6 ms·

Why is that extreme? If you own a company, why shouldn't you be able to fire someone at any time? If you work a job, why shouldn't you be able to quit at any ti

Why is that extreme? If you own a company, why shouldn't you be able to fire someone at any time? If you work a job, why shouldn't you be able to quit at any time? I don't think it's great that our society tries to treat work like it's family, and jobs like they're some guaranteed long-term relationship. It sets people up with the wrong expectations. Your company will lay you off or fire you once they run out of money to pay you or reason to keep you on board. That's how it works. Just as you will quit your job and take a new one if you interview and get a better offer elsewhere. These are business contracts.

ForHackernews 2y ago
You're asking why it's bad that your owners can take away your livelihood on a whim without any reason?
- gojomo 2y ago
  Can an employee quit on a whim without any reason, taking vital functions away from the productive team on which they served?
  - laserlight 2y ago
    > taking vital functions away It's business's responsibility to not depend on a single employee. The employee might have been hit by a bus.
    - csallen 2y ago
      Yes, and it's an employee's responsibility to not depend on a single job, and to be prepared for the possibility that it might go away. That's the mindset we should be teaching people, because it's REALITY. Plenty of people are aware of this, and they navigate this successfully by saving part of their income, by maintaining an employable skillset, and by living within their means, while working a job. When you suggest to people that it's their company's responsibility to take care of them, to guarantee their job into their future, or to look out for their personal financial livelihood, that IS NOT REALITY. That's not how it works. You're telling people that their own responsibilities are someone else's, when that's not in fact true. When people mistakenly believe this drivel, they're far more likely to take bad risks and make huge financial mistakes.
      - laserlight 2y ago
        Hundred percent. Yet, it's also reality, today, that the power asymmetry between individuals and corporations are huge. Anybody trying to bootstrap an independent business is heavily punished, simply because corporations want you to be an employee, just because they can. Unless the system balances the power dynamics, it's futile to tell people that they shouldn't ask for more rights from corporations.
        csallen 2y ago
        I literally run the biggest website for people trying to bootstrap independent businesses, and I haven't seen anyone complain about being heavily punished for trying to do so. Founders are the most employable people I know, and they typically find it the easiest to go get jobs when their businesses fail (although they hate doing so).
      - ryandrake 2y ago
        Employers employ many people at once. The risk of a bad employee is divided by the entire workforce. Employees, on the other hand, put all their eggs into one basket at a time. Many (most?) employers specifically forbid moonlighting and working multiple full-time jobs at once, so employees are forced to depend on a single job at a time. The risk of having a bad employer is shouldered 100% by the employee. It's this power dynamic that justifies different standards for employers and employees.
        csallen 2y ago
        There is not some guaranteed power dynamic. Business is not all huge companies with infinite redundancy. There are 30M small businesses in America that employ 60M people. For the vast majority of businesses and teams, losing an employee hurts, and employees have lots of leverage. These business owners have to do the work to ensure redundancy, to plan their budgets and products and systems to ensure they can weather inevitable employee turnover. Plenty of businesses fail to do this and have to close their doors. It happens with regularity. On the flip side, unemployment is the US is super low. It's true that workers can only hold one job at a time, but they are not "trapped" at a job. In fact, they have more mobility than ever, which also gives them leverage to negotiate for higher salaries or to hop jobs. Not to mention more gig jobs, remote jobs, and contract jobs than ever, even for highly paid positions. Sure, losing a job hurts. But the employees who plan for this possibility, who maintain skills, maintain savings, and live within their means, can find new jobs, just as businesses who plan well can weather employee turnover. It goes both ways. So if you're in a position where your employer has some huge power dynamic hold on you, is that some universal truth for all employees resulting from the nature of the employer-employee dynamic? I don't think so. I think that's the result of poor personal decisions, or bad luck at best. All that said, I'm 100% on board with legal protections that set a high standard for employers. We have plenty of those already. And I'm 100% on board with government stepping in to help take care of people who fall through the cracks. For example, I love that COBRA allowed me to stay on my previous employer-provided group healthcare plan for 18 months(!) after my last job ended. What I'm against is any cultural or legal change that begins to suggest that its employers' responsibility to keep their people employed. It's not. Financially, the system can't work that way. Employers are not our parents or our nannies or our caretakers, and we should not try to make them into that.
  - ForHackernews 2y ago
    I can't. My employment contract has a three-month notice period.
miltonlost 2y ago
> If you own a company, why shouldn't you be able to fire someone at any time? Because that is bad for the individual worker. We live in a society, and society should look out for humans before corporations.
- IG_Semmelweiss 2y ago
