4 ms·

It is well-known that if you're in the USA you can lose your job at any time, for no reason at all. At-will and all. People need to plan for that happening, an

It is well-known that if you're in the USA you can lose your job at any time, for no reason at all. At-will and all. People need to plan for that happening, and not just assume it can't happen to them. This example employee should have thought "Hmmm, I should wait some years and save a good amount extra just in case". I wish it weren't this way, but this is the reality of the world. Yes, it means moving slower and buying a house later (and for more money) - or never at all, but it isn't going to change and our hands are tied.

BlargMcLarg 4y ago
>Yes, it means moving slower and buying a house later (and for more money) The latter is not necessarily true relative to other countries and showcases people don't understand the long term influence, or lack there off, of various contract structures. The US has at-will employment dangling a sword of Damocles over your head 24/7. Well, here we have temporary contracts not getting extended to permanent, and the status of a 'permanent' contract being the only way to open doors, which employers will royally abuse to lower other benefits. US or not, the premise remains the same. Don't be reliant on a party not looking out for your best interests.
qbasic_forever 4y ago
The entire US is not at-will employment. And companies with strong employee unions do not have this issue of suddenly and without notice firing their staff...
- scarface74 4y ago
  Well if you are lucky enough to live in Montana instead of the other 49 states….
- peterangular 4y ago
  Minus Montana, every state is at-will employment of some sort or another. And, I think Montana may even have it in some form now. > And companies with strong employee unions do not have this issue of suddenly and without notice firing their staff... Lots of people don't work at a place with a union, and don't have access to unionized employment due to industry, current geography, etc. Also we're seeing a huge anti-union push by a lot of interests right now, recently notable being Starbucks.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  At will employment works both ways. You can quit at any moment to get a better job.
  - NoraCodes 4y ago
    And yet, the norm is that employees give notice while companies give nothing.
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      As the WSJ reported a few weeks ago, companies often find out an employee had quit when the company noticed that they'd stopped showing up for work. Sometimes they disappear with accrued pay being owed them, and don't leave a way to contact them to give them their pay. Companies doing layoffs often give 2 weeks notice in the form of a 2 week severance check and escorting them out. This is for good reason - very few people are productive as a short timer, and some are even destructive. I'm not saying companies good employees bad. I'm saying these things cut both ways all the time.
      - slowhand09 4y ago
        I tendered my resignation once and was met at my desk in an hour. They brought two boxes, watched me pack. They interrupted me while writing detailed status for customers on each of about 5 projects I was working on. I hit the print button, and was escorted to the conference room. They offered a severance package if I agreed not to discuss why I was leaving. I handed the status package I'd printed to my (former) manager. He glanced at it, and recommended they double the severence. Best summer ever. I looked for work, and was paid to deliver sailboats offshore.
        WalterBright 4y ago
        The reason people are met at their desk, watched, and escorted out is now and then an employee will be tempted to steal company equipment, and worse, commit some form of sabotage in their anger. As usual, a stinker here and there ruins it for everyone.
StillBored 4y ago
In the USA you can't out save the housing market unless your making 10x+ the median salary. A lesson I've repeatedly learned. I worked for a number of bootstrapped startups, and purchased houses far under what I could have borrowed based on my salary because I always wanted to have a good solid year+ of runway should I face an unexpected layoff during a downturn. That has turned out to be some of the worst financial decisions I ever made. While my contemporaries were buying house for 4-5x+ their salary and over time those houses doubled, tripped in value, my house also doubled and tripped in value, but now the difference between the houses I could have purchased and the ones I did, are now in the millions of dollars (aka I have to find 2+ million to upgrade to a house only slightly better than the one I own). Meaning if I want to move up in the housing market to a house I could have purchased a couple years back for just a slightly higher percentage of my income is basically out of reach. So a lot of people complain about what it takes to get their foot in the door, but the spread between houses has massively widened as well. Just 10 years ago 1.5 million would have gotten a house in the top couple percent, now that number is probably closer to 7-9 million. So even if your salary doubled or tripped, unless you purchased at the max of your previous salary its like starting all over in the housing market. (and just to make this post longer, this is largely the result of interest free money, a few years back I realized that steady state interest one pays should always be just slightly higher than inflation. Anytime the inflation != interest rates happens it throws things out of wack. AKA while people are complaining about the current rates, if inflation is 8-9% the fed should have immediately reacted with 7-8% rates, which would have massively hammered the system, but apparently no one at us fed/etc has really studied control systems enough to understand that adjusting rates every couple months will never result in a stable system, especially if they fail to react to changes strongly. Their current strategy entirely assumes that inflation/etc slowly rises or falls.).
- WalterBright 4y ago
  On the other hand, the people who bought in the aughts were caught underwater with the 2008 crash in home prices. When using leverage to make investments, the lever always works both ways. I could easily have been a billionaire today if I'd made different moves (like buying all the MSFT or AMZN I could when they went public). I know a billionaire who did just that - he borrowed every penny he could and put it into MSFT at the IPO. Of course, I was also urged to buy bitcoin when it was $500. I didn't. Shrug.

