You can fire people in Europe and hiring is by no means more convoluted than in the US.
Typically here you have 3 to 6 months probation period where you can be fired at any moment. Then your rights increase with your tenure.
The other big difference is that when you leave a job, you usually have 1 to 3 months of notice period while in the US that tends to only last a couple of weeks.
Overall this gives people a lot more security and I think we have a much better balance because of it, at least in the tech industry.
Industries with higher turnover (like hospitality) typically only hire employees as contractors so they can fire them at any time.
They're required to keep minutes from face to face meetings for compliance. Of course people still talk informally but they need to know to constraint what they talk about in those circumstances. This likely was triggered because some employees were using whatsapp to evade compliance checks on topics that should have been regulated.
...Admittedly I've been in smaller fintechs where that isn't a problem, but holy hell, why would anyone work somewhere where you couldn't even talk in the hallway? Insane.
> It sucks, because often the best programmers are not degree-qualified.
I've worked with very good programers that don't have a degree. But, learning the basis to become a good software engineer, is just a lot easier following formal training (like going to University). I find it hard to believe that most competent programmers will not have a degree.
Again, having a degree is not necessary to be a good software engineer. But it's a lot easier to be a good software engineer if you have a degree.
Most computer science curriculum I know of are far from engineering curriculum. Few students seem to retain any knowledge of predicate calculi or how to apply them to software specifications.
Perhaps. My curriculum (and of most other universities in my country) thought me the basis of OOP, Databases, Software Requirements, Development Processes, Distributed Systems, etc... All these concepts map directly to my day to day to job. Having learned this at college, made my life a lot easier after entering the market. And I still think that holds true after 10 years of professional experience.