  I recommend you travel to LATAM or EMEA, where worker protections are much higher. No one gets fired because protections are so high. At-will is unheard of [1]. In some countries, there's a mandatory X months of salary for Y months worked. The regulation of the labor market, however, is strict and inflexible [2], and all LATAM jurisdictions impose mandatory severance pay for wrongful terminations.[2] What are the results of worker protections mentioned above ? Literally no jobs with protections. See for yourself. LATAM has an average of ~65% informal employment. Take Argentina for example. Close to 50% of the labor market are under-the-table "jobs" for this reason.[3]. Even more developed countries suffer the consequences , such as UK having 24% informal sector [4] All those governments intended to look out for humans before corporations. It didn't work out that way. The road to poverty is paved with good intentions. US dynamism actually creates more jobs as more are willing to try new things and experiment. Yes, you can protect workers, very very well. But only if you are OK with a tiny amount of protected workers, and let everyone else toil in the informal sector where zero protections exist [1] https://goglobal.com/blog/from-legal-protocols-to-cultural-norms-navigating-employee-terminations-in-latam/ https://goglobal.com/blog/from-legal-protocols-to-cultural-n... [2] https://www.acc.com/sites/default/files/resources/vl/public/ACCDocketArticle/1373467_1.pdf https://www.acc.com/sites/default/files/resources/vl/public/... [3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1037216/informal-employment-share-latin-america-caribbean-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1037216/informal-employm... [4] https://ilostat.ilo.org/topics/informality/ https://ilostat.ilo.org/topics/informality/
  - jorvi 2y ago
    I work in the EU, and I'd rather see the American "at-will" system, but with a basic income + additional financial distress protections. It is IMO ridiculous that in a lot of EU countries, chronic low performance is not just cause for firing. It makes economical sense to reduce the friction of allocating workers where they'll be most productive. It just shouldn't destroy those workers' financial security.
FpUser 2y ago
>"These are business contracts." I would agree with this but if that's the case why employees are not given the same perks as companies from a tax point of view? My personal preference is to treat every human as a business. The alternative would be to eliminate all taxes except sales tax with some cutoff for low income persons.
p_j_w 2y ago
>If you own a company, why shouldn't you be able to fire someone at any time? If you're a worker, why shouldn't you be able to band together with your fellow workers to not allow this?
- csallen 2y ago
  For the same reason companies shouldn't be able to band together with other companies to not allow raises. They're anti-competitive practices, which eats away at the entire point of having a market, which is for competition to force parties to offer better prices, bid higher amounts, and produce better products/services, which benefits everyone. For example: - Landlords should not be able to collude to keep rent prices high. They should be forced to compete against each other, either by offering lower rent or better premises and services to tenants. The result is that over time, society gets better and better places to live, that are nicer, updated, and safer, at cheaper prices. - Healthcare providers shouldn't be allowed to collude to set uniform prices for services. They should have to compete on price, quality of care, or access to treatments, ensuring patients can choose better or more affordable options. The result is that more and more people can afford healthcare services, which themselves become increasingly effective over time. - Internet service providers shouldn't be able to divide territories or coordinate to prevent competition in specific regions. They should have to compete, driving down prices or increasing service quality for consumers. - Software companies shouldn't agree to not hire each other's employees to keep wages low. This prevents employees from negotiating higher salaries and better benefits, hurting workforce dynamism and innovation. Etc. Capitalism is simply a collection of laws and regulations that blocks all means of profit other than simply offering a better deal or better services. The goal is for those to be the only real ways to profit. The side effect of workers and companies all competing to do this in order to profit is that society benefits by having a ton of innovation to make better and better things, at cheaper and cheaper prices. Which is the central reason why, today, the average person can have a cell phone, a TV, the internet, amazing healthcare treatments, and an almost infinite array of options for clothing, food, entertainment, etc. Allowing people to profit in ways that disrupt competition gunks up the entire functioning of the market. Maybe you get some short-term benefit, but ultimately you end up with a system that doesn't create nearly as much wealth and prosperity. Because why go through the trouble to create great things for your customers (as a company), your employers (as an employee), or your employees (as an employer) if you can instead benefit by simply banding together with others and colluding, or monopolizing some essential resource, or fixing prices, etc.
ta_1138 2y ago
When your company gets even a little big, the decision making process gets filtered through sufficient levels of management that it's not the company owner firing people at any time: It's an employee who doesn't necessarily have to be aligned at all with what is good for the company that is firing people at any time. Eventually you learn that one of your middle managers managed to fire someone for some reason that is illegal, or is related to some kind of crime, and guess what? It seeps upward, and your company is in the wrong. A process doesn't just protect the employee, it protects you from the iffy middle management that, without exception, gets in. And the more freedom you give them, the worse the behavior.

