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Comment by logicalmind | Hacker News Reader

I work at a company that was in bad shape during the financial crisis. A temporary CEO was put in charge. Ultimately, a number of companies were merged to create one company that could survive. In the end, one of the CEO's of the merged companies became the CEO of the final company. His first act as CEO was to offer everyone in the company a tenure-based package to leave the company. I don't know the full numbers, but nearly everyone in the IT department took the deal. And I am aware of many people in other departments who took the deal as well. Rumors were that between 30 and 40 percent of staff took the deal. Once this happened, the company got rid of that CEO and had to then offer alternative packages to people to stay. Basically the same amount you would have received if you left, but paid out to you over a few years to guarantee you'd stay.

It was unclear what his intentions were. To determine loyalty to the company, possibly. But what actually happened was that people who were good at their job, and could find work elsewhere, left. So they would have had all of the top talent leave the company and the remaining employees would be the people who did just enough to get by. The company is still trying to make amends with the employees.

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I think the idea with Zappos is that they're supposed to be such a great place to work that you wouldn't want to leave.

And in Zappos' case, I get why they offered severance deals. They were embarking on a radical experiment in organizational structure, and not everyone is going to be on board with it. Rather than having a bunch of people at the water cooler talking shit about the changes, you offer them money to leave so that people who aren't on board with the changes get out of the way.

I would guess that many of the people at Zappos who took the deal were managers themselves. If you're a middle manager, you have skills around managing people but maybe not so much with doing the actual work. If your skill set doesn't align with the new job you're being asked to do (which is effectively a demotion), and the company offers you a buyout to leave, what would you do?

I imagine that people in management positions have reason to take the package even if their skill set is perfectly aligned to the new job. If you're on a career path where one of the major measures of your success is how many people are under you, then you better be pretty committed to the Zappos vision if you're staying on. A long stint of not having anyone reporting through you might be a bit of a black spot on your resume if you ever end up for a position elsewhere.

The list of people who took the offer was posted internally. I imagine it must be out in the wild somewhere by now as well.

Besides managers who are looking to jump ship and pretend to do work somewhere else, a lot of professionals are on the list- lawyers, accounting people. I imagine some of these people will show up on Amazon's roster in the near future.

> "Pretend to do work"

Little presumptuous isn't it?

Yes, even the title change from something like "Senior Manager" to "Employee" might hurt your chances. With IT/dev it's not so bad, as some very good organizations list both grads and greybeards as "Member of Technical Staff." I have to imagine that those who remain plan to retire from there.

> If you're on a career path where one of the major measures of your success is how many people are under you,

My assumption would be that those are the people that this move is attempting to push out.

I'm surprised the number of people taking the deal isn't higher. If I need religious zeal, I'll go join a religion.

well another way to look at it is that there is already a fundamentalist organizational religion that most people adhere to, they're just unaware of being part of one already

Please explain.

Please identify this "fundamentalist organizational religion" a bit clearer. Did you mean capitalism, b-school, emergent hierarchical organizations.. tribes?

its pretty simple, there is obviously a very ingrained faith in the standard organizational structure w/ management, staff. its so obvious that is how things should be (its "fundamental"), that its difficult to consider that belief is possibly also a matter of faith, even if that standard structure was itself emergent in some respects.

its possible the commenter i was responding to was referring more to the "rah rah" aspect of zappos as a whole, rather than religious zeal re: this new organizational concept. those are different things in my mind, also both are exhibited by the directive "to all employees: read this book and indicate you have done so".

anyway it isnt a comment on whether or not the zappos idea itself is useful and/or just another fad coated with new terminology (i have no idea). just that when you can identify someone else as engaging in religious zealotry, its fun to consider what that zealotry is being compared to, which probably turns out to be something like "everybody knows its supposed to be this way", aka. some sorta implicit religion.

There's plenty of reasons to stick around that aren't religious zeal.

There certainly are but are there that many reasons that are good enough to make someone stick around instead of taking 3 months pay while not having to work?

I imagine most developers could find a job with similar pay in a month or maybe one and a half, so the reasons would have to be strong enough that you'd give up an extra 10% in salary, or even being able to take a 3 month long vacation.

