351–360 of 410 posts
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> you can do everything right and still get fired And that's why much of the world has a social safety net.
I don't disagree. As a US citizen, I pine for the social safety nets in Canada and Europe. I'm playing the hand I was dealt.
There are people who were at OpenDNS in the early days who were incredible, and as we grew, became less and less incredible, largely because the things that made them incredible actually started to be really frustrating as the company grew and they didn't want to change those things. So they had to leave. Usually it was a series of conversations about how the person, their peers, and the company were all unhappy, and…
If you fire your commandos, that means that you've settled on your one business and are no longer needing the people to innovate. That doesn't reflect well on you. Your company should always be innovating-- and the people who got you there should be rewarded, not fired for it.
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>...why should the taxpayers cover your mortgage? because as a taxpayer i have been covering mortgage of somebody unemployed. So i expect (due to social contract of safety net) that if i happen to be unemployed than some other taxpayer(s) will cover my mortgage.
That's obviously true, the question was why should you have to cover someone else's mortgage?
This is probably a stupid question, but could someone explain what it means to be fired in the USA? Here in the UK (especially after you've been employed for over two years and/or you're off "probation") it tends to be the last step in a long process of verbal then written warnings where you're repeatedly doing things you're getting told off for. Relatively few things are actually "bad" enough to get you instantly di…
The company makes up the objectives you have to meet, so could set really hard targets. Its called being "Performance Managed" out.
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This seems like a weird way to flog a 15 year old dispute.
Let's put it this way: I've worked with people I disliked and even some I found incompetent. I would never dream of calling them out like this. Putting that page up filled a need in my sense of justice in the world - which probably also motivated the guy who put up the other page, too. To quote the poster above, "But part of the problem is that in a meritocracy you need people to know who the bad actors are".
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> How on earth would this ever benefit you? Breaking taboos is a good way to get noticed. Zach getting noticed is a good way to broadcast the fact that he's available for hire. That, taken with his strong reputation in the community? I'd be shocked if he wasn't sitting on a tidy bundle of offers in the next week.
It is actually somewhat relieving that even amazing developers and creative individuals can get fired. Makes me not feel as bad about it if I ever end up in such a situation.
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> Note that while it technically works both ways, realistically it only works to the employers benefit. The employer is allowed to fire any employee at any time, for no reason, with no recourse. I don't agree at all. In this market it benefits technology workers to be at-will. You can get a great job offer and literally leave your job the next day. This drives salaries up overall and means companies need to work hard…
> You can get a great job offer and literally leave your job the next day Except who would hire someone like that?
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> When you interview ask how many people with MBAs and no programming experience you'll be working under. If someone asked that, I would probably consider that a red flag, that they are mistrustful of "business types" and probably difficult to work with.
There are other less direct ways to pose the question.
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I have a lot of family in France, and based on what I've heard from them, the flip-side of those kinds of employment protections is that employers become much more reluctant to hire people (especially young people and people considered higher risk based on background, skills, etc.) Possible that this attitude (along with many other factors) contributes to the far less developed startup cultures of many Western Europe…
Spain has a 15-days notice for termination and Luxembourg 1-month, France 3 months for IT jobs (I'm French) and I guess employee protection laws are proportional to those figures. So I wonder whether it's essntially France which is considers the employment contract as a blood pact.
The way the usual contract in IT (CDI) works is: you can have a 4-month trial period, which you can renew once. Then the employer cannot fire you without "serious cause" (and "bad performance" does not qualify).
Some side-effects of that are:
- Employers are afraid to hire, leading to long-term unemployment.
- IT is dominated by huge consultancies (because companies prefer to contract out than hire).
- As an employee, it is almost impossible to rent a flat in Paris during a trial period (because we also have laws that make it impossible to expell people who don't pay their rent).
- Acquisitions are complicated because the acquirer needs to keep the whole team. An exception is companies that go broke (in which case they can fire part of the team and then be acquired).
I understand why we have those laws, they are useful to protect some categories of people. But for higher revenue professions, we would be better off with a contract that is more flexible. More and more people are trying to work around this by creating single-person companies instead of being employed directly, but it is a mess (and the state is doing all it can to make it illegal...).
Form my experience, if not being part of a 10% cut 80% of the fired people deserved it and should think hard why.
Also from my experience, most people getting fired for legit reasons have not enough self introspection to see the signs and change, also mostly everyone else sees those in them.