6 ms·

I was thinking that it seems strange to fire a 10x dev that has regular one-on-one meetings with a VP. OP could have contacted said VP and outlined that he was

I was thinking that it seems strange to fire a 10x dev that has regular one-on-one meetings with a VP. OP could have contacted said VP and outlined that he was worth keeping, until I got to this line : >the law enforces a social scoring system to determine who is affected, prioritizing the protection of the most vulnerable employees This is the reason OP got laid off, if all he says about his high performance is true. The good old positive discrimination making unintended victims. Germany just lost a 10x dev's productivity for this. While I agree with the spirit of the law and don't have the details of this case, it is quite the sad situation for everyone involved.

Tainnor 2y ago
At no point does the law force a company to fire a high performer. The company can literally just fire one fewer person - if the employee really is 10x and if the company has its shit together, that's what would happen.
inglor_cz 2y ago
Let us face it, the European welfare model is a blind alley. No one in the world is going to copy this from us again, now that it is clear that it makes us a) uncompetitive - taxes too high, too much protection for people who might not merit it; b) less likely to start new businesses - in theory, you can have a great welfare system and a great atmosphere for enterpreneurship, but in practice, the former will usually stifle the latter, as the "eat the rich" types will dominate the discourse; c) extremely vulnerable to the aging problem. Too many pensioners, not enough kids, not enough highly qualified migrants who have zero reason to subject themselves to lower compensation, higher taxation and, on the top of all, interaction with bureacracy that insists on the local language. OTOH hardly literate people from Afghanistan or Niger don't mind any of that; the German / Dutch / Swedish welfare system will take care of them even if they do nothing and/or immerse themselves in the black market. IDK how to get out of this pickle, the local population is addicted to high welfare spending and other onerous protections like to crack and won't vote against it, even though it is becoming clear that as we fall more and more behind the US, we won't be able to afford a system like that. Robust welfare states can be only carried by robust economies and a lot of young workers. Those conditions existed in the 1960s or 1970s, and our current systems are downstream from that, but the foundation is eroding with every passing year. The final collapse will be pretty ugly, something like Argentina, but full of 70 y.o. paupers. Weaker spots in the EU already have a huge problem providing healthcare to the elderly, or even anyone. On paper, it is an universal right, but in reality, there simply aren't enough doctors to carry this obligation out. The Czech Republic is somewhere in the middle, nowhere near as bad as rural Bulgaria, but try finding a dentist who accepts insurance patients outside the major cities like Brno and Prague. That will be an exercise in the impossible.
- shafyy 2y ago
  What does "European welfare model" even mean? Europe consists of many countries, and different countries have significantly different welfare models. Many EU countries have enough wealth, the problem is that it is unevenly distributed.
  - inglor_cz 2y ago
    "Europe consists of many countries, and different countries have significantly different welfare models." In general, single payer healthcare + pay-as-you-go pension systems + relatively comfortable welfare systems + high taxation and regulation to support those systems. Yes, there are meaningful differences across the continent. But visible outliers are scarce. One of the really nasty consequences is underfunded defense, which caught up with us once Russia started acting on its imperial dreams. "Many EU countries have enough wealth, the problem is that it is unevenly distributed." A typical EU government spends about 40 per cent of the GDP, with the heaviest part of the spending being pensions. The worst outlier, France, around 55 per cent. If this is not enough, it will never be enough, short of mass expropriations. We already have a massive brain drain to the US. More punitive taxation = more brain drain.
    - shafyy 2y ago
      It makes sense to me that a big portion of government spending goes towards social welfare and healthcare – at the end, that's one of the most important things. I agree that defense was underfunded in many EU countries. But hindsight is 20-20. If you remember the 2000s, everybody was optimistic about eternal peace in Europe, and global trade without tariffs was at its heights. The lower investment into defense came not at the cost of higher social welfare. The gap between poor and rich is still increasing, and we need ways to address that.
      - inglor_cz 2y ago
        "The gap between poor and rich is still increasing, and we need ways to address that." Do we? For what? We already have a serious problem in Europe that we totally missed the IT revolution. In the list of the biggest corporations in the world, US tech giants dominate. The first European entry is Louis Vuitton, a producer of luxury handbags. Either we are going to have a robust economy that can support the levels of taxation which carry the welfare state, but that means that someone is inevitably going to become very rich. If someone succeeds in building European Amazon, they will be in the same category of rich as Jeff Bezos. Or we will still have our legacy giants like Louis Vuitton and a more equitable distributon of poverty. But hey, no new digital parvenus up there. You are concerned about the gap between the rich and the poor. What about the gap between the US and the EU economy? That is growing pretty fast. Already we are small brothers to the big brother overseas. 20 or 30 more years of our current stagnation and we will be global nobodies; no one will bother to implement our strict regulations to gain access to our markets.
shafyy 2y ago
I had to look this up, and the law states that the Sozialauswahl (social selection) only applies to employees who have the same qualifcations, rank etc. The law applies when the company is doing across-the-board layoffs (e.g. because they have become unprofitable). It says that employees who have been longer at the firm, have disability, need to support family etc. should be let go last, compared to employees who have the same qualifcations, rank etc. So, in theory, what you're saying is wrong – the company would not lose their "10x devs" (whatever that means) because of this law. Also, OP mentions the law, but does not say that he was affected by it.
netdevphoenix 2y ago
OP didn't got it right. It only applies for those with the same qualifications (i.e. given two 10x devs, the most vulnerable one is kept) so the company gets to keep a 10x dev. He's just externalising his problems to the easiest target (ie. vulnerable people). His own situation is partially his fault and he admits as much when he describes a list of what he would have done differently. People expect things to always work the same way and they get upset when they don't.