On the other hand, if they recently had to move to Vegas I wonder how hard it is to find work there and I can totally see people not wanting to move again so quickly.

Henderson is a suburb of Vegas. You wouldn't have to move unless you wanted to walk to work.

In the grand scheme of things, 3 months pay is not that significant (a large enough performance bonus can already match that, or a joining bonus for that matter). Now compare that against the chances that you will enjoy your new same-pay job less, or you'll have to move far away, or delay career advancement while you learn the ropes at the new job. There are plenty of potential advantages from changing jobs too, depending on the job, so it actually might make a lot of sense to switch. The point here is that 3 months of salary tips the balance only slightly.

Of course, those who have reservations about working where they are, should take the severance package, but that's the point.

Also, I am a bit surprised that we are discussing 3 months of pay as a magnanimous, almost foolish, concession from management, whereas in many places around the world that kind of compensation is law mandated when you lay-off people without reason.

3 months is less than 1% of lifetime earnings. Not worth throwingaway your plans (whatever your plans may be)

But factor in the value of 3 months. http://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/timevalueofmoney.asp

3 months pay is nothing compared to years at a great company with great culture and great people. The work itself might be the same company to company, but the people and the environment depend a lot on internal culture that's not particularly easy to find before taking a job elsewhere. One spends at least 8 hours a day working with others, not just writing rote code. There's very much a human aspect to employment, not simply economic self-interest.

> I imagine most developers could find a job with similar pay in a month or maybe one and a half

Geographic area heavily influences this. Last time, I spent 8 weeks with almost no nibbles (and then suddenly had two companies fighting for me on the 9th week).

I've got mouths to feed. And when you interview for your new job, you are going to be asked why you took the buyout. "LOL 3 months salary" isn't a good answer.

Your point is valid. However, saying "LOL 3 months salary" would be a foolish answer in an interview even if you did take the buyout. Leaving a company over differences in philosophy (management, engineering, or ethical) are all perfectly acceptable reasons to part ways without compensation. I wouldn't take the buyout flatly, but if I wholeheartedly felt the direction the company was going in was foolish, I would certainly consider it.

Not everyone likes the ping-pong ball model of modern employment. A stable job, where I show up five days a week, the company takes care of me, and I get to form stable working relationships with my coworkers, is valuable to me and many others.

I'm surprised the number isn't higher because they recently moved Zappos from Henderson to downtown Las Vegas.

Recently? I'm pretty sure it was over 12mths ago as I toured the Vegas HQ in late May last year and it was well lived in by then.

I consider that recent. Long enough to know you hate the commute.

Three months is cool, but it's a big reordering of life. If you enjoy your job, you shouldn't take it. Maybe your next job is worse. And people in SV say "every good developer has 5 offers waiting for him by breakfast" but it's not that way in every part of the country.

On the other hand, if you've been contemplating a job change, take it.

I believe Zappos is in Las Vegas. And they're not really a tech company, although they use tech.

> they're not really a tech company

By your definition, what is a tech company?

Guessing he or she means they sell shoes, not software or hardware.

My definition is that they use tech as their differentiator and/or as their value proposition.

You can be a tech company and sell commodities, Amazon is an example of that.

Amazon has not only used technology as their differentiator/equalizer, they've also innovated in other areas of technology and now resell that to others. Amazon is definitely a tech company on that measure. Zappos - they sell shoes. Now maybe they've done some innovating/inventing themselves, but I don't think they are known for that aspect of their company.

Not sure if you're aware, but Zappos is owned by Amazon.

There are reasons to stay besides religious zeal, too. I'm not certain how one can easily see this change as seriously threatening unless you're somewhere in the middle of the org chart. If you're at the bottom, hey, your day probably won't change that much (unless you hate your boss). If you're at the top, well, I've yet to hear that Mr. Hsieh is planning to abdicate.

Or perhaps you've experienced the Zappos culture first hand, and, for whatever reason, don't think that this is a good idea.

Some may still quit. They may just not have taken the last second offer. Instead, I wonder how many are interviewing and will leave once they have an offer safely secured. I'm sure Zappos will not want to publish that, because combining that will take them to probably 20+% turnover. Ouch.

