9 ms·

It's okay to feel bad for people who lose their jobs. But business cycles are important for a healthy economy. Unsustainable ventures need to die or be pruned a

• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• hankerito 4y ago
  As a european though, it is absolutely crazy to see you can do this on a day by day basis. Here you would have at least 1 month, more likely 3 month, prior notice to just being kicked out and having your accounts closed. You would also have to state a business reason for people who are employed as fixed staff. This gives people time to react to these kinds of things. Edit: Sorry, this refers to a comment further below: Also, comparing this to the pandemic is kinda crazy, isn't it? It's one thing to have a global scale event effecting the lives of billions and another of just buying a company for way tooo much because you wanted to make a dumb joke about smoking weed. America truely is a heartless, dystopian society...
  • PeterStuer 4y ago
    In the European places you never get fired. They just make sure you quit.
  • philliphaydon 4y ago
    Notice period is different from redundancy. Redundancy can mean you leave the day you’re made redundant. But they must give 30 days notice that redundancies are going to occur. In australia you cannot hire for a redundant role for I believe 9 months? If you do you must rehire the people made redundant or face big fines.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • OJFord 4y ago
    > As a european though, it is absolutely crazy to see you can do this on a day by day basis. Here you would have at least 1 month, more likely 3 month, prior notice to just being kicked out and having your accounts closed. That's not true, there are minimum periods for which you must continue to pay the employee after notice their contract will be terminated, but I'd be surprised to learn of any country where it's illegal to prevent the employee having access to the building, confidential documents, etc. Cf. 'gardening leave'.
    • mancerayder 4y ago
      That's only for very senior management positions and highly paid specialists, I've never seen gardening leave for even middle management, much less an engineer.
      • OJFord 4y ago
        We don't have to debate that though to agree that it demonstrates it's clearly not illegal.
    • ghaff 4y ago
      >be surprised to learn of any country where it's illegal to prevent the employee having access to the building, confidential documents, etc. And I'd surprised if there were many countries where you couldn't prevent an employee who had been notified they were being let go from having access to systems, documents, etc.
      • OJFord 4y ago
        No I agree, that's exactly what I mean. You might still have to pay them, but if you don't want them to actually 'do work' for you that's fine. (It's your prerogative to have ever let them access any of that stuff to begin with, could've changed at any point during employment even if they still had a job.)
        • ghaff 4y ago
  • sweaty 4y ago
    I'm surprised by these "generous" packages. Where I work in Europe, they must give me 3 months notice, my full salary is paid for 6 months, after which it's 75% up to 2 years, and if I still don't find anything new by then I get 50% indefinitely. I've worked in both the US and various EU countries, while the higher salary is certainly enticing, it's also a trap; When shit hits the fan, you better have been saving. In Europe, the money I make is money I get to really use, because the rest is taken care of for me.
    • oytis 4y ago
      > When shit hits the fan, you better have been saving. In Europe, the money I make is money I get to really use, because the rest is taken care of for me. I wonder where this happy country is. In Germany it is already a common knowledge that relying on state for your retirement is a sure recipe for poverty in the old age.
      • onli 4y ago
        France would fit.
      • dopidopHN 4y ago
        It’s probably France
      • patates 4y ago
        > In Germany it is already a common knowledge that relying on state for your retirement is a sure recipe for poverty in the old age. Is it? I'm living in Germany since so many years and nobody told me this. They send me estimates about the money I'd be getting when retiring regularly, and while it'd mean downsizing, I'd not be poor with the amounts named.
        • hankerito 4y ago
          Assuming you are somewhere in IT and earn above the average, you will be okay-ish. People with lower incomes will benefit less. But if you look at that receipt and consider inflation, the extreme rise in rent in Germany, etc and all of that over maybe 20-30 years from you ending your career. It becomes less. There are adjustments for inflation, but still. These high pension values are also quite sure to be unsustainable for the government, as the workforce shrinks quite dramatically and people still get older. Generally, people are advised to put some money for retirement on the side, if they can. If you are in a position to put some money aside probably try to do some research. "Geldanlage für Faule" by Sina Groß is a very down to earth starting place.
  • saiya-jin 4y ago
    Every coin has 2 sides - yes we have this additional security (which I love, just like everybody else), but we pay for it. Much lower salaries, companies not so agile, so they are hardly world leaders. You simply can't get compensation like those folks had/have in Europe, not as perm employee on 100%, more like 25-50% of it. Its actually great, skilled people can choose their priorities and how they want to setup their lives and career (stupid immigration policies and bad stuff coming out of it notwithstanding). I prefer something in between - ie Switzerland. Salaries higher, taxation lower, some middle ground on social security - ie easy to fire people, usual 3 months notice by law, but social system will give you 70% of your salary (up to an OK limit) for first year, you just need to keep doing the job hunt. It means you are not shit-scared if you take a mortgage for example, you don't need to have such a massive reserve like in US. And of course top of the world healthcare that cost very little (sickness, accidents are 0 if you work/retired) and cca free top notch education including best universities.
    • arlcode 4y ago
      Europe has plenty of world leaders and very large cooperations. Just a few examples: Automotive manufacturers, Siemens, ASML, Several arms manufacturer, Airbus just to name a few. In addition, at least where I am, there are a million small companies (a few hundred employees) who deliver to customers around the world and, I assume, at market prices. It's a balance and probably one of the reasons we lost out on the digital race so far.
