Welcome to 95% of the tech world. I don't know anyone whose been laid off and was offered even a month of severance. It appears very common in San Francisco but the rest of the world acts like most businesses
Not “rest of the world”, rest of the US. In Europe and e.g. Israel, minimal severance is dictated by law and its often 3-months pay or more, in some cases a months salary for each year worked (so laying someone off after 20 years means they get 20 months severance).
There are exceptions (e.g. firing “for cause” such as sexual misconduct or embezzelment) but they are really exceptional. And if the company folds and can’t pay that, the government will, and likely criminally indict the officers who let the company fold without taking care of the severance payment.
In Germany the minimum notice period is 4 weeks and increases in steps (after 2 years it’s a full month, after 5 years it’s two and tops out at 7 month after 20 years of continued employment). Since germany can’t go below European minimums, that’s an upper bar for those. It’s fairly l common to see 3 month as a minimum though. Keep in mind, however, that during that time you’re employed and expected to work, though the employer may decide that you don’t have to show up (common in security critical employments). You still can’t take another job. If you don’t show up against the employers will, that’s cause for immediate termination with no severance. Severance payments are still uncommon.
If a company folds, notice periods are capped at three month, and no, officers will not be indicted for any future failed payment. Officers may be indicted for delaying the an Insolvenz, failing to pay taxes or social security or embezzling money in the process, but costs for future wages are not on the list. There is something called Insolvenzgeld which may pay for some of the wages, but it’s capped to 5400 EUR/month and covers the outstanding wage payments for the three month _before_ the company was declared insolvent.
However, the whole social security system makes loosing or quitting a job less of an hardship. Even though quitting a job yourself now means that you’re not receiving unemployment payments for the first three months, you’ll still be covered after that, lowering the overall risk.
>>> If you don’t show up against the employers will, that’s cause for immediate termination with no severance. Severance payments are still uncommon.
That's not true. An employee cannot be immediately terminated for not showing up to work ONCE. Doesn't matter if it's in the notice period or not.
If it's something that your employer does, ask you to show up on the next day while you are on garden leave, then immediately terminate you, it's serious ground to bring them to court.
Note that in this case, additional infractions were committed, but the court specifically pointed out hat each infraction on it own would have been sufficient grounds for termination. And this was even without handing in a notice.
It’s certainly not the regular case that your employment will be terminated immediately for being late or not showing up once, but if you hand in your notice and don’t show up the next day without a damn good excuse, this will be treated as exactly what it is: cheating your employer for a wage. And that’s a standard ground for immediate termination.
Also note that just not showing up without a good cause entitles the employer to withhold your wage. So now you’re still employed, cannot take another full-time job and don’t get wage nor unemployment payments. Good way to footgun yourself.
Minor quibble: a lot of businesses go bust unable to pay redundancy and there are very rarely consequences for directors unless reckless trading can be proven. That at least is my experience in Ireland and UK.
I am most familiar with the situation in Israel with respect to layoffs; not paying severance in Israel is criminal whether or not the company folds (with officers actually indicted), and it’s 1-month per year of employment, with social security underwriting this payment.
As a result of this strict lawful requirement, there’s an industry of regulated escrow middlemen who collect 8.33% of monthly salary from employer on behalf of severance. If employee is terminated for cause, employer may get it back. In all other cases (including going bust), it goes to the employee.
Severance is extremely common outside Silicon Valley and even outside of tech. Even people in (skilled) factory jobs usually get severance when laid off. It's mainly a hedge against getting sued rather than goodness of heart, but it's still common.
More than that, severance is the law in the vast majority of the world. Being fired without notice and without severance, losing your health insurance and having to fight for unemployment in court is a trifecta of unthinkable for the average European.
Severance is not in the law in germany. Notice periods are, but there are some substantial differences. You can’t take on a job after having received or handed in your notice - you’re in principle still expected to work. If you just decide to not show up, that’d grounds for immediate termination.
Both sides can agree by contract to terminate the employment immediately (Aufhebungsvertrag) and those contracts often stipulate a severance, but for example they also often stipulate that any wages from jobs you take on in that period get deducted from the severance payment.
In germany, severance is uncommon, even if the company lays you off. You get your three month notice, and after that, no further payment is made. Things may differ if the situation is slightly complicated, for example the company would prefer you gone earlier, they may offer you a payment lower than the wage for the notice period and you’re gone earlier or if they might not be allowed to terminate your employment for legal reasons to avoid lengthy lawsuits. Sometimes severance payments are negotiated in mass layoffs in unionized companies.
My point was: severance differs substantially from a notice period. If you’re laid off with severance, you can go and get a different job the next day. If you’re laid off with a notice period you cannot. You must show up and work the next day. If you don’t, you’ll be terminated without notice. A common thing that people do is that they call in sick after either being served or handing in their notice - same thing happens. Immediate termination.
Please stop spreading misinformation. There are few circumstances where an employees can be immediately terminated and calling in sick is not one of them.
Calling in sick when you’re not is grounds for immediate termination. Doubly so if you made the grave error of announcing that - the announcement alone could be sufficient (Bundesarbeitsgericht, Urteil vom 12.03.2009, 2 AZR 251/07). That’s really field day for a lawyer.
