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Comment by notyourday | Hacker News Reader

The really funny part to me is that the same startups that laid people off are posting in "Who is hiring". I mean, come on!

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I think a lot of companies used covid as an excuse for cutting under-performers without needing to go through the complicated PIP process.

This kind of practice is illegal in most developed countries. Hiring for the same position after giving someone a redundancy is considered intent for unreasonable dismissal. Does the USA not have these kind of protections?

I've had pay withheld for months, sudden massive pay cuts, rent spikes (residential jobs), in fact well over half of my previous bosses still owe me salary that I will never see. One job I had to quit because my boss refused to give me time to heal from work-inflicted RSI and I ended up getting carpal tunnel. I still deal with it today. The BBB has never followed up and lawyers are expensive for a young adult living on their own. This is America!

The BBB will be useless in this case. If your state has a department of labor, you can file a complaint with them; often, just going reporting your employer's practices doesn't require a lawyer. You can also try to go to small claims court yourself to recover back pay, if the amount doesn't exceed the small claims limit; small claims is usually pretty DIY friendly (as far as legal processes go).

I've considered small claims but it's just never been worth it. And that's the margin in which these kind of people operate. As far as the BBB, that was really only one specific incident where it made sense to involve them. I was trying to disparage a boss for holding pay for the entire staff for a month and tried involving numerous organizations but he ended up getting away with it scot-free. I think not paying taxes eventually caught up with him though because that place was recently leveled. Looking back there was surely something I could have done to better escalate the situation but I was a dumb kid.

Yeah, I don't blame you. That is, unfortunately, how the system fails us; young people who don't know their rights or people of any age who are desperate to keep their jobs are really vulnerable to exploitation by shitty bosses who know that the balance of power is skewed in their favor. But that's a conversation for another thread, probably...

Many states in the US are at will employment. Meaning you can be fired at any time for basically any reason. Protected classes (race, gender, etc) and acts are the exemption to that. But they can use any excuse they want, fire you, and hire someone else to the same position right away.

For the most part the answer to "can this possibly be legal under US employment law?!" is yes.

No it doesn't. Most states have at will employment meaning they can fire you because they don't like what you had for lunch.

They aren't filling the roles after. Companies are just trimming the under-performing fat.

Especially when they know they can replace them with a lot of talent suddenly on the market.

If developers are difficult to hire in a regular market, you can use this opportunity to hire them now while you trim your marketing team, which is trying to sell to a market which has hit the pause button anyway...

Except that layoffs.fyi which publishes lists of people being laid off together with their titles and linkedin/email addresses lists software engineers in the same companies that post a week later posted in "Who is hiring" looking for software engineers.

Cut the fat and hire good engineers looking for work.

:Shrug:

It could be as simple as "easy time to let people go" but things have changed..

If your plan hasn't changed since January, you're doing something wrong. Odds are companies are changing direction and killing off ideas/projects that aren't working and doubling down on those that are. That could be as simple as the marketing mix but may be product roadmap or target customers and the entire go to market strategy.

Any one of those things means you might need to shift people from one area into another or even layoff one group to add to another.

You can pick up laid off engineers for a “bargain” price and have them build feature x,y and z now to be ready for the grand reopening of the economy.

If the ppp shell game works like I’ve been told you can swap marketing/support/sales for engineers and maintain headcount.

I think this is true.

We are a smaller company, laid off 4 employees, one technical, and three in sales.

Then, we added a family member, with a newly created role.

Oh, and hired three interns as fulltime devs.

Just realized, as I typed this.

Doesn't seem odd to me to be cutting staff in on area and hiring in another.

Care to name names?

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