9 ms·

Firing easily and hiring easily are two sides of the same coin. If you can be fired easily, you will find a job easily. If companies can go down quickly, new co

• butterNaN 4y ago
  I have been in Europe for a few years now and my experiance is significantly opposite of what the parent comment claims.
  • jfoster 4y ago
    That doesn't really make logical sense to me. Can you elaborate? If hiring is an irreversible decision for a company, why wouldn't consideration be required prior to any hire?
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • hhmc 4y ago
      Having more protections than zero (at will) doesn’t make hiring anything as dramatic as ‘irreversible’
    • snovv_crash 4y ago
      There's usually a considerable probation period where the firing rules are much more relaxed. Germany is typically 6 months, for example.
      • ttoinou 4y ago
        Doesnt that make my point ? You can easily be fired in a probation period :-) and right before the probation ends is when the employer wonders if they should keep you (really hire you for good)
        • mirchibajji 4y ago
          In theory, this is true. However, IME as a techie in the UK, those situations happen when there is a significant mismatch between the interview vs reality - from either side. Hiring based on referrals is one way to mitigate some of the unknowns.
        • snovv_crash 4y ago
          After 5 months of being embedded in a team, firing someone who management doesn't like but who is popular with other employees will cause major morale issues even if they are still technically in probation.
      • thomascarney 4y ago
        Even after 6 months, typical compensation for being fired is 2 weeks of salary for every year worked. For most startup employees, this won't be a huge amount, given they have often only worked a few years.
    • Epa095 4y ago
      Because if you are slow at hirering the candidate has accepted a position somewhere else by the time you get back to them.
    • BlargMcLarg 4y ago
      The premise of it being irreversible is wrong and far more complex. Case study. In my country, most individuals do benefit from a severance on a permanent contract. Getting a permanent contract happens after working for a year if you're lucky or in a high demand job. In other cases, companies will use their power to stall as long as possible where beneficial. Temporary contracts do not have the same severance benefits, just wait the year and they are gone. Severance itself varies case by case. Younger people with permanent contracts aren't getting multiple years in salaries for getting fired. Most older employees don't, either. The entire premise also requires a largely immobile workforce. Workforce mobility in The Netherlands is actually pretty decent, with most younger people switching jobs every few years. This inevitably means these people have temporary contracts for a large part of their career, with much weaker severance packages. Top comment also discounts the obvious, trying to get individuals to quit themselves through e.g. legal bullying or bad benefits.
      • ttoinou 4y ago
        We shouldn't normalise pushing people to quit via bullying of course. But bullying and bad benefits result from a company/employee mismatch, which changing jobs fixes easily
        • BlargMcLarg 4y ago
          And changing jobs means you now no longer have the vast amount of protection you used to and have to build them back up. For the majority of countries, your entire point rests on the premise individuals are choosing to largely be immobile. Tenure length isn't that different from the US, all things concerned. Significant, especially given some countries, but not nearly as dramatic as "impossible to fire". The moment you introduce mobility, most of the safety is gone for a large portion of time. What we are seeing, is that younger people are hit disproportionately since job hopping tends to be the far better choice, and younger people do not start at incomes that get them comfortable. It is primarily the elderly that benefit from the current structure.
          • ttoinou 4y ago
    • kioleanu 4y ago
      It's not irreversible in any sense of that word. First of all, you have a trial period of 3 to 6 months where you can fire someone without even giving a reason. Second of all, you can have fixed-term contracts, like 1 or 2 years - also with the trial period. Third, you can still fire people after the trial period, you just can't go Trump-yelling at someone "YOU'RE FIRED!!!" because of some small mistake or if you don't like their face. It's not an easy process, but also not impossible. I very much prefer it this way. I'm seeing this at the company where a friend works. They have an american branch that completely changed the employee roster twice (!!!) in the last two years. Everything they do is a mess, every new person that comes brings a different point of view of how things should be done. In the end, they always end up falling back to implementing what their colleagues in Europe did. The europeans have been working together for 6 years now PS: for my current job, where I have a permanent contract, the interview in-all took 55 minutes. About another 15 minutes of talking to HR on the phone and bam, here I am.
    • meheleventyone 4y ago
      You can fire people pretty easily in Europe. There’s rules around layoffs but they are also common. All the companies I’ve worked for have hired and fired relatively freely.
