These damn employees, what are they thinking that they could better their employment and lives. They're a bunch of hypocrites for wanting a better piece of the cake of the billion dollar extremely profitable company they built.
Won't someone please think of the poor shareholders?
/s
It's the opposite - Google is a giant, humanity-fucking ad platform. That can't really change, so any changes that come is just gonna be placating the employees so they stop complaining and keep building the giant, humanity-fucking ad platform.
Might feel a bit better, but if you really care, quit!
>>That's a nice way to say "Do what I tell you regardless of what we agreed your role would be or I fire you".
No, it is specifically NOT that.
It is exactly what I said, expecting people to have a "Can Do / put your shoulder to the wheel / solve the problem" attitude, and to be flexible about how it gets done. Especially in a development situation (vs production that's been static for years).
If the company failed to make clear at the beginning that it was a dynamic and changing environment, and that Can Do attitude is expected, then yeah, it is their fault.
But even in relatively staid environments, a "not my job" attitude can become toxic and contagious in a hurry. Then, it may not be far before no one has a job.
I'm strongly pro-union and pro-workers getting a larger slice of the economic pie. But I also recognize that the "not my job" attitude and over-constraining work rules is an enormous part of what lead to the demise of unions. Of course you don't want plumbers doing electrical work and vice-versa, but when a plumber or manager cannot toss a stray shovel onto the truck without a foreman/union/mgt meeting being called for stepping over the line (literally seen it happen), that's beyond unsustainable.
Where I'm from (western europe) we have this, but unironically.
Imagine the horror not having to worry over not being able to pay your mortgage or rent whenever your boss or some power tripping middle manager decided they want you to start juggling bowling pins while riding a unicycle while you were hired to develop software.
Won't someone please think of the poor employers? /s
How are tech salaries in Western Europe compared to the US?
There are pros and cons. How would you hire someone at a startup? Do you specify they can only write code for the website and then if you need their help with something else they just say "not in my job description"? Eventually you'd just get contracts that have laundry lists of vague responsibilities to get around this and it would just wind up like standard terms of service for websites/electronics where people just sign and take the job. Too much money at stake to not do it and for little gain.
We have a justice system based on reasonable interpretation by judges, which is a bit less "strict" literal interpretation of contracts.
Mine says "Software development", some collective bargaining agreements have more specific descriptions (to prevent under paying of employees by classifying them as lower salaries jobs).
As a start-up you'd hire contractors which you'd pay a much higher fee for, as these wouldn't have the labor protections of employees.
Salaries for contractors are I guess similar to the US maybe a bit lower, for salaries employees definitely lower than the US (for tech at least).
But then again my rent is cheaper, and my insurances are cheaper too, I get PTO and unlimited sick-days, stuff like that.
At the end of the day, if I want to make more money and not have many protections (like in the US) I'd become a contractor. (which does come with some strings attached to prevent employers from hiring normal employees like contractors).
You have a choice over here for both models essentially.
> We have a justice system based on reasonable interpretation by judges, which is a bit less "strict" literal interpretation of contracts.
We as in all of Western Europe or for a specific country? What are some examples you've seen where the US has "strict", literal interpretations of contracts that are unreasonable as it relates to employment/the topic at hand? Off the top of my head the only thing that comes to mind immediately is maybe non-competes but I think that's an issue of leverage and not really a contractual issue, and even so it's risky for companies to enforce except for key employees.
> As a start-up you'd hire contractors which you'd pay a much higher fee for, as these wouldn't have the labor protections of employees
Isn't this just sidestepping the protection? And without needing to do an exhaustive list what are the labor protections? I assume there are like a minimum number of paid days off/holidays/vacation, exact job you'll do (though this is still vague to me how it's handled practically) and some protections around being fired/how you are fired?
Is there a big protection for tech workers I'm missing?
> But then again my rent is cheaper, and my insurances are cheaper too, I get PTO and unlimited sick-days, stuff like that. At the end of the day, if I want to make more money and not have many protections (like in the US) I'd become a contractor. (which does come with some strings attached to prevent employers from hiring normal employees like contractors).
My "rent" (mortgage in this case) is pretty cheap and so is my insurance. I work remote for a great company, get PTO, and take it as you need it sick days and stuff like that too. Of course rental rates in certain markets (NY, SF, etc.) are much higher, as is compensation. $250k-$300k for many tech workers. I think that probably compensates for the higher costs though who knows what'll happen with the post-pandemic labor market (2024-2026 or so).
It's an interesting topic, I think a comment could't accommodate all the differences between the labor markets.
I'll say this much, our justice systems in western Europe (with the exception of the UK) are based on civil law you could find more about this on Wikipedia to find sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law
When it comes to contractors, yes they have less rights (at-will employment, no PTO, no sick-days etc. etc. etc.) So yes it does side-step labor protections but it's more expensive, also in my country at least contractors are required to get disability insurance and not everyone can be considered a contractor. If a judge finds that a contractor actually more resembles an employer (so not being independent of the company hiring), they will retro-actively be considered an employee. (This has happened with Uber drivers for instance)
Some of the protections employees enjoy over here are:
- Not being fired unless the labor board approves (which required documentation from the employees, and them to follow strict labor rules).
