> It would be so much more humane to just have two people on-call each week, each covering a 12-hour window, with 8-hours overlapped by their own work schedules.
Just another reason why opening an office in Europe is great for a company at some stage of its growth.
India is a better bet. 10.5 hours away means they are nearly on the opposite schedule, price is better (wages only marginally, but Europe has lots of other costs) and you aren't stuck dealing with insane euro labor laws.
I heard the daily complaints from a person attempting to handle restructuring at a major UK bank. Let me emphasize that the restructuring was ordered by parliament, who also happened to own most of the bank. Various difficulties:
- Work councils get input in whether you can lay someone off - it's a far cry from at-will employment.
- Pretty insane laws surrounding pregnancy - you have give a pregnant woman the option (with no obligation on her part) to return to work a year later. I'm told the best way to survive a restructuring is strategic pregnancy.
All told, it was vastly more difficult than the US (where she had come from). I know in France you can only fire for cause.
In contrast India is pretty easy. It's a simple trade of money for labour, provided you stay out of the communist states. (Which of course you will if you are hiring devs.) The cost difference is actually only a minor reason to hire here - European devs are highly underpaid, and Indian devs are very much not.
> parliament, who also happened to own most of the bank
Ok, so that's RBS then. For the record, that bank embodies everything that's wrong with the UK banking system: huge, completely out of control before the crash, totally sclerotic internally, top-down managed, etc etc. Think of anything bad about banks you've ever heard; RBS is it.
> - it's a far cry from at-will employment.
And thank god for that. This island is still in Europe (at least until next year), and in Europe we have this old-fashioned notion of workers' rights, including basic respect for human beings. Firing people from one day to the next is barbaric, especially in huge organizations like RBS where you can probably give anyone a chance in some other department.
> - Pretty insane laws surrounding pregnancy
Honestly, sir, a bit of decency is called for. Do you really think people would get pregnant just to get some time off? We are not talking about benefit scroungers, these are middle-class workers for whom a kid is a big deal, financially and psychologically. I honestly don't see anyone getting "strategically pregnant" just to gain some time.
Btw, pregnancy laws came about because employers were being complete dicks, firing female employees as soon as they got pregnant. They would then have the gall to show up in church and talk of human values they clearly knew nothing about.
> In contrast India is pretty easy
Well done you for exploiting the reserve army of labor, that time-honored tradition of mean ruling classes. You are a shining beacon of progress to all of us. Have a good day, sir.
Even in the rare cases the law applies, the maximum penalty is two month's pay minus whatever severance/notice was given. It's not much of a restriction.
Its far more than the UK has - recently one big multinational artificially made a uk subsidiary bankrupt to avoid paying statutory redundancy. The taxpayer picked up the bill for that one.
They just herded every one into a big room and said "company is bust - there is a pile of the RB2 forms over there"
Everyone I know who has taken maternity leave has very much had an obligation to go back afterwards, or pay pack the money paid while they were off.
I'm also not familiar with anyone who has got pregnant to avoid layoffs, if nothing else given the cost of raising a child it seems like a very poor tradeoff.
A) Laid off in a bad economy, hunt for job, maybe find something. Then have children at age 33 or 34, only a couple of years into a new gig. (In banking they consider a couple of years to be a short time.)
B) Get pregnant at age 30 instead, avoid the current restructuring, and if you do hit the job market it'll be in a much better economy.
Really? You can't possibly see the benefit of (B)?
Just another reason why opening an office in Europe is great for a company at some stage of its growth.