GAB, you mean?

I'm reminded of the last part of 'TLA' form the Jargon File (I had a hard copy back in college that I read cover to cover).

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/T/TLA.html

...

The self-effacing phrase “TDM TLA” (Too Damn Many...) is often used to bemoan the plethora of TLAs in use. In 1989, a random of the journalistic persuasion asked hacker Paul Boutin “What do you think will be the biggest problem in computing in the 90s?” Paul's straight-faced response: “There are only 17,000 three-letter acronyms.” (To be exact, there are 26^3 = 17,576.) There is probably some karmic justice in the fact that Paul Boutin subsequently became a journalist.

Watched this movie 3 times and never noticed! This is a fun touch.

That’s very subtle. I have not noticed that.

I was laid off by a consultant. It was somehow even worse than Up in the Air since they made my manager sit in on the call.

I don’t think that’s really fair. It can certainly be a hard but necessary decision. And what does it matter that a CEO makes more than his employees? Even if he makes 50 times what they make, that means even if he gave up all of his salary he could only save the jobs of 50 employees.

I work for a US company but in western Europe. The layoffs have been much more humane here than in the US. There was a negociation process which lasted several months, and the severance was better and on a voluntary basis. I don't think a company making profit can easily get rid of employees over here, but probably depends on the country. Regarding performance-based layoffs, they did manage to fire people too, but again it was technically a common agreement.

That being said, if they want to get rid of employees, they always find a way. And the European market isn't as dynamic as the US one, so there are pros and cons. Personally, all things considered (risks of layoffs, PTO, cost of living) I'm happier in Europe but it really depends on individual situation.

Well US companies now take the cowards way out generally - tell everyone to WFH that day (despite prior RTO mandates) and then just disable peoples access so the first way the laid off find out is when they can't login for the day.

It's a fundamental problem with large organizations.

In principle, an organization that is built on reciprocal loyalty is more productive than one that treats people as interchangeable cogs, because people are individually happier and go to greater lengths to achieve the shared goals, making them more productive. However, this arrangement can only be built on trust, and trust doesn't scale well past the Dunbar number. Thus, spirit of the rules is replaced by letter of the rules (which can be meaningfully enforced).

Thus, the larger the bureaucracy, the more soulless it is even in individual interactions between people within it, and the more it treats those people as interchangeable cogs that are there solely to serve the overall function of the organization. If the organization is a for-profit corporation, its overall function is profit, and thus megacorps always tend to optimize squeezing their employees.

Short-term this can be reversed somewhat if leadership is concentrated and opinionated. E.g. when the company grows out of a startup dominated by a single founder, and that founder has certain ethical standards or beliefs that they enforce on the org, overriding the natural tendency. This arrangement never lasts long-term, though - either the founder goes away and is replaced by generic management which has neither the desire nor the capacity to go against the current, or the founder becomes corrupt.

That's absolutely happening in US-owned companies in EU that used to be great places to work before they became US-owned. They do pay a premium for their bullshit of course.

Many cases where someone is in practice functioning as a full-time employee are legally employment relationships according to both US and EU law even if the contract and payroll procedures say otherwise, and even if the contractual relationship is directly between a US entity and a worker in the EU. This includes whatever employment rights are supposed to exist, for the number of employees (whether or not misclassified as independent contractors) the company has in that country under its national employment laws.

Lots of US tech companies like to pretend otherwise, but a complaint or two from the misclassified employee can create plenty of pain for the employer for lying to both the US and foreign governments about the genuine nature of the relationship. And these penalties generally go not to the employee but to the employer, since the noncompliance is generally around employer tax, payroll, and reporting obligations as well as laws which are meant to protect employee rights.

That's usually illegal, unless you're a genuine independent contractor that completes work packages for multiple clients.

If it was legal to work in the office of your only "client" 40 hours a week on a permanent basis, then any EU company could ignore the entire employment legislation of their real country by setting up a shell subsidiary in the US.

There are 2.8 million developers in the US. Most of them don’t work for “tech” companies. Most of them work for boring enterprise companies without multiple rounds of enterprise companies and many let you just do behavioral questions and techno trivia on the stack they care about.

I personally have interviewed for 7 enterprise dev jobs and I have had 2 coding interviews and those were simple.

IME, this was true four years ago. Few rounds, assessments were mostly take homes or in-person "implement a feature" style, interview questions didn't seem to be built to trip you up.

Now, every job I apply for has 4-5 rounds, leetcode is more common, they do behavioural and system design rounds that you have to prepare for, etc. One job I applied to even asked me two behavioural questions via email before I even talked to someone. Something's truly off.

Of course. Companies who fire more also hire more.

European companies have very little staff turnover, so new jobs are fewer. Another aspect is that salaries are very even across much of the industry, as it is often negotiated by unions and unless you are also switching roles (e.g. into management) salaries at different companies will be very similar. That is why working for the same company for a long time is much more common in Europe.

> Aren't US tech interview notoriously difficult? Many rounds of interviews, background checks, etc.?

Not really, people get hired all the time that can't do a fizzbuzz.

What he meant is that the whole capitalist culture, less regulations, creates a more thriving economy which creates more jobs and hence more options to go to.