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Comment by sequoia | Hacker News Reader

Facebook and google have "required some employees to apply for new jobs if they wish to remain at the company."

I have to say this is a sort of hilarious newspeak framing of layoffs. "We're not laying you off, you just need to apply and get accepted for a job or else you're terminated." OK, so I was a job-haver, now I'm a job-seeker... but at least I haven't been laid off!

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This can be very valuable because it means you don't lose your unvested RSUs. Plus internal teams are more likely to already know you, or at least it's easier to show them your work, so the interview isn't necessarily that hard.

This is still lapping up the bullshit of what it actually is. It's a redundancy plain and simple, your job is being terminated, it should be reported as such.

You literally still have a job. Being reported as a layoff would be lying. If you don’t have a job and have to find work elsewhere then that would be the layoff. As long as the company is still paying you the at worst you’re on the bench.

Rest and vest.

false hope, chances are when such mechanisms are in place all teams already have the clamp on budget/resourcing to achieve the overall x% reduction in headcount. so it ends up a big game of musical chairs, some just gotta go.

1) Vesting continues 2) Salary continues 3) Benefits continue 4) For the duration of the search, you don't have other things to do.

==> It's at the very least a paid job search. (If you only look internally during that time, you're doing it wrong). Please do talk to people who've experienced actual layoffs how that's a comparatively very cushy alternative.

And let's not forget that an internal transfer is usually significantly easier than actually finding a new job.

But sure, it's "newspeak".

It all depends on what percentage actually get new job offers internally. If it's "most or all" then it's very different from layoffs. If it's "few to none" than it's very similar to being laid off.

"Pay and benefits for 30 days while you look for a job" this is called "garden leave," a severance package could also cover this. If my position is terminated & I'm paid out two months salary and they continue covering my insurance for 60 days, that's great, but I'm still terminated.

I'm not against this policy, I'm not even against layoffs in all cases. Sometimes you hire a lot, sometimes you cut, that's business. This policy does seem better than direct layoffs, but eliminating people's positions and making them apply for new jobs (with 30 days garden leave) is pretty damn near layoffs. What if no other teams have headcount, what would you call it then?

I was just commenting on the turn of phrase, not laying people off but 'terminating their positions and making them look for a new job.'

Not really newspeak. The difference is that you're still getting paid in between and still have a job, pretty different from getting laid off where you often don't get paid and don't have a job.

But it's still "prove you're still worth it". Instead of, we have the following teams with openings, please pick one you want to go to. No, it's, we have openings in the following teams, prove that one of them want you enough.

Yeah sure but it's definitely different from being laid off. You can just look at the numbers. The vast majority of people end up on a new team and do not leave the company.

To put employees through this when meta and Google have billions in cash is disgusting.

But... they are paying them. What are you proposing? That they dissolve the team and just give the employees a permanent pension while not requiring them to find a new team?

I’m proposing that cuts like this are unnecessary for companies this flush with cash. It’s an excuse to cut staff with some reason to point to for doing so.

I work at Google and am strongly in favor of this vs pretty much any alternative. I'd be in favor even if I were one of the people on a dissolved team. Hard for me to see how this is bad for employees.

It's totally reasonable for a company to ask you to prove you're worth it or just fire you, just like it's totally reasonable for you to demand your company prove they're worthy to employ you (increase your pay or benefits) or jump to another opportunity

I think the idea of bell curving people and firing the bottom is extremely dumb, a form of decimation with similar results. It's a culture destroyer and invents many perverse incentives in the company that are counter productive to "make great products".

But ultimately I don't think it's unreasonable for someone to be authentically reviewed poorly and made to prove they should stay.

The company is reducing the amount of workers on its payroll.

You get garden leave while you apply for jobs internally. After 30 days (assuming you can't find a new position internally), it seems identical to having been laid off

The Area120 folks were given 4.5 months to find a new team. Even if you decide there is a 0% chance of success and start looking externally, that's a great deal.

Didn't know it was that long! That's fantastic.

Assumption being, if you can't pass interviews with another team, you're not good enough to stay. That only works for large campuses and of course, getting another role is more indicative of your networking abilities than skillset and experience.

Meta doesn’t do interviews when passing between teams though (at least not in the common case).

false, i had to interview again during a layoff in 2020 (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/28/technology/facebook-secur...)

Less of an interview and more of an informal team-matching coffee chat. They all have access to your co-workers and body of work, so no need to haze you with leetcode again.

That’s going away due to d&i requirements. They want everyone to have to apply for all open positions so internal transfers aren’t given preference over external.

I see it as a last chance to move to a position that's not being terminated, and also an opportunity for someone who needs headcount and has the budget for it to pick proven candidates without the hassle of an external hire. Large companies are worlds of their own. But still, I imagine if you receive that message, I'd be worried.

Haha, even a cynic like myself couldn't see this coming. It's a fantastic way to shift focus away from leadership decision making towards competition between the very employees who are supposed to work together. I suspect there will be a lot more politicking than the usual hiring process (which is quite objective, despite its other flaws).

Google has a massive number of teams, many of which are actively hiring. This is not some musical chairs exercise and it’s only getting attention because it fits the storyline journalists want to tell right now. This has been going on throughout the last decade and before.

I should have added this at first but I'm not saying this policy is bad, I'm not even against layoffs in all cases. Sometimes you hire a lot, sometimes you cut, that's business. This policy does seem better than direct layoffs.

I was just commenting on the turn of phrase, not laying people off but 'terminating their positions and making them look for a new job' (which sounds pretty dang near being laid off with garden leave).

The term "layoffs" is obviously toxic, so companies go to lengths to avoid using that particular phrase, even when that's what seems to be happening. I've been at a company while this happened: lots of reductions in headcount over a short period but "we're not doing layoffs."

I had the same deal at a big telecom 7 years ago. The offer lasted one month. I moved to a better position with better pay/responsibilities.

I also saw this at a different SV company in 2015. Nothing new under the sun.

Microsoft did this post-Sybase split. People who had seen the Sybase code were contaminated, and had a bad time.

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