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jackson1442

Layoffs are going to suck regardless, but this is one of the best severance packages I've seen in this wave:

* 15 weeks base pay + 1 week per year of employment

* 6 months COBRA + $300 mental health

* no 1-yr cliff, options can be exercised thru next year

* you can keep all your equipment

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The "$300 mental health" seems odd - for any kind of counseling/therapy/etc sessions this is a drop in the bucket in terms of cost.

It will easily cost 10x to work with a mental health professional (and insurance companies sadly pay a very small amount of it). So why add this to an otherwise reasonable package?

$300 is incredibly reasonable since it's more than $0.

They are paying the COBRA. So this goes toward copays and hitting deductible. Assuming their health coverage is good (why wouldn't it be, it's a San Fran tech company?), this gets you pretty far.

I think this is a case of small help coming across as worse than no help, even though rationally that's not true. Like if I ask you to write a quick script that'll take a half hour... offering you $5 may be worse than just asking it as a favor.

I'm sure their heart is in the right place and offering mental health coverage is a good thing, it's just the number causes a double-take.

To clarify why it bothers me: It tries to tell a story of "we as a company care about you", but at least in my experience, health care plans cover less than $100 per session, and in the SF Bay Area you easily pay $200+ per session for mental health professionals (as they are often out of network).

Maybe Apollo's health care plan has much better out of network coverage than what I'm familiar with, in which case I stand corrected (and agreed that its good to help cover copays, if this is what this actually does).

It’s like one private pay visit at a really good clinic. They can then help guide you somewhere that’s covered by insurance. Mental health is full of quackery so best start at a top notch place

You nailed it!

I think it might be just enough to make someone consider trying therapy since it’s free, and that’s a good start.

Why was this downvoted? You raised an important issue. Does this mean the health plan has terrible mental health coverage? I guess so. (It would be great if someone who works for Apollo care share details about your mental health coverage.)

When I worked in the US, my health plans had pretty good mental health coverage. You could spend 1,000s of USD per year for psychotherapy / counseling with zero-to-minor co-pays. If you required medication (prescribed by a psychiatrist), that was also well-covered with zero-to-minor co-pays. I remember specifically that mental health care had "higher coverage" because therapists were rarely part of the insurance company's network. You paid the health professional directly, then require reimbursement from health plan. (Yes, I know this isn't true for all health plans.)

To hire an experienced mental health professional in SF Bay Area, I guess the rate is 100 to 200 USD/hour. Most will have sliding scales, but that will not apply to well-paid engineers.

At least for Kaiser Permanente in the SF Bay Area, which is one of the biggest healthcare providers, they are notoriously bad at covering and providing mental health services

It's worth noting that a lot of therapists (especially solo or small-practice therapists) don't take any insurance at all, which makes visits de facto out-of-network.

Folks on an HDHP or who don't get through their deductible most years would probably end up spending most, if not all, of this out of pocket. Even if they would get something back they have to do all the dealing with the insurer.. and that's assuming that they understand superbills and all the BS that insurance companies make you wade through...

In short, $300 just clears all of this out of the way. You go; you get reimbursed for the visit; you get to decide what to do next.

It’s an amount that likely covers the first visit. People that have struggled in the past will already know the benefits and the service. People newly disaffected will be reluctant to “just go” so the 300 bucks takes that off the table. If/when they go and decide it’s a value add to their circumstances then it will be prioritized and paid for.

I see it as a coupon to try it out.

Fair point, I read this more under the light of paying for an ongoing therapist relationship to deal with a challenging situation (which as noted in another comment, $300 as a one time payment doesn't do much if you have weekly sessions with an out of network provider).

I agree it might help someone make a decision to try out therapy and see whether its a good idea for them.

In my experience that covers 2-4 visits outside of insurance. That's enough to help you process eg. the stress of suddenly losing your job

Crazy. Usually it's just "Pay stops today, benefits at the end of the month. Hand in your badge - off you go."

No it's not. Severance is extremely common, while this package is quite generous.

Severance is definitely not common in startups. They'll usually burn the cash right up until the very last investor says 'no more' and then call it quits. They might have one more pay period (or two) in the bank.

Or worse: they go right up to the edge, convince people to work for back pay for "a month or two", then shut down afterward. I've seen that happen.

I got hired by a place, and my first paycheck bounced.

The owners are now billionaires.

(They sold the company to a Fortune 100 about 18 months later.)

Employers are by dollar amount the biggest actual thieves by far in the US. Business owners ought to generally receive more scorn and critical evaluation than common property thieves who represent a thin fragment, if we really care about theft

Why don't you go start a business and become one of these rich employers you speak of? If taking such risks wasn't rewarded accordingly, then I don't think people would be nearly as eager to start a business.

There can be a lot of risks involved, and a lot of theft.

https://calmatters.org/explainers/when-employers-steal-wages...

I'm talking about a system at scale, not individual actors. You don't know what I'm doing as an individual and it's not relevant to a discussion of material reality as observed. If your solution to this problem at scale is for everyone to become a rich employer in order to avoid wage theft, I don't know what to tell you

Re: risk staked, I will add that for many business owners their greatest risk and fear is simply having to work for a wage themselves.

Respond to "stealing is bad" with "then why don't you become a thief if it's so easy?!?" is very strange.

Hi I don't have power to downvote, so please accept my comment in place: irrelevant.

Doubtless for some cohort of employers you are correct.

