I did it a couple of years ago. Just left and accepted a slightly lower compensation in a non-FAANG company, but still a very respectful salary.

Didn't regret it for a moment.

My advice is to just fire some CVs, do some interviews, and see if any of the offers you will eventually get make sense for you, in terms of the ratio of Compensation vs. Responsibility. While you are still employed, you can always refuse offers.

And now it's time to throw this account away. Cya.

It doesn't really matter either way. Unemployed people in most EU countries do have access to healthcare, benefits that keep them from starving, etc.

Not a paradise, but not a hellhole.

Certainly, though that typically depends on where you live, and as a general rule, social security gets better the further north you go, and that's also where unemployment is low, while the situation looks tougher in Spain, Italy or Greece.

But that's besides the point, the claim was that employment has something to do with it, not the extent of the welfare state.

Yes, that tends to be true.

On the other hand, a lot of things influence employment beyond labor protection as well.

Is that not related in a roundabout way?

Part of the reason the US has dismal social security is the same "dog eat dog" hyper individualistic mentality that is also present in people thinking it's their sacred right to own assault rifles and shit.

At least that's my impression from the outside. I never really went to the US to taste it first hand.

I never had a problem with extended notice periods. The companies hiring me know full well how the law operates.

It offers me no disadvantage. Only upsides.

I'm glad you've never had a problem with it. But sometimes people do leave jobs rather than simply move to a new job on good terms. I couldn't imagine being forced to work in a job that I no longer wanted to work.

If something changes at work or in my personal life and I no longer want to work at my job, I have the right to say "goodbye", and leave immediately, and I wouldn't want it any other way.

If you've seen an American TV show where someone says "I quit!" and walks out the door, that isn't just a trope. I know people who have done that. As should be their right.

> I couldn't imagine being forced to work in a job that I no longer wanted to work.

Well, that is easier. Just show up drunk and tell your boss to fuck off. Piss on his door if his office has one.

They will terminate you immediately with just cause and you'll be free.

Otherwise just be professional and give them the proper notice period. Being professional is not hard.

If an employer ceases to be professional, reasonable, or safe, there is not a damn thing wrong with immediate termination of employment from the employee’s end.

If an employer can terminate the agreement for just cause immediately, why can’t the employee?

> How is this legal, in the famously pro-labor EU?

Because it's actually pro-labor.

I go into a job knowing an employer cannot simply fire me out of the blue. Meaning I have a little stability to be able to plan my life a few months in advance.

The fact that Europe has a strong labor laws, worker unions and such is the reason why I chose to migrate to Europe and disregarded the US as a destination. A decision I never came to regret, by the way.

Keep that awful "at will employment" to your side of the pond, thank you.

> Keep that awful "at will employment" to your side of the pond, thank you.

The UK has zero-hour contracts, which I think is in the same spirit.

It won't surprise me if other European countries either already have or will soon have similar arrangements. It's a sad reality, honestly.

The UK, thankfully, is not part of the EU anymore however.

I don't think labor protections are eroding however. Those tend to be very popular among the population here.

Perhaps I am wrong? Do you have more information about this?

I know that there are some leeways to avoid labor protections in some places, such as being employed as a temporary contractor, but I understand there are some limitations to this practice.

> thankfully

Lol not sure if you're an anti-UK EU member or a Brexiter. Not that it matters, really.

> I don't think labor protections are eroding however.

If you mean in the UK, then they definitely are. Zero hour contracts are more or less the worst parts of being an employee with the worst parts of being self-employed, all turned up to 11. At least that's what I've heard from a lot of people on them.

> Those tend to be very popular among the population here.

I'm not sure where 'here' means in this context but honestly I imagine the only country in the world where labour protections are impopular (are they really? no idea...) is the US.

> Do you have more information about this?

More or less anecdotal but yeah - like I said above, people on zero hours tend to have it pretty rough.

> being employed as a temporary contractor

This is me. Not to avoid labour protections, but rather to have more autonomy. I like not having a boss. I like not having to go through the yearly grind of performance reviews. I like being able to take (unpaid) time off more or less when I feel like it.

There are drawbacks but for my needs and wants I find the tradeoffs to be pretty good.

> I don't understand why it's necessary to treat employees with such sudden distrust

To be honest, every employee should treat their employers with the same level of distrust.

It's important to have mutual mistrust as baseline for a healthy professional relationship.

Thank you for this, I had a good laugh. XD

> Each to their own, but I wouldn't hire you

It's okay, a lot of other companies do. There's plenty of fish in this particular ocean.

Even if you would hire him, nothing meaningful would change.

I agree. Good luck to him with his strategy and I hope it continues to work for him.

You just described with incredible precision my approach to jobs and career.

