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Dutch employee fired by U.S. firm for shutting off webcam awarded €75K in court

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Re: Dutch employee fired by U.S. firm for shutting off webcam awarded €75K in court

#291

Post by denton-scratch »

trevvr wrote: post #146
tyfon wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Norwegian civil court, the loser pays the legal bills for both. It may seem a bit harsh, but it does prevent frivolous law suits. For work related cases, if you are in a union, they will foot the bill in most cases.

I wonder if this makes court cases a pretty high stakes game for even the smallest of issues? Interesting concept all the same.

> I wonder if this makes court cases a pretty high stakes game

Stay away from courts! If your case goes before a judge, you're in casino country. Unless you're on the hook for some criminal offence, tell your lawyer to negotiate a settlement. Once a civil case comes before a judge, that usually means that there's a legal issue to be decided that nobody agrees on, which means that you can't predict how the cookie might crumble.

Re: Dutch employee fired by U.S. firm for shutting off webcam awarded €75K in court

#292

Post by RHSeeger »

phpisthebest wrote: post #210
croes wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like paying schools from taxes and never have kids, or paying fire fighters and your house never burns. It's called society.

Well I would prefer they send me a bill directly for fire services monthly, like water instead of having it obfuscated in general taxation. I prefer user fees not taxation. as for schools, to the extent I support their funding (which is more limited than I suspect you do) it is generally ethically justified because I too attended schools paid for by taxation, so in that manner I paying off a debt vs paying for others…

> I would prefer they send me a bill directly for fire services monthly

The problem is that then some people opt out. If enough people do that, it's no longer financially viable to have a fire service.

> I absolutely reject the idea of a "social contract"

Which is fine, but then don't live in the society. As a society, we have decided what is important for the benefit of the society; fire departments, law enforcement, schools, roads, etc. We then attempt to gather money from everyone in that society to pay for those things, because that's the only way it's realistic. Not everyone in the society agrees to all the details, but (in theory) the majority of people agree to them.

It's not all that different than living in an apartment with a few other people. If most of the people agree that everyone has to split the electricity bill, but one person says they don't want to... then it's reasonable to have that person leave, and replace them with someone that is ok with the rules set by the group.

Re: Dutch employee fired by U.S. firm for shutting off webcam awarded €75K in court

#293

Post by RHSeeger »

bernulli wrote: post #283
phpisthebest wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>(we get 1 year for 80% pay, first 6 months full pay, then 5 years protection against dismissal) That is just crazy.... I would hate to be a chidless person in your country, I can not image the extra amount of work that get places on people that do not have children... As someone that will never have a child I like the fact that the US does not force this kind of parental leave on employers, I know that will be very…

There's a simple word for people with that attitude: freeloader. It's pretty easy to understand: > I can not image the extra amount of work that get places on people that do not have children... What you're forgetting is the amount of work required to raise children. That's an externality that is only covered through a social contract, where everyone contributes to a next generation. Why should parents put in the ext…

I think there's a lot of people that want things to be fair at the individual level ("that person gets time off for a child, but that other, childless person works the whole time")... but don't see the greater "benefit to society overall" part of it. It's not necessarily that they're being greedy; it may not even be something that would benefit them directly. They just never consider that they're paying a cost for the greater good, because it's not in their view of the world.

Re: Dutch employee fired by U.S. firm for shutting off webcam awarded €75K in court

#294

Post by RHSeeger »

flippinburgers wrote: post #160
phpisthebest wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know companies have budgets right? you can not just "hire more people" and remain profitable, no profit no company. Companies are not charities created to employ people. So sure if only 1 person is off on leave most likely another person could be hired But 5 years of protected leave..... What percentage of the work force is going to be out on that? Also since it is very hard to terminate someone in the EU, what h…

Not five years of leave. Five years of protection that one wont be fired due to having taken leave is the way I read it. Also in the system I work under, all employees pay a government tax that is used to pay for the parental leave. That is, the money isn't coming out of the companies pocket, but coming out of a national bucket designated for the purpose. The company pays nothing when the employee is taking this time…

Well, not "nothing", just not money directly. They still have to pay the loss in productivity during ramp up times. It's less of a big deal, but it's not nothing.

