7 ms·

Pretty decent. When I was laid off last year from a company that supposedly has a reputation for taking care of their employees, I got 1 week per year of servic

by Imz4di 3y ago

Pretty decent. When I was laid off last year from a company that supposedly has a reputation for taking care of their employees, I got 1 week per year of service, which was 8 weeks.

atlas_hugged 3y ago
Name and shame please.
- goosejuice 3y ago
  Curious, what would be a severance package HN would be satisfied with? I suspect the average US employee would be stunned to hear an offer of 6 months. So much negativity around these statistical outliers. The majority of companies in the US don't offer severance and it's very rare in some industries. Not saying that it's fair, but name and shame? Maybe we're living in different worlds.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    Given the gauntlet that is modern tech interviews, 3 months. 1 month severance isn't an issue in a market where you can grab a new gig in 2-3 weeks. But all these places want 5 rounds of interviews.
- d4mi3n 3y ago
  Shopify is my guess; I was part of that layoff and the timing lines up. They had those exact terms and paid them out in addition to WARN act minimums contingent on signing of a severance agreement. I had the same offer but declined due to issues I had with the severance agreement.
  - dabber 3y ago
    > I had the same offer but declined due to issues I had with the severance agreement. Is it too prying to ask what that means in terms of your outcome? Idk what the WARN act is, and I understand that my question may be neive or too personal to post an answer to publicly, but I'm curious what the alternative to signing is/was and if the answer is generally applicable or specific to the company/agreement.
    - d4mi3n 3y ago
      Not at all—I would not have mentioned this if I was unwilling to talk about it. The WARN Act[1] is a bit of federal legislation that applies during mass layoffs. There are some variations from state to state, but it generally ensures anyone caught in a mass layoff (50 to 100+ people) is required to receive either 2-months advance notice or 2-months salary+medical benefits. When Shopify performed their layoffs, there were subject to WARN payouts as they did not furnish 2-months notice. The severance agreement they gave me and others paid out an additional 8 weeks + 1 week per year of seniority, contingent on signing. I declined to sign, which was painful, but my main concerns were over two clauses: * a non-mutual NDA Shopify was unwilling to change to a mutual NDA. * a provision to appear in court on Shopify’s behalf, uncompensated, for an indeterminate about of time, whenever requested. There was a lot of other oddness about that whole layoff I’ll leave out here for the sake of brevity, but the whole process was quite the shitshow. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_Adjustment_and_Retraining_Notification_Act_of_1988 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_Adjustment_and_Retrai...
- justin66 3y ago
  One week per year of service is so standard, no company is going to be shamed by it. That doesn't mean it's not lame.
  - piva00 3y ago
    Is so standard in the USA, it's not the standard in any other place on Earth I worked at (Brazil, USA, Sweden). Even in Brazil you'd get at least a few months of severance.
    - gambiting 3y ago
      That's literally all you get in the UK: https://www.gov.uk/redundancy-your-rights/redundancy-pay https://www.gov.uk/redundancy-your-rights/redundancy-pay To quote: "half a week’s pay for each full year you were under 22 one week’s pay for each full year you were 22 or older, but under 41 one and half week’s pay for each full year you were 41 or older Length of service is capped at 20 years." And also it's pretty shit because it's capped, so for most software devs it won't be anywhere near what their actual salary was: "If you were made redundant on or after 6 April 2023, your weekly pay is capped at £643 and the maximum statutory redundancy pay you can get is £19,290. "
      - Jochim 3y ago
        The UK has an awful standard living for how wealthy it is. For example, if you happen to be classed as a "worker", rather than an employee, you do not have a legal right to leave work or take time off to care for a sick family member or pick a child up from school.
        gambiting 3y ago
        Yep. And there are many many many other examples like this - for instance UK employee protections are quite good.....unless it's your first 2 years of employment. In which case you get almost nothing - within the first 2 years you can be let go without any reason, and it's not redundancy either so it doesn't trigger all kinds of protections - it's just "it's not working out, bye" - same as US, or worse actually in some ways.

