Often you start with a 6 month 'probationary period' when either side can quickly terminate the contract. The employer is supposed to use this time to decide if the employee is 'mediocre' or not.
Apart from that you could also be terminated if there is documented evidence that you are failing to perform your job.
The uniquely American idea that you can be fired at any time for any reason is for me utterly terrifying and the primary reason I would never want to work in the US.
There's plenty of contractors in Europe who can effectively be fired without giving a cause. They are often the most experienced and valuable people and the "firing at will" is not a big issue for them - they are paid for it (much more than full time employees).
Similarly, tech people in the US make much more than European FTEs - you don't get protections, but you get paid so much that it's trivial to save up money to just protect yourself against any periods of unexpected unemployment.
People in US generally enjoy higher standard of living than people in Western Europe (minus healthcare, but that's unrelated), which is a signal that the system as a whole is generally benefitial for workers. Employers hire much more eagerly knowing that, if the tides turn, the extra employees will not be a burden. To see this in practice, check out for example unemployment trends in US vs France.
Health care, dental care up to adulthood, parental leave protected by law and education through college is definitely not unrelated to standard of living. Neither is mandatory pension contributions from your employer, as well as a guaranteed contribution from the state (we unknowingly get contributions to our retirement for every month we go to college).
Sure, if you're single with no kids, in very good shape, employed as a data engineer and 30 years old , like me, you would gladly take the money instead of all the other stuff. But I like the fact that children who are born into working poor families in Sweden will have a much healthier upbringing than if they were born in the US.
Given that healthcare is often provided by employer's in the USA, I think healthcare is very related to the topics of the jobs markets and job regulations.
The "hire much more eagerly part" is actually great. Sure, your job can be reduced at any time, but the alternative is to not have the job at all - the business will likely not risk job creation on an uncertain project knowing they will not be able to fire if the project goes south.
In practice, just see unemployment numbers - around 3% in US and around 9% in France, with chronic low-intensity rebellion (yellow vests) happening in the country.
This is not backed up by statistics. Look at life satisfaction or mood-polls. GDP/capita or stuff like that does not tell you how people are actually doing. Even in rich cities like NYC or SF, I did not feel like people had a higher standard of living - unless they were part of the 1%
This is the country that saw the invention of the "food desert", that has an absolutely terrifyingly high incidence of opiate addiction and that routinely shuffles entire cities worth of homeless around the country so they're someone else's problem? That US?
It's also the country where not being able to live in a detached house is mostly seen as not worthy of middle class. That's far above the standard of Western Europe, where people in middle class lives in flats.
In Sweden, most middle class people live in detached houses. However, most young professionals desire to live in apartments because it's simply more convenient. I hate the garden and I hate driving.
This article is about Sweden, remember. My parents have two houses, one outside Gothenburg (big enough that they have converted the floor me and my younger brother lived in into two apartments, one if four bedrooms the other one is two) and a beach house further up north. They're from a completely different generation with different priorities.
'documented evidence that you are failing to perform your job'. It's the same where i live. But here (nl) it basically means that you can be fired at will anyways. employers will write down their version to set up a case. lawyers dont really try these cases because their rates are high enough employees cant afford a court case. They prefer settling these cases, so you get fired, but you typically get some money. after i found that out, i did not really bother with the whole permanent contract thing at all anymore.
In Sweden the unions are the ones who will go to court and negotiate for you because they know that if you go it will set a precedent that exposes everyone else too.
In Sweden you almost have to be part of a union, not in the least because it is right (because they dictate and negotiate your minimum wage, among other things). In the context of the Netherlands this doesn't really apply, except for specific sectors that are overwhelmingly not tech (or tech-adjacent).
This is very, very wrong. What happens is that they bring it in front of an employment judge and they will decide whether or not it is right. Both sides present their argument. If you are not employed at minimum wage you can afford insurance to pay for legal costs, including those incurred in disputes between you and your employer.
As for the practice of handing employees a sack of money to leave (and other, more insidious practices) - that definitely happens, but that isn't at-will employment (which would be turning the dial a few ticks up on the dystopia scale).
> The uniquely American idea that you can be fired at any time for any reason is for me utterly terrifying
As an American nearing the end of a decades-long pretty successful tech career maybe I can offer some useful perspective. Having spent quite a bit of time interacting with international colleagues one difference I've noticed is that American high tech workers are more aware of and connected to their employer's bottom line. This is partly because stock options, RSUs, profit sharing, performance bonuses, and commissions tend to be a more significant portion of our overall compensation here. But a more meta reason is that generally speaking, companies are both started and go out of business faster and more often here. The faster pace of the overall economy leads to less effective firms reaching the natural consequences of poor performance faster.
I haven't looked up the data but I suspect the average length of employment of highly-experienced skilled employees is shorter here. It's not just due to being laid-off from a failing or pivoting firm but also because employees choose to leave for other opportunities more often. I've had international friends assume "perhaps you Americans feel less loyalty to your employer or employees" but it's more that loyalty is earned (and lost) faster.
While different firms and industries vary, I think there's an overall trend from employees of "switch employers faster" which is matched by employers tending to hire and fire faster. In my experience, this also seems true for other job changes like promotions and employees voluntarily applying for open positions within the same organization (against their direct manager's desire to keep them). On those anonymous employee satisfaction surveys run by HR depts, there's often a question asking employees to rank "How likely is it you'll still work at this company in X years". I'm pretty sure in the U.S. those responses average much shorter than in Europe. So, while there's a higher level of medium-term job uncertainty, it's just the necessary 'other side of the coin' of having a higher level of medium-term upward mobility.
For me, none of this feels 'scary'. Frankly, I wouldn't want an employer to be required to keep me around for one minute longer than makes business sense for them. The reason is that for most of my career, my performance stock options and bonuses have consistently increased, often to more than half my total compensation - sometimes much more than half. To be clear, that extra money wasn't a "gift" or granted because the company is "nice" (though nearly all my employers have been very nice). They keep increasing my comp because my market value is increasing and they are justifiably worried I'll leave for a higher paying or more interesting job elsewhere (or to do my own startup). When it comes to highly skilled workers at silicon valley tech companies, managers often don't even have to fire employees who aren't performing well. Once the employee sees the performance part of their compensation falling to match their current value to the firm, the employee will quit to go somewhere that values them more.
My relationship with employers is similar to how I feel about my relationships with romantic partners (and now my spouse). There's a constructive tension that makes it work. I want to continue being in the relationship not because "it's comfortable" or, worse, "this person is about as good as I can expect to do" (ugh!) but rather because I so highly value the other person I'm worried she'll 'come to her senses' and dump me for someone better. I think an ideal relationship is where both parties feel that way equally. I want to be so valuable to my employer that they're worried I'll 'come to my senses' and quit. Conversely, I want the job I'm in to be so well-suited to my skills, challenging, enjoyable and highly-paid that I'm worried they'll 'come to their senses' and replace me with someone better or cheaper. If either party ever stops feeling that way, the relationship is ultimately going to degrade anyway and life's too short to remain in relationships where the value dynamic is unbalanced for any significant period of time.
Apart from that you could also be terminated if there is documented evidence that you are failing to perform your job.
The uniquely American idea that you can be fired at any time for any reason is for me utterly terrifying and the primary reason I would never want to work in the US.