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Comment by jmull | Hacker News Reader

> Those fired got 4 weeks severance, by the way. A slap in the face, given that if they chose to not click "yes" to stay just a week ago, they would have gotten 3 months.

Can this be real? That’s seriously f-ed up.

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I was thinking, why did they give the first round 3 months and this time only 1? Why didn't they give the first round 1 month? Only thing I could come up with is that more people who were on the fence for the first round might have stayed, so giving them 3 months encouraged more people to leave, which is the ultimate goal, to save money.

This is why not getting to review severance (if leaving) and employment contracts (if staying) before having to make the "commit to hardcore" decision was unreasonable.

Unfortunately this is often standard procedure when companies do layoffs. The first round gets generous severance. In subsequent rounds, the company's death spiral has become obvious and they no longer spend on niceties like unnecessary severance.

Lesson: if your employer offers you a buyout, take it.

First round got 3 months because a no-notice mass layoff requires at least 60 days according to various state and federal WARN acts. Once you get down to actually firing people for cause, you can (usually) skirt WARN acts.

Twitter's only argument could be that this wasn't a mass layoff assuming the numbers check out, IIRC less than 50 employees at a work location (whatever that means with all remote work). Musk bought the company about 30 days ago, so it couldn't have given a60-day notice since. And I doubt that these employees were laid off "for cause", otherwise all layoffs would be for “not satisfactory” and avoid severance. Of course you're screwed if you're here on a visa that doesn't let you fight this.

If it’s “for cause,” then is any severance at all warranted?

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