      • junon 4y ago
        Again, different countries, different laws. It is objectively NOT easy to fire people in Germany, for example.
        • Rubber8787 4y ago
          There is no such thing as "objectively easy". In Germany very small companies can fire people at will. It's effortless and requires minimal bureaucracy. Same for firing people in their long trial periods. In other cases, the difficulty depends heavily on the situation. The easiest way is to simply negotiate with the employee. The other options involve more work
        • meheleventyone 4y ago
          Right but it’s still absolutely miles away from making hiring an irreversible decision.
    • scott_w 4y ago
      Because it's not an irreversible decision. Most countries allow a probation period where you can let an employee go if they don't work out. These are typically anywhere between 2 weeks and 6 months (depending on the training time expected).
    • lmm 4y ago
      Interviewing practices have very little connection to logic in the first place, and to the extent they do there's probably more connection to the general employer/employee power balance than any such specific consideration. American companies make candidates jump through hoops because they can; European ones don't because they can't.
    • esteth 4y ago
      In the uk at least employers have a grace period of 3-6 months where they can fire you for any or no reason.
• Zagill 4y ago
  Except if too many companies are doing hiring freezes and mass layoffs, who's going to hire you? There's a limit to this and it's fair to be concerned about just how widespread these layoffs have been.
  • ttoinou 4y ago
    You are comparing situations with different factors varying, I was talking in the general sense that the two actions of hiring and firing are linked together, and you're talking about the current economic situation. Maybe the employee got in in the first place because hiring and firing were easy. If you made it difficult, the employee wouldn't have been hired in the first place. Then it doesn't matter if you have an economic crisis, the person is out of job anyway. We need to let companies fire employees to survive the crisis, and let newly fired people re organize their life and create the companies that will compete and destroy the current ones
• JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > if you can be fired easily, you will find a job easily And if you can find a job easily, you can credibly threaten to decamp for leverage. (Or, if your boss is a dick, just leave.) I'm American. My bias shows. But I think an easy-to-fire, easy-to-hire model is far superior to the incumbency-biased systems which make hiring and firing an Olympic sport. We lack a strong-enough social net underneath it all, necessary to be humane and maintain social stability. But that seems an easier fix than reforming an entire commercial culture.
  • lostlogin 4y ago
    > But that seems an easier fix than reforming an entire commercial culture. Does it? To an outsider, workers rights seem to be regressing.
    • ttoinou 4y ago
      Maybe we want less rights but more freedom and wealth
• soptikha2 4y ago
  My experience is quite different in regard to working in Europe. How exactly is hiring a very tedious process? Seemed quite fast and easy to me. And btw, it's not that hard to fire a wrong hire. You have few months to do so basically for any reason at all, and afterwards, you can still do it, if you have a good reason to do so.
  • acatton 4y ago
    Europe is 27 countries with uniformized trade laws. There was never any uniformization on labour laws. GP made a huge generalization by saying "in europe" while talking about labour laws. It's like me saying "in asia, (something about the labour market)", there is no such thing. Hiring/firing/Employee-rights are very different between Spain and Czechia.
    • rypskar 4y ago
      >>Europe is 27 countries No, Europe is 44 countries the subset of Europe that is EU have 27 members
      • junon 4y ago
        I think it's pretty clear they were referring to the EU. No need for semantics wars.
        • ttoinou 4y ago
          Calling the EU Europe is made on purpose to conflate the two and make it obvious that all countries should unite into this political union. I think it is very useful to point that to people who conflate the two terms
          • junon 4y ago
            I think that's putting words into peoples' mouths.
• lostlogin 4y ago
  > If you can be fired easily, you will find a job easily. If companies can go down quickly, new companies can be formed in an instant. In New Zealand it is fairly easy to start a company (in the sense that the required paperwork isn’t too difficult). It’s easy to hire people, but firing is hard. Why would ease firing mean ease hiring? Why would companies failing easily mean start ups are simple? It’s not so much that companies need to be idealised, but that people need to be treated with a minimum level of care.
  • bobthepanda 4y ago
    usually the ease of hiring/firing bit is more of "hire the right person for the role", in the sense that a vacated spot can become available for another. but also, there is a limited amount of capital in the economy, and so propping an "unhealthy" company up with debt will crowd out new, potentially successful businesses. If there are enough zombie companies around this is enough to paralyze an entire economy. The general observation is that the US has less worker stability, but also bounces back faster than European countries. And the poster child for zombie companies strangling the economy by hoovering up all the credit is post-bubble Japan.
