Warning Signs You're About to Be Laid-Off | Hacker News Reader

Warning Signs You're About to Be Laid-Off

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60 pointsmixmastamyk73 comments

When you try to enter office's multi-level parking but your access key doesn't work.

When the Director/VP/Head says "even though the market has turned, we have _no_ plans to lay people off"

When you receive a notification that your <enter company's source control> privileges have been revoked.

When you see a voicemail (or tweet in case of Twitter) from HR around Friday afternoon/evening or early Monday morning.

When you apply for vacation but the request is denied for unspecified reasons ("We may need you here during that period").

When your manager keeps postponing your ++year() roadmap meeting requests.

>> When you see a voicemail (or tweet in case of Twitter) from HR around Friday afternoon/evening or early Monday morning.

Not quite - layoffs usually happen on Thursdays (so that any problems/issues can be sorted out on Friday), last week of the second to last month before the end of the fiscal year (so that severance pay is booked in this fiscal year), but never on a payday week (too much work for payroll).

I was partly referring to this https://twitter.com/bartt/status/653946266938818561

When you show up to work and there is a cardboard box on your desk and someone from HR loitering by (if your keycard even worked)

Personal experience: when you are working late and you hear suspicious noises in the executive quarter. After arming yourself with a nice long bar of metal you come across the CFO who is hurriedly packing all the expensive computers into the back of his car. When confronted he offers to pay you your outstanding invoice cash in return for your silence...

I'd say watch out for a meeting that's so important that it's split into two groups, and you're in the first group.

I had the unusual experience of having everyone else in the office being summoned to an HR meeting and me left at my desk as I'd already resigned...

I once got called at home the Monday after I'd left a company to hear that I'd been "laid off". The previous Friday had been my official last day (planned exit, I was going off to college), but I had banked a bunch of unused vacation days, and they were calling to let me know that they wouldn't be able to pay out the remainder of my vacation pay.

Much later, when I got into the workforce for real, I learned that I could've collected unemployment checks for this, and that if I'd played my cards right, I could've been drawing unemployment for my first year at college. Ah well - one of my coworkers told me "If you'd done that, I might have to hate you. Unemployment is for workers who need it, not college students who take a gap year at a dot-com."

A number of states, including California, require accrued vacation to be paid out in the final paycheck: http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/layoffs-plant-closing...

Unemployment is covered by taxes paid by the employer. You should absolutely collect it if legally allowed: https://www.irs.gov/Individuals/International-Taxpayers/Fede...

Additionally, California has additional protections for workers, such as requiring immediate payment for all wages, including accrued vacation, upon termination: http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/faq_paydays.htm

>if I'd played my cards right, I could've been drawing unemployment for my first year at college.

What state was this in? That is certainly illegal in California, and I would assume most states, though people do get away with defrauding the system.

It was Massachusetts. A number of people told me later that I could've collected, and a quick glance through Massachusett's Unemployment Insurance FAQ shows no mention of being a student other than UI not covering student work-study programs for financial aid:

http://www.mass.gov/lwd/unemployment-insur/resources/questio...

I didn't because it never occurred to me - as far as I was concerned, I left my job normally to go to college and they just didn't pay out the vacation pay. I wasn't hurting for money then or now (I was still living with my parents at the time), so I don't really regret it, but it does appear to be a real, genuine loophole in the system.

Even worse, when I worked at "chip manufacturing plant", the construction crews would _regularly_ be laid off, unemployment would be drawn, then magically re-hired months later. Working the system...

Or Conference room A Conference room B

Being a casualty in room A must be devastating. I've been a survivor in room B 3 times and each time I resented the turmoil of being happy for me and sad for them.

Company wide meeting called. Survivors were warned beforehand and told to sneak off to lunch. While in the meeting they locked us out of our computers.

For bonus points, do it on the 31st of the month so nobody has health care the next day.

Assuming you're in the US, that's not how healthcare works.

You'd still be covered by your current plan as part of the provisions of COBRA. You have 60 days to elect coverage, if you had a medical need at any point during that time, you could seek care immediately and then deal with the paperwork later.

