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Maybe it's just the segment I'm in, but I feel like Salesforce was hiring pretty hard up until recently. They wouldn't be the only company to go from a hiring s
by dan-0 4y ago
Maybe it's just the segment I'm in, but I feel like Salesforce was hiring pretty hard up until recently. They wouldn't be the only company to go from a hiring spree to layoffs that quickly over the last quarter.
We really need to lock this absurdity down and increase severance requirements for large companies heavily. It's one thing to gamble risk for the company, it's something completely different to gamble employee livelihood when you're signaling job security by hiring.
- fatnoah 4y agoSalesforce is giving a minimum of 5 months severance to affected people. That's not too shabby.
- sushid 4y agoProbably the best after Meta and Airbnb from what I've seen. Looks like most large companies have been generous with their severances with the exception of Twitter (not sure about Amazon).
- bsk26 4y agoAffected by this, and unless I'm reading the docs wrong 5 months is a bit of a PR exaggeration. Health insurance is longer but pay and vesting end mid-March.
- fatnoah 4y agoInteresting. Somewhere else in (this or another thread on HN) someone mentioned that their wife was affected and would have pay & benefits into March, and then 5 months severance after. My hope for folks affected (and, as a former SFDC employee, I know several affected) is that it's pay & vesting for the WARN period, with the severance period following that.
- bsk26 4y agoYou're correct, I 100% misread my docs. My package appears to be the same and really is quite generous (and makes me feel a bit better about sfdc, which is nice) Overall will probably be a good change - as much as I liked our product, the sfdc transition was rough. For better or worse the layoffs don't seem to have been totally random: most of the affected folks I know had larger than normal equity packages
- fatnoah 4y agoNice, glad to hear it's a good package. I had only a 60 day warn period to find a new job, which was a bit stressful. Good luck!
- peanuty1 4y agoIncluding accelerated RSU vesting?
- fatnoah 4y agoThe letter doesn't explicitly say (I'll way to hear from friends at CRM to get actual details) but their SEC filing mentions stock-based compensation as an associated cost of the layoffs, so it sounds like accelerated vesting might be happening.
- kerbs 4y agoI read that they will technically be on payroll until late March. If that's the case, it's not so much accelerated vesting as it is vesting while not being "employed". So same result, to some extent.
- fatnoah 4y agoFWIW, I was laid off earlier in the year, and was put on garden leave for 60 days. My vesting stopped immediately, even though I was still employed for 2 months.
- time_to_smile 4y agoI really hope that I get laid off in the first round of these layoffs where everyone gets good severance. My current worry is that the first round of layoff at my first company will get 4 months severance, I'll miss that round, and 2 months later get laid off with only 2 months severance. This would of course mean that my severance ends at the same times as the first group but I had to work an additional 2 months.
- mortenjorck 4y agoIt could always be worse. I got laid off last month with 2 1/2 weeks of severance. And of course there are plenty of industries outside of tech where severance itself is an alien concept.
- reaperducer 4y agoAnd of course there are plenty of industries outside of tech where severance itself is an alien concept. Absolutely. People in tech don't realize how good they have it. The first time I lost a job I found out when my company phone started showing alerts on a Saturday night that it couldn't connect to the e-mail server. It turned out that my entire department was canned. The second time, I came to work on a Thursday only to discover the door locked, and a couple of coworkers lingering around. Eventually, we decided we had the day off. Same story Friday. In the Sunday newspaper there a small note that the company has been bought. So Monday morning, it was off to the Unemployment office. For 99% of American companies, you're lucky to get notice before you get laid off, let alone severance pay.
- sequoia 4y agoMy first full time programming job I got laid off (or terminated anyway, they got rid of 25% of the small staff) at 90 days, and my severance was being paid to finish the project as a contractor. I took the offer of course.
- rkunde 4y agoIt’s should be possible to volunteer.
- coredog64 4y agoWARN Act already exists and has state level analogs that strengthen it to some extent. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_Adjustment_and_Retraining_Notification_Act_of_1988 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_Adjustment_and_Retrai...