BlargMcLarg 4y ago

>Yes, it means moving slower and buying a house later (and for more money) The latter is not necessarily true relative to other countries and showcases people don't understand the long term influence, or lack there off, of various contract structures. The US has at-will employment dangling a sword of Damocles over your head 24/7. Well, here we have temporary contracts not getting extended to permanent, and the status of a 'permanent' contract being the only way to open doors, which employers will royally abuse to lower other benefits. US or not, the premise remains the same. Don't be reliant on a party not looking out for your best interests.

qbasic_forever 4y ago

The entire US is not at-will employment. And companies with strong employee unions do not have this issue of suddenly and without notice firing their staff...

scarface74 4y ago
Well if you are lucky enough to live in Montana instead of the other 49 states….
peterangular 4y ago
Minus Montana, every state is at-will employment of some sort or another. And, I think Montana may even have it in some form now. > And companies with strong employee unions do not have this issue of suddenly and without notice firing their staff... Lots of people don't work at a place with a union, and don't have access to unionized employment due to industry, current geography, etc. Also we're seeing a huge anti-union push by a lot of interests right now, recently notable being Starbucks.
WalterBright 4y ago
At will employment works both ways. You can quit at any moment to get a better job.
- NoraCodes 4y ago
  And yet, the norm is that employees give notice while companies give nothing.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    As the WSJ reported a few weeks ago, companies often find out an employee had quit when the company noticed that they'd stopped showing up for work. Sometimes they disappear with accrued pay being owed them, and don't leave a way to contact them to give them their pay. Companies doing layoffs often give 2 weeks notice in the form of a 2 week severance check and escorting them out. This is for good reason - very few people are productive as a short timer, and some are even destructive. I'm not saying companies good employees bad. I'm saying these things cut both ways all the time.
    - slowhand09 4y ago
      I tendered my resignation once and was met at my desk in an hour. They brought two boxes, watched me pack. They interrupted me while writing detailed status for customers on each of about 5 projects I was working on. I hit the print button, and was escorted to the conference room. They offered a severance package if I agreed not to discuss why I was leaving. I handed the status package I'd printed to my (former) manager. He glanced at it, and recommended they double the severence. Best summer ever. I looked for work, and was paid to deliver sailboats offshore.
      - WalterBright 4y ago
        The reason people are met at their desk, watched, and escorted out is now and then an employee will be tempted to steal company equipment, and worse, commit some form of sabotage in their anger. As usual, a stinker here and there ruins it for everyone.

StillBored 4y ago

In the USA you can't out save the housing market unless your making 10x+ the median salary. A lesson I've repeatedly learned. I worked for a number of bootstrapped startups, and purchased houses far under what I could have borrowed based on my salary because I always wanted to have a good solid year+ of runway should I face an unexpected layoff during a downturn. That has turned out to be some of the worst financial decisions I ever made. While my contemporaries were buying house for 4-5x+ their salary and over time those houses doubled, tripped in value, my house also doubled and tripped in value, but now the difference between the houses I could have purchased and the ones I did, are now in the millions of dollars (aka I have to find 2+ million to upgrade to a house only slightly better than the one I own). Meaning if I want to move up in the housing market to a house I could have purchased a couple years back for just a slightly higher percentage of my income is basically out of reach. So a lot of people complain about what it takes to get their foot in the door, but the spread between houses has massively widened as well. Just 10 years ago 1.5 million would have gotten a house in the top couple percent, now that number is probably closer to 7-9 million. So even if your salary doubled or tripped, unless you purchased at the max of your previous salary its like starting all over in the housing market. (and just to make this post longer, this is largely the result of interest free money, a few years back I realized that steady state interest one pays should always be just slightly higher than inflation. Anytime the inflation != interest rates happens it throws things out of wack. AKA while people are complaining about the current rates, if inflation is 8-9% the fed should have immediately reacted with 7-8% rates, which would have massively hammered the system, but apparently no one at us fed/etc has really studied control systems enough to understand that adjusting rates every couple months will never result in a stable system, especially if they fail to react to changes strongly. Their current strategy entirely assumes that inflation/etc slowly rises or falls.).

WalterBright 4y ago
On the other hand, the people who bought in the aughts were caught underwater with the 2008 crash in home prices. When using leverage to make investments, the lever always works both ways. I could easily have been a billionaire today if I'd made different moves (like buying all the MSFT or AMZN I could when they went public). I know a billionaire who did just that - he borrowed every penny he could and put it into MSFT at the IPO. Of course, I was also urged to buy bitcoin when it was $500. I didn't. Shrug.