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Comment by thebean11 | Hacker News Reader

It's a double edged sword, difficulty firing people will always make hiring more difficult; it becomes a much bigger risk.

At will employment wouldn't be such an issue if we had a more substantial government safety net.

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One side of the sword makes hiring more difficult, the other side means you become homeless, lose your health insurance, and cannot provide for your family. It can literally be life threatening to the worker.

The power differential favours the employer so much in this situation that it is ridiculous.

I agree if there was a social safety net like UBI this would be a non issue, but we’re nowhere near that.

There is unemployment insurance and COBRA, although I agree unemployment (without the temporary pandemic increase) isn't really enough especially with COBRA premiums. I do think things are slowly going in that direction though.

On a one by one case, this is very sympathetic.

However, if a company has eager competitors which can leverage an advantage, then keeping the 10 or 20% of a workforce which is minimally productive or counter productive can jeopardize a whole company and all its employees.

Say intel were to not fire low productivity employees but AMD does, then AMD can capitalize on this, intel loses share and then intel folds subsidiaries and so on. On the other hand AMD would be on a hiring spree to meet the added demand.

I agree with your logic here, but ideally Intel and AMD have to follow the same rules and find cause to terminate their employees OR pay out severance based on duration of service.

You might follow this up by saying that this decreases global competitiveness as well, and you’re absolutely right.

When say for example HiSilicon’s employees work 12hrs a day 6 days a week and live in bunks on company property it would certainly be hard for Intel/AMD to compete. We then start getting into issues of worker rights being baked into international trade agreements.

When do we collectively agree to stop the race to the bottom ? Or do we just accept that labour has no value and humans are expendable?

I think most of the problems with this issue are rooted in the fact that capital is becoming increasingly more profitable than labour. It reminds me of “Capital In the Twenty-first Century” by Thomas Piketty.

Companies providing welfare is inefficient, worse for workers, and doesn't help the jobless (of which there will be more if companies are responsible for welfare). Welfare is better left to the state.

I agree with your points. The race to the bottom is a problem.

Addressing the international aspect via trade agreements is a good step.

Better unemployment benefits between jobs would help the domestic aspect.

Allow employers to fire their employees without giving a cause for the first few months, giving them time to evaluate them. Problem solved.

Which is what is the norm in most European countries (length depends on country and usually duration of the contract).

What if the company starts struggling to make payroll 3 months in? What if the employee works hard the first 3 months then stops showing up?

Regulations like that just entrench the biggest players because they can afford the legal headaches of firing. Great way to incentivize people to start companies elsewhere.

If they stop showing up, you would have legal cause to fire them.

That's an extreme example obviously, but still one where there might be significant legal costs if the firee lawyers up.

Apparently all the companies in the building I'm in didn't get the memo. There is a risk yes, then again there are also way more rewards for the company than the employee so you give some, you get some.

Nobody is claiming hiring would go to zero. Do you know for a fact how many employees would be in your building if laws were different?

My guess would be zero more than now. None of the startups is limited by getting employees and I'm almost certain no funding would be gained by allowing at will employment as it is a non-issue anyways (as it is already possible to do so by just hiring contractors but nobody does this).

edit: Consider that most people would request considerable more than they earn here now if at-will employment would be the case, offsetting any "gains" you might consider. In Europe wages are considerably lower than the US.

Why do you think the vast majority of startups choose the US despite dramatically higher dev salaries?

Because that's what everyone(TM) does. Don't judge what makes sense based on what people do.

Not being able to afford an employee is obviously a valid reason to dismiss them. So is them refusing to work. But the scenario you describe is contrived anyway: Someone motivated enough to work hard won't randomly stop being so.

The "legal headaches" are only a serious problem if your legal system is broken.

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