In (most of ?) Europe, this severance is law and not debatable (as discovered by Musk recently), so this sentence would be outright illegal. You can talk about your salary with anyone you want, discuss it with your colleagues, that's even mandatory for mass-layoffs (through unions and/or elected representatives).

You should fight for some more rights, sometime <3

Those making less than a certain amount can only be terminated:

a) immediately for cause (theft/fraud/etc)

b) with notice for poor performance

c) with notice and a legislated payout for redundancy where the job is no longer required.

Those earning above a certain amount need to negotiate any/all of these into their contract.

Admittedly it does occasionally result in employees being reinstated whose sacking was (IMO) completely justified. I don't like those specific instances, but I figure it's the price you have to pay for a system that is tilted slightly in favour of employees.

[0] The actual laws are rubbish though, they're intentionally obtuse/vague owing to industrial relations being a political minefield and no government wanting to touch it for fear of voter pushback.

A small handful of countries in Europe*

Some employees that capture a piece of that wealth funnel it back into more startups/growth (Silicon Valley) creating more jobs, more growth and more wealth (not to mention whatever the new startup is doing is usually creating a new thing people want too).

Software salaries are extremely high, but software companies in the US pay a lot in non software roles too.

On net you end up way in a way richer society that operates this way vs. one that incentivizes not operating this way.

That doesn't mean there should be zero protections from abuse, but it's important to be cautious about the net effect of these sorts of regulations and how you can end up trapped in a worse local maximum because of them.

In a society where you can take bigger risks, make bigger bets, you can get a lot bigger wins at scale. I think that's a good/important thing.

There are regressive taxes (e.g., sales taxes / VAT) which are certainly lower in America than most of the rest of the world, and some American states deliberately starve their government of income so that they cannot be obligated to provide basic services and instead shift things to user fees.

Sometimes just a roll of the dice. Large companies tend to lay off more. If you've only worked in startups, it's very possible you may never be laid off. I've never been laid off despite working 20 years in industry.

Working in banks, FAGMAN, etc, you are much more likely to be laid off. I guess you could consider that high-risk, but those jobs are low-risk overall imo, because they pay a lot more than startups.

You only get to the part where it's all worth it once you've settled into the new country, gotten a few jobs/promotions/started a business, bought a house, made lots of friends, learnt the new culture (not such a huge shock for UK->US), etc.

This takes years and sometimes a whole generation!

However, I looked it up, and she was right. Plugged in my numbers into healthcae.gov, and I got a call from medicaid the next day. Even though I had made the equivalent of >240k per-annum based just on my January income (was laid off in Jan), I qualified for medicaid for my kids immediately (my wife and I would have qualified in a few months in my state due to how they count income, but in the meantime, qualified for a heavily subsidized rate). Medicaid in my state takes income by the week, so since I made no money in the week, my income was considered zero, so my kids got free medical. Some time later we found out my wife is pregnant, so she was also covered by medicaid.

A few things. Firstly, I explicitly called out to the medicaid guy how much money I was expecting to make (almost 300k), as well as how much savings I had. He told me it didn't matter since I made zero in the past week, and medicaid is by the week. Secondly, I explicitly asked, since I expected to make a shit ton of money this year, if I had to pay it back. He said no. Even if I were to make a million dollars this year or a billion, I would never owe anything for those months we were on medicaid.

Of course, I also qualified for unemployment, but that income put us below the medicaid threshold.

Medicaid was better than our private insurance (which was itself a posh PPO plan). I know this because my youngest daughter ended up in the hospital twice and needed an ambulance ride. The november ride cost us more than a thousand. The medicaid ride was free. All things considered, especially given my new job, we saved a good amount of money being laid off.

At the end of it all, I got a new job in April and the new insurance kicked in in May. It was actually hard to get off medicaid since they didn't really have a way to do that (I guess it's not 'intended' for those making a lot of money with periods of unemployment). We had to struggle to explain to the state we didn't need their money anymore and were insured. They insisted on keeping us insured anyway. I was okay with this but my wife thought we shouldn't squander state funds, so she called regularly and finally got through to someone who would cancel it for us (I had already sent in my income change notification forms, but whatever system they had in place didn't remove me).

