They were told that these were performance based terminations, despite not receiving any negative evaluations during their time at Twitter. They were also told they needed to sign NDAs in order to receive any severance.
Can't confirm the %.
It's probably worth it to find a labor attorney.
In most cases, an employer will want at least something in return for providing severance pay.
But NDA is another reason, or even keeping unemployment insurance premiums low by having everyone that accepts severance state that they are voluntarily leaving the company in exchange for the severance.
By voluntarily separating, they cannot collect unemployment benefits from the state, which means the state charged the employer less in unemployment insurance premiums.
But I suspect it’s mainly as a carrot to sign the NDA/non-compete/whatever else they want you to sign to keep not talk about what happened.
These kinds of things are not always about the strict minimum cost actions. In general, it is a better world with some degree of human consideration being part of things.
I am quite sure many of the cases I had involvement in could have been done cheaper. However, I am also quite sure the people involved had what they need to get through to their next gig with few worries too.
That is worth a lot and these days one can never know who may be working for or with who.
I hope you start a company and are in a position to give severance to fired employees and not make them sign non-competes.
If the employee doesn’t like the terms, they’ll just get the statutory minimum.
It’s pretty rare anyone takes that option though!
Tweeps are being told these are performance-related terminations, not layoffs. It was posited that "performance" was referring to Twitter, not the employee. I simply pointed out that's exactly what a layoff was, and performance in this context can only mean the employee, not the company.
Lots of coasters in big companies can get with good rating just be being on the good side of manager/peers and even get Bonus points if you are vocal about DEI and activism.
No, this is pissing on people and claiming it's raining.
There are people who build multiple successful companies and then there are who prioritize well-being and pick some weird hill to die on.
He's a really good marketer, a good businessman but I do not think he knows what he is doing when he requests access to the codebase behind a massively distributed and scalable system such as Twitters backend
People like Walter Isaacson have a better opinion about him