If you get laid off today in the US, you have two full months to either 1) sign up via COBRA to stay on your old plan 2) sign up for a new individual plan or 3) start a new job and move to your new employers plan.

He probably means that healthcare coverage is typically through the end of the month. If you're planning on quitting, do it on the first day of the month so you have coverage before even needing to think about COBRA.

Did you look for a way out after that or just satisfied that you made it... This time?

It depends on the layoff I suppose.

I mean each time, the survivors all do the "wow this sucks, but at least we made it" motions. Then a portion of them go grab a beer and inevitably talk about what a mistake it was to lose person X and the disbelief that useless person Y is still around. Then a portion of them talk about finding work at a better company.

The one time I did leave, I think the entire survivor group went through the above ritual. There was a lot of anecdotes revealed by various people that pretty much convinced everyone to leave before the next round.

I have a sample size of 3 so now idea how normal my experiences are.

Definitely

When everything has been "We have to work really hard and long hours just to keep the startup alive!" (we were working 60+ hour weeks every week) and suddenly there's nothing to work on, and you're told you can take a few days off, and the boss is suddenly a lot harder to get ahold of (he worked in the parent office and came by to visit as much as possible).

...the next time you see your boss in person might be to tell you the apps he pretended were successful didn't actually make any money and he has to close the company down.

When you make a hotel reservation to go to a conference in three weeks (Nintendo conference in Los Angeles in my case) and the parent company calls and tells your boss "Wait! Don't make any travel plans! Also, we're going to visit in two weeks!"

....yeah, we basically twiddled our thumbs for two weeks until they came by to pack up our servers and fire everyone.

When your company sends a press release about the layoffs to the wire services and it accidentally gets released 24 hours before the event.

One-on-one meetings suddenly scheduled after management themselves have been in meetings for an unusually long time.

The one that got me, was the German company I was working for was bankrupted by the president of the company as a key sale of the software product fell through. He did it on December 23rd, before any of the directors could intervene (A quirk of german company law).

I found out on the phone on the 28th while back in the UK. Fun times.

So my contribution: "When it appears the directors bet the company on a single sale and failed."

Honestly, I think that is what you heard down the grapevine. Sounds like a cover up for something much more heinous. Was this information public/private, how did you find out? (Not attacking your trust, just sounds a bit odd to me)

I flew back and collected my stuff, even going back to the office. The place was dead and I met with some of the people. They were in utter shock. Over 30 people's livelihoods destroyed.

Really terrible. Since working at a corporation, I no longer look at Dilbert comics the same way. Man, so much waste, so much lack of backbone, so many of the wrong people in the right positions. I'd really like to read a book that explains why almost every corporation, aside from maybe a select few, have the "oh-thats-just-a-quirk-of-XYZ-leave-it-alone-not-worth-getting-fired-over." You basically end up getting a workforce that does the bare minimum to say they are still working. I mean, I talked to my manager the other day, an abusive one at that, and I told him, just do it already, fucking fire me. But he says he can't. I will just be "purged" by the performance review process.. What a fucking joke.

When the CTO stands up and says "there will be no layoffs" it's time to clean up your resume. Happened to me twice.

When you're a contractor and a project you were working on gets cancelled internally, the only other developer leaves for greener pastures, and suddenly your boss takes an added interest in everything related to your work, and makes sure to get the passwords for various things.

... you might get a call as your driving home from work that day to tell you not to come in to work the next day because your contract has been terminated, and they'll ship your desk contents to you, eventually.

Or you get that call telling you not to come in the next day. Then a day later they call you telling you need to bring the computer back in right now.

What follows is a back and forth exchange of "I'll bring it in when I feel like." "That's unprofessional." "You mean unprofessional like having someone do something for you when you're not paying them or laying someone off by email unprofessional?"

Cancelling the company Christmas party has been the sign of a death spiral for two companies that I worked at.

A similar anecdote from one previous employer: at that company, we had a lot of remote B2B sales people all over the country and even one overseas. On rare occasions, there would be a sales meeting where all the sales people come in to meet with the top executives personally and discuss strategy.

