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Comment by lost_name | Hacker News Reader

Not that this is really any help, but an acquaintance of mine works for HPE and notified he was being laid off yesterday, and his last day is today. He was with HP (now HPE) for maybe 4-6 years.

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It is helpful to know that people are being notified already. By chance do you know what division he worked within?

I don't, sorry. I'm seem to recall that he worked with a state government.

How is that legal?

How is what legal?

One day's notice of redundancy. In many countries, in the circumstances at hand, it's not legal.

How is it legal to tell someone they won't be working at their job anymore, with one day notice and presumably unemployment benefits considering it's part of a reduction in force? I would certainly hope that remains legal.

That's the American expectation, but most European employment legislation disagrees -- that's probably the root of the question.

HPE will give severance. You don't start unemployment the next day.

You are unemployed. You just have some money around for a few months (usually 3 months) to look for a new job. It's tough out there to get a new job, even senior engineers have hard time getting through interviews.

Our market (Sacramento, CA) is so hungry for senior engineers (for web or mobile), I'd wager max 2 weeks to be back in the saddle. But I doubt HPE has much talent for web-stacks, likely Microsoft/.Net and SAP experience which I can agree with your statement.

We just interviewed a PM from HPE and to our surprise, he makes ~$180k a year. We hired an awesome candidate for $80k.

Don't discount the experience based on the company name. HPE is still a big broad place that spans from HPUX to web apps to SaaS to consulting.

$80k is not senior.

And no, finding a job in 2 weeks is not realistically obtainable for a senior engineer. Try 6 months to a year. This whole 'developer shortage' BS I keep hearing needs to stop.

And besides, most employers' hiring timelines (from first contact to first day on the job) are longer than 2 weeks.

$80k is what we paid for a PM, not a senior engineers. We pay our seniors $120-$250 depending on how their domain experience maps to ours, and if you want to live and work in the Sacramento Area I can have you interviewed, vetted and on-boarded in less than a week. Being in Sacramento, we have lost talent to the Bay Area for top candidates coming into the state that want to work for a more known entity and a have a larger network work within.

No BS or bad vibes; Just real peeps writing code and having fun doing it and always looking to add great people to the team because the demand is high and experienced talent is in short supply.

Fair enough. Sorry if I sounded snippy, I've been job hunting recently and am a bit jaded :)

Anything we can do to help?

Nah, somewhere out there is a company for which I am a 'cultural fit.' I think, maybe. I'll find it eventually.

2 weeks for a job is pretty tough but not unachievable. I'm not the best engineer on the planet, however I've experienced probably a month into a job search there are some solid offers on the table. I'd go insane looking for a job for 6 months, at month 2 I'd feel there was definitely something extremely wrong.

Here are reasons why one can't:

* you shouldn't work for a job you are not going to be happy about (of course you can't be too picky)

* because interview sucks (numerous highly regarded engineers were turned down by big tech companies)

* because some jobs require you to move despite you like the job

Good for HPE PM though.

Why wouldn't it be legal? Virtually every US state has zero notice requirements -- tell your employee that they are being fired, laid off or otherwise no longer going to work here, pay them what you owe them immediately, and you're done.

"Two weeks notice" is a social nicety, good for maintaining good relationships and status. If you don't care about those things, you can quit or fire on the spot.

Wow, here in Germany you need to give 4 weeks notice at the minimum. Two months if the employment lasted for at least five years.

What requirements do employees have should they wish to quit?

The time frame is symmetrical - both employers and employees have to give 4 weeks notice (default). In my case, the US parent company decided on 12 weeks, probably to retain the software developers.

Note that depending on unions (rare in IT) and mandatory employee representation (Betriebsrat) for big companies, firing people can be harder, especially for long-term employees.

Is the 4 weeks on the employee side a social custom that can be ignored (it is considered rude to do so here but not illegal) or is it actually a law or contractual obligation? Can you quit on the spot if say you feel the work load is unreasonable?

Can't speak for Germany, but that's usually both a law and contractual obligation on that side of the Atlantic.

If you want to quit and the firing notice period is also four weeks, what can they threaten you with if you refuse to work overtime?

I'm not sure what the legal or contractual penalties are, if they are nothing then you are right and in real terms you can just quit on the spot.

No, it's by law. You have a minimum of 4 weeks notice in Germany (some exceptions apply, for example you are hired for temp work). So you cannot quit on the spot, and your employer cannot fire you on the spot, unless it is for gross reasons on one side which makes it extremely unreasonable to continue employment.