  • emoII 4y ago
    If it's easy to fire you won't have to be as thorough when hiring because if the new employee doesn't fit - just waste him/her. If it's difficult to fire the company will put potential employees through hell before deciding. I don't think there's any country where the actual process of hiring someone is a legal nightmare
    • oblio 4y ago
      > If it's easy to fire you won't have to be as thorough when hiring because if the new employee doesn't fit - just waste him/her. That's super bad for morale and companies generally don't do it unless high churn is normal (retail). US companies have hiring processes which are HARDER to go through, not easier, on average, than European companies. For example background checks almost never happen, as well as reference requests.
    • 4y ago
• randomsearch 4y ago
  > Firing easily and hiring easily are two sides of the same coin. If you can be fired easily, you will find a job easily Yes, like 1930s America. I guess you mean “you can be easily hired” rather than “you will find a job easily”. Very different things.
  • ttoinou 4y ago
    Could you elaborate the difference ?
    • shawabawa3 4y ago
      > "you can be hired easily" Little bureaucracy/paperwork/barriers to starting work if a company wants to hire you > "you will find a job easily" There are actually companies that want to hire you
• acatton 4y ago
  > In Europe where firing is almost impossible Assuming you mean the European Union by "Europe", this is 27 countries with 27 labour laws. I don't think this can be generalized. Only trade laws were unified in the EU. The labour laws diversity is made even wider if you include non EU countries like Switzerland or the Balkans. Just as an example Denmark follows the concept of Flexisecurity[1], easy to fire, but there is a good government safety net which prevents people from falling into poverty, while trying as hard as possible to find them a new income. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexicurity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexicurity
  • ttoinou 4y ago
    No I meant the geographical area. The EU is called the EU, the two should never be confused. Good for Denmark ! Generalizations are never true. Specialized descriptions with all the cases covered on the other hand, are never read.
    • lyricism 4y ago
      > Generalizations are never true. Specialized descriptions with all the cases covered on the other hand, are never read. The wording of this struck me; is it better to lie than to go unheard?
• Fiahil 4y ago
  > In Europe where firing is almost impossible, hiring is a very tedious process. Europe is not a single country, anyway, here's what happen in France: Firing is tedious, but not impossible. Hiring people is easy, but you enter into competition with higher salaries - like the US - for remote jobs. > Firing easily and hiring easily are two sides of the same coin. Not exactly, they diverge when firing is made more difficult.
  • ttoinou 4y ago
    No they're the same coin. You didn't get me. When you make firing more difficult, you mechanically make hiring more difficult. There is no free lunch. To fire in France you need a really good reason well justified, and prepare your company for the Prud'hommes trial. Of course you could say "but most companies are big and have HR teams and lawyers dedicated to this, whereas the employee is all alone", but that's also my point about big vs. small companies and legal protections
    • dnissley 4y ago
      Simply put: There are reactions for every action! The most optimal outcome is not easily legislated.
    • peoplefromibiza 4y ago
      > When you make firing more difficult, you mechanically make hiring more difficult or, depending on the law, you make mechanically easier to form new companies or create more contracting jobs etc What you're missing is that in most European countries where firing is hard, it's only for medium to large companies
    • tgv 4y ago
      > When you make firing more difficult, you mechanically make hiring more difficult. There is no free lunch. That operates under the idea that employees only change when fired. And that's patently not true.
    • mola 4y ago
      But hiring in the US is not an easy process relative to Europe, atleast in tech context. There's much more ceremony involved in the US you have to meet a lot more ppl. your whole premis is imagined, but you refuse to acknowledge it. It's very baffling.
• HL33tibCe7 4y ago
  > In Europe Tell me you’re an American without telling me you’re an American ;)
  • ttoinou 4y ago
    I'm from western Europe :)
• AndrewThrowaway 4y ago
  This is just so wrong on so many levels. > If you can be fired easily, you will find a job easily. Unless it is another economical crisis and nobody is hiring? > In Europe where firing is almost impossible It is called "job security" - if you hired somebody, you "promised" them to pay a wage. If they are not needed anymore, you need to keep on promise and pay a wage. For at least some time. E.g. a few month of salary seems reasonable because a person has planned his future with you, now he needs to find a new job which will take some time. So it is not impossible in Europe. It is expensive at most because it only looks reasonable. > Companies are big and look financially stable Unless you count all the mom and pop cafes all over the Mediterranean? All the Scandinavian startups? And etc.?