Keep in mind that they're in vegas. There aren't a lot of similar companies there to transition to.

it's easy to forget that zappos was acquired by amazon. i am interested to what extent sales growth or lack thereof, would be a driver of radical restructuring.

I think that Amazon is content to let Zappos experiment. If Zappos loses customers, statistically most of them will end up at Amazon anyway. Tony Hsieh is pretty out there, and a lot of his ideas sound kind of crazy, but I think Bezos believes in him and is willing to let him try. Even though everyone says "Oh, that won't work" you don't know until you try.

If Zappos can experiment with a new leadership style, maybe it produces desirable results that can be replicated elsewhere. Maybe it fails miserably. What's likely to happen is that there will be things that work and things that don't, and I guarantee Amazon is interested in that. Because of all the things I've heard about Amazon (many of them good), I've never heard that it's a great place to work. Their turnover is high, so maybe they're looking for ways to reduce it while not losing the culture of urgency (though some would say fear) that makes them so good at executing on things.

Of course, if it's a total failure, Bezos will likely fire Tony and trash the entire idea.

It's a great place to work. There, you can no longer say "you never heard it's a great place to work". Sample size of 1, but I love it.

That's great to hear, but how much did that change for you or others when the holocracy processes were added? I can see where that could totally change how I feel about a job even if I still love my coworkers, the job perks, etc.

Sorry I should have clarified - I meant Amazon is.

Are you an AWS employee? They're the only people who ever say good things about working at Amazon in my time reading HN.

Nope not AWS

That brings the total count of satisfied workers I have heard from to 2.

My spouse worked there, a couple of steps down from Jeff Bezos. At least parts of Amazon are micro-managed misery.

Amazon implemented pay ($2,000 -- $5,000) to quit about a year ago.

For warehouse associates. This doesn't apply to engineers.

"Rather than having a bunch of people at the water cooler talking shit about the changes, you offer them money to leave so that people who aren't on board with the changes get out of the way."

Each change creates winners and losers. The losers will be around that water cooler. You can't manage this before the trajectory is flown. Best of luck to all involved.

Rather than having a bunch of people at the water cooler talking shit about the changes, you offer them money to leave so that people who aren't on board with the changes get out of the way.

There's that element directly, but I think even more powerful is the sense to the employees that they are consciously opting in to staying. They are literally passing up a (small) pot of gold in order to stay in the new structure. The mere fact of choosing in such a way (even if that's the default choice) will tend to increase commitment in the inevitable dark moments of the transition.

Doesn't Zappos make a similar offer to everyone that finishes their new employee training program?

Yep, 3k -- and for the same reason. http://bigthink.com/inside-employees-minds/zappos-will-give-...

This is the risk (the "wrong" people taking the buyout). It was the source of a lawsuit during one of HPs many acquisitions and then downsizes where HP tried to give "selected" individuals the option to leave early, and the folks who were not given the option sued. The courts affirmed that you could not give preferential treatment for early retirement/severance it was everyone had the same choice or no one did.

For what it is worth, managing staffing levels is one of the hardest things to do in a large organization because the visibility of contribution is so low. You have the quiet guy who gets things done everywhere but is invisible, and the useless guy who keeps up a very believable patter of what they are getting done. If you layoff people just based on the optics of the situation you screw yourself.

a la 'Office Space'

Personally I think this idea is probably flawed in the first place.

I think that's one of the important roles of a team leader - to know who is getting how much done (among many others). I wonder how Zappos will accomplish this now that they have no team leaders.

I had a team leader who had to convince me that I was getting things done. One of the best.

Yes, and another way to look at this is that team leaders maintain teams. They're not there merely for leadership's sake, they happen to have a particular role, maintenance.

Who will maintain teams without people whose specific role is maintenance?

People work at a company for a variety of reasons. Some want or need the money. Some really believe in the company's mission. Some like the people they'll be working with. Some want to develop skills for their next move. Some want the brand name or status. Over time, the company will accrete people of all sorts of different motivations.

What a buy-out does is take money out of the equation. It makes it so that everyone who is there for financial reasons has a financial reason to leave. This can be logical if the company has little to offer financially, as in, for example, a company that's in bad shape during the financial crisis. The only employees who're left are those who are not in it for financial reasons - the true believers in the company, those who like their coworkers, and those who want to gain skills. Those people will be a lot happier when they don't have to listen about their financially-motivated colleagues grousing about how the company is going under, and they'll be more productive when they're happier.