My 100% free medical is enshrined by the law in my state, which sets the eligibility guidelines for medicaid. Please stop parroting misinformation and discouraging people from using the available welfare programs. So many people I've spoken with thought I was crazy for applying to medicaid and didn't do so themselves because they thought they wouldn't be eligible, but they would have been.

It's against the law to steal money. That's a regulation we need to keep.

It's also against the law to build a house if the existing homeowners vote that you can't. That's a regulation that makes the market less efficient, though I can see the reasoning behind it.

In scenario H (for hard to fire), we expect employers to spend more time evaluating new hires, because if they make a suboptimal choice, they will be stuck with that employee until they can justify to the authority that the employee is not suitable. This makes them averse to hiring quickly, and also averse to paying a premium unless they are extremely certain of the results. We then expect potential employees to spend more time vetting potential employers, because any involuntary job search process is going to be long and expensive.

In scenario E (for easy to fire), we expect employers to spend less time evaluating new hires, and to be more agreeable to paying a premium, because the loss of hiring suboptimally can be swiftly ended. Since employers hire faster, we expect employees to spend less time vetting employers, since getting a new different job should take less time.

In practice, I suspect that current economic situations are much more of a driver than the regulatory regime.

I'm talking about a post-employment notice period. How much notice does the employee get between getting fired and then no longer receiving paycheques? Basically, how much severance does the company have to pay?

Add to this any red tape involved in firing someone.

Now look at it from the point of view of the company. If I, the business owner, know that I have to comply with a raft of regulations and pay several months' severance to fire someone, I'll be very reluctant to hire them in the first place. I'll jump through hoops, work late nights, outsource the job, do anything I can to avoid hiring someone.

On the other hand, if I'm in an at-will state in the US, you can fire someone for no reason with zero notice. Seems crazy right? But it means I won't even think twice about hiring someone either. Could they maybe help on a project? Sure, hire them! Frequently one thing leads to another and employees stay on for a long time anyway.

Now in the second case the same number of companies with the same capital available will end up hiring lots more people due to the lower friction.

Make it easy to get out of a situation, and more people will want to get into that situation.

As a business you're more risk-averse in offering high salaries since it costs more when you make a mistake.

- Your company is most certainly not allowed to break the NLRA. No company is.

- But your company can terminate your employment without cause whenever they like, as long as it's not over something that breaks the law, and as long as they pay the associated full severance.

- You talk about your salary. And given the vast majority of jobs aren't "my employer's so great, I get paid so well" but "there is so much inequality, let's talk about salaries so we can see how deep the rot goes", it's not going to be in a positive light.

- A short while later (definitely not immediately, your company's not a nice company, and it's going to take some time to make sure it has anything on you that they can legally fire you over that doesn't violate the NLBA) your company fires you, without reason, but with full severance.

- You challenge them to provide a reason

- Their lawyers point out they are under no obligation to provide you with a reason because they are complying with "termination without cause" legislation, and that if you think your dismissal was in violation of the law, you take it to court.

Now you have a problem, because now you're going to have to take them to court and prove that they only reason they could have fired you is because you talked about your salary. Can you afford that court case or is it cheaper to take the severance? We're not talking about a happy happy justice "laws work" world, we're talking about the real world, and specifically the real, nasty, world of shit paying US companies, where you aren't a valuable employee but are a disposable asset to be replaced by a cheaper alternative the moment you give them reason to do so, whether that reason is legal or not, because they know you can't afford the challenge, and they know they just need any reason for you to make the case that it was more likely because you talked about salaries than anything else.

What about the European system prevents that for the employee?

Every system could be improved and if you prefer one the other isn't by default inherently evil.

People within both systems can suck.

If they all are all happy and free to chart their own destiny - why are those contract things then pretty much standard in the US (as it seems to me)?

And maybe things are not perfect on either side of the atlantic?

I would be fine with less regulations and hire and fire here in europe btw - but I would be not OK, having to sign such contracts. But I don't see, why we can't have both. Meaning employee respecting contracts - but not mandated from above.

I've always found it much easier to "chart my own destiny" when my healthcare is guaranteed, forever, for free, whether I have a job or not.

Absolutely not treu. You probably didn't read the part in my comment where I explained my experiences where needing the local language was a must for dealing with the bureaucratic paperwork you can end up facing regularly.

