Meta's mass layoff severance agreements illegal, says judge | Hacker News Reader

Meta's mass layoff severance agreements illegal, says judge

theregister.com

55 pointsrntn14 comments

> zuckercorp

Unrelated but I hate when journalists squeeze in these insults.

The judge was part of the NLRB, and this can (and probably will) be appealed to a federal court, where it sounds like precedent doesn’t agree with the NLRB. The NLRB is a joke, and they love to issue rulings against politically unpopular people, even if the ruling is clearly wrong.

It could be that this is upheld in federal court, but we should wait and see before claiming anything is happening

> and they love to issue rulings against politically unpopular people, even if the ruling is clearly wrong

Please give an example.

Wild accusations without evidence? Shill much?

Why don't you just read the article above?

> The NLRB is a joke, and they love to issue rulings against politically unpopular people, even if the ruling is clearly wrong.

You’ll need evidence your claim here… and are you implying that their ruling was wrong in this instance? In what way? The NLRB’s decision was linked and everything seemed sound while I was reading it.

I don't know what were the conditions

But severance packages can be REALLY attractive e.g more than a year of pay

It depends. I got 18 weeks. They didn't say, but I was laid off because I was new and remote. They're all about RTO because ironically they interviewed me again for SWE roles relatively recently under the condition of RTO as an absolute requirement. Whatever, I'm not playing this stupid game anymore.

Bait and switch. This happened to me, the day before I accept their offer they tell me it’s changing to hybrid. To make up for it they offer me relocation compensation. An entire $5k! Mind you that doesn’t even cover my mortgage and, maybe more insulting, this position was the equivalent of an L9 role at google.

Anyway I happily accept because money. I never had plans to go to the office but I did make a few trips on my own dime to meet the team. The entire time “it’s so hard to find candidates like you”.

After 3 months I left for a job that pays double. Play stupid games, lose exceptional candidates.

This is highly country specific.

Luxembourg Being one of the more favorable.

Germany can be 0.

https://www.tarmack.com/blog/severance-regulations-across-co...

https://www.cnbc.com/2010/12/03/The-Worlds-Best-Places-To-Ge...

On one hand, it's probably better for everyone that employees can dish on their employers.

On the other hand, if you already signed an optional agreement not to badmouth Meta for a ton of money - would Meta be in their right to ask for all of that money back?

Maybe ethically but legally no. When the language is stricken the rest of the contract stands as agreed. What I would give for a law that makes it a punishable offense to put illegal terms in your contracts. I see it all the damn time when dealing with employers hoping that people don't know half the contract won't stand if challenged.

I don’t see why it would be ethical to give back the money either. This isn’t an uninformed person making a mistake on contract terms, this is one of the most qualified legal teams betting that they can get something by breaking the law, and losing the bet.

Meta is morally in the wrong for putting terms in their contracts they are well equipped to determine would be legally unenforceable. Individual engineers agreeing to contracts deserve some deference, while a multinational corporation deserves stricter scrutiny.

Wouldn't that just mean the contract is upheld? Like it probably says (pardon my legalese):

  We give dollhairs and you say only nice things[*]!

  [*]: If you say mean things, your dolls get a haircut.

So if Meta gets its money back, the contract is upheld... It is not like they(Meta) are going to be asking for money "back" from folks that followed the terms of the agreement, just from folks who didn't.

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