The CEO's fatal mistake was that he forgot that his board is financially motivated. From their perspective, he's acting insane, because why would anyone stay at a company for reasons other than money? And they're his bosses, so they can have him removed. For this to have worked, he probably should've taken the company private, or at least packed the board with people who bought into his vision for what kind of company it should be.

The board's fatal mistake was in removing the CEO. By offering buyouts, he had just aligned the company in one direction. By removing him, they suddenly took the company in a different direction - one that they had less than zero capital in, because the CEO's previous actions had alienated everyone who might've helped them.

In both cases, the failure was in understanding that people are different and may have different motivations, and that a company survives based on how well it can hold together people who all have their own goals and worldviews and motivations.

I don't see how the usual buyout amount would be able to take the money out of the equation. "Low performers" who don't have good chances in the job market surely will stay, since their earning potential is greater than what you reasonably offer them in a buyout. The likelihood that the skilled employees will take the money, knowing they will get another job immediately, is much higher.

The buyout is so that you get mediocre, financially motivated people to leave. The idea is that you give them enough cash that they can be reasonably sure they will find another job before running out, but not as much as you would pay out in salary if they stayed.

Imagine your employee base graphed on two orthogonal dimensions: their performance level, and their motivation for working for you. (In reality, "motivation for working for you" is actually many dimensions, and performance is likely to be somewhat correlated with certain motivations, but this illustrates the point at least.) The buyout offer doesn't affect people who aren't financially motivated, so take them out of the equation, and look only at the folks who are strictly financially rational.

You can loosely group them into high-performers (those who are known achievers, who always have an offer in hand as soon as they make overtures toward searching), mid-performers (those who pretty much amble along, and for whom the job search provokes intense anxiety, because they typically have to put in 3-6 months of full-time searching to find a new position), and low-performers (those who don't do anything and everyone already knows it). In most companies, the distribution of these is roughly 10-80-10. You can fire all the low performers; the point of bucketing them into the "low performer" category is that their underperformance is obvious enough that they leave a documented paper trail that makes this unambiguous. And in a company that's run into financial difficulties, the top 10% has probably already left, because they continually get job offers and when your company is going down the tubes, it's to their advantage to take them. That means that most of your financially-motivated employee base probably fits into the middle range, the folks who are average employees and will have average difficulty finding a new job.

The point of a buy-out is to reduce the anxiety levels surrounding getting that new job to the point where anyone who is unhappy at your company but isn't sure they have enough money or skills to go elsewhere ends up taking the leap.

"What a buy-out does is take money out of the equation. It makes it so that everyone who is there for financial reasons has a financial reason to leave."

Unless you're not confident enough that you'd be able to get a job in those X months, either because of your skills or there not being jobs around.

Also, even if you like your coworkers, or want to acquire skills, if the ship is going down and you feel confident enough that you'd be getting another job quickly, then you might jump ship anyway.

The company I worked at "solved" this problem by offering the same package but with a clausing stating "key employees are not eligible to receive this package". There was some legalese at the end of the document that deciding who was "key" was ultimately up the company and no explanation was required.

As one of my co-workers explained it: If you're incompetent you can get a great payout and then go be someone else's problem.

That sucks. If you ask, you are signaling you want to leave, which you don't want to do unless you really can.

Isn't that illegal, though?

Possibly, but I have no idea really. You'd have to sue them anyways to find out wouldn't you?

> It was unclear what his intentions were. To determine loyalty to the company, possibly.

Corporate loyalty has been dead for many, many years.

> Corporate loyalty has been dead for many, many years.

The higher-ups in be corporations have yet to get that memo.

Corporate loyalty is gone, but nepotism never dies.

Maybe you need to write a 5000-word memo to get the message across.

http://www.webwordcount.com/count.php?u=FoW3dBdV

They got the memo; they just want to have their cake and eat it, too. They want you to be loyal to them, but to retain the option to dump you on the street as soon as somebody needs to bump their profit numbers by 0.1%.

You missed a zero or two on the right side of your decimal point.