Maybe in northern Europe that might be true but it's definitely not my experience in Austria (and even in Denmark I have friend who met doctors' offices telling them they need to speak Danish). Language barrier is defiantly an issue here, especially outside the SW dev world.

Plenty of government offices you have to interact with don't or don't want to speak English (mostly due to older grumpy staff). Plenty of police officers don't speak English (also the older staff). Plenty of doctors, nurses and specialists don't speak English. Plenty(most?) companies outside of SW require German knowledge. Plenty of landlords and building management companies or utility companies don't speak or don't want to speak English. The list can go on, especially if you mostly land with older staff members. The language barrier is real. Sure, sometimes you can get lucky and land a young contact person who speaks great English and will want to help you, but that's quite rare, most will tell you "nur Deutsch" and then you're shit out of luck as a lot of the issues need to be solved over the phone or in person instead of email where you can fire up deepl.

I remember when a negligent driver hit me while cycling, the two police officers who came over spoke no English at all as they were a bit older. This happens quite often when you deal with older staff.

Saying English is all you need to get by is a gross over-exaggeration and does not match the struggles me and my friends had here at all. Sure, you can order a beer and a pizza in English just fine, but any and all official bureaucracy needs to be done in the local language, not in English, often on the phone or in person, on paper and the spot, without the possibility to easily google translate the thing you're signing, like you can on web forms (and even the stuff google translate camera app spits out is a lot of the time confusing as hell). And believe me, there's a lot of paper work: contracts, insurance forms, complaints, registration forms, etc.

Also, it's respectul to learn the local language to integrate, unless you want to make life difficult for yourself, and live in isolation in expat-only bubbles.

Anyway, my point is, from personal experience, it's still a huge hassle, to move and live in countries where you don't speak the local language as not everything and everyone is always geared to swatch to English for your convenience.

You can have your cake and eat it too. It's called the Danish model, although Denmark itself has an imperfect implementation of the model.

In the Danish model, it's easy to fire people, but the social safety net ensures that the employee doesn't get screwed if it happens. They don't lose their health insurance, EI is generous enough that it has minimal impact on their lifestyle, etc.

When you count just the taxes we definitely pay less, especially in places like Texas and Florida. Well, I suppose there's the budget deficit and national debt to consider, though yours aren't exactly great either.

Well, except that there's a middle income trap with social security taxes. Basically, you want to be earning either a fair bit more than the social security cut-off, or to be on welfare. This is a terrible feature of our system.

> When you include health insurance and college education, Americans get much less value.

Honestly I'm starting to believe that our tertiary education system is vastly overvalued and that we can do much better for much less cost. Also, we have state schools that are very good and very cheap (by comparison to private ones anyways). I know people who have done very well in tech without having gone to school or graduated.

As for medical, the only coverage I want is catastrophic, and if I could just just get that then health care would be way cheaper. Health care providers generally have much lower prices when you have no insurance and pay out of pocket.

> I do agree with the first half of your comment. American labor laws make it easier to fire which allows employers to take more risk in hiring.

This is, on the whole, a very very nice feature. We also have better political speech rights than you. And... well, the whole Bill of Rights is a big deal, and European countries mostly don't have anything like it.

less risk, you used the wrong word. If they can fire easily, they take less risk by hiring. That's more risk for the employee though, you miss the fact that most of the people is not HN, and they don't get paid 6 or 7 figures and don't find a job in days if they really need to.

They do. It's been quantified. There are many states with no income tax.

A 230k salary and corporate health insurance is going to put you ahead of almost every European software shop.

I love Germany and enjoyed my time there, but I choose to work in the states and have the financial security that can only be gained by saving money from a high salary.

Still, I would love to see some friction added to the layoff process in the US. Perhaps larger mandatory severance periods. Make layoffs possible, but not easy.

College education can be had for super cheap in the US via community colleges. Going to an expensive college is a lifestyle choice and I know many people who spend first 2 years in local community colleges and then move to the state college system.

At least for me, regular medical care needs scheduled out some months, doctors have poor availbility. I get one freebie a year via insurance, everything else is about $50.