ForHackernews 2y ago

You're asking why it's bad that your owners can take away your livelihood on a whim without any reason?

gojomo 2y ago
Can an employee quit on a whim without any reason, taking vital functions away from the productive team on which they served?
- laserlight 2y ago
  > taking vital functions away It's business's responsibility to not depend on a single employee. The employee might have been hit by a bus.
  - csallen 2y ago
    Yes, and it's an employee's responsibility to not depend on a single job, and to be prepared for the possibility that it might go away. That's the mindset we should be teaching people, because it's REALITY. Plenty of people are aware of this, and they navigate this successfully by saving part of their income, by maintaining an employable skillset, and by living within their means, while working a job. When you suggest to people that it's their company's responsibility to take care of them, to guarantee their job into their future, or to look out for their personal financial livelihood, that IS NOT REALITY. That's not how it works. You're telling people that their own responsibilities are someone else's, when that's not in fact true. When people mistakenly believe this drivel, they're far more likely to take bad risks and make huge financial mistakes.
    - laserlight 2y ago
      Hundred percent. Yet, it's also reality, today, that the power asymmetry between individuals and corporations are huge. Anybody trying to bootstrap an independent business is heavily punished, simply because corporations want you to be an employee, just because they can. Unless the system balances the power dynamics, it's futile to tell people that they shouldn't ask for more rights from corporations.
      - csallen 2y ago
        I literally run the biggest website for people trying to bootstrap independent businesses, and I haven't seen anyone complain about being heavily punished for trying to do so. Founders are the most employable people I know, and they typically find it the easiest to go get jobs when their businesses fail (although they hate doing so).
    - ryandrake 2y ago
      Employers employ many people at once. The risk of a bad employee is divided by the entire workforce. Employees, on the other hand, put all their eggs into one basket at a time. Many (most?) employers specifically forbid moonlighting and working multiple full-time jobs at once, so employees are forced to depend on a single job at a time. The risk of having a bad employer is shouldered 100% by the employee. It's this power dynamic that justifies different standards for employers and employees.
      - csallen 2y ago
        There is not some guaranteed power dynamic. Business is not all huge companies with infinite redundancy. There are 30M small businesses in America that employ 60M people. For the vast majority of businesses and teams, losing an employee hurts, and employees have lots of leverage. These business owners have to do the work to ensure redundancy, to plan their budgets and products and systems to ensure they can weather inevitable employee turnover. Plenty of businesses fail to do this and have to close their doors. It happens with regularity. On the flip side, unemployment is the US is super low. It's true that workers can only hold one job at a time, but they are not "trapped" at a job. In fact, they have more mobility than ever, which also gives them leverage to negotiate for higher salaries or to hop jobs. Not to mention more gig jobs, remote jobs, and contract jobs than ever, even for highly paid positions. Sure, losing a job hurts. But the employees who plan for this possibility, who maintain skills, maintain savings, and live within their means, can find new jobs, just as businesses who plan well can weather employee turnover. It goes both ways. So if you're in a position where your employer has some huge power dynamic hold on you, is that some universal truth for all employees resulting from the nature of the employer-employee dynamic? I don't think so. I think that's the result of poor personal decisions, or bad luck at best. All that said, I'm 100% on board with legal protections that set a high standard for employers. We have plenty of those already. And I'm 100% on board with government stepping in to help take care of people who fall through the cracks. For example, I love that COBRA allowed me to stay on my previous employer-provided group healthcare plan for 18 months(!) after my last job ended. What I'm against is any cultural or legal change that begins to suggest that its employers' responsibility to keep their people employed. It's not. Financially, the system can't work that way. Employers are not our parents or our nannies or our caretakers, and we should not try to make them into that.
- ForHackernews 2y ago
  I can't. My employment contract has a three-month notice period.

miltonlost 2y ago

> If you own a company, why shouldn't you be able to fire someone at any time? Because that is bad for the individual worker. We live in a society, and society should look out for humans before corporations.