- alistairSH 4y agoWARN doesn't apply if... - layoff results in fewer than 50 workers losing their jobs at a single employment site - If 50 to 499 workers lose their jobs and that number is less than 33% of the employer's total, active workforce at a single employment site These seem to let some* tech companies off the hook. * Those that are highly remote or distributed.
- symlinkk 4y agoIf you do that companies will be more reluctant to hire, since they’ll have to factor in the risk of paying a hefty severance.
- shafyy 4y agoThat's the whole point
- dinkumthinkum 4y agoDoes that really make sense if layoffs only happen a minority of the time after hiring sprees?
- chucksmash 4y agoIf the answer to "am I likely to have to lay this person off soon?" isn't "probably not" then it's good that the company becomes more circumspect in hiring. The other side of the token is that such a guarantee would help convince more people to accept an offer. I'd personally be hesitant to switch to a less stable job right now, and getting an offer yanked or immediately laid off with minimal severance would be brutal for many. A company providing "we changed our mind" insurance would retire a lot of risk for job seekers - and, if things are going well, it costs them essentially nothing to do.
- dantheman 4y agoWhy do you want to make it harder for people to get hired?
- chucksmash 4y agoI've laid out my thinking above, which part was unclear? Many people taking a job are leaving some other job or passing up on other offers to do so. Imposing a cost on employers when they pull a "whoopsie daisy" and rescind offers or immediately lay off a new employee seems like a reasonable trade off to me.
- llampx 4y agoThere was a slide deck by Sequioa going around recently, wherein one of the points was that the companies that cut costs hard and fast at the beginning of the recession were more likely to survive to the end of it. Either that or they see something the rest of us don't when looking at economic data (a long recession).
- bink 4y agoThat's the general consensus, especially around YC companies. Didn't they send out warnings early last year suggesting people cut early and deep? I really don't think Salesforce falls into that category though. They aren't going out of business any time soon and their revenue may not even drop if there were a recession.
- berkes 4y agoWhy would their revenue not drop? Typically, revenue suffers if either clients downgrade or stop their contracts. Or go out of business. Is Salesforce in a position or niche where that doesn't apply?
- __coaxialcabal 4y agohttps://content.fortune.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Adapting_to_Endure_May_2022.pdf https://content.fortune.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Adapt...
- Eumenes 4y agoSeverance requirements are not an entitlement. It'll make hiring harder than it already is.
- mr_00ff00 4y agoIt’s all about trade-offs and I think it’s worth it. I’d rather it be harder to get a job, but have higher job security when you get it.
- dantheman 4y agoThen choose companies that offer that, you can sign a long contract. Or avoid companies that are rapidly growing. Why should you force your preference on everyone else?
- Spivak 4y ago"My preference is the current state of things so I pretend that it wasn't forced on people in just the same way I accuse others with different preferences of doing." Welcome to "government is the means by which a group of people make collective decisions about the way we want our city/state/country to work." When striving for liberty, the thing we actually want, anarchy is just as much a preference as order.
- Eumenes 4y agoYeah, liberty is totally defined by draconian policies on employers/companies to give hand-outs for lay offs. If that's the case, we need to mandate employees give 3 months notice, for the employer to backfill the position properly. Its only fair.
- Spivak 4y agoLiterally nothing could be considered a handout to your own employee. By definition they’re selling their labor to you for a public contract called “legally being an employee” which comes with obligations on the part of the employee and employer. Everything else is haggling over the specific details. If we decide that one of those employer obligations is to provide guaranteed runaway for employees in the case of termination then that’s that. If we decide that one of the employee’s obligations is providing 3 months of notice then that’s also that. But the two things aren’t at all related except in your mind. Right now today with no change in policy whatsoever you have to make the choice as to weather you are willing and able meet your obligations as an employer before taking on employees and you have as much say and the same votes as everyone else to decide what those obligations are. Fairness informs but does not ultimately decide the employer employee relationship. The only thing we get for sure if the system works is that over time it tends toward what is considered fair by the current working citizens.
- Spivak 4y agoAt minimum if you're gonna lay someone off then any employee benefit that required they worked there for x months/years should be immediately paid out.