Surely you meant "left side".

Since we've learned that they are almost all sociopaths (not as an epithet, but clinically so), this behavior is perfectly consistent.

Not for lots of people. And startup loyalty is even worse.

Corporate loyalty died when companies stopped paying pensions, or severely reducing pensions. Our parents always worried about pensions and corporate loyalty. In our generation, and especially technology, we make a lot more money, and can generally make even more by switching jobs. Therefor, corporate loyalty, in the current tech industry, is virtually dead.

The one case that it isn't is perhaps companies like google where an employee gets the founders award, which is millions of $$$ of stock options that vest over a relatively large stretch of years. I know a guy who won this award and he is google for life.

Could not agree more, the only downside is that some companies see you as a job hopper, but you can just explain to them that losing 30K-40K/year (aka staying in your job) is not an option

I've worked at companies at a minimum of 2 years or more and have switched between 5 companies. Would that be considered job hopping?

If I was a hiring manager, seems totally reasonable to me.

I have been at 6 companies in 10 years and have not had a problem explaining it. In tech, 1 year per company is reasonable as a minimum.

Same here, I had to explain to a HR manager once, but I told them if they don't get it they are not looking for me. :)

Maybe at Silicon Valley startups but it will raise flags in many places. That may be fine based on your interests however.

Is 30k-40k really correct? That seems a bit high to me.. If you could make even 30k more a year from switching jobs, and you started at the standard 100k, after 10 years you would be making 400k.

I haven't heard of any developers who make 400k. Then again, I suppose you never said this was for developers, so is there another job where this actually applies?

There's only been one documented (via a lawsuit) in the 400K range, although that was a few years ago: http://adtmag.com/articles/2011/05/27/what-highest-paid-prog...

I was following this pattern: test engineer, administrator, junior developer, developer, senior developer, principal developer, architect, principal architect.

My last 2 job changes were in the 20 - 40K increase range.

250K is not unheard of. I guess this caps out somewhere, but if the US immigration keeps H1Bs under this control than we are going to soon experiencing 300K wages.

Ah okay I think when you said job change I just assumed it meant going to another company, not having a new position or title. I do wonder how quickly you can change positions though. I imagine once you get to senior it's very difficult keep going higher. At least this was what I heard at Amazon.

Do you know if it's easier to get promoted when switching jobs? I have a hard time believing that since I think you would have had to accomplish something significant on several projects to get to principal, but if you switch companies it's very hard for them to truly the impact of what you did.

I think you are overestimating companies... For most of my career (12 companies, 3 of them my own) it has been easier to get hired at a higher position in a different place than being promoted internally.

When you are applying for a new, higher, role having enough experience at your current level, being sure enough of yourself and demonstrating the ability to create value within the test period will be more than enough for most companies out there.

When trying to get promoted internally you have to deal mostly with office politics. In a way, the quality of your work is only a small part. And, if you are good enough, it can go against you, I know people that have been skipped for promotions for years because their managers knew that the whole department depended on them.

Of course, there are exceptions and I admire those companies, but they are just that: Exceptions.

Interesting. Well, you would know better than I do since you obviously have way more experience! I appreciate the advice and will keep that in mind!

Staying with one company is hard. Especially getting promoted in Amazon, that is crazy crazy hard. Your best promotions are when you are changing jobs, I think the best time is to change when you can get a more senior position with obviously more responsibilities but also more recognition.

In SF this can be achieved quick, enough if you demonstrate your knowledge during the interview loops. For certain positions they also ask for previous experience but those positions more of the management side I think. If somebody walks in and writes good code we are willing to hire even into senior position, I don't care too much about the history. I have seen a candidate walking in to the interview from a grocery story where he worked as a cashier. Not only he got hired based on the interviews but he became one of the top performers on the team.

I think it is definitely easier to get "promoted" by changing jobs, especially if you are in a meritocratic environment, like some of the startups in SF.

You absolutely can make 400k or more by working as a developer in finance. I work in finance and have made more than that some years at my previous job.

Hey I appreciate the input. I'm actually EXTREMELY interested in finance so I'd love to know more about it.

Do developers in finance require any unique skills? Also is there anything special one would have to do to break into the finance industry?