- At least 4 weeks PTO.
- Up to 2 years of continues sick-days, (with a doctors note) (after which you'd get fired and get social security)
- After being fired you'd get 1 month of continued salary for each year you were employed, until you find new work
- Paid Maternity/paternity leave
- The right to bargain for a collective bargaining agreement which allows for additional minimum rights/salaries to be applied to all workers within a field
- The right to ignore your boss after hours unless additional consideration (salary) is offered and time schedules are agreed upon
- The right for employees to have a employee-board whenever there's at least 50 employees within a company/org
- The right for employees to keep their jobs if they become disabled (if possible, judged by the labor board not the employer)
When it comes to costs/salaries, I reckon it'd highly depend on the region/job market/sector.
Thanks! I think there are some good things here for sure. I think I'd have to really sit down and go over these to better understand the trade-offs but I wasn't aware of a few of these like the right to have 2 years off continuously for sick days.
> When it comes to costs/salaries, I reckon it'd highly depend on the region/job market/sector.
I do want to bring this conversation back to make sure we're still talking about tech workers per my original comment.
> I'll say this much, our justice systems in western Europe (with the exception of the UK) are based on civil law you could find more about this on Wikipedia to find sources
Thanks for the link. I really like the common law approach myself. It's interesting that you noted that common law was based on strict contract interpretations (which I think you noted in a negative context since one was considered reasonable but the other wasn't) but then at the same time common law tends to be more predictable (according to the article) versus civil law since case precedence acts as law. I guess it depends on your interpretation of reasonable. As an American I'd want the law to be applied equally no matter who you are, but that's my culture and lens. I also like that it's flexible and, again noted by the article, able to cope with social changes better. With respect to contracts I think I prefer to enforce what was written - how else do you know what the contract is then?
They'd probably make it illegal for cars to drive without passenger in cities like Amsterdam without a taxi license to prevent traffic jams of cars driving around to avoid parking costs.
It doesn't, it also doesn't account for the fact that China has a larger population.
The US only has about ~23% of China's population to sustain. GDP/CO2 is a silly metric to compare (No Patrick, selling financial products to increase GDP/CO2 isn't green).
In reality China is just "greener" (in CO2 emission) than the USA if you measure more reasonable metrics like CO2 emission per capita.
‘personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person;
AFAIK a personal to-do list would be "relating to an identifiable natural person" as the database will have a relation from this data to the account, which will likely have a name, email address or other PII (directly or indirectly).
So Apple is forcing its customers to bundle their phone with their billing platform.
Which should be illegal (as we democratically decided to have these laws), having no choice in services is not a feature it's an additional price to pay for the product and customers legally didn't agree to that simply by buying a commodity phone (no contract, no consideration whatsoever for this additional price).
> People should just leave if they don’t like the rules.
This is correct, Apple should just get out if they don't like the anti-trust rules of our market.
No, you can't pay with any currency like Zimbabwean dollars and expect the EU to force businesses to accept it, no.
But this article isn't about legal tender or how debts can be repaid it's about anti-trust and coupling commodities (like bread, and phones) with exclusive services without a service contract at the moment of purchase.
> A big +1 to what Robert said. Let's not be the PHP Drama Group or the PHP Court of Social Justice.
It seems like all these “groups that have arbitrary mechanisms for becoming a member and have some sway in the wider community” eventually end up becoming a giant ball of drama and controversy.
I hate it when companies want to track me and put a pop-up on their first page to ask my permission to do so.
I don't care about cookies being placed on my system by my browser and that in and of itself isn't illegal under GDPR, I just don't want to consent to being tracked by corporations for profit or be tracked for profit without my consent.
If companies choose to comply with EU law because they want to do business in the EU that's up to them, they don't have to.
Lol, our employees who have access to sensitive data cannot be citizens of:
- A country the country our company is based in is currently in war with.
- A communist dictatorship known for pressuring its citizens into stealing IP/corporate secrets abroad.
It's not arbitrary banning from foreign countries on your client's request if there's actually good reasons to take precautions with these nation-states.
And why not? They're a private company they can choose to employ whomever they want as long as they're compliant to local labour laws. There's no "due proccess" in business.
"Finally - it actually looks like Gitlab's security practices are truly lacking. That an employee is Chinese/Russian shouldn't be a consideration - the systems should be tight enough to make sure absolutely no-one has access to customer data without consent - and that any actions taken are logged for auditing. Whenever necessary - pass your employees through a background-check. In sensitive (government) scenarios - restrict to employees with government clearance."
Don't improve HR security practices because you're vulnerable in different ways anyways?
If you as a company simply don't trust the government your employees work under, you cannot trust them with sensitive information, even if they're outstanding trustworthy people.