Re: Dutch employee fired by U.S. firm for shutting off webcam awarded €75K in court

#295

Post by galangalalgol »

csydas wrote: post #167
phpisthebest wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the company but they are commonly used to ensure managers are not just firing someone that they are "pissed off" at, people are cynical about them but they are designed to ensure managers have to document the poor performance, and have notified the employee they are under performing... I have seen companies that lack this process and witnessed employees getting very positive feedback from managers even in…

I'm actually shocked that so many companies handle performance improvement and coaching so badly. We implemented a coaching system for our support team about a year ago with the explicit purpose that individual coaching does not directly affect KPI, and that as much coaching can and should be done freely without worry of impacting the support team. The system tracks both the person being coached and their team lead w…

I've seen this work well, especially with some flexibility. Had a very dramatic underperformer on a team that sat near me. His lead went down every paperwork rabbit hole to get him fired, and the improvement plan was the last step. He simply couldn't knock out a simple backlog item without a lot of help. I'm not sure how he graduated with a degree. But the improvement plan had him doing some ops work as well as development, and low and behold he was a natural born ops wizard... It all made sense to him. Had never heard of k8s or helm and was spitting out helm charts, docker files, conan files etc. in less than a month, burning down the whole teams ops backlog.

Re: Dutch employee fired by U.S. firm for shutting off webcam awarded €75K in court

#296

Post by kube-system »

trynewideas wrote: post #245
formerkrogemp wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still a checkbox used during termination.

I also don't see how going through it reduces the stigma. The stigma exists _because_ of the experience, not the unfamiliarity of it. For instance, does the experience of going through US airport security ever reduce the stigma of it?

When you go through TSA, nobody thinks “oh, that person must be a terrorist because the TSA is screening them”. Because the TSA screens everyone.

When someone is on a PIP, the expectation is “that person is about to get fired”

This is the stigma we’re talking about.

Re: Dutch employee fired by U.S. firm for shutting off webcam awarded €75K in court

#297

Post by memcg »

P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote: post #270
memcg wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That does not answer the question regarding interacting with customers.

>Was the company already recording his screen and voice (if applicable) The answer is yes.

Was his job to interact with customers? Not answered. Did not address voice recording which is common for call center and support employees.

Re: Dutch employee fired by U.S. firm for shutting off webcam awarded €75K in court

#298

Post by Spivak »

malshe wrote: post #266
unity1001 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which is why you make 50% less by the way They make 50% less. And they don't have to pay $1000 per head for private insurance, more for other insurance, $3000/month for being able to be a roommate in a 30 m2 apartment. Also they have disability, reasonable retirement, paid vacations and everything that are pretty much nonexistent for American employees.

If you use some extreme examples then sure living in the US can be very expensive. But for most of us the things are not this bad. I am a professor and even with the academic pay I save about 30% of my salary even after paying all the expenses. The key is to live in a lower cost US state where the salaries are still quite high compared to most of the world.

Same, being DINKs we literally save 85% of our monthly cash flow while maxing out two IRAs, two employer matched 401ks, and two HSAs, and carry no debt.

We don’t even make that much by US coastal standards.

My retired grandparents have total monthly expenses of $3k but make $12k/mo from their pensions plus around a million in retirement accounts. Their entire careers they barely made more than the median household income and had kids.

The advantage of making a lot of money in expensive cities is you get an amazing deal when you pay “world rates” for things. But living in cheap medium size cities gives you an absolutely fucktonne of purchasing power. Our total monthly expenses including rent, utilities, internet, food, insurances, gas is less than $2.5k and we live in a nice well appointed flat.

Re: Dutch employee fired by U.S. firm for shutting off webcam awarded €75K in court

#299

Post by tallanvor »

blub wrote: post #101
ineedasername wrote: post #80

he was ordered to take part in a virtual training period called a "Corrective Action Program." This is the sort of name given to processes uses when an employee is already performing below expectations. (Where I work it’s a more euphemistic Performance Improvement). If that’s the case here then his firing was a bit less sudden than it appears. Though the entire monitoring process seems draconian regardless.

PIPs are a tool for managing out employees that don’t perform well or don’t yield to often abusive company demands like e.g. overtime or pissed of somebody in management or connected to management.

This completely depends on the company. Where I work, PIPs really are designed to give extra structure to the people on them as to what is expected of them and they're designed to be achievable by the average employee without working extra hours. Of course, they're also private, so you only know someone has been on one if they choose to share that information.
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