    • bombcar 4y ago
      > you don't need to have such a massive reserve like in US If it makes you feel better people in the US don’t have massive reserves either. They just gamble and hit up credit if things hit the fan, even at FAANG salaries.
  • CWuestefeld 4y ago
    > you would have at least 1 month, more likely 3 month, prior notice to just being kicked out At this point we have no idea what kind of severance package Twitter will be offering. I think it's likely that what you're saying is pretty much what they're going to wind up with - that is, Twitter will push them out the door, but with a check equivalent to something like 60 days of pay plus like continuation of benefits. Of course, I don't know this for sure, but neither do you, so there's no point in condemning or praising them yet.
  • mensetmanusman 4y ago
    Many Americans think Europe is heartless because youth unemployment is allowed to get so high because businesses are paralyzed to protect those that have work and thus can never reorganize. Knee-capping the dynamism of youth is a current consensus of the European system.
• watwut 4y ago
  But in here, the company has deep debt only because of overpriced leveraged buyout. And the layoff have popcorn qualities because they are rage driven. The debt twitter had originally was much smaller. The scale of layoff that had to happen would be much smaller. It is also fair to guess they would be deal with more tact and more fairness then done now (no I dont believe Musk team is able to actually tell bad and good performers apart). Twitter has some profits last year first time. I am not saying it was perfect company. But the deep deep financial trouble it is in now is because of leveraged buyout motivated by politics (stick it to ennemies) and ego.
• pmoriarty 4y ago
  "if they're skilled and useful – as every person should always strive to be – they'll be fine" And if they're not?
  • throwaway4aday 4y ago
    Welfare and food stamps.
  • kgwgk 4y ago
    Many of them have been paid a high enough multiple of the median household income in the state (which is less than 80k) for long enough - they’ll be fine.
  • xyzzy4747 4y ago
    They can always move back in with their parents, or worst case get a plot of land and start subsistence farming.
  • Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
    And if they are not, they should have been fired a long time ago.
  • croak3r 4y ago
    Then they only have themselves to blame.
    • fnimick 4y ago
      So in your world, if someone doesn't have a useful skill, they deserve to be destitute?
      • alex_sf 4y ago
        Not making 500k in a job you're incompetent at != being destitute.
• thedorkknight 4y ago
  "if they're skilled and useful – as every person should always strive to be" Side note, but the fact that people will "be fine" based on their level of economic usefulness - and, indirectly, linking their value as a human to their ability to be productive - is what keeps me up at night thinking about what happens when automation outclasses all of us
  • prepend 4y ago
    As a programmer for a few decades automation has been a big part of my life. When you automate something, there’s more to do. If we reach some zen state where truly all has been automated then we’ll have UBI (or some dystopian hellscape) so I don’t worry about it. I’ve always struggled with programmers who feared automation and wrote shitty, complicated, buggy code happy that they had “job security.” I go to sleep wishing for the day when I can automate everything away. Also, there’s tons of one person businesses you can run if you automate workflows.
    • thedorkknight 4y ago
      It's not the next few years, but half-century out that I'm worried about. I'll personally be retired by that point, sure, but that doesn't stop me from being deeply worried by society at large. Even good programmers are going to have a hard time finding jobs. You're also missing that programming isn't the only sector that's going to be upended by automation. Basically every job market is going to be affected by the end of the century. >If we reach some zen state where truly all has been automated then we’ll have UBI (or some dystopian hellscape) In the States at least, the resistance to any form of socialism is so strong that I have no faith UBI has a snowball's chance in hell. >there’s tons of one person businesses you can run if you automate workflows. and when literally everyone can do it, competition will be brutal. When the stakes are "make it or end up homeless", and everyone is desperately trying to run their own business because corporations don't need to hire anymore, we're in deep trouble
      • prewett 4y ago
        We have about a century of empirical data that says that automation does not cause widespread unemployment. Automating horses took away all the horse-care jobs and business, but they found other things to do. Computers automated computers (armies of mostly women who chugged out calculations), and they all found new jobs. Nobody has a secretary any more. All those people responsible for inter-departmental mail are gone, because nobody sends memos any more. Nobody has live-in servants any more, partly thanks to washing machines, dishwashers, and microwaves. Actually, in some sense, more people have servants, just that they are part-time: cleaning services, people who keep track of your schedule (executive assistants, but for normal people, can't remember the word). When Microsoft Word automated away secretaries, it also raised the level of quality to be what was formerly available only at professional printers, so people spend the same amount of time, but now the expectation of quality of output is higher. There can't really be widespread unemployment due to automation, because then labor costs would decrease and handmade goods would become more affordable, so people would start doing that.
• cafard 4y ago
  In this case, though, we aren't talking about the business cycle, are we?
  • therealdrag0 4y ago
    Why not? Twitter hired a TON in the last 3 years and their income didn’t keep up. That’s business that could need correction. That’s part of the cycle.
• taurath 4y ago
  We’re the richest country in the world and yet that lasting prosperity only seems to exist for a few. Maybe we’re going about this wrong. Maybe being heartless and coldly efficient doesn’t create lasting prosperity.