Hacker News Reader

Structural comparison: In the Netherlands, employees are hired for specific terms. Usually this results in employment contracts for 6-12 months, followed by yearly renewals. This is a bit one-sided: The employer can only sever the contract if there is a very good reason, but the employee can leave with 30 days notice. After 3 years employees can be offered a 'permanent' contract... "we won't fire you unless there is a huge problem and/or we will negotiate a severance".

This 'loyalty' seems like a burden to employers from my American perspective. After living here, I've noticed a few things about Dutch employee loyalty.

* Removing the fear of possible instant dismissal seems to orient employees toward long term improvement instead of maintaining status-quo.

* Defined intervals of contract negotiation do the same, they give both parties a goal.

* Employees want that 'permanent' contract, it gives them even more stability. Once obtained, employees are hesitant to give up their luxurious position (true loyalty). My initial fear of a productivity drop doesn't seem to be valid, if I look at the 'perms' around me.

* Children do start to appear around this time, though. Good for loyalty, bad for midnight coding, good for efficiency.

I don't know how this system would play out back in the valley, but I feel that it beats the anarchy of at-will.

Is that legal in the EU now? I know the EU is clamping down on treating short term contractors differently to permanent employees the UK just changed a whole load of employment laws

After so many contracts in succession your considered a permanent employee its the same in the at will USA Microsoft got caught by this a few years ago.

> After 3 years employees can be offered a 'permanent' contract...

Actually, after three years you are REQUIRED to either be let go or get a permanent contract.

My current employer gave me a permanent contract right away (after just a 3 hour chat, is that normal for someone with 1.5 years experience?). Now I don't have to worry about losing my job after 6 or 12 months, and my employer has fewer worries about me looking around.

At will employment does not prevent a company from negotiating a contract that would demonstrate two way loyalty. It merely sets the default conditions in the absence of such a contract.

One could offer a contract with, say, a 1 year intro period during which both sides were effectively at-will, followed by 3 year renewals contingent on acceptable performance by the employee and acceptable compensation and working conditions from the employer. Everything can be negotiated.

I suspect that this would be viewed more favorably if it was proposed by the potential employer than by the employee, though it should be to both sides advantage to have such a degree of predictability.

>Companies, even ones who have the resources and should no better, are more interested in finding someone already trained (and griping about how they can't find them) than investing in training new people (and of course the fail to realize the correlation between the two phenomenon).

In my experience, many prefer to shirk the responsibility for hiring/training entirely by contracting out wherever possible.

After some number of prime/sub contracting shops have taken their cut the employer likely ends up with exactly the kind of unqualified body that one should expect for 50% of the base rate they're paying.

Negotiating with a new company seems like it's always faster and easier than negotiating with your current employer for a better raise or a promotion.

Lower risk. Fail the negotiation with the new .biz and just go to work like usual, keep those paychecks flowing. Fail the negotiation with the current .biz and you could end up out on the street.

The reasoning is negotiating with the current .biz really means re-negotiating the original deal. That obviously means someone screwed up the original negotiations and we don't employ screwups. Therefore intense pressure not to rock the boat, up to and including termination. Even worse a lot of decisions are made by group now at hiring time, so who do you even blame for the original mistake? Easiest to just blame the employee.

If you lose, you have to leave anyway. If you win, they know you're looking and don't trust you anymore, so you have to leave anyway. Never bite the hand that feeds you, never negotiate with your current employer.

Internal promotions are about as bad as salary re-negotiations.

Why is an internal promotion a bad thing?