For minor injuries, or medical stuff that needs same-day eyes, but not a full emergency department, there is urgent care. You wait as long as it takes, in my area, usually 30-90 minutes, pay $100 and they may or may not be able to help. Minor prescriptions and stitches they can usually do

For major stuff, such as broken bones, heart attack, psychosis, whatever, there is the ER. You wait as long as you wait, and it's about $300 for the initial visit, though this can climb rapidly if you need to stay.

That's about it for your insured options.

Your uninsured options are similar, but more expensive. If you are extremely poor, or old, or both you may have a semi-free option with medicare and medicaid, but that is more complicated than I care to type out.

Yes, that's what I meant by being fired, with notice. You thought I meant being fired without notice which is uncommon anywhere in Europe unless the employee did something illegal.

The fact that in Austria your employer can terminate your employment contract anytime with a notice period, and for no reason, is very rare in Europe as it makes employees super vulnerable to loosing their jobs anytime.

In most EU countries, with better employee protections, employers need valid reason and proof to terminate your contract with notice, otherwise they can get sued for wrongful termination and have to pay penalties.

Also, in Austria you can even get fired (with notice) while you're on sick leave, which is pretty barbaric by EU standards.

How can you tell?

That part seems fireable IMO (or the getting caught part)

So the music streamers were able to leverage that and extend the deal.

If movies had a similar licensing model, you'd see a ton of "Netflix"'s who were all licensing the same content and competing on user experience. Like the music streamers.

Although it should be noted that the music streamers are now moving towards the exclusivity model, where the big ones are making exclusive deals to keep that music off of any other platform.

Of course you treat family members well when they "deliver" for you, the real part is when they can't deliver and you still support them.

It breaks down the second you actually compare your family to your company. I think that basically every single person would do many, many things for members of his family that he wouldn't do for the members of his company.

Were it like family, you'd still invite each other to birthdays and the like.

That's as close to actual 'family' as i feel im not, in the multinational i work for.

The company will exhibit the following behaviors at the same time:

- they will organize a bunch of social events, full of drinking and games, fly colleagues from all over the world to some exotic location

- will refuse to increase your salary to match inflation citing lack of funds (which were somehow available when flying 200 people to AUSTRALIA)

- will work on deadend projects to further the career of X-middle manager/whim of CEO due to something they read. Will overhire people for said projects. At same time, main parts of business can often be underfunded and understaffed

- will cut off full departments when said deadend projects reach their inevitable dead end

- will, at random holidays, give away branded bags, pens, socks, usbs and chocolates, but still have no budget for a salary increase

- will be having a great financial year with 15% growth and send emails of the type: "Good job Team!" but salary increases will not happen or be confined to the 1-2% range.

After some time the cognitive dissonance becomes too much and you simply stop caring.

During one of my reviews it was mentioned that it's disappointing I don't attend the happy hours as that's when the team is able to connect and strengthen our bonds with each other.

Wasn't surprised I was let go just a few weeks later after I declined the next happy hour.

They are particularly designed without a single thought given to "non-social" types.

Executives that make promises to their employees they can't deliver on should know better. You can't create a "family" out of your company because the realities of running a business make that impossible. It's fine to encourage mutual respect, etc as cultural values but it's important to make clear where the boundaries are or people will be hurt (either financially or emotionally) when you can't deliver. Saying the company is "like a family" is blurring these lines, not making them clear.

Edit: That's not even mentioning how "we're like a family" usually means "we're like a TV family". Many real families sometimes fight, swear at each other, say fucked up, sometimes racist/sexist/etc, things, talk about politics and religion, etc. Most larger companies would not tolerate any of this.

My family will support me no matter what. My family will never fire me. My family actually loves me.

None of those things are true with an employer.

Hate to break it to HN, but the most successful engineers I've met in the biz are also very empathetic and enjoyable to be around. This HN stereotype that you have to be an low-EQ, frustrated incel to work on software is incorrect in my reality. Just look at the top coders who are living (Linus, Guido, Hashimoto) and you will notice that they are very teamwork oriented people.

I think it's misguided to think that there aren't many people force themselves to work in that and worse conditions. Why? They need the money.

