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Comment by chrisss395 | Hacker News Reader

I see others mentioning the severance package being decent for a US company. I'm glad they received something, but I'm sorry, can we stop calling this decent? It's markedly lopsided when a company can one day decide to lay off a large portion of their workforce and think 4 months is anywhere near acceptable. The average time to find a new job is significantly longer, especially depending on role and seniority.

I'm tired of seeing American workers bear the brunt of the stupidity of the executive teams that have done their job so poorly as to suddenly need to lay off workers. If you are a leader and you are put in this situation, it is because you are a terrible at your job. It's not the market, it's not AI or some unforeseen disaster...it's because you had your head up your ass instead of actively running the business.

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It's decent compared to the severance I just got for getting laid off: 2 weeks of pay and healthcare through the end of the month (at a tech company too)

> The average time to find a new job is significantly longer

Is that really true?

https://standout-cv.com/stats/how-long-does-it-take-to-get-a...

They found 3.8 months which sounds realistic. I can't imagine the average being significantly longer (like 6+ months?).

It says senior engineer almost 8 months right in that article

Ok cool, but he just said the average. Not the average for senior engineers.

From the article

> Graduates take an average of 5.6 months to land a job in the UK. This is almost 2 months longer than the national average

also noting the average includes, at the fast end,

> Job Average time to get a job (months) > Bar staff 1 > Sales assistant (retail) 1 > Waiter/waitress 1.2 > Delivery driver 1.2

I once worked for a company for 3 years, and during layoffs was offered... to work until the end of the month, and be paid for that. With no severance afterward.

4 months is not bad.

If the executive team is stupid, and the company making bad decisions, you should be actively searching for a different job. I've never worked at a place where it was any secret when things were getting rough.

You're not a slave to your employer. You have all the same autonomy that they have. No one is forcing you to be there.

People are so hopelessly confused about what a business relationship is. They actually drink the kool-aid of "We're a family here". No, you're work is not your family, it's a business, treat it like one, because I can assure you that leadership does.

>instead of actively running the business.

I’d like to be convinced of this point.

What about your CEO actively spending their time pursuing their own creative interests and doing speaking gigs railing against AI? And posting them on the company YT and his own YT just a week before somberly announcing layoffs where you cite AI as part of the reason... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17_HcR95YBc

To be fair, tech companies I've worked at that have done layoffs have had seemingly full-time CEOs. So I guess at least Jack is having a good time.

Patreon entered my brain again recently only because Jack went to talk to The Verge on a podcast (text: https://www.theverge.com/podcast/952607/patreon-ceo-jack-con...). If you write a book or star in a film, you try to appear on every late night show there still is, etc. He’s trying hard to be relevant and position his company as good guys.

Now the rail against AI while laying off due to AI… would be quite ironic, but he seems more anti-theft while still excited about the tech. (Like me, theft is bad and open-source tech is neat.)

This attitude is why US engineers are 3x more than your European ones.

It doesn't take 4 months to find a job. Life goes on.

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