I guess analytical skills, math probably, but these are pretty general. What unique skills are you thinking about?

I don't have the slightest idea since I don't work there. I was more wondering if there was anything I would need to know before applying specific to the industry or if it's just like any other software engineering job.

Math... and a lot of it. Look up job descriptions for a Quantitative Developer or Quantitative Analyst.

To succeed in financial dev you need to be comfortable working in a heavyweight, slow large-corporate environment. Think lots of meetings, lots of time estimation & metrics, using Java, C# or C++ (shudder), people caring what you wear. If you can deal with this, the rewards are great. If you can't, it's hell.

There are finance startups where the above doesn't apply, but they don't pay like the banks do.

What you describe in the first paragraph aren't roles that pay 400k...

I got a $40k raise when I switched jobs the first time, and I was paid pretty well before then (not quite $100k, but I'm not in a tech hub either).

Then again, that's the only time I've ever done it, so I can't really say at all whether that trend might continue (almost certainly not).

Plenty of developers at Apple, Facebook and Google making 400K per year total comp. They aren't the majority, but there are enough of them to not be rare.

A 10 or 15k pay increase per job hop should be easily achievable by much of the Hackernews demographic/stereotype. Sticking around several years for a single digit percent annual payrise could easily cost you 30k/yr over 2 or 3 years compared to switching jobs yearly or faster.

The speed with while a typical ~100k dev role gets promoted or awarded payrises to become a 200k position is _much_ slower that the dev who cherry-picks better opportunities when that arise, and works out close-enough-to-truthful explanations for any resulting 6 or 12 months roles (usually with ex-colleagues who'll give references backing up your post-role-claim that it was a 6 or 12 month contract role, not a permanent position.)

Then they'll simply complain that you're only "motivated by money" and that you "don't really want to be part of this team". This is, of course, ignoring the fact that everyone is motivated by money, and almost none of their employees would still be working there if they stopped paying.

Corporate loyalty is a two-way street.

In medieval times, the vassal paid homage and swore fealty in a commendation ceremony, and the lord granted him a fief. The vassal had a duty to aid his lord, and the lord had a duty to protect his vassal. The vassal gave loyalty, and got a secure income in return. It was a permanent relationship. To dissolve it, you had to use an axe, rather than a pink slip.

Corporate loyalty died when management culture forgot that the company owes duties to its employees in addition to its shareholders. Defined benefit pensions became defined contribution retirement plans. Then the employer contribution disappeared. Health insurance plans dwindled from all medical expenses paid to you paying 80% of the premium, $30 co-pays at every turn, and deductibles that are met midway through the twelfth month of the plan fiscal year, then reset. Training programs evaporated. Severance packages got smaller, or vanished. Even the amount of notice I get whenever permanent layoffs are to occur has become days, rather than months.

So there are no more loyal vassals. We are all mercenaries now. I'll start sending out resumes if I so much as notice that the building has a new janitor.

  H. R. tells new hires:
  "How great it is to work here!"
  Give me cash, not lies.

If corporate loyalty is dead, it is because corporations have killed it.

Exactly. There's no "there" there.

The death of pensions really did it. My wife and I each stumbled upon positions with a pension, and it seems as if the roller-coaster just stopped. We had no "loyalty" and moved around whenever the mood struck us, but now we look at the risk/reward of a more exciting job vs 25 years of stability and a secure retirement... it's not a hard decision to make.

Just be careful. I used to work at Nortel in Canada which at one point had over 90k employees. When I worked there, I believe they were making $18 billion a year in revenue. Profits appeared to be good.

A few years later it turned out the "good profits" were actually accounting fraud. The company tanked and everyone lost their job. But Nortel had a fairly good pension system, so the people who had worked there for 25 years or more were fine, right?

Well, the company feared that while they were tanking the "best and brightest" executives would leave. Oh my! What to do? They were allowed to siphon the pension money into "executive retention bonuses". Of course this didn't stop the company from ultimately running out of money, but it did get rid of a large part of the pension money.

Investigate your pension scheme and make sure you understand what will happen to your money should the company go out of business. Especially find out where the pension system is ranked as a creditor. No company is too big to fail.

