Live data from Hacker News

X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum

fortune.com

251–260 of 474 posts

Re: X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum

#252

I am glad to hear that workers rights are being enforced in Europe. As an employee in Germany, it sounds deranged to receive an email saying I have one day to completely change my work contract, or be fired from my job.

BTW in Germany, if a company decides to lay off people just to save money, they have to coordinate with some government agency -- and if the company doesn't have financial trouble, those layoffs can be blocked. This happened to Alphabet/Google when they wanted to lay off 6% of their workforce, but were wildly profitable. They couldn't in Germany. (This probably wouldn't have applied in the Twitter case, because Twitt…

This is a great way to cement inefficiencies and create pencil pushers.

Re: X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum

#255
post #214
post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He can afford it as long as the stock market remains convinced Tesla deserve to be the most valuable car company in the world while being outside the top ten in sales ...

Even then; so far as I can see (which is limited) he's also making bank from SpaceX.

How do you figure? SpaceX needs about a billion dollars of new capital injection every 18 months or so..

Re: X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum

#256
post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you have accrued vacation, you "earned" your vacation and they can't take it away from you without compensation... If they fire you, they should even have to pay you your salary for those vacation days. This is the law in California but not most other states. In most states, vacation time is a benefit that can expire, evaporate, or be rescinded. The company is just deciding not to assign you job duties during yo…

Bingo: unlimited vacation is a scam

It really depends. The company I work for - doesn’t even have a time-keeping system. Taking vacation is a matter of sending a slack or email, or simply verbally letting your manager and team mates know that you won’t be available. So far this year I’ve taken more than 3 weeks at least. I know it’s not a ton, but the point is - that I don’t know the actual exact count, I strongly suspect that nobody really tracks it in any way, and I am planning to take few weeks more before the next year.

Re: X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum

#257
post #4

Would this be legal in any jurisdiction (click-or-be-fired)? I am not familiar with US labour laws, are employees actually at the level of indentured servants considering terms of employment (which I would expect to be a contract between TWO parties)?

In the US, in most (all?) jurisdictions, your employer doesn't really need to have a reason to fire you. They can fire everyone wearing red shirts, if they wanted to. There are also very few places providing leave (outside of white-collar positions). For example, my wife was given two weeks off from her job after having my son. The state we lived in only required maternity leave to be implemented at companies having…

I wonder if the development of maternity leave sort of happened backwards from how we typically think of it happening.

Like most people talk about it as if culturally we used to expect 0 accommodations for working mothers, which was bad, and the expectation has increased over time.

But, actually in the past the mother would have spent many dedicated years with the infant/baby/toddler/child, until they entered school. If the mother has multiple children, it’s not really practical for a company to hold their spot open for like 8 years and I don’t think this happens even in the most progressive of European countries.

So, culturally speaking, does the rise of maternity leave actually come from an increasing cultural tolerance for the mother spending less time with the child via daycare?

Re: X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum

#259
post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even then; so far as I can see (which is limited) he's also making bank from SpaceX.

How do you figure? SpaceX needs about a billion dollars of new capital injection every 18 months or so..

Last I heard, it was making a profit despite spending about 5bn on Starship:

https://archive.ph/20230817224420/https://www.wsj.com/tech/b...

(I count "can make Starship on the side" as a QED of "making bank").

Regardless of how Starship concludes, when it does so it saves them ongoing costs, and turns "small profit" into "huge profit": either Falcon becomes redundant, or the R&D team does.

Re: X ordered to pay €550k to Irish employee fired after yes-or-resign ultimatum

#260
post #80

Good luck collecting: X is notorious for stiffing on debts.

I'd assume Ireland has something like bailiffs in the UK.

Delta tried not paying around £3000 owed to a customer. He got a court order and sent bailiffs who went to the airport, closed the checking and said they were going seize the plane to pay for the debt.

There's a good short documentary about it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QSj9odUD_c&t=320s . This link starts at 320 seconds, where the action starts. Start from the beginning if you want the back story.

Spoiler: Delta called the police who explained to them that they were about to pay up or lose the plane. Delta paid up. Actually, the managed used her personal card to pay I'd assume Delta paid her back.

Post reply on HN