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Comment by duxup | Hacker News Reader

I got laid off from a company after nearly 20 years of work there. I was very lucky to get a big company layoff type package of ~ 9 months of pay. I decided to take it as opportunity to do new things.

It was still a worrying experience, had kids, family to take care of, but I chose to take that money and time and enroll in a coding boot camp and go in a new direction in life after age 40. I figured I wasn't going to see a lump sum of 9 months pay and time to do something with it ever again so I was going to take advantage of it.

Years later now I'm very happy with the decision. Starting over was stressful, but I'm much happier with what I do now... and I don't think I would have done it if I hadn't been laid off.

It was still traumatic, but I don't think I would be on this side of things had it been easier...

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Similar story here. I was laid off after 4 years with a company, got 3 months severance. I used it to try freelancing while looking for full time jobs - it ended out working out really well and I am more fulfilled and make much more money now. I wouldn't have taken the leap without the layoff.

Awesome that it worked out for you! That said, 9 months of pay as severance for 20 years of work seems a bit disappointing.

In my country it's currently one month of pay per year worked for layoffs where the employee was not at fault.

where is this? I've lived a few places and never heard of something so generous.

It's normally closer to 1-2 weeks per year. Also in the UK, ireland and france they put a very low cap on the weekly pay.

In Spain it’s 22 days per year worked up to 24 months I think. But the pay is also exempt from income tax.

Argentina.

The downsides of living here are discussed elsewhere, of course. But let's not get sidetracked :)

in the UK the cap is for the statutory redundancy

if the employer wishes to give you more they are perfectly free to (and it's very, very common to)

One week per year is standard in Canada, too

That's what the law says as a minimum but in practice it's more like a month. That's because whenever it goes to court you'll get awarded a month on average. At least I'm pretty sure that's what it's like in BC.

WOW what a story. And what an epic layoff package ;)

The teleco I used to work for gave people 2 weeks pay for every year a person was with the company when they had post merger layoffs. I don’t know if there’s a standard but that seems to line up pretty close.

Yup that was roughly the number they used / how it worked out.

In my case, was one week for every year — so 16 weeks for (just short of) 17 years.

9 months after 20 years doesn't seem particularly great. Heck, I got 6 months severance + 6 months of paid health insurance after being at a large corp for only 2.5 years - it was a buyout, ie. they were asking for volunteers to take severance to leave so they wouldn't need to do an actual involuntary layoff later. Seemed like a great deal and I had another gig 6 months later so it was kind of an extended vacay.

At my last corporation, they had severance set at 1 week of pay per year worked, up to a max of 4 weeks for 4 years worked.

It all depends on the corporation.

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