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Comment by UncleOxidant | Hacker News Reader

"Preparing for a Malicious “For-Cause” Termination The new leadership has dramatically changed the expectations of workload across the organization. It is now expected that teams work evenings and weekends to ship products. Work progress is being tracked by the hour in spreadsheets to build precedent for terminating workers “for cause” to avoid paying severance. "

That's just shitty. Richest guy in the world and he doesn't want to pay severance. CA has some pretty strong labor laws, I'd think requiring people to work evenings & weekends would be a no-go.

From a game-theory standpoint it seems like given that Musk is going to do everything he can to keep from paying severance that the best strategy would be for everyone to just walk out the door all together and let Musk figure it all out by himself. Don't give notice, just stop showing up for work.

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> "Preparing for a Malicious “For-Cause” Termination The new leadership has dramatically changed the expectations of workload across the organization. It is now expected that teams work evenings and weekends to ship products. Work progress is being tracked by the hour in spreadsheets to build precedent for terminating workers “for cause” to avoid paying severance. "

Unfortunately this is happening at a different not-quite-FAANG company in the Bay as we speak

It’s a terrible feeling. Getting gaslit, having everything you do suddenly be under a microscope, finding flaws in any work you do correctly to further document your faults. Even though every other review you’ve had with your manager previously was positive. All to avoid paying out a mildly generous severance package en masse, and the bad press that comes with actual Layoffs…

Companies really show their true colors when times get hard. Benefits mean nothing if they’re taken away at the first sign of hard times

Unionize. Unfortunately, there is no other way to improve working conditions on a smaller scale, and it’s more actionable than legislation. Efforts to do so are protected by federal labor law.

Labor rights are not a four letter word. It’s dignity, plain and simple.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33426373

> Unfortunately this is happening at a different not-quite-FAANG company in the Bay as we speak

It’s happening at FAANG companies as well. My team was dissolved last week and I was reassigned to a different team that already had a senior engineer on it. I was told by my manager that they only need one senior on the team and so it’s them or me. I’m encouraged to document their flaws and I’m sure they were told the same about me. The next review cycle is going to be brutal.

Having won a severance lawsuit in the past (Quebec jurisdiction though):

Employment lawyers must be salivating at this point.

Twitter is blatantly trying to avoid paying severance by using the for cause, and are likely sloppy in doing it given management pressure.

Gentle reminder to everyone that a big reason companies pay severance is so you dont sue them.

If they offer you the minimum legal package, or worse they try to bullshit you into even less, you should be suing them. Theyre hoping you dont.

Even California's labor laws are not going to be close to anything in Canada. And I don't know how many Twitter folks are remote, but if they're not in a very small minority of states, they're basically at the whims of management.

At the end of the day, Twitter is under new management and it is within management's right to change to circumstances of your employment. If they start pushing night and weekend work, and you don't deliver, that alone isn't necessarily a violation of any law. You didn't perform, and it's completely possible that your termination is legally for cause, even in California.

Employment law is very complex and honestly the situation will vary drastically even among similarly leveled folks on the same team fired at the same time. What kind of notification you're given, what kind of documentation there, previous reviews, etc. all play a role.

I think it's shitty to try to squeeze out people like this but just because it's shitty doesn't mean it's illegal or that it's a good idea to sue over it.

Everything you say is correct, but Twitter employees should all still:

1. Document everything off company devices

2. Consult an attorney, preferably specialized in employment law.

Prepare for a lawsuit, itll be worth it if one is necessary.

You are missing a key point: scale of lay offs.

Of course an employer can pull this off for a handful of employees, but not for a significant percentage of their workforce.

If your claim was right, no employer would had paid severance for layoffs. They would just give a cause to every one laid off. Not that hard to come up with bs metrics.

> Twitter is blatantly trying to avoid paying severance by using the for cause, and are likely sloppy in doing it given management pressure.

https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/finalpay.pdf

> There is no legal requirement under California law that employers provide severance pay to an employee upon termination of employment. Employees should refer to their employer’s policy with respect to severance pay. Severance pay plans provided by an employer pursuant to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, 29 U.S.C. § 1001, et seq. (ERISA), are subject to federal law. Contact the U.S. Department of Labor at www.dol.gov. In certain limited situations, California laws may apply. However, a thorough review of the facts is necessary before a determination can be made.

But layoffs in California of 50 or more people in a 30-day period require the employer give 60-day notice to affected employees as a result of the California Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act[0]. This is often handled by giving 60+ days of compensation as severance with ~0 notice. If they can get away with saying it's "for cause" then they can claim it's not a layoff and therefore not covered by the WARN Act.

----

[0]https://edd.ca.gov/en/Jobs_and_Training/Layoff_Services_WARN

You are describing garden leave ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_leave ) which is often part of a the WARN layoff approach - but it is distinct and different than severance.

It is completely possible to say "we are going to lay off these 50 people on January 3, 2023" but not actually have them leave (and instead require them to come into the office for the next four weeks to help with knowledge transfer). That fills the requirement for WARN - the employees know that they are getting laid off and have time to find a new job.

In tech jobs, where IP is important, the garden leave approach is often taken because it limits the opportunity for an employee to engage in IP theft - but it is not required.

When I was laid off from Netapp in 2009, I was informed I was going to be laid off on March 16th. My last day was May 15th, 2009 and then I had a severance package that was 3(?) weeks of pay for every year I had worked there.

I could have left on my own accord in March if I wanted to, but my severance package was tied to me completing knowledge transfer for the next 60 days at which time the layoff would be complete.

It's shameful is what it is. Richest man in the world trying to pick the pockets of average workers after he abused them and threw them out of a job.

