Minimum six months severance pay + healthcare + cash bonus. That is incredibly generous all things considered.
So much negativity around these statistical outliers. The majority of companies in the US don't offer severance and it's very rare in some industries. Not saying that it's fair, but name and shame? Maybe we're living in different worlds.
Is it too prying to ask what that means in terms of your outcome? Idk what the WARN act is, and I understand that my question may be neive or too personal to post an answer to publicly, but I'm curious what the alternative to signing is/was and if the answer is generally applicable or specific to the company/agreement.
The WARN Act[1] is a bit of federal legislation that applies during mass layoffs. There are some variations from state to state, but it generally ensures anyone caught in a mass layoff (50 to 100+ people) is required to receive either 2-months advance notice or 2-months salary+medical benefits.
When Shopify performed their layoffs, there were subject to WARN payouts as they did not furnish 2-months notice.
The severance agreement they gave me and others paid out an additional 8 weeks + 1 week per year of seniority, contingent on signing.
I declined to sign, which was painful, but my main concerns were over two clauses:
* a non-mutual NDA Shopify was unwilling to change to a mutual NDA.
* a provision to appear in court on Shopify’s behalf, uncompensated, for an indeterminate about of time, whenever requested.
There was a lot of other oddness about that whole layoff I’ll leave out here for the sake of brevity, but the whole process was quite the shitshow.
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_Adjustment_and_Retrai...
https://www.gov.uk/redundancy-your-rights/redundancy-pay
To quote:
"half a week’s pay for each full year you were under 22
one week’s pay for each full year you were 22 or older, but under 41
one and half week’s pay for each full year you were 41 or older
Length of service is capped at 20 years."
And also it's pretty shit because it's capped, so for most software devs it won't be anywhere near what their actual salary was:
"If you were made redundant on or after 6 April 2023, your weekly pay is capped at £643 and the maximum statutory redundancy pay you can get is £19,290. "
For example, if you happen to be classed as a "worker", rather than an employee, you do not have a legal right to leave work or take time off to care for a sick family member or pick a child up from school.
Redundancy also comes with a required notice period that the employer must pay you through as well. And there’s a bunch of other rules around how people can be selected for redundancy.
I got laid off when Realtime Worlds went into administration and only got the statutory pay until years later the company was wound up and I got a follow on measly cheque from them for part the money they still owed me for the notice period.
Nope, that money is entirely paid by the employer.
https://www.springhouselaw.com/knowledge-hub/redundancy/who-...
"Your redundancy pay is called a statutory redundancy payment. It is calculated based on your age, weekly pay and number of years you’ve worked for your employer. You are also entitled to a paid minimum statutory Notice Period. It’s your employer’s duty to pay these, but your payments are capped"
Likewise the notice period is paid at full rate.
It appears to be very heavily biased toward artists, so even if they start that job hunt today, it’s still going to be frantic.
Despite unemployment being low, the reality is that many of those “thousands of positions” are either geographically-distributed duplicates of the same position, eternally-open cattle calls, or open-but-basically-a-formality for either getting a visa or an internal move. This makes the number of actual openings quite opaque, yet much smaller than it appears.
Of course I could simply be unlucky and swamped by other more attractive candidates. Apparently seniors are swamping Junior roles, so maybe I'm just competing with a bunch of staff/principals now in mid/senior roles.
Or did we all fall for the lifestyle inflation trap that comes with high salaries?
I'm probably a pessimist/realist but I have always lived way below my income and saved as much as possible because it really feels like the cash cow that software engineering is is eventually going to end. Layoffs are always looming. When that day comes, I want to relax as much as possible and not have a deadline to find a job,
I could afford to take months or years off, but I’d rather let that money grow in an interest-bearing account for decades and spend it later.
I'd much rather resort to temp work than dig deeply into my future if I had a choice.
If I could help it I'd rather invest in
They probably eat cheaper food? We do a lot of fruits and veggies. But not organic. Eating out is too expensive, we don't do that.
Also, I live in Southern California, it might be cheaper where you are.
2. I'm married and I have two kids. It's amazing how fast multiple years of saving disappear when you have daycare.
Just to give you an idea of what childcare looks like: It's a very reasonable question whether we should pay for childcare, or hire a full-time staff member for the household to watch the kids: The price is about the same.
I guess it is a trade-off. We could live slightly better in a bigger house but I don't want to stress and be in a tough spot if one of us lose their job. That mental sanity is worth 30% of our income to me.
Peace of mind for the cost of "only" making 4.65% interest is well worth it to me.
PS: not saying you shouldn't have gotten a better severance package.
So ... fraud? Probably nets you up to six months in prison?
Unfortunately, tons of people in the world really don't care about wrong, they only care about what they can get away with? Their argument was "I paid the unemployment tax, I should be able to take advantage of the benefit". But I agree, the point is not to use as much as possible. It's to use as little as possible. We can't have nice things because lots of people will abuse the system.
I feel bad for all these layoffs, but it seems the support system has improved drastically since then.
Most are fairly high cost living locations outside the US (ex: Sydney, Tokyo, Seoul, Paris, Dubai). Mumbai and Sao Paulo are not cheap for India and Brazil.