  • ttoinou 4y ago
    Most industries would deserve less barriers of entry and less legal protections, it would favor the little ones. Of course employment is an exchange of promises between employer and employees to bring stability for less money and less risks. But if the exchange benefits both sides, there is no reason to forbid both parties to negotiate whatever they prefer. In Europe there are too many legal hurdles (called "protection" of course they're going to choose a positive word !) If there is an economic crisis and you forbid firing, the only solution is to close companies. Societe re organizes itself at each crisis, so the people laid off need to find new ways
    • Jochim 4y ago
      > If there is an economic crisis and you forbid firing, the only solution is to close companies. Societe re organizes itself at each crisis, so the people laid off need to find new ways Firing isn't entirely forbidden for a start. Secondly, if companies know that firing has a cost they're more likely to grow their headcount in line with what they're able to support. Making firing cheap only serves to encourage the type of behaviour that leads to instability in an economic crisis. > Of course employment is an exchange of promises between employer and employees to bring stability for less money and less risks. But if the exchange benefits both sides, there is no reason to forbid both parties to negotiate whatever they prefer. In Europe there are too many legal hurdles (called "protection" of course they're going to choose a positive word !) The vast majority of employee/employer relationships have a power balance that's vastly in favour of the employer. Even for those of us lucky enough to be in tech, we've seen that employers are more than willing to secretly conspire in order to drive employee wages below what would have been the market rate.
• cm2187 4y ago
  Also the US corporate world has a good history of dealing with problems upfront, taking the pain and moving on, rather than living with their problems like it is done too often in europe. It seems destructive but the long term impact is a healthier economy and more jobs.
  • alchemist1e9 4y ago
    GDP per capita is an interesting number and I was quiet surprised recently when I compared US and European cities and countries. For those who haven’t the spoiler is the US is significantly higher. Most pro-EU economic narratives are on pretty shaky ground even before recent developments.
    • mola 4y ago
      What does gdp per Capita means when inequalities are very high?
      • cm2187 4y ago
        I am not sure inequalities are that high in the US. They certainly are if you compare the absolute extremes of the distribution (Musk to a homeless drug addict), but beyond 2% percentile each side they are not that high. There was an interesting talk on this topic [1]. What they argue is that the statistics used in the US to measure income inequality are misleading as they don’t account for taxes and benefits. The gap is greatly reduced if you do. In any case, poverty is usually the issue, not inequality. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XL1DSo_gvK4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XL1DSo_gvK4
        • alchemist1e9 4y ago
          I don’t have a reference handy but there was also recently sn analysis that concluded immigration significantly skews the numbers when comparing inequity to EU nations. The US has significant immigration on the bottom end and also on the top end.
      • 4y ago
• atoav 4y ago
  > In Europe where firing is almost impossible, hiring is a very tedious process. Sure you need to vet your candidates more carefully, because you cannot fire them right away without reason (although these law vary within the 27 nations of the EU). But: 1. there are limited contacts. So if you don't wanna have the risk, you are free to make shorter contacts and pay people more so the good people are willing to take those. This has the downside that they are free to go to your competitor as well at the end of the contract. Everything comes with it's downsides. 2. Hiring random people and firing them a month later does not make it easier for the employers. If employers vet their potential employees more carefully, everybody wins. Sure, finding and selecting the right person is hard. But even if you could hire and fire villy nilly, that would waste your companies time. Every person you hire will take the company into a new direction, one bad person can poison the social climate, hurt your company etc. So hiring carefree is not a good idea in any case. 3. In hiring not just the employer takes a risk, the employee takes risks too. They might have to move, they might have to buy a bicycle, a car, a public transport ticket to commute, they plan their lives on the promised employment and wage. It is only fair that they get the time to reorganise if you let them go.
  • ttoinou 4y ago
    I agree with all points ! Not sure how that helps OP's fears though :)
• tsimionescu 4y ago
  > In Europe where firing is almost impossible, hiring is a very tedious process. I don't know where you got this idea, but, at least in tech, the most infamous 7 rounds of whiteboard interviews stories I've heard are from Silicon Valley, not Europe. The company I work for (a Romanian branch of a US company - and yes, Romania has all the same legal protections against t firing as most of Europe) typically does one tech interview and one HR interview and that's it.
