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This is absolutely untrue. In Europe we work several days/weeks after the layoff notice. You can fire people from the night to the morning only in US
by a_chris 4y ago
This is absolutely untrue. In Europe we work several days/weeks after the layoff notice. You can fire people from the night to the morning only in US
- kamyarg 4y agoI have seen people fired in the morning and their access cutoff by noon and them being asked to go on "gardening leave" in Europe. This is rare but depends on your manager, if they don't want you around. You will still be paid for the remaining of your "employment" but will not be working.
- robin_reala 4y agoIt’s also more typical in situations where serious damage could be done by a malicious act. I’ve seen a UK Finance Director escorted from his desk because of this.
- the_lonely_road 4y agoOnly in the US? What about Australia or Canada? What about China or Russia? You have no idea how hard it can be to fire a state or federal employee here in the US. I’m guessing there are regions or industries in Europe where it is easy to fire employees. The situation is so much more complex than US bad Europe good. Poorly constructed swipes like this are becoming more and more common and it’s disappointing.
- Symbiote 4y agoAustralia is at least a week: https://www.fairwork.gov.au/tools-and-resources/fact-sheets/minimum-workplace-entitlements/notice-of-termination-and-redundancy-pay https://www.fairwork.gov.au/tools-and-resources/fact-sheets/... Canada two weeks: https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/services/labour-standards/reports/termination.html https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/servi... China, 30 days: https://china.acclime.com/guides/china-labour-law-hiring-firing-employees/ https://china.acclime.com/guides/china-labour-law-hiring-fir... Russia, two weeks: https://uk.practicallaw.thomsonreuters.com/5-503-4083?transitionType=Default&contextData=(sc.Default)&firstPage=true https://uk.practicallaw.thomsonreuters.com/5-503-4083?transi... (Did you really think ex-communist countries would be good examples?)
- tdudzik 4y agoIn Europe I think it's far less common to be fired in the first place, I actually know zero people that was ever fired (but I'm not saying that it doesn't happen, I think it even happened recently at Klarna).
- xyzzyz 4y agoI’ve known dozens of people fired by Google in a mass layoff, when they decided to close one of their offices. The process has stretched for months.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mst 4y agoRedundancy is a different matter to firing for cause, and I definitely read 'firing' as meaning the latter. I suspect the fact that some people in this thread read it the way I do, and others (I guess including you?) read 'firing' to include redundancy, is causing a fair amount of confusion / people talking past each other. (I'm not claiming I'm right and you're wrong, btw, just observing a linguistic disconnect)
- ChuckNorris89 4y agoFiring is very common in Europe depending on specific country and it's laws and the industry we're talking about (is it unionized? are the employees easily replaceable? immigration, etc). In Austria it's super easy to fire jobs like white collar tech workers and sales people without any reason as the employee protection laws are very weak (you just have to give them their notice period). At every company I've worked here I've seen people get fired after not meeting their performance goals(PIPs), or even having too slow velocity in Jira's charts, or just some manager having an axe to grind. There's no magic protection aura from the government to save you from getting fired here.
- viraptor 4y agoIt depends on the company/position more than the country. People with high access levels / dealing with lots of money will be treated differently than receptionists for example.
- loehnsberg 4y agoEmployees from the HN sphere maybe, but ask a temp worker. They can get fired on the spot — in Germany!
- ChuckNorris89 4y agoEven in Austria, tech workers ca be fired on the spot without any reason and sent home (though you stil have to pay them the duration of their notice period, which I believe is called gardening leave on this topic), or you can still keep them working in the office during their notice period, but then you need to give them 10 days off to look for jobs.
- thdespou 4y agoCoinbase should had opened their offices in Austria then...
- nemo44x 4y agoDid you see the severance the ex-employees are getting? It’s super generous and amounts to months of work. Id rather that than face the humiliation of having to come in for weeks to a company that has fired me. Flexible labor laws are also a major reason Americans are paid considerably more than euros.
- ohgodplsno 4y ago
- ricardobeat 4y agoIt is not generous everywhere. In the Netherlands you get 1/6 salary for every 6 months, so only two months salary if you’ve been at the company for six years.
- jagermo 4y agotalk to your laywer. there is probably some mistake in your paperwork or something that's not so clear or maybe the wrong people were left out/included in the process. European work laws can be complicated and not all hr people are on top of everything. Helped me a lot a few years back and got me from "you are fired without severance" to "you are paid for six more months, you don't have to come in and here is half a year's pay in severance". Companies want to shock you into submission, hand it to an external party, lean back end enjoy.
- ricardobeat 4y agoI haven't been laid off myself, fortunately, just relaying the information that was given by the company I worked for. That is the standard policy and is quite different from "months of work enshrined in law" as the parent comment suggested.
- xyzzyz 4y ago> Having to spend half your available income for things that are automatically taken on your salary in Europe is _the_ major reason Americans are paid considerably more, with "US tech companies and VCs have so much money they don't give a damn about salary" as a close second. I don’t think you can name many things here that the American tech workers have to spend on, that are included in typical European social benefits package. For example, if you were thinking about healthcare, you would be very wrong, as American tech workers spend very small fraction of their pay on healthcare, smaller than a typical European tech worker.
- t_mann 4y agoThose people's contracts aren't invalidated by revoking access. Those companies are basically saying you're not expected to do any more work except react to our emails until the end of whatever the notice period is. And the same thing might be less common but can definitely happen to you in Europe as well, it mostly depends on which sector/roles you work in.
- mezi 4y agoYou are mixing things up: It's possible to get fired on the spot in EU as well. You'd most likely receive a generous package but it can happen.
