| I don't know of any countries where you're not allowed to make an offer. But if you offer packages to people who are underqualified or underperforming for the terms they currently enjoy, it may require a very high sum to make them sign it. And in markets where every job basically come with the same terms as academic tenure, people will be less worried that the company will play hardball and just fire them without compensation if the package is refused. However, most if not all European countries allow layoffs, even though the terms of the layoffs may have to be approved by the union in a few places, or at least have the selection criteria for who gets laid off made public. And if some department can be stuffed full of all underperformers, it can serve as a convenient proxy for performance to lay off mostly from that department, based on lack of profitability there. I'm sure this happens in the US, too, at least if it turns out that a higher fraction of those on the way out belong to some protected identity group, which may easily be the case in tech companies where essential developers are disproportionality male and/or asian/white, while various support staff, account managers etc are recruited from a more diverse pool. |