Remix.run Logo
MarcelOlsz 11 hours ago

It's a lazy and cowardly way to get people to cull themselves and save money on severance packages. It's not that deep.

oytis 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Isn't it possible to just not give people severance packages?

deviation 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Somewhere between 85% and 90% of all countries have some sort of mandated severance pay in the event of a layoff.

A small percentage of countries also mandate severance even if the employee is fired (with cause).

oytis 11 hours ago | parent [-]

US doesn't seem to be such a country though?

swiftcoder 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Depends what sort of contract they have (and/or how much perceived leverage they have - firing high-income workers who have a public platform can make for messy PR)

ivanbakel 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It is likely too late for many existing contracts with packages built-in, which probably also overlap with the longest-working (and thus most expensive) engineers.

progbits 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It's also a dumb strategy because the good people will easily find another job and leave and you end up with office full of the least competent employees.

But yes I'm pretty sure this is a big part of the reason for these mandates.

spiderxxxx 2 hours ago | parent [-]

From what I've seen (at a fortune 100 company) they made the supposedly "best" employees fully remote, and they neglected to tell the others that there were "limited slots" for fully remote and thus they had to come in to work. After a few months of coming in for work, they then laid off those employees, as not enough people quit for that to happen. To be fair, I was given a severance, but it still sucks. And the office was in bad shape, bathrooms poorly maintained, cafeteria in disarray, with substandard food (compared to before). The reason they're trying to get rid of employees is to make their stocks look good. We did better during covid by all measures, when everyone was working remotely.