  • ttoinou 4y ago
    We shouldn't compare big SV companies with the rest of the world though. Of course companies that are in high demand have a lot of people applying at their job and have harder / longer interview processes
    • rob74 4y ago
      So, in that case, getting hired is hard, but getting fired is just as easy as for less in-demand companies? And also, in an economic downturn, the companies are free to fire people, but getting a new job will become considerably more difficult. So I'm afraid I don't really see the "easy to get fired/easy to get hired" symmetry that you talked about in your first post...
      • ttoinou 4y ago
        Is it easy to get fired from a big SV company ? Anyway, I am not talking about one specific company, I am talking about society as a whole. Read the OP's fear about being fired
  • mathverse 4y ago
    Your perception is skewed because Romania is a hotspot for companies to outsource to. There's a lot of companies hiring in Romania and the employers are not as picky.
    • oblio 4y ago
      His point was, and I can confirm this, in Europe companies generally have simpler interviews. Frequently, especially for seniors, it's a technical chat. I have anecdata from about 6 European countries.
• anothernewdude 4y ago
  Hiring is most tedious in the U.S. Those massive pipeline processes are an American invention.
• peoplefromibiza 4y ago
  > In Europe where firing is almost impossible Where exactly in Europe? It's like saying "in Asia is almost impossible to do X" Europe is a 750 million people continent formed by 51 different countries including Russia and UK Be more specific please. In Spain it's easy to fire, for example. Their average salaries are 20% lower than the French ones, even though in France firing is hard, and their unemployment rate is almost double. You theory has some flaws apparently.
  • ttoinou 4y ago
    Be more specific please. In most countries of Europe we have a lot of laws to "protect" employees and current companies, making it harder in the first place to even create companies and hire people. But that's also true for others places in the world Yes generalizations are never true. Even talking about one country is a generalization and you will fail at making a statement about it. The best way to not make a mistake is to not say anything Europe is a 750 million people continent There is no good reason to separate Europe from Asia, it's all one big continent. Your theory is also flawed :(
    • peoplefromibiza 4y ago
      > In most countries of Europe we have a lot of laws to "protect" employees and current companies, making it harder in the first place to even create companies and hire people There's no such things as generally "harder to create companies" in Europe. It's simply harder to create global multi billion conglomerates with an easy trigger for layoffs. So generally, that's true, there are less multi billion global conglomerates with an easy trigger for layoffs than in the US. But USA has 2.2 companies registered per 1,000 people Most European countries have more than that, Netherlands is at 7.1, UK at 7.4, Bulgaria 6.7, Denmark 5.2 etc. > There is no good reason to separate Europe from Asia, it's all one big continent Eurasia is a super continent, Europe is a landmass, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia Thanks for giving me the chance to explain this topic once again.
      • orwin 4y ago
• serf 4y ago
  > If you can be fired easily, you will find a job easily. that would only ever be true in whichever fantasy world where the managers and people-in-charge made wise and just decisions. Plenty of 'rare talent' that is near irreplaceable is fired every single day by managers that don't know any better, and their niche talents make it very difficult to find new job prospects.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• nata79 4y ago
  You can fire people in Europe and hiring is by no means more convoluted than in the US. Typically here you have 3 to 6 months probation period where you can be fired at any moment. Then your rights increase with your tenure. The other big difference is that when you leave a job, you usually have 1 to 3 months of notice period while in the US that tends to only last a couple of weeks. Overall this gives people a lot more security and I think we have a much better balance because of it, at least in the tech industry. Industries with higher turnover (like hospitality) typically only hire employees as contractors so they can fire them at any time.
• vidarh 4y ago
  Firing without cause is "almost impossible" in Europe. Firing for cause or genuine redundancies are rarely a problem most places in Europe. You have consultation requirements many places, to ensure that it's actually a genuine redundancy, but a company willing to offer a reasonably fair payout and who can demonstrate a genuine need to cut costs or a genuine lack of work for certain staff will generally not have much of a problem carrying out a redundancy most places in Europe.
  • orwin 4y ago
    Firing for cause is easy. Firing without much of a cause too in most cases, but you will have to pay quite a bit.