Well, my first couple of years at the company, there was a sales meeting to coincide with the Christmas party. Basically, all of the sales people were flown in to attend the Christmas party and they justified it as a business expense by having a strategy meeting sometime that week. One year, that didn't happen. I mentioned offhand to somebody "too bad the sales guys couldn't make it", and I was outright told that they skipped out on the sales meeting to save money. So we had a Christmas party, but we cut back the invitations.

That was no surprise, given the events of the previous few months. They had been actively trying to shrink the company by attrition; i.e., letting employees quit and declining to hire a replacement. I also don't know anyone who got a raise that year. We ended up losing a lot of people just from that alone. They also fired a bunch of sales guys for underperforming and hired a bunch more who were almost exclusively paid on commission... and I'd heard that the CEO specifically intended to flood the company with commission-only sales hires because he didn't have to pay them more than peanuts unless they brought in money.

The next few months were brutal. January opened up with two executives being fired -- while the actual reasons for the firings were because of a power struggle, they weren't really replaced. One of them had his power distributed among the people who reported to him, and another was replaced by "promoting" multiple existing employees while still making them do their previous jobs. One of those was fired only a few days after being promoted, too. The next month, I was laid off. I heard through the grapevine that shortly after I was laid off, they laid off another guy and closed the entire India office, letting everyone go except one or two employees who were transferred to the home office.

Interesting. Once we were laid off and invited to the Xmas party. ;)

When you are asked to sign a non-compete agreement, or agreement to use binding arbitration where no such agreement was in place before.

When your supervisor isn't interested in keeping you busy.

When suppliers call you instead of accounts payable because no one in accounts payable is answering the phone.

When you can't get approval from the top for ANY large purchase requisition.

When the VP of HR is extremely busy just before really bad quarterly results are announced.

When the CEO of a California-based Corporation is overheard in the hallway bitching about onerous employment laws.

When there are lots of unfamiliar people walking around the place in suits, and a lot of closed door meetings.

Closed door meetings with odd combinations of managers that don't normally meet is a HUGE red flag.

When you wake up to this https://twitter.com/bartt/status/653946266938818561

Wow that's brutal, especially the Github subject but from what I gathered he missed a call that went to voicemail.

Your manager wants to add an admin account to the laptop you have been using for over a year.

When the CEO puts "restructuring meeting" on the shared calendar accidentally.

"It's not you, it's us. We still want to be friends."

When you get asked to wait two weeks because the main client hasn't paid yet because their assets aren't "liquid enough" (the client said that to everyone himself). And then they ask you to do it again a month later.

...you might get called in to be told the company can't afford you anymore and get laid off with two-thirds of the staff.

When you move into a New (New Lease/New Construction) building for the organization. Two for Two so far in my career.

Warning sign you're getting bought: someone asks for the licenses of all the open-source libraries in your stack...

Or that a "board member" wants detailed write ups on your processes.

Here's another one:

Executives leave the company, and their replacements have lesser titles and are existing employees who have to continue to do their existing jobs in addition to whatever function they absorbed. Bonus points if the executive's function gets divided up among multiple employees.

When a consultant comes in and interviews you about "what exactly you do," nodding generously and saying, "oh wow, yeah" every few sentences.

When management seems to continually allow ridiculous overreaches in employee behavior, especially when such behavior is critical of management.

When higher ups who barely acknowledged your existence suddenly become very interested in your future availability. Companies love to settle group layoffs in 1 swell swoop. My multi week vacation may have bought my team more time and more importantly another month of health insurance.

When all your external vendors and subcontractors are told to stop working and ship back all materials.

Also when external vendors start dropping hints to you that they haven't been paid for their previous invoice (and you are not responsible for finances).

That's a great one.

I got hit by II, back in 2010. They hired an intern, asked me to train her... a month later, I was laid off.

Also, I knew a number of people who worked for a local video game company who got the axe after their paychecks had been late for a while. They were all complaining that they haven't been paid in about two months, and then one day the CEO calls people into his office one at a time... 11 people were let go that day. A bunch more got the axe about a month later. They weren't a big company. It took a while for them to get their final paychecks, and I think that was only because a couple of them threatened to sue.