I hope this breaks his reputation amongst tech types. But sadly it probably won't.

I think this whole fiasco has definitely tarnished his reputation among all but the very most devoted muskbros. I'd certainly never consider buying a Tesla now - not just because I don't want to support Musk's project, but because driving a Tesla is starting to be a bad look.

Right. They worked for a shitty company with shitty service that elevated shitty people to prominence while collaborating with a shitty government to oppress speech while ignoring shitty users who were distributing underage porn. Poor them.

> Don't give notice, just stop showing up for work.

I’d assume many of the employees that will be kept are grateful they don’t have to carry the low performers any longer. Game knows game and high performers want to work with similar people.

Why would the cohort of high performing employees walk out for the benefit of the low performing employees?

Why would a high performer put up with being treated like shit because the new guy regrets his stoned impulse buy?

If I worked there, I'd walk.

It sounds like everyone is being required to work some pretty crazy hours. Why would even high performing employees want to be burned out when they could easily get another job?

Sad they’re asking people being paid many hundreds of thousands to put in some time to make real impact.

The great engineers are inspired by this leadership. It’s like fresh oxygen. They have purpose.

Hi Elon! Sounds like you're smoking weed again.

Maybe you can educate us all on what Twitter's new purpose is.

Because from what I've seen from Jason Calcanis, David Sacks etc they seem to be outsourcing product vision to their followers who have no skin in the game and plenty of hidden agendas.

Can't imagine any great engineers finding that inspiring.

So you're telling me that if your current job told you to do 12 hour work days 7 days a week, you'd leap right on that because it's inspiring?

Would and have. My wife is an insurance agent, basically that is her Q4.

Lol. Seriously just give up on your original assertion and say you're wrong. If not today, you will realize this eventually.

You might consider the fact that some folks have a different work ethic and approach to their careers than you do.

Also if I haven’t “realized” it in the 35 years that I have been doing this sort of thing…that perhaps there is nothing eventually to realize.

Twitter hasn't had real impact?

Some would argue that the impact has been negative. I don't even like Twitter. But the impact is one of the greatest of any software platform till date.

And I really doubt great engineers are the kind of herdable cattle like you suggest. Most have pride and self-respect. I suspect they will be the first to leave a s(t)inking ship, and get the good jobs in the market while they are still abundant.

> The great engineers are inspired by this leadership. It’s like fresh oxygen. They have purpose.

I’m sure the great engineers at Twitter were inspired by the order to print out all of their recent commits on sheets of paper and then promptly shred them before anybody looked at them.

I’m sure that the great engineers at Twitter who are parents are salivating at the opportunity to lose almost all of the time spent with their children.

How did you end up being a boot-licker for bosses and corporate management?

I ask this sincerely, given that you seem to be just another worker as most of us. When and how exactly did you decide that forcing workers, as best paid as they are, to work longer hours is something acceptable, and from the tone of your posts even desirable?

How long has been your career? 10 years? 20 years? How often have you found that people work much better when they are pressured with a lingering guillotine over their heads? Have you ever managed someone, or a team? And managed them enough to have to tap into team spirit and morale to keep some semblance of productivity when things crumble around them?

What exactly has happened in your life for you to be on the side of corporate-owners? Is is just a lack of liberating education compelling you to become an oppressor coming from the oppressed?

High-performing is not necessarily equivalent to working crazy hours. In fact, working crazy hours, in some circles, is indicative of not being high-performing.

From the original post it sounds like everyone is being required to work evenings and weekends. Doesn't sound like high performers are excepted from that.

Reading this comment I highly doubt you're a high performer.

The really great people understand that life isn't a zero sum game and have a high degree of empathy and altruism for their team members. And they definitely see the bigger picture e.g. that firing 50% of the company (as is rumoured) is not going to be good for anyone.

> I highly doubt you're a high performer.

They could also be young/naive, but.. yeah.

I'm old enough to have survived large layoffs a couple of times in my career. In both instances a very large number of the "top performing" survivors left the company within a couple of months.

Large layoffs tend to breed a sense of insecurity and insecurity tends to get the remaining people to scurry, and the first out the door are naturally going to be the ones with the most options because their skills are highly sought after.

Putting it in very superficial terms... assuming you manage to get it right with choosing the "Cs" and lower on the layoffs, the As generally bolt soon after and you end up with a company full of Bs. At least that tends to be how it goes in my real world experience.

A lot of things managers and higher ups don't see is the human connection. You can look at the metrics, organize people by stack ranking and then fire the quote unquote worst performers, but those worst performers can also be core to the business in other ways by being good team players or good to work with.

That's when you get Jim the all-star programmer leaving because John the slightly underperforming guy gets laid off and he no longer has anyone with relevant interests to talk to. That's assuming that John is underperforming as a whole and not just underperforming relative to his team, which his team could be generally high performance.

So then instead of a 150% programmer and a 90% programmer, you end up replacing both of them with 110% programmers for a net loss in productivity.

Depends on the current ratio of A/B/C/lower. If Musk thinks that As are currently rare at Twitter, then having a company full of Bs left could be a big improvement. I have no idea if this is true, but Twitter's profits and pace of innovation don't necessarily make me think they're filled to the brim with rockstars.

I've never met a "high performing employee" who is willing to work the kind of hours being demanded, especially to meet arbitrary deadlines. Frankly to high performers know their value and are far less likely to bow to this nonsense.

High-performing employees do not enjoy being abused the way Elon is abusing current Twitter employees. Being good at what you do does not make someone enjoy working 24/7 under threat of firing. They especially don't like doing it for somebody who is openly antagonistic and disrespectful towards them.

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