The only difference is that I make a point of leaving my current job in 18 to 24 months. That is the sweet spot. No matter how good or bad I think the job is. Always get a raise in the switch. Rinse and repeat. I actually avoid getting promotions in whatever is my current job, those are detrimental, seldom the raise is compatible with the increase in responsibility.

I worked for companies I liked and for companies I personally hated, the procedure is always the same. Has been working wonders for me in the past 2 decades.

I follow a similar pattern. A current employer almost never raises salary commensurate with market rates after 2 or more years.

> Face to face collaboration is a lot more efficient.

That's really not my experience. I'm always very confused when I see this statement being thrown around as if it was a universal truth. Perhaps depends on your role?

Honestly, for all the companies I worked in the past decade, the ones where I had better quality communication were the ones where I worked remotely.

Then again, I'm a software developer. Developers tend to be good at communicating through pull requests, documentation, screen sharing and text-based chat where you can send snippets.

> That's really not my experience. I'm always very confused when I see this statement being thrown around as if it was a universal truth.

Because it's obviously true.

Communicating through pull requests is shockingly inefficient. It can take days or even weeks to accomplish what face-to-face communication would accomplish in SECONDS.

Please explain with a case study or an example.

IME face to face communication gives the impression that communication happened. The impression that a problem was discussed and solved. When talking people barely listen and just wait for their turn to speak and feel like they are contributing.

Written communication can be re-read, it can be looked at your own pace when you're focused. It can be challenged with comments and it's much harder to hand wave the questions away.

I honestly don't know why I have to explain this, it is, as I said, shockingly obvious.

First, the mega obvious: if I leave a PR comment, and you ignore it for several days, resolving the conversation will take several days! If I walk over to your desk and speak to you, now, that doesn't happen. Especially if we resolve the issue while I'm standing there, and I watch you type "git push".

Moving on...

In a Github PR (perhaps other interfaces are better!) you cannot comment on a line that wasn't changed. This can make it very difficult to point out problems caused by the way that added/changed code interacts with code nearby. It forces the reviewer to describe an outline of the issue, or paste bits of code and mention line numbers. It's possible to do this well, but it takes focus and clear writing. Folks who are not good writers, or who are communicating in a second language, struggle mightily with this.

...but if I can walk over to your desk (or you to mine), where I can point at the nearby code with my finger, there is no ambiguity. No need for careful English composition. No back-and-forth. I just point.

Honestly, have any of you in this thread ever had a face-to-face conversation?

Why would a face to face conversation help? A smile is going to suddenly explain why you using a 7 character variable is jeopardizing the project? People are so afraid to confront others in person so if you talk to them they will just accept your changes so they don't have to deal with the person breathing on them anymore? I can see that..

As I said, this makes me very confused. Face to face communication tend to be absolutely inefficient in my experience.

They are a hindrance more often than not.

> Sure. But will that be the case 5-10 years from now?

Not with language models. A language model can parse natural language, and with enough training data, give out what it thinks the answer is based on the data it was trained with. It is not General AI.

It cannot reason a solution for a problem that had an unknown answer. It won't be able to reflect logically on a context to foresee problems within this context. It cannot have a meaningful conversation. It won't be able to understand that one of the things it "knows" was incomplete, untrue, or just plain wrong, and fix itself.

It's a powerful tool, a game-changing tool. Perhaps as game-changing as the advent of computers, internet, or wireless communication. But it still won't replace humans.

General AI for now is science fiction. Perhaps this is unfortunate. I wouldn't mind an AI that can replace humans, even if I too am made obsolete with it.

> General AI for now is science fiction. Perhaps this is unfortunate. I wouldn't mind an AI that can replace humans, even if I too am made obsolete with it.

Maybe I’m optimistic, but I feel like we need AGI to reach the next level of development as a civilization. If software engineering jobs are the price to pay so be it. World hunger, medical science, energy, space travel, if we can get all of these to take a ride on something resembling Moore’s Law we are in for a one hell of a fantastic future in our lifetimes.

I actually think AGI will bring about the collapse of civilization, and perhaps the end of humanity. I'm okay with it.

I also think it will solve things such as energy and space travel. World hunger, medical science (among other human problems) will become meaningless.

"Rejoice glory is ours / Our young men have not died in vain / Their graves need no flowers / The tapes have recorded their names"

When ChatGPT was first released, I read a memorable comment on HN (paraphrasing from memory): It looks like AI is poised to take over all the things that I enjoyed doing as a human such as art, music, storytelling, teaching, programming.

There only needs to be one intelligent species in any ecosystem. If AI becomes that species, humans will be relegated to the role of horses - only good for menial physical labor. That is, of course, only until the AI invents cars.