It's seriously misguided, to think you can have any successful career without being able to force yourself to work. Quitting work everytime there is a hicup will not generally lead to a successful career. Not being able to work at all because the sun is out, your kid is long term sick, your wife had an affair, etc will generally not lead to having a successful career. There are many scenarios on a daily basis where people force themselves to work.

> if he had been hit by a car you wouldn't be suggesting he force himself to do anything

If cleared for work and needed to keep their job, yes I would. Many people do in fact force themselves to work after truamatic events such as being hit by a car or being in a car accident.

And remember, I didn't say in this scenario he should have forced himself to work. In fact, I said I had no problems with him not. But I said it is a skill that is needed for many in life.

What's so off-putting about: "Do well and you stick around, do poorly and you go away"?

Risk should be compensated by higher expected return, otherwise it's not worth it

Since nobody is advocating "doing nothing", I think you have a nice strawman going on there.

In another post you also equate being depressed with "flaking out".

I'm going to guess you know nothing about clinical depression, so spare me the description of what you think the treatment plans are.

But I did point out that sometimes in life we need to force ourselves to work. Why? Because we need an income. Some people live a life where they don't need to work but most of us don't. Plenty of us had to go to work in scenarios where we didn't want to. Other half is long-term sick, kid is on school holiday, it's sunny outside, etc.

This not true. It is possible to have no more reserves. It is possible to argue that ideally you should be able to predict your imminent collapse, but not everybody is afforded this luxury.

Your comment reads like a form of victim-blaming, "they should have never gotten into a situation that left them severely depressed".

What!?!?

Well, you did reply to someone claiming severe depression and burnout, so the specifics matter.

If you meant to post about hard work and doing stuff that might not be enjoyable in pursue of a paycheck, that's fine, but do you think it's warranted in reply to this specific case?

It'd be like going into generalities about how one can push oneself harder to run a 100 meters sprint when talking to someone without legs or arms. I mean, yes, sure, but isn't it a touch insensitive?

That means NOT participating hurts your career, or at least doesn't further it, which is the same thing. Career outlook should be dependent only on your performance at work, and requiring to do extra unpaid stuff after work is simply a form of silent exploitation, favoring young people (mostly men, as women getting wasted with their superiors might be considered unprofessional) with no dependents (e.g children).

Push that to the extreme, and you have an extremely bro-hierarchical culture like Japan, where guys are expected to spend their (unpaid) time with their superiors at karaoke bars at late parts of the night, while not doing so puts their career prospects at risk.

All kinds of these silent expectations (but not demands) achieve is form a power imbalance where the ones not wanting to participate (in senseless drinking, or idiotic child games of team building) are pushed to the fringe and not considered "team players". This, naturally, creates a culture of fear that you might miss some of those unspoken rules of the workplace, and also a form of competition of who will simp more to their boss by letting them win at laser tag. Grown up people have families to be with, old parents to take care of, hobbies to do, errands to run, so in a culture of drinking/hanging out after office hours, they often have to choose between possible career prospects or family, and that's always a hard choice.

They literally asked if they were being unprofessional and if they should have forced themselves to work. Telling them that being able to force themselves to work is a useful skillset if they want to keep a job is not unrelated.

> You think being depressed is "flaking out"? Shame on you.

No, the fact you need to come up with just an absurd statement really shows what you're all about.

They didn't give the industry standard notice period, they as far as we can tell, just said "I'm not coming back". That is flaking out. If you did it because you were depressed or because it's sunny outside doesn't really change the fact it's flaking out.

> At which point would you say it's ok to admit you were wrong and that you misread the post? Is this really the hill you want to die on?

Misread what? You need to misrepresent my position.

In another comment you said I have no experience of depression.

I've been on sucide watches so extreme, they took away my clothes, gave me untearable clothes, only gave me fingerfood, left me in an empty room with just a mattress and an untearable blanket, and had someone sit there and watch me nonstop. The reason I know that mental hospitals will force you to be active is I was there and they annoyed the shit out of me with it. I was diganosed with depression at the age of 9. One professional said that I had been depressed for so long that I basically considered it normal. I almost certainly have more experience with it than many others.

You also implied a strawman argument because I think someone who says they struggled to brush their teeth because they were so depressed would have been sitting around doing nothing because well they couldn't even brush their teeth. That's just extrapolating. Very simple logic.