Normalising Layoffs/Firing

I agree, as long as there is no guarantees for your human rights, we'll continue to live in scary world, where being fired might literally mean death or suicide or becoming criminal. I know that in my country many men took their life, after they lost job, because unless you can quickly find something else, your life can quickly fall apart and most people don't earn enough to have savings and state won't offer you much help.

I know that now we talk more often about how this global system is broken, but can we actually do anything about it, if wealthy just amass their wealth and don't want to share? I don't want revolution, but it seems like we need some revolution, so humanity can survive as something more than masses of wage slaves.

It's just sad, when I again hear in my company about equality, sustainability, but CEO is making 150-300x my salary and is in top 0.1% by income and I hear that I don't even deserve raise that would match inflation in my country.

Interviewing practices have very little connection to logic in the first place, and to the extent they do there's probably more connection to the general employer/employee power balance than any such specific consideration. American companies make candidates jump through hoops because they can; European ones don't because they can't.

> Firing easily and hiring easily are two sides of the same coin. If you can be fired easily, you will find a job easily. If companies can go down quickly, new companies can be formed in an instant.

> In Europe where firing is almost impossible, hiring is a very tedious process.

This is, at best, an anecdote. I'm charitably saying anecdote to avoid calling it utter bullshit. The average hiring process at companies I'm familiar with -- in the UK, France, Germany, Finland, the Czech Republic, Portugal and Greece, so I guess it's a reasonably large sample -- is no more complicated than the hiring process at Google or Facebook. And, much like in the US, if you stay away from the big players -- like Google or Facebook -- the average hiring "process" is a technical interview + a short interview with the hiring manager and HR. Popular enough companies may do a phone screening but that's about it.

Firing someone for bad performance is not "almost impossible". I have, unfortunately, had to sign off on that a couple of times. What is almost impossible is firing someone for bullshit reasons and writing it off as "a bad fit".

Of course there are legal protection in place: if you are laid off and can't find work -- for example, because you relocated to stay with your current employer when they moved offices, and were promptly laid off afterwards, in a new town with somewhat uncertain prospects -- the solution you're offered, in most countries, is not stop being poor, lol, but various forms of social protection so you don't starve before your next interview. Consequently, yes, it's important to make it difficult to fire people because they don't bend to toxic management or poor working conditions, otherwise that'd just be sponsoring incompetent management.

> Companies are big and look financially stable because the little ones cannot survive or dont enjoy the same monopoly / legal protections.

That is not even an anecdote. Except for Eastern Europe, where the Iron Curtain interrupted the history of most businesses, there are plenty of small companies, in every country, that have been operating more or less without interruption since the 1800s (and usually the interruptions were on account of one of the World Wars). There are four of these within a ten-minute walking distance from where I'm staying.

Keep in mind that a 401k is almost all funded with your own money. The amount going into the 401k is deducted from your paycheck... you can see it in one of the boxes. A pension, on the other hand, was funded by the company. And that is the exact reason there are so few defined-benefit pensions today in the private sector. These things were so incredibly generous that they are potentially bankrupting the original company... GE is certainly in that boat. Of course companies would prefer employees to fund their own retirement, perhaps sprinkle in a limited employer match subject to 5-year vesting, than to fund the whole thing themselves!

europe is the worst of both worlds. there isnt really protection. and as the years go by it gets worse as our governments vote new law to reduce our protections. let me give you the example of france. when we join a company we can be fired during the first six months with very little real reason. when we want to leave the company we need to give a 3month notice (think about how happy is the new company knowing youll misss a quarter when some of those companies don't even plan their future well - just look GCP hiring freeze suddenly in the middle of a quarter while in a hiring spree one week before). when you get fired most of the time you will get unemployement. 55% of your salary (it is very good but when you plan your life around 100% salary it gets very very challenging to live on 55%). but only for the first 6 months (a new law that concerns mostly white collars...) then it will be degressive so that after a few months you out of luck. note that in europe you pay tax while you work so that you can be paid while unemployed... so the 6month degressive new law is pure stealing from the people and totally evil and because it hits only white collars workers most of the people don't talk about it because it concerns people that are 'well off' in the society while in reality policies like this are a total destruction of the middle class.

finding a new job you will compete with people that have this 3 month notice so most of the companies plan hiring around it. also if you are unemployed in europe it will look really bad during your interviews.

now compare that to USA. you give 2 week notice, job market is very fluid so you can likely find a new job 2 week after stay there a few months helping the company and then use that time to apply to a new job in a better company.

Obviously the french model might be better for low earners/blue collars that do not have a job security. but for everyone else it is really hard to move to another company, managers know that too so they dont need to carrot you into a raise or a promotion as much as they do in US.