Unfortunately your statement is painted with a wide brush, covering everyone from Jeff at Amazon to the owner of a corner grocery store. Everything from profitable FAANGs, to VC funded startups with hypergrowth ambitions, to small, finally profitable, boot-strapped endeavours.

Clearly among that group there are some who have embraced late-stage capitalism, who are milking their custoners and employees at every turn.

However, I would suggest, that many more have spent a life-time working harder, with less income security, doing what it takes in good times and bad. Looking after employees, treating them, and customers, fairly.

If after all this time they become well compensated, perhaps even rich, calling them "theives" belies the effort, and sacrifice, to reach that place.

To respond briefly, [Jeff at] Amazon has been convicted of being one of the leading wage thieves, and small business owners like the corner grocery store are also frequently accused and caught for wage theft. It is a pretty wide brush that's needed to evaluate the majority category of theft in the US.

I haven't mentioned anything about the effort or value employers provide. I don't think hard work from owners is relevant to the amount they thieve. And I wonder why you don't mention anything about the hard work provided by the labor who are victims to the largest category of theft, who by definition do the majority of the work obligated in business to begin with.

It’s definitely common in parts of the world where workers have organized to have severance required by law or through other organized means. When workers demand it one on one with their employers, they have no leverage and are at the mercy of “nice owners” (ones that value reputations effects created by worker-favorable market conditions)

Not only is not common but it's definitely not "extremely common." In the current wave of layoffs signaling the end of the "cheap money era" it does seem more common however. At least among the types of companies that are likely to make it onto the HN front page. I've worked for plenty of startups where we got nothing more than being paid up through the day we were laid off. And most of those withheld our last check until we returned all company property.

Severance is common in high paying tech jobs. Severance is not common in general.

Almost 60% of US workers are hourly and most of them don't get severance. A lot of the other 40% dont either.

https://www.workstream.us/blog/hourly-vs-salaried-jobs-benef...

Severance as in a 'voluntary' payment by employers is a US thing that I don't understand. Do you mind explaining why it gets paid at all?

In the UK, it's common for employers to have contractual obligation to pay a notice period, and for longer term employees they are legally obliged to be firing them on capacity or redundancy grounds - so it is common to pay some severance in order to pay the employee to resign themself and sign some legal paperwork saying it's okay.

I don't get why employers pay extra money "just to be nice" where there isn't some legal reason to do it...?

Thought there are 0 hour job as well in Uk. But Uk at least have universal health care.

This kind of package is very rare. It's uncommon to get any kind of severance without tenure and many companies have been laying off w/no severance what-so-ever in my area regardless of tenure. They pay through the current week, expect you to return all equipment, and f right off.

"If I haven't already talked to you, today is your last day. You will receive one more paycheck and you can keep your laptop."

just curious, can one collect unemployment during severance?

I would think not. The one time I was on UE (back in 2008), you had to report any income you received.

edit: apparently in some states you can - at least in Colorado in 2008, you could not. Generally your unemployment would be reduced by the amount of income you brought in. So, in any case, severance payments from a typical tech job would far exceed UE anyway...

Hmm, I thought this was a good question so I looked it up. At least in my state you cannot.

It's state by state. I know you can collect unemployment while receiving severance in Washington.

not an expert, but my understanding is it depends on how the severance is paid off.

If the company keeps you on payroll and pays you weekly, then you cannot collect unemployment. If the company gives you a lump sum then you may be able to.

If a condition of the severance is that you sign a document saying you are quitting instead of being fired, then you cannot collect unemployment.

My understanding comes from recent googling because of similar layoffs that happened at my company. I'd welcome more informed thoughts on the matter.

> If the company gives you a lump sum then you may be able to.

Yep, in the case of the lump sum you're not being paid after you're given the lump sum. I was laid off in 2014. Got 4 months in a lump sum when I went out the door. There were no problems applying for unemployment.

If a condition of the severance is that you sign a document saying you are quitting instead of being fired, then you cannot collect unemployment.

This is false. If a company makes you sign a statement that you are quitting instead of being fired as a condition of getting severance, they are committing unemployment insurance fraud and are subject to civil and criminal sanction in most states.

(The point of trying to make employees do this is to avoid claims against the company's unemployment insurance account in the state. How UI works differs from state to state, but in all instances claims against UI increases the company's ongoing UI expense.)

And a key giveaway is that companies rarely pay severance to people who actually quit.

This is how people get caught for fraud in quite a few cases too. They create a one sided contract that outlines their fraud and then they distribute it to people who run straight to lawyers, as they should.

I had a layoff like that, they gave me the option of choosing. Lump sum or "stay on the payroll but have no access."

I went with the latter because it paid better.

For a while I was always stressed out about background checks, because it showed that I was working two jobs. (I got a job to replace it almost immediately, but continued to get paid by the old place.)

Sorry but where exactly would a background check show you have two jobs?

The payroll companies sell your data to prospective employers sometimes included in a background report bundled deal.

Usually company doing a background check calls all your previous employers to verify dates of your employment.

> where exactly would a background check show you have two jobs

"The Work Number" is a very popular service for this. They are owned by Equifax.

you can keep all your equipment

Including laptops with likely the customary IT spyware as well as confidential company data? If I were in this situation, I would at the very least wipe the drive completely, and probably reflash the BIOS too before actually considering it safe for personal use.

Obviously they’re going to wipe the laptops

Hopefully their IT department does that, because if not, I wouldn't expect less technology savvy former employees to go through the trouble.

It’s all done remotely, by the aforementioned corpware.

That's a fantastic deal.

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