Making it hard to fire low performers results in low performing teams, and there are no reliable solutions to this.
It seems if the problem you allege were true at scale, the entire labor force is sitting around doing nothing.
Are you really claiming that the only reason all (tech) employees do their job is just to avoid firing? How do you operate in a zero-trust life?
An interview is at least 4 people, each grilling you for an hour, asking hard questions.
Their hiring bar is high and they optimize for avoiding bad hires (which of course is pissing off the commenters who want to be hired and therefore would prefer lower hiring standard).
In Europe they make it harder to fire people and guess what happened?
First, companies have probatory period (2-6 months, depending on the country) where you're hired but can be fired at will. This is to minimize chances of being stuck with a poor performer.
Second, EU economy is about the size of US and China but software industry (and the tax / employment riches associated with it) is largely in US Chine. Might be a coincidence but I think there's causality between over-regulation and stagnation of the economy.
What good is a growing economy when your country's people are living shorter, unhappier lives?
Look at the countries that are generally regarded as happiest: are their economies the biggest?
Assuming when you say "biggest" you mean per capita... yes. Obviously it's not the only factor, but generally I think it's generally accepted that people in rich countries are better off than people in poor countries.
With the endless seas of SWE layoffs, we'll see if that behavior continues.
It's also not a solved problem in countries where at-will employment is not the norm.
Both parties have freedom in this arrangement, but we can find examples of both employees and employers with weak negotiating positions. I don't think that invalidates the benefits of freedoms of association.
To your point about business being bound by constraints, they absolutely are bound by the niche they operate in. As markets change, world events unfold, competitors appear, decisions are made, companies can struggle and fail, yet are typically unable to pivot.
Consider a company that makes ICE cars that can't follow the market into making EVs. Or a company that has never had competition might be in the stranglehold of "this is the way we've always done it" when a fierce competitor emerges, and won't adapt.
True, most employees typically don't have equity (so they don't share in all the upside), but they also aren't married to the company when it looks like a supertanker headed for an inevitable collision with a bridge (getting wiped out on the downside).
Yes.
About half the people on this thread seem to be misreading that sentence.
It's very clear that "just cause" includes cases of low performance. So no, it's not about making it impossible to fire these people.