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Comment by myworkinisgood | Hacker News Reader

How come no severance? Despite of how you're being fired, you should be entitled to severance right?

There is no entitlement in any country/state/province I've ever worked. You can quit at any time and your employer can fire you at any time - no reason needed either way

https://www.ncsl.org/labor-and-employment/at-will-employment...

They have a new performance rating system that says that 5% of every team should be ranked as "needs improvement" meaning an automatic PIP. When MSFT did this in the 2000's, it was a requirement to fire that group. Firings for performance do not entitle an employee to severance, but official "layoffs" generally do outside of bankruptcy. Net cost of this move is hidden in employees spending time updating resumes and doing job interviews, not in direct bottom line dollars from actually paying out severance.

The other hidden cost is the paranoia and backstabbing that is encouraged when someone in every team has to be fired even if everyone did objectively excellent work.

Paranoia and backstabbing happens everywhere.

What happens if stack rank->pip is too obvious is that people and teams will not cooperate with newer fresh meat. They're incentivized to keep knowledge protected for their job. New people struggle to get above the pip mark and it becomes a revolving door.

Firings for performance do not entitle an employee to severance,

This keeps getting repeated on this thread but its not true. U.S. WARN laws require severance or 60 days notice for mass layoffs (which would definitely include 5% of a company as large as GM). Only terminations for cause are exempted, and performance is only grounds for cause in a very small handful of "right to work" states.

The point is that this move isn't a mass layoff. It's not a layoff at all, it's firing "under-performing" employees. QED no entitlement.

No, my point is that it's irrelevant whether they're underperforming or not; what matters for WARN purposes is the amount of workers being laid off.

Only for-cause terminations are excluded the WARN Act, and for-cause in this context means specifically behavior that violates the law, or the employee handbook setting forth company rules (which are binding on both the company and employee, which is why companies make you read them every year). Also note that companies can't make poor performance a violation of company rules; this has been tried before and smacked down pretty harshly even in right-to-work states.

Thus, those 5% laid off due to stack ranking are entitled to 60 days of severance, or 60 days notice of an impending termination.

You're missing the part where 5% isn't let go at once triggering WARN.

Think of this is as a continuous process of evaluation -> pip -> fire. This means no WARN and no severance.

You're missing the part where the WARN Act doesn't require the employees to be let go all at once.

And the part where rolling layoffs at a company the size of GM will all involve multiple layoffs exceeding the WARN threshold.

And the part where no general counsel will let their company knowingly subject itself to a $500 daily fine per employee, in addition to full back pay for the mandated period.

And the part where GM satisfies its WARN obligations by paying the mandated severance (or more) in lieu of providing advance notice...which is what most companies do...

"Right to work" is an anti union provision and has nothing to with being fired for cause or not.

Which is exactly why they will try to bully you into quitting rather than fire you in jurisdictions with strong firing compensation/protection regulation.

in the US at least, I'd be surprised if you entitled to anything, especially in a "right to work" state. It's mostly goodwill.

Severance is a "we'll pay you to leave quietly" deal, not an entitlement. If the company plans to be continually laying people off (kind of a stupid idea because it makes your other employees nervous) they can find other ways to ensure silence from their victims.

> kind of a stupid idea because it makes your other employees nervous

And in the medium and long term solidifies a self-serving culture rather than individuals working towards the group’s and firm’s success.

perhaps this 5% is employees who were documented underperforming, breaking rules, getting into conflicts, gaming at work, etc. ehe company has every right to let them go without severance. usually referred to as "regretted attrition" which is ironic in this case because GM doesn't regret them leaving in the slightest.

And in my experience you run out of those individuals rather quickly and start cutting well-intended employees after only a few years. After that, you start firing hard working individuals who can’t or won’t play the game.

After that, you’re selecting for corporate psychopaths.

Pitting your employees in a hunger games-esque charade is sure to have unintended consequences.

Surely, if I was an employee here, self-preservation would be of the utmost importance. If I fix something to make my job easier, I will keep it to myself. If I have the opportunity to sabotage a teammate, I would. If I can lie easily, I will.

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