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Comment by ericvolp12 | Hacker News Reader

The article doesn't really do this justice, it's not really "opting to leave" it's that entire divisions inside the Science side of NASA have had their projects defunded and so all the work the people in those labs were doing is now gone. They're being asked to leave voluntarily so they don't have to be "fired" but all their work and resources are gone and they couldn't stay if they wanted to.

A friend of mine had her division's headcount cut by >80% that was all research focused and building instruments for deep space observation. No one is hiring people to do that in the private sector. Dozens of astrophysics PhDs in that division alone are now without work and with no real prospects doing anything related to what they've dedicated their entire lives to (and accepted modest salaries as civil servants to do).

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Pardon my ignorance. But isn't it better to be laid off or fired than to resign, since the former entitles you to a few months of severance pay? Or is it different somehow under these circumstances?

I’m not sure about this round but I know someone that resigned out of the DOGE wave in Homeland and she got 9 months severance. I would assume something relatively similar.

In the US, there is no general entitlement to severance beyond a specific employer's policies, a worker's or union's contract (if any) with that employer, or any one-time offer (usually called a voluntary layoff or voluntary resignation) from that employer.

I'm not familiar with the US laws. But I have seen a few cases where the terminated employee sued their former employer for not giving them the severance pay they were owed. That's why I made that (possibly wrong) assumption. So, how does that work?

If you mean how does that lawsuit work, the only way the employee wins is if there's some type of agreement that says they should get paid. That agreement could be employer's written policy, an individual or union contract, an email from someone with authority, or so on.

(Or the lawsuit could be a hail-mary on its merits, hoping the employer will settle rather than air dirty laundry in court.)

There may be state-specific laws (in a small number of states for limited circumstances) and there is the WARN Act (but any court payout there would be a penalty on the employer and much delayed for the workers, while it only requires advance notice rather than being like severance -- and also limited by more conditions), but still "no general entitlement to severance" for the vast majority of workers no matter the reason for their separation.

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