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Comment by geewee | Hacker News Reader

The hire-slow, fire-fast paradigm might be an employers dream, but it is _terrible_ for employees. In the worst-case situation you end up quitting your job and maybe even moving to be let go with little warning? That's rough. I think if the employer wants to fire someone, they _should_ be paying for severance.

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For good workers it is better, as it is easier to get hired and you won't have to pick up a bunch of slack for useless colleagues who are impossible to fire. And if you are fired it's easy to find a new job. Hard firing is only good for employees who don't deliver.

Stronger protections help good workers too, such that it eliminates some risk in changing jobs, for example, to take on new opportunities that may be really exciting. It also adds some nominal value to tenure at a job (IE, there is a known ahead of time amount of severance you can expect if things do go sideways for reasons beyond your control, like in a merger)

The assertion that it only helps employees who don't deliver is not accounting for any variance factors that may not be obvious immediately.

Stronger protections hurt better workers, likely more then it helps. It means companies are more apt to keep marginal workers and expect the higher performers to make up the difference

I'd need to see data to really believe this is the norm rather than an outlier

I hope you understand that it is not possible to make such data? You have to use common sense to determine if the assertion is valid or not.

Been great for me as an employee. People are willing to take risks if they know they can fire you if it doesn't work out. That risk has been my carrier, as someone without a traditional background.

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