IG_Semmelweiss 2y ago
I recommend you travel to LATAM or EMEA, where worker protections are much higher. No one gets fired because protections are so high. At-will is unheard of [1]. In some countries, there's a mandatory X months of salary for Y months worked. The regulation of the labor market, however, is strict and inflexible [2], and all LATAM jurisdictions impose mandatory severance pay for wrongful terminations.[2] What are the results of worker protections mentioned above ? Literally no jobs with protections. See for yourself. LATAM has an average of ~65% informal employment. Take Argentina for example. Close to 50% of the labor market are under-the-table "jobs" for this reason.[3]. Even more developed countries suffer the consequences , such as UK having 24% informal sector [4] All those governments intended to look out for humans before corporations. It didn't work out that way. The road to poverty is paved with good intentions. US dynamism actually creates more jobs as more are willing to try new things and experiment. Yes, you can protect workers, very very well. But only if you are OK with a tiny amount of protected workers, and let everyone else toil in the informal sector where zero protections exist [1] https://goglobal.com/blog/from-legal-protocols-to-cultural-norms-navigating-employee-terminations-in-latam/ https://goglobal.com/blog/from-legal-protocols-to-cultural-n... [2] https://www.acc.com/sites/default/files/resources/vl/public/ACCDocketArticle/1373467_1.pdf https://www.acc.com/sites/default/files/resources/vl/public/... [3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1037216/informal-employment-share-latin-america-caribbean-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1037216/informal-employm... [4] https://ilostat.ilo.org/topics/informality/ https://ilostat.ilo.org/topics/informality/
- jorvi 2y ago
  I work in the EU, and I'd rather see the American "at-will" system, but with a basic income + additional financial distress protections. It is IMO ridiculous that in a lot of EU countries, chronic low performance is not just cause for firing. It makes economical sense to reduce the friction of allocating workers where they'll be most productive. It just shouldn't destroy those workers' financial security.

FpUser 2y ago

>"These are business contracts." I would agree with this but if that's the case why employees are not given the same perks as companies from a tax point of view? My personal preference is to treat every human as a business. The alternative would be to eliminate all taxes except sales tax with some cutoff for low income persons.

p_j_w 2y ago

>If you own a company, why shouldn't you be able to fire someone at any time? If you're a worker, why shouldn't you be able to band together with your fellow workers to not allow this?

csallen 2y ago
For the same reason companies shouldn't be able to band together with other companies to not allow raises. They're anti-competitive practices, which eats away at the entire point of having a market, which is for competition to force parties to offer better prices, bid higher amounts, and produce better products/services, which benefits everyone. For example: - Landlords should not be able to collude to keep rent prices high. They should be forced to compete against each other, either by offering lower rent or better premises and services to tenants. The result is that over time, society gets better and better places to live, that are nicer, updated, and safer, at cheaper prices. - Healthcare providers shouldn't be allowed to collude to set uniform prices for services. They should have to compete on price, quality of care, or access to treatments, ensuring patients can choose better or more affordable options. The result is that more and more people can afford healthcare services, which themselves become increasingly effective over time. - Internet service providers shouldn't be able to divide territories or coordinate to prevent competition in specific regions. They should have to compete, driving down prices or increasing service quality for consumers. - Software companies shouldn't agree to not hire each other's employees to keep wages low. This prevents employees from negotiating higher salaries and better benefits, hurting workforce dynamism and innovation. Etc. Capitalism is simply a collection of laws and regulations that blocks all means of profit other than simply offering a better deal or better services. The goal is for those to be the only real ways to profit. The side effect of workers and companies all competing to do this in order to profit is that society benefits by having a ton of innovation to make better and better things, at cheaper and cheaper prices. Which is the central reason why, today, the average person can have a cell phone, a TV, the internet, amazing healthcare treatments, and an almost infinite array of options for clothing, food, entertainment, etc. Allowing people to profit in ways that disrupt competition gunks up the entire functioning of the market. Maybe you get some short-term benefit, but ultimately you end up with a system that doesn't create nearly as much wealth and prosperity. Because why go through the trouble to create great things for your customers (as a company), your employers (as an employee), or your employees (as an employer) if you can instead benefit by simply banding together with others and colluding, or monopolizing some essential resource, or fixing prices, etc.

ta_1138 2y ago

When your company gets even a little big, the decision making process gets filtered through sufficient levels of management that it's not the company owner firing people at any time: It's an employee who doesn't necessarily have to be aligned at all with what is good for the company that is firing people at any time. Eventually you learn that one of your middle managers managed to fire someone for some reason that is illegal, or is related to some kind of crime, and guess what? It seeps upward, and your company is in the wrong. A process doesn't just protect the employee, it protects you from the iffy middle management that, without exception, gets in. And the more freedom you give them, the worse the behavior.