Tainnor 2y ago

At no point does the law force a company to fire a high performer. The company can literally just fire one fewer person - if the employee really is 10x and if the company has its shit together, that's what would happen.

inglor_cz 2y ago

Let us face it, the European welfare model is a blind alley. No one in the world is going to copy this from us again, now that it is clear that it makes us a) uncompetitive - taxes too high, too much protection for people who might not merit it; b) less likely to start new businesses - in theory, you can have a great welfare system and a great atmosphere for enterpreneurship, but in practice, the former will usually stifle the latter, as the "eat the rich" types will dominate the discourse; c) extremely vulnerable to the aging problem. Too many pensioners, not enough kids, not enough highly qualified migrants who have zero reason to subject themselves to lower compensation, higher taxation and, on the top of all, interaction with bureacracy that insists on the local language. OTOH hardly literate people from Afghanistan or Niger don't mind any of that; the German / Dutch / Swedish welfare system will take care of them even if they do nothing and/or immerse themselves in the black market. IDK how to get out of this pickle, the local population is addicted to high welfare spending and other onerous protections like to crack and won't vote against it, even though it is becoming clear that as we fall more and more behind the US, we won't be able to afford a system like that. Robust welfare states can be only carried by robust economies and a lot of young workers. Those conditions existed in the 1960s or 1970s, and our current systems are downstream from that, but the foundation is eroding with every passing year. The final collapse will be pretty ugly, something like Argentina, but full of 70 y.o. paupers. Weaker spots in the EU already have a huge problem providing healthcare to the elderly, or even anyone. On paper, it is an universal right, but in reality, there simply aren't enough doctors to carry this obligation out. The Czech Republic is somewhere in the middle, nowhere near as bad as rural Bulgaria, but try finding a dentist who accepts insurance patients outside the major cities like Brno and Prague. That will be an exercise in the impossible.

shafyy 2y ago
What does "European welfare model" even mean? Europe consists of many countries, and different countries have significantly different welfare models. Many EU countries have enough wealth, the problem is that it is unevenly distributed.
- inglor_cz 2y ago
  "Europe consists of many countries, and different countries have significantly different welfare models." In general, single payer healthcare + pay-as-you-go pension systems + relatively comfortable welfare systems + high taxation and regulation to support those systems. Yes, there are meaningful differences across the continent. But visible outliers are scarce. One of the really nasty consequences is underfunded defense, which caught up with us once Russia started acting on its imperial dreams. "Many EU countries have enough wealth, the problem is that it is unevenly distributed." A typical EU government spends about 40 per cent of the GDP, with the heaviest part of the spending being pensions. The worst outlier, France, around 55 per cent. If this is not enough, it will never be enough, short of mass expropriations. We already have a massive brain drain to the US. More punitive taxation = more brain drain.
  - shafyy 2y ago
    It makes sense to me that a big portion of government spending goes towards social welfare and healthcare – at the end, that's one of the most important things. I agree that defense was underfunded in many EU countries. But hindsight is 20-20. If you remember the 2000s, everybody was optimistic about eternal peace in Europe, and global trade without tariffs was at its heights. The lower investment into defense came not at the cost of higher social welfare. The gap between poor and rich is still increasing, and we need ways to address that.
    - inglor_cz 2y ago
      "The gap between poor and rich is still increasing, and we need ways to address that." Do we? For what? We already have a serious problem in Europe that we totally missed the IT revolution. In the list of the biggest corporations in the world, US tech giants dominate. The first European entry is Louis Vuitton, a producer of luxury handbags. Either we are going to have a robust economy that can support the levels of taxation which carry the welfare state, but that means that someone is inevitably going to become very rich. If someone succeeds in building European Amazon, they will be in the same category of rich as Jeff Bezos. Or we will still have our legacy giants like Louis Vuitton and a more equitable distributon of poverty. But hey, no new digital parvenus up there. You are concerned about the gap between the rich and the poor. What about the gap between the US and the EU economy? That is growing pretty fast. Already we are small brothers to the big brother overseas. 20 or 30 more years of our current stagnation and we will be global nobodies; no one will bother to implement our strict regulations to gain access to our markets.

shafyy 2y ago

I had to look this up, and the law states that the Sozialauswahl (social selection) only applies to employees who have the same qualifcations, rank etc. The law applies when the company is doing across-the-board layoffs (e.g. because they have become unprofitable). It says that employees who have been longer at the firm, have disability, need to support family etc. should be let go last, compared to employees who have the same qualifcations, rank etc. So, in theory, what you're saying is wrong – the company would not lose their "10x devs" (whatever that means) because of this law. Also, OP mentions the law, but does not say that he was affected by it.

netdevphoenix 2y ago

OP didn't got it right. It only applies for those with the same qualifications (i.e. given two 10x devs, the most vulnerable one is kept) so the company gets to keep a 10x dev. He's just externalising his problems to the easiest target (ie. vulnerable people). His own situation is partially his fault and he admits as much when he describes a list of what he would have done differently. People expect things to always work the same way and they get upset when they don't.