- meatsauce 4y agoAnd instances of employee sabotage are elevated in Europe. Imagine that.
- cdiddy2 4y agoI(an american) was quitting a job at a UK company and tried to put in my 2 weeks notice, they said the standard was a 2 months notice for them and so I just kinda bumbled along for 2 months not doing much. Really odd practice
- hhmc 4y agoIt's not odd at all really -- it just sounds like you weren't a perticularly key employee. For many roles, the extra time to ensure continuity and handover is very valuable.
- mst 4y agoI've usually (in the UK) had 1 month's notice upon quitting and spent it doing documentation updates and handover meetings. I managed to use pretty much the entire time productively - though admittedly one could make a good argument that that was because I hadn't been making time to document things better previously. I've known quite a few senior developers with a 3 months' notice period baked into their contract.
- djvdq 4y agoThe same happens in Europe. It did not happen to my but a friend but he knew that he was the one to go when he couldn't login to his laptop after lunch break. And when they let him do it to finish some things he got someone watching behind his back.
- antoniuschan99 4y agoOver here in North America is common. Been to so many companies last few years and it’s always escort out of building right away. The one I remember most is how our coworkers coffee was still there for like a week. She had made it literally right before getting called in for the layoff! Apparently main thing is they don’t want them to start a scene, talk shit about things, and cause issues with their computer access
- refurb 4y agoI’ve been laid off and it’s varied between 6 months notice and 2 weeks. Note, whether you get walked out the door right away or later, in these types of job you get a severance package. In my case where it was two weeks it was work 2 weeks, go home keep getting paid for another 30 days, then start your paid 60 day WARN period, then actually separate and receive severance of ~9 months pay plus heath insurance for 1 year.
- Markoff 4y ago> You can fire people from the night to the morning only in US And in most of the Europe and I'd guess also world during probation period (typically in Europe 1-3 months). But yeah, you can't do that once probation period pass, then it's usually at least 1-3 months PAID resignation period. You can tell people not to come to work and still get salary though, but if they would still wanna come it could get very messy legally. I had actually only fixed contracts during my EU jobs and either company told me they won't extend the contract or I told them I won't extend it, but they were happy to keep me working until very end. Only in China during Microsoft layoff I was told I don't need to come to work, while getting compensation, but that was understandable considering me and other Israeli girl were only two people fighting against company trying to cheat us for our legal compensation and it came to me telling them whether they wanna leak certain data and me contact labor bureau about their illegal procedures.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- odiroot 4y agoI have never worked outside of Europe and I have seen it happen multiple times. More often than not. The fired person is just sent on paid time off.
- synu 4y agoIn Europe you have to keep paying the person, but it's not uncommon for them to be told not to come in anymore.
- indymike 4y agoThis is true in the US as well. While in some cases you can lay someone off, and immediately stop paying, most of the time there is a period where the former employee will be paid and not have to come to work (or really, allowed to).
- synu 4y agoIt's also what Coinbase seems to be doing here (they are paying people for fourteen weeks or more).
- adrr 4y agoCoinbase layoff is so large they are paying them because of the WARN act in California.
- bambax 4y agoYes but you can't really "cut them off". You can tell them they don't need to be there, and most will be happy not to. But you can't revoke their access for no reason. If you want to do that you need to prove they have (already) committed a fault of such gravity that allowing them to stay would harm the company irremediably -- it's a high bar to cross.
- schrodinger 4y agoIt’s true in the US too, depends on the risk of terminated employees causing intentional harm. Most of the time layoffs come with severance making it similar to your “garden leave” situations.
- NikolaNovak 4y agoWe may be mixing things up. You can definitely be paid laid off employee for a period of time, while having your access revoked. They're completely orthogonal. Depends on role, company, situation. It's an assessment and tradeoff - is it worth / do I need the next two weeks of work and KT from this person, vs the risk of having access. The notion of revoking security access to limit risk is definitely not a US thing.
- ohgodplsno 4y ago>You can definitely be paid laid off employee for a period of time, while having your access revoked. In France, this is a breach of contract as you are not providing your employees with the means to work, and you can be sued for it if it is not done as a disciplinary measure (which you can also be sued for if not done in good faith) EDIT: my dudes stop trying to link legifrance articles to me, I have literally been in this situation twice, gone to prud'hommes twice and helped multiple friends with such a situation. I'm starting to know our work code a little bit. EDIT 2: alright, more context for all the nonbelievers and people who never had to face an actual work code: In the very best case for the employer (in such a way that doesn't expose them to being sued), firing a single employee takes two weeks. * Initial notification of the firing, with at least 5 days between this notification and the meeting before firing to explain the reasons * Meeting before firing, a mandatory 48 hours waiting period before taking any decision. * Notification has to be mailed in as a recommandé, which can only be sent after those 48 hours, and takes a day or two to arrive. It gets infinitely more complicated for Coinbase sized companies trying to lay off more than 10 people for economical reasons, the company is obligated to have meetings with the employee representatives, at the very least twice spaced by 15 days. For a company the size of Coinbase, the CSE has 2-4 months to answer and can ask for proof that the company is, indeed in financial troubles, having them open their books. https://entreprendre.service-public.fr/vosdroits/F24648 https://entreprendre.service-public.fr/vosdroits/F24648
- Symbiote 4y agoDoesn't seem correct "Upon termination of employment, the employer may release the employee from working during all or part of the notice period and pay him an indemnity in lieu of notice" https://knowledge.leglobal.org/restrictive-covenants-in-france/ https://knowledge.leglobal.org/restrictive-covenants-in-fran...