(edit: just to make this clear, I didn't work at that video game company, but several friends of mine did, and I got to hear the stories)

Sounds very similar to Crytek.

It wasn't. The company I'm talking about was based in a suburb of Dallas and only had the one office. In fact, I believe that after the layoffs they actually got rid of their office for a while and worked out of the CEO's house for a bit before they could afford to rent space again.

Much smaller and lower-profile than Crytek, though they still have their own Wikipedia article.

By the way, even before the layoffs, the CEO was notorious for firing anyone he felt had a "bad attitude", including a world-renowned living legend of a developer who was suffering from severe depression and had been previously hospitalized for a suicide attempt.

He was known for working his employees to the bone, developers regularly slept at the office, and the company was a caricature of every overtime-happy game developer. One of my friends took up smoking and was addicted for a few years because the only way she was allowed to leave her desk was to go on a smoke break and sitting in one place for so long was getting physically painful. They also had a policy where no matter how late you stayed the previous night, even if you were there until 3am, you had to be in by 10am the next day or they'd dock you a vacation day.

There was this one time that I suggested cross-training to reduce the bus factor, and management went with it. I was being sincere, but I have to admit that it was amusing watching everyone think they were going to be laid off when we implemented it.

I am big on cross-training to avoid the bus factor! But everyone gets paranoid, the problem is it needs to be ingrained in the culture to thats "what you do" and not have it just pop up all of a sudden, thats what gives people trepidation.

When your network login suddenly stops working.

Or, when you get a weird email from the payroll system about having just withdrawn /exactly/ how much PTO you've accrued.

When the Director of HR and VP of Legal send a meeting request to you.

Actually, I got a surprise meeting request with CIO and Global Head of HR (and not even of his grim minions) - which I didn't think was good.

Got the meeting request while I was out of the office - got in to find my account locked out...

Not good I think - but I was on 6 months notice so WTF...

Turns out I was being notified of a restructuring and a new boss and my account being locked out was an unfortunate coincidence.

Mind you the entire office did get the bullet about a year later - I'd left by that point as it was clear that something was up....

Just literally had this happen to me with our HR/Accounting Department, with a subtitle of "We want to understand what you do around here." Visons of Office Space are dancing in my head.

here's another sign you're about to be laid off: none of this happens, and you haven't done any real work in months.

When you are told to stay in your cube and NOT MOVE.

Then people walk by and pat you and the back to come to another room.

Source: http://www.ihatedell.net/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=17...

(search for "day in 2001")

When somebody needs to say "let's get all outstanding code checked-in ASAP!"

That one's in the article.

My contribution: when we have a new CEO and she starts asking how much revenue cost centers generate.

You misunderstand me - the fact that there is "outstanding code" should have alarm bells ringing

An old one, but also be weary of private meetings with your boss on Friday.

When a company that was previously very strict about line managers setting yearly and half-yearly performance objectives suddenly doesn't set any....

Having the entire team suddenly focus on a superfluous project like the company intranet or any non-critical busywork. Not a good sign!

Any announcements on a Friday especially before a long weekend.

Looks like I'm going to be laid off soon :'(

Deleted comment

I had a similar experience in 2010.

At that company, the passes were only for use after hours and on weekends; the doors were unlocked during business hours on weekdays. About a month before I was laid off, there were a couple of high-profile firings (first the VP of Engineering, then the Director of QA/IT/the India office a week later), and the CEO put in a new policy that whenever someone is let go, the doors are to be locked for a week or two so we'll actually need to use our passes to get in. This was to prevent the fired employees from coming back in and stealing or vandalizing or what have you, especially since they knew where the bodies were buried.

Well, the day I got laid off, the doors were locked. I wasn't even a high-level employee! I kinda knew where some of the bodies were buried though... I was one of the few people outside IT with admin access to certain servers. I didn't even think anything of it until my boss called me into his office... where the CFO was waiting with a paper that had "CERTIFICATE OF TERMINATION" in big letters at the top.

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