[strix_varius]

I am absolutely for decoupling healthcare from employment (via universal care), and for mandated severance.

However, there's a reason that so many - I'll pick on Germany here - German tech leaders move to the US. When firing employees becomes too hard, hiring is risky, giving people broad latitude is risky, and compensation suffers because high comp is risky.

If you're a very capable software engineer, it's better to be in the US. If you're a not-very-effective one, it's better to be in a place that will make getting rid of you much harder for the business.

[candiddevmike]

> When firing employees becomes too hard, hiring is risky, giving people broad latitude is risky, and compensation suffers because high comp is risky.

I don't follow this conclusion at all.

[strix_varius]

It seems self-evident, but maybe that's from managing teams that span countries and seeing the difference firsthand. Here's a concrete example:

Congratulations, you're now an EM! You get +1 headcount for your team this quarter. Your interview pipeline winds up with two candidates who get exactly equal recommendations.

One of these people (A) lives somewhere that, if they turn out to have neutral or negative value on the team, you can easily let them go. The other (B) lives in a place where, based on your management training and company policies, you have to first make a request through the legal department, then go through at least six months of PIP to (maybe) get rid of them.

Which of them do you hire?

If the answer (A) is too obvious here, let me add one more detail: A wants to come in at the role's max level, whereas B would accept one level lower (less comp). Does that change your answer?

Almost certainly not. You're a line manager. The cash for this isn't coming out of your pocket! There's no reward for getting folks to agree to less than market value. On the other hand, a bad hire makes you look bad, and a bad hire requiring working with legal over a protracted period in order to avoid liability - even worse. If your hiring decision results in an employment action against your company? A managerial nightmare!

Meanwhile, your top performers are asking you why the hell they're working so hard and contributing so much when it seems like performance doesn't matter for retention on your team. You're legally barred from sharing information about the in-progress coaching of the negative-impact teammate.

[samtho]

I don’t see what’s so difficult here.

If it’s risky to hire (because terminating is difficult, takes a long time, is riddled with red tape), then employers will be slow to do so. Less competition for employers to find workers, lower pay overall. High compensation is even risky because of the burden of having to keep employees on due to labor law compliance.

I personally believe it is better to have a robust unemployment insurance system in place that helps workers bridge the gap between jobs.

[skygazer]

I don’t know if the assertions are true in practice, because I’ve only worked in the US and not Europe, and have never held a tenured position or had a union, but the logic described seemed straightforward enough: if it’s difficult to fire an employee, then you must be more cautious in hiring, because you may be saddled with a poor employee for longer than you’d like. Likewise, empowering employees to take high stakes risks is suggested to be more dangerous if the employer loses the ability to easily let employees go if the employee’s poor judgement causes disaster. (Think sink or swim, give them enough rope to hang themselves — this doesn’t necessarily sound like a great employer.) Finally, offering high salaries is more risky if you can’t let those employees go if they fail to perform. As a counter-factual thought exercise that all seems plausible, we do like our at-will employment here, but no idea if it’s really that difficult to fire employees outside the US — he does make it sound like more of a long term marriage relationship where additional caution is warranted. That all aligns with the uninformed stereotype I have in my mind that the US is more pro business and Europe is more pro worker. While the proposition is internally consistent, I’m eager to hear if it’s sound.

[neom]

I'd guess they're saying that if you're in an environment where making staffing changes can be legally challenging, you might opt to keep people on a tight leash at low salaries. You could in theory I guess hire someone low comp within a box, watch them, promote them quickly, and expand their latitude if they turn out to be high preformers. I don't know much about highly regulated labor markets so no clue if this exists in reality, but I suppose it's not impossible.

[baryphonic]

> > When firing employees becomes too hard, hiring becomes risky

If a firm has severe restrictions on firing anyone, then it must be extremely diligent with hiring, because employees will be around as long as they want to be. If an employee is unproductive, lazy, or just a bad fit, then the firm will be stuck giving a paycheck to someone who really ought not to be there. Thus firms will simply delay hiring.

> > giving people broad latitude is risky

I admit, I'm not exactly sure what this means, but I would surmise it means that employees need to be micromanaged to ensure loyalty to the firm, since they have no natural consequences of going rogue.

> > compensation suffers because high comp is risky

If the firm grants significant pay increases but cannot terminate someone, that pay increase becomes a permanent recurring expense, even if some future event renders that pay increase inappropriate or unnecessary. Thus firms will minimize pay increases.

These are "deadweight losses" where optimal exchange between employers and employees is limited by some policy.

[pc86]

Since Germany was mentioned specifically, I'm curious what the laws are around decreasing pay, if it's as hard as firing someone, if some threshold or percentage would be considered a constructive firing, etc. This could eliminate some of the risk of high compensation if, for example, you could hire someone at $100k/yr USD equivalent and then after a reasonable review cycle lower the pay for bad performance.

[sneed_chucker]

Yeah, I have a lot of friends and family in German and think their labor laws are a little extreme.

Feels like some sort of balance should be achievable?