As for me, I only worked there for 5 years and left when it was at its height. After I quit I got a letter from Nortel stating that my minimal benefits were not worth it for them to administer. They were going to keep my pension money and I was welcome to sue if I didn't agree. I guess as it turned out, it didn't make much difference...

It wasn't mentioned if the job was public or private sector. Many government jobs have good pensions.

In Australia, this gets taken out of the equation as we have compulsory superannuation.

Listen to this guy. I'd much rather get a big 401k match and have the money be mine than trust that my pension will be there based on the whims of the company and market.

Look at the airline industry. Plenty of pensions have been restructured during the string of bankruptcies. Pensions are guaranteed by a federal body, but only up to ~$50K/yr I believe. You'll never get less than that, but you $100K/yr pension might get cut in half and the gov't will say "that's the best we can do".

Yes, these days a private pension isn't worth the paper it was written on in many cases.

These things should always have been administered by 3rd parties and required to be fully-funded.

No "executive" can look at so much money "just lying around doing nothing" without wanting to get their grubby little hands on it.

Very sad for a lot of people

Loyalty runs both ways. Employees aren't going to want to stay loyal to a company in this mess of a capitalist economy.

> But what actually happened was that people who were good at their job, and could find work elsewhere, left. So they would have had all of the top talent leave the company and the remaining employees would be the people who did just enough to get by.

This reminds me quite a bit of a blog post from The Wetware Crisis on what he deemed The Dead Sea Effect ( http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/11/the-wetware-crisis-the-d... )

While not a forced evaporation which you describe, its the 'the best people can get jobs elsewhere' and 'the less capable people entrench themselves as experts on critical systems to where they can't afford to be let go'.

> It was unclear what his intentions were.

When you don't know how to run a business, cut costs and call the result a profit. Then take the bonus for "hitting the target", and pull the golden parachute ripcord.

This. I was going to post a reply just to say that, but I couldn't have said it better..

I once started a gig at a broadcasting company that had just bought a respected multimedia/internet company running several major high traffic websites. The broadcaster didn't like the employment contracts with all the "cushy" benefits, so they offered the staff a buyout. The entire technical staff took the buyout, most of the easily replaceable editorial, project management and graphics people stayed put.

I've seen this done, but there was a class of employee not eligible for the buyout (e.g., engineer).

So you wind up with good engineers, and all the bad management and support that couldn't find jobs elsewhere, and that works out real well, you betcha...

>But what actually happened was that people who were good at their job, and could find work elsewhere, left. So they would have had all of the top talent leave the company and the remaining employees would be the people who did just enough to get by.

I remember this being an issue with General Motors near bankruptcy (2008) too. They couldn't lay off union workers, and figured it would be cheaper to offer them buyouts than keep paying their above-market salaries.

There too, people pointed out that the only takers would be the best workers, who can easily find work elsewhere, and they'd be left with the ones who can't.

It was the same at British telecom when there where such good incentives to leave that many of the key technical staff left.

Most of the Uk's mobile networks was designed and built by ex bt people who took redundancy

>It was unclear what his intentions were.

"a tenure-based package to leave the company"

People who have been longer with company are also more likely to be older than average employee. So I think he wanted to get rid of "old" people who would "slow down" company and be unfit for its "new and vigorous" culture?

In my (thankfully limited) experience, it's entirely standard for severance packages to be tenure-based and, IMO, most of those reasons have nothing to do with ageism.

The longer you've been with us, the more you've likely contributed and we should recognize that as we part ways. The longer you've worked with us, the more life upheaval the separation represents. The longer you've worked with us, the more personal relationships you have developed, perhaps with the same people making the decision to eliminate your position. A generous severance (which IMO requires a tenure component) sends an important signal of stability to the employees who remain AND makes it easier for managers (who are of course humans themself) to make the decision to eliminate the position of a long-tenured but "surplus to ongoing operations" employee.

What's the alternative? The person who joined 6 weeks ago gets the same package as the 10-year veteran? That seems worse all around to me.

There is a subtle difference between company wide push to get rid of employees and severing employment on an individual basis. Giving presumable older people more in the first situation looks like a systematic effort to get rid of them.

Did he make the offer without consulting HR? I've received occasional buyout offers - they're always subject to approval and capped based on a number of factors.

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