One wonders if it is not solved simply because of at will employlemt? Almost like firms are lazy, and unwilling to go beyond the bare minumum required by law.

There's nothing stopping someone from performing well at interviews then stop performing once they get hired and have the job secured.

Moral obligations, a sense of pride in ones work, ethical worldview...thats just off the top of my head.

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?

I never said the things you claim.

If you ever went through interview loop at Google or a similar company, I doubt you would call those companies "lazy" wrt. hiring.

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.

I wonder if there is causality between "over"-regulation and life expectancy and quality of life too.

What good is a growing economy when your country's people are living shorter, unhappier lives?

The size of the economy very directly impacts people's quality of life.

I agree, but not necessarily at fostering happiness!

Look at the countries that are generally regarded as happiest: are their economies the biggest?

> 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.

"size of the economy": Do you mean total GDP, or GDP per capita?

Per capita

Why is your original comment downvoted? It makes no sense to me. This is simply common sense. Most of the very high quality places to live are also wealthy, highly developed countries.

No idea. I try not to worry about downvotes on this site.

There's also the confounding factor that software engineers, historically, were more in demand as a baseline, so in an environment where you think you can get a job if you're fired, people optimize more for higher risk/higher reward plays, while having job security improvements much more heavily benefits industries where you're seen as more disposable.

With the endless seas of SWE layoffs, we'll see if that behavior continues.

> One wonders if it is not solved simply because of at will employlemt?

It's also not a solved problem in countries where at-will employment is not the norm.