    • vidarh 4y ago
      Getting someone to leave without much of a cause is easy, certainly, if you're willing to pay enough. The being willing to pay bit tends to be the sticking point that makes employers who are used to US "at will" employment complain.
• 6c696e7578 4y ago
  > In Europe where firing is almost impossible, hiring is a very tedious process. France has good job security rules, from what I've heard. The UK, not so much. Once you've completed two years, you are entitled to a consultation process if the company wants to make redundancies. Those positions cannot be filled for six months after a redundancy. HR departments can reword and change descriptions though so if they really wanted to fill the position, they could, but from what I've seen they mostly change it after six months anyway. If you're unlucky and have just started a position, you can be dropped easily, no consultation, but the rules of redundancy above remain. However, having spent some time on the other end, doing interviews, hiring is a lot more expensive than firing. One month of consultation vs delays to projects, training of new starters, retention of employees and talent are far more valuable than an easy firing process. Never doubt the value of your experience to a company, any employer who does ignore that value isn't worth working for as they're delusional and likely to fail soon. Yes, hiring is a very tedious.
• alxlaz 4y ago
  > Firing easily and hiring easily are two sides of the same coin. If you can be fired easily, you will find a job easily. If companies can go down quickly, new companies can be formed in an instant. > In Europe where firing is almost impossible, hiring is a very tedious process. This is, at best, an anecdote. I'm charitably saying anecdote to avoid calling it utter bullshit. The average hiring process at companies I'm familiar with -- in the UK, France, Germany, Finland, the Czech Republic, Portugal and Greece, so I guess it's a reasonably large sample -- is no more complicated than the hiring process at Google or Facebook. And, much like in the US, if you stay away from the big players -- like Google or Facebook -- the average hiring "process" is a technical interview + a short interview with the hiring manager and HR. Popular enough companies may do a phone screening but that's about it. Firing someone for bad performance is not "almost impossible". I have, unfortunately, had to sign off on that a couple of times. What is almost impossible is firing someone for bullshit reasons and writing it off as "a bad fit". Of course there are legal protection in place: if you are laid off and can't find work -- for example, because you relocated to stay with your current employer when they moved offices, and were promptly laid off afterwards, in a new town with somewhat uncertain prospects -- the solution you're offered, in most countries, is not stop being poor, lol, but various forms of social protection so you don't starve before your next interview. Consequently, yes, it's important to make it difficult to fire people because they don't bend to toxic management or poor working conditions, otherwise that'd just be sponsoring incompetent management. > Companies are big and look financially stable because the little ones cannot survive or dont enjoy the same monopoly / legal protections. That is not even an anecdote. Except for Eastern Europe, where the Iron Curtain interrupted the history of most businesses, there are plenty of small companies, in every country, that have been operating more or less without interruption since the 1800s (and usually the interruptions were on account of one of the World Wars). There are four of these within a ten-minute walking distance from where I'm staying.
• Jochim 4y ago
  > If you can be fired easily, you will find a job easily. What happens in a recession? When tens of thousands of people are fired easily across an economy they're not going to find another job quickly. Making firing more difficult puts a mandate on companies to be a little more responsible when growing their headcount. As a consequence they're less vulnerable to wild swings as a result of unforeseen circumstances. > Companies are big and look financially stable because the little ones cannot survive or dont enjoy the same monopoly / legal protections. Big companies are favoured in hundreds of ways. Leveraging other income streams to price dump their way into a dominant position and creative methods of lowering their tax burden being just two. The answer to this isn't to strip worker protections but to remove those loopholes and encourage competition rather than monopolisation. Many laws around workers rights are already relaxed for smaller companies. > If a company is not useful to society, it should go down. Absolutely, but most societies wouldn't be able to function if this was the case. Most economies simply aren't resilient enough to allow large companies to go down. I feel like it's fairly intuitive that once companies in certain sectors grow large enough they can become an essential part of the nation's infrastructure. That only leaves a few options: - Continue bailing them out - Nationalise them - Prevent them from reaching that size in the first place I don't see how making it easier to lay people off would advance any of these. Instead it only encourages companies to engage in risky behaviour and grow beyond their ability to sustain themselves. > Don't idealize employment and companies. They are only tools on our path to wealth and freedom We've created a system predicated on the fact that not everyone can be wealthy. I don't think it's moral to then say that the solution to being treated poorly is to just become wealthy.