Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

You're too old. You have a criminal background. You're too overeducated. We think you'll sue. You're too young.

It seemed that companies are loathed to take risk on employee. At the same time, lot of environments contained toxic working conditions, so it's not clear if their choice of employees matter much.

But people must find a job to keep themselves afloat or depend on someone having a job. It didn't matter if you're bad at social grace or if you have mental illness or if you're a felon, old or young.

Without food, shelter, and peace of mind, I think people would be hard pressed to be economically productive.




At the same time, there are a lot of employees suing companies "just because", so the feeling has some justification.


Only in places like the modern US, where suing is a kind of hobby, and you can be sued for anything. In other places (and in the US in the past) neither the companies expect to be sued and take pre-emptive measures, nor the employees sue "just because". At least not any significant numbers.


Really? But the right wing in the UK keep insisting it's because of all that red tape from Brussels and the EU? How can the USA, being free from the yoke of Eurocrats, have such similar problems???


Where do you think the Eurocrats get their ideas from?


Just because we are American doesn't mean we don't know how to make our own red tape.


As a matter of fact, we kind of feature it on our flag.


That's pretty awesome never looked at it that way...


And where do those employees find the money to sue the corporation?

Don't forget that it doesn't prevent the creation of toxic working environments.


> And where do those employees find the money to sue the corporation?

Often from lawyers who work on contingency and then take the bulk of the damages.


My home insurance includes legal cover in case I wanted to sue my employer for almost any reason, or if I am sued by them(up to half a million pounds, so ~$750k).


A lot of places expect this, and my observation is that it fuels even more twisted behavior by the companies. For example, in Academia, it's not uncommon to sue over a failed tenure case. I know of a colleague who was terminated the year before tenure review, because (from what I gather from scattered conversations) his case was expected to be controversial, and it was much easier to fire him now, where the process is not well-defined and not transparent, instead of going through the whole process and having everything scrutinized in courts.


I do not understand this comment. Can you point at an example of this?


I've heard of several cases where people were fired for poor performance and then turned around and filed baseless, retaliatiory discrimination lawsuits. Obviously that's anecdata, but I believe that's the type of thing the poster is referring to.




Consider applying for YC's W25 batch! Applications are open till Nov 12.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: