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Comment by ezfe | Hacker News Reader

Voluntary severance/ERO is possible without a bad culture. I’ve seen it done, people love it.

Doesn't that make people with best opportunities (most skilled workers) leave and people with least opportunities (least skilled workers) stay?

Personally if I was offered 6+ months of severance I just couldn't justify staying even in the best companies I've been at.

Yes but usually that’s fine because you structure it to happen over a timeframe that you (the company) chooses based on the person.

What is the age distribution of employees at Block? I'd guess it skews quite young. You won't have much natural attrition or interest in early retirement. And in this job market, voluntary severance is also not very attractive.

Young people love to be paid to switch jobs too - who would refuse 20 weeks of doubled income? From Squares perspective, this would lead to an adverse selection, because Square would lose the people who can easily get jobs elsewhere.

That is working on the assumption that those employees are meaningfully better than the ones who remain. If you have people you feel are under performers then yes, ideally you would lose those specifically but then it’s not a reorganization it’s a performance based layoff where you’re outright saying “you’re not good at your job”

> That is working on the assumption that those employees are meaningfully better

The assumption that people who get hired after interviewing are "better" than those who are fall off the hiring funnel underpins the entire hiring process that even Square relies on. Does the assumption seem outlandish to you?

I think that assumption is not unreasonable - but I don’t think it’s a reasonable conclusion to say the people who are more confident to jump ship are inherently better for the future of a company than those who have been around for just as long and don’t want to risk it in the market.

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