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Comment by ordinaryperson | Hacker News Reader

Yep. I'm not disputing the injustice (at least, as his essay lays it out -- some comments on the article tell a different story of him being difficult to work with).

But contracts not being renewed -- happens all the time in the "real" world. My point is just: good people don't get their contracts renewed all the time, often for silly or dumb reasons, and it's not some cosmic injustice because most people find another job.

The fact that finding one of these jobs is so difficult should not change the basic risk/reward stature of at-will employment.

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Where is the 'reward' of at-will employment? It seems it's mainly on the employer side.

It's never happened to me personally, but a friend that managed a team of email content developers took more than six months to fire an employee who literally didn't know HTML. PIP after PIP, meeting after meeting, a union rep getting involved, etc.

The reward is not having to work with that person. Probably not a good enough reward to justify the downsides, but still a reward.

I assume this was in Europe? I've read elsewhere about some of the protections over there and length of time it could take to lay someone off as well as even putting in your own notice (like a month in the UK?).

I really wish there was a bit of a balance here in the US but I think the at-will stuff (along with stagnant wage growth) is why companies have such a hard time keeping people. Most of my working career has been (about 15 years discounting part-time work in high school) has been one in which I've worked with other people that very clearly knew or experienced that there was no such thing as stability in the modern workplace and you can be out on the street on a whim.

At least in the Duke professor's case, there was a process and a means of appeals it seems. There has to be a more human way for us to do this that balances the needs of people (and their faults) with that of a business.

Once a probationary period has been completed (usually about 2 months in most companies) a month's notice on both sides is usually the bare minimum for someone in Full Time Employment in a non trivial job in the UK. after some length of service (in the order of 5 or 10 years) that can increase to 3 or more years. Of course the employer can opt to just pay your that notice period and say farewell if you are judged a security risk, and even with this notice period in place a UK firm cannot simply "fire" you because of trivial reasons (like you manager has a hangover and doesn't like your chirpy attitude that particular day) it has to go through a process - with exceptions for gross misconduct but they are usually explicity laid out in a contract and can be validated/overturned by industrial tribunal

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