Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am absolutely for decoupling healthcare from employment (via universal care), and for mandated severance. However, there's a reason that so many - I'll pick on Germany here - German tech leaders move to the US. When firing employees becomes too hard, hiring is risky, giving people broad latitude is risky, and compensation suffers because high comp is risky. If you're a very capable software engineer, it's better to…
> When firing employees becomes too hard, hiring is risky, giving people broad latitude is risky, and compensation suffers because high comp is risky. I don't follow this conclusion at all.
I don’t know if the assertions are true in practice, because I’ve only worked in the US and not Europe, and have never held a tenured position or had a union, but the logic described seemed straightforward enough: if it’s difficult to fire an employee, then you must be more cautious in hiring, because you may be saddled with a poor employee for longer than you’d like. Likewise, empowering employees to take high stakes risks is suggested to be more dangerous if the employer loses the ability to easily let employees go if the employee’s poor judgement causes disaster. (Think sink or swim, give them enough rope to hang themselves — this doesn’t necessarily sound like a great employer.) Finally, offering high salaries is more risky if you can’t let those employees go if they fail to perform. As a counter-factual thought exercise that all seems plausible, we do like our at-will employment here, but no idea if it’s really that difficult to fire employees outside the US — he does make it sound like more of a long term marriage relationship where additional caution is warranted. That all aligns with the uninformed stereotype I have in my mind that the US is more pro business and Europe is more pro worker. While the proposition is internally consistent, I’m eager to hear if it’s sound.