Examples of this would be if you're caught stealing or harassing a coworker - or if your employer is breaking the law by repeatedly not paying you on time or endangering your health etc. You cannot be fired for being late once. Your employer has to document that he has told you "Do not be late again, or else" (and you have to sign off on this).

Work load may not be unreasonable. Usual work load is 40 hour weeks, and overtime is dependent on contractual definitions. Some people are (by union) not able to work more, others are exempt from overtime restrictions (managers), others will receive money or free time as compensation. You can enter contracts that specify a certain amount of overtime work, but unless they are specific enough, those clauses are void. You cannot get less than 24 days / year of holidays, you must not work on Sunday (unless: emergency or working in an exempt job, like healthcare), and employers risk fines/prison if they deny you those rights.

Overtime usually requires an explicit order, and is limited to 48h total work time /week. Anything more (for example: seasonal workers) needs to be compensated with free time in the following 6 months. So an employer can demand a death march for a project, but even that is limited to not more than 10 h/day.

That said, while the law may be on your side, people may work more than the contractually defined amount "because it's necessary / they need me there" or other strange reasons.

(note: there are exceptions for all rules. When your data center is down for some reason, you are not going to tell your boss "sorry, my 8 hours today are up, find someone else to restart those servers. I'll be back tomorrow.")

So if you're not allowed to give less than 4 weeks notice, what happens if you say "I am quitting in 4 weeks" then you come to work and do nothing all day, I guess the employer can fire you then?

You have a contractual obligation to do the stuff you're getting paid for, else that may be cause for a immediate termination (after being reprimanded). But of course no one expects you to go out of your way and put in overtime. During our last round of layoffs, the people leaving the company got ~2 months of free time and were told not to work.

On your last day, you (should) receive your letter of recommendation (Arbeitszeugnis), which by law needs to be a positive statement of what you have done, enabling you to get another job.

Slacking off in the last 4 weeks _may_ cause your employer to give you slightly less than a glowing review. Some employers take those letters seriously and if your last boss writes "he did the best he could with the tasks that were given to him", that's not going to reflect well on you.

edit: there is a whole "secret" language for those certificates of employment / recommendation letters, where employers may try to sneak in outrageous stuff ("He had an open ear for the concerns of his female coworkers" - grabbing them or being otherwise inappropriate towards them ), but since most companies do not want to haggle in front of a judge about the exact phrasing, it mostly is written in an okay way. Often you will be told: "Write this letter yourself, you know best what you did here, I am going to sign off on it."

Are Google, Apple or Facebook German companies?

If they employ people in Germany they have to obey German law.

I hate that there is such a double standard with this. Corporation can eliminate my employment at any time with zero notice and suffer minimal reputational impact. If I decide to quit right now and walk out of my office, I have to worry about long lasting reputational issues and "burning bridges". I get why it's like this, corporations have all the leverage, just hate that the dynamic exists.

In general, there is some sort of severance that is at least 2 weeks plus some additional days based on years of service.

I don't know if it's different on the east coast but I have never met a single person whose gotten any severance. About the nicest I've seen from companies is them saying "we won't dispute your unemployment claim"

From big companies? Which ones? And my limited understanding of labor law is that Massachusetts has more regulation on this sort of thing than most states.

Read https://www.thelayoff.com and typically any big companies layoff discussion will mention the severance package being offered.

https://www.thelayoff.com/t/Plt3gwU

I never experienced mass layoffs, just a slow removal of employees. Either outright firing, but one at a time, or some aspect of the job was changed abruptly and in a manner that garunteed people would leave. Those positions then wouldn't be backfilled. It's not doable on a scale of 1000s but it was doable on a scale of 30-40

Almost all of the Indian IT companies have a 3 month notice period. If we were to quit before that, we may not get the service certificate which would be needed for a new job.

At the same time, they can fire us (usually being called into HR room and forced to resign) at will. Even if there is any compensation, it will be 3 months basic pay (basic is only a percentage of the full salary).

Thus we get to enjoy the bad things of capitalism without any of the protection it offers.

"Thus we get to enjoy the bad things of capitalism without any of the protection it offers."

As it is, I think you do have all the protection capitalism offers.

To be fair, usually when companies lay people off with no notice, in these high profile layoffs, they will include severance (aka, a fat chunk of money).

It is possible that the employer pays for some number of weeks, but does not require (or allow) the employee to do any work during that period. But in 2017, I doubt it. If it's a big company in an at-will state, they just show you the door and say, "Bye. Good luck out there!"

He will get severance. Probably a week or two weeks per year of service.

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