by Imz4di 3y ago

Pretty decent. When I was laid off last year from a company that supposedly has a reputation for taking care of their employees, I got 1 week per year of service, which was 8 weeks.

atlas_hugged 3y ago

Name and shame please.

goosejuice 3y ago
Curious, what would be a severance package HN would be satisfied with? I suspect the average US employee would be stunned to hear an offer of 6 months. So much negativity around these statistical outliers. The majority of companies in the US don't offer severance and it's very rare in some industries. Not saying that it's fair, but name and shame? Maybe we're living in different worlds.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  Given the gauntlet that is modern tech interviews, 3 months. 1 month severance isn't an issue in a market where you can grab a new gig in 2-3 weeks. But all these places want 5 rounds of interviews.
d4mi3n 3y ago
Shopify is my guess; I was part of that layoff and the timing lines up. They had those exact terms and paid them out in addition to WARN act minimums contingent on signing of a severance agreement. I had the same offer but declined due to issues I had with the severance agreement.
- dabber 3y ago
  > I had the same offer but declined due to issues I had with the severance agreement. Is it too prying to ask what that means in terms of your outcome? Idk what the WARN act is, and I understand that my question may be neive or too personal to post an answer to publicly, but I'm curious what the alternative to signing is/was and if the answer is generally applicable or specific to the company/agreement.
  - d4mi3n 3y ago
    Not at all—I would not have mentioned this if I was unwilling to talk about it. The WARN Act[1] is a bit of federal legislation that applies during mass layoffs. There are some variations from state to state, but it generally ensures anyone caught in a mass layoff (50 to 100+ people) is required to receive either 2-months advance notice or 2-months salary+medical benefits. When Shopify performed their layoffs, there were subject to WARN payouts as they did not furnish 2-months notice. The severance agreement they gave me and others paid out an additional 8 weeks + 1 week per year of seniority, contingent on signing. I declined to sign, which was painful, but my main concerns were over two clauses: * a non-mutual NDA Shopify was unwilling to change to a mutual NDA. * a provision to appear in court on Shopify’s behalf, uncompensated, for an indeterminate about of time, whenever requested. There was a lot of other oddness about that whole layoff I’ll leave out here for the sake of brevity, but the whole process was quite the shitshow. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_Adjustment_and_Retraining_Notification_Act_of_1988 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_Adjustment_and_Retrai...
justin66 3y ago
One week per year of service is so standard, no company is going to be shamed by it. That doesn't mean it's not lame.
- piva00 3y ago
  Is so standard in the USA, it's not the standard in any other place on Earth I worked at (Brazil, USA, Sweden). Even in Brazil you'd get at least a few months of severance.
  - gambiting 3y ago
    That's literally all you get in the UK: https://www.gov.uk/redundancy-your-rights/redundancy-pay https://www.gov.uk/redundancy-your-rights/redundancy-pay To quote: "half a week’s pay for each full year you were under 22 one week’s pay for each full year you were 22 or older, but under 41 one and half week’s pay for each full year you were 41 or older Length of service is capped at 20 years." And also it's pretty shit because it's capped, so for most software devs it won't be anywhere near what their actual salary was: "If you were made redundant on or after 6 April 2023, your weekly pay is capped at £643 and the maximum statutory redundancy pay you can get is £19,290. "
    - Jochim 3y ago
      The UK has an awful standard living for how wealthy it is. For example, if you happen to be classed as a "worker", rather than an employee, you do not have a legal right to leave work or take time off to care for a sick family member or pick a child up from school.
      - gambiting 3y ago
        Yep. And there are many many many other examples like this - for instance UK employee protections are quite good.....unless it's your first 2 years of employment. In which case you get almost nothing - within the first 2 years you can be let go without any reason, and it's not redundancy either so it doesn't trigger all kinds of protections - it's just "it's not working out, bye" - same as US, or worse actually in some ways.