First, you never specified that it was about sick leave while not actually being sick.
Either way, it is not an immediate termination, there is a long procedure to follow. I have to repeat again, there are very few circumstances where an employee can be immediately terminated.
> First, you never specified that it was about sick leave while not actually being sick.
Which could have been clear from the context.
> Either way, it is not an immediate termination, there is a long procedure to follow
Which would be? Have you read the court decisions I quoted, especially the one from the BAG? The lengthy process was as follows: The employee threatened to call in sick if holiday was not granted on May 25th. He did not show up for work on May 27th. The first immediate termination on June 1st had a formal error and was rejected. The second immediate termination from June 7th was formally upheld. The only reason that the case was sent back to the previous court is that the previous court did not confirm whether the employee was indeed ill.
That's not exactly "lengthy". It's not always easy to prove that the employee was not sick, but legal literature is full of examples.
> I have to repeat again, there are very few circumstances where an employee can be immediately terminated.
That's true and I never pretended otherwise. Most cases for immediate termination are based in the fact that the employee knowingly attempts to defraud the employer. Trying not to show up for work if you've been fired or quit on your own is a prime example of that. The fraud is in trying to get a wage that you haven't worked for.
Yea, I should have specified this was the US only. I will say though, this is not the "vast majority of the world". South America, Africa, and Asia certainly don't have the same protections as Europe and they hold the vast majority of the population
I would like to see evidence if that. I've seen companies offer a single paycheck,two weeks that is, of pay and act like they were ghandi for it. They also usually ask for you to sign all the NDAs and other agreements they forgot to get you to sign, in exchange for that severance
Is this 'laid off' in the individual (or even team) sense or 'laid off' in the 'company went bankrupt' sense? I'd guess your exposure to the latter would be significantly higher in startup land than in the real world.
The first. Most of the people I know who were laid off get, at best, an vague promise to blnot fight unemployment claims and even those aren't always honored. Other than California most states allow NDAs and non competes which companies rely on heavily to threaten employees if they fought a lay off at all
If there's no notice then that's pretty crap. Every employment contract I've ever (in Australia) had has specified some fixed amount of notice required on either side to terminate employment (usually 2-4 weeks, sometimes increasing with time spent at the company) plus the company has to pay out any accrued annual leave, long service leave etc. This stuff is owed regardless of why the employee leaves.
Even if they tell you to go home and not come back, they still have to pay out the notice period and other outstanding amounts. It usually works out that you're covered for a month or two before you start to lose out financially.
I've never actually encountered it myself (and in fact just had to look it up [1]) but if you're made redundant then there's also a mandatory redundancy payout which starts at 4 weeks' pay for an employee who's been there between 1 and 2 years, and scales up to 16 weeks for employees of 10 years or over.
(The one time I've been 'made redundant' it was never official, I was working for a games company and they just kind of stopped paying us so we eventually just kind of stopped going. Lots of people lost significant amounts of money in owed wages.)
Edit: As for noncompetes, I think they're pretty universally held to be unenforceable attempts to bluster employees into believing they can't leave, but I can't imagine a company which actually tried to enforce one would ever be able to hire quality staff again. It'd be suicide.
>an vague promise to blnot fight unemployment claims
How does unemployment work where you are? Why would a previous employer be involved in the process of you claiming unemployment? The only thing I can think of, and also why they would be inclined to fight it, is if the payments come out of their pocket. If that's the case, then isn't that sort of just severance but with a different name slapped on it?
They pay unemployment insurance to the state, which goes up if they have more claims from ex employees. The government gives them the chance to contest any unemployment claims.
You can also get in a limbo where you accept an offer from employer A, give notice to your current employer B, then employer A rescinds the job offer from you before you start or even early in employment. The state then considers you not having been employed with employer A and having quit voluntarily from employer B, so they deny unemployment payments
My understanding is that employers in the US pay for unemployment insurance and their rates go up if the number of claims go up. So they don't pay directly but they do indirectly.
well i was offered two weeks after two years of work (China), though according law it should be two months (month for each year you worked), out of maybe 30 people, me and i think one Israeli girl were the only ones who didn't accept it, then i followed great examples of my role models from Fight Club and American beauty and bumped my severance to two months with promise i will keep my mouth shut and i don't need to come anymore for next two weeks we were supposed, i don't need to keep bridges with such shitty companies
Because we are taught that way by company propaganda. It really isn't a big deal and often, leaving without notice is the right thing to do. Companies in the US have no respect or care for their employees, yet they push this idea that we must respect and care for them. Fuck them if their usefulness has come to an end. Not to mention that often, when you do give notice, they'll fire you simply to avoid paying you the final two weeks. We need to stop buying into this stupid bullshit corporate propaganda and eradicate it out of our culture to make progress.
> Not to mention that often, when you do give notice, they'll fire you simply to avoid paying you the final two weeks
This makes no sense. Companies will make your life hell and do anything to get you to quit so they don't have to fire you. If they fire you without cause, you can make an unemployment claim against them-- but if you quit on your own, that's on you.
In my experience, it's more common that they'll enact your resignation immediately yet continue paying you as though you were working the next two weeks, to mitigate any final acts of sabotage or exfiltration.
> In my experience, it's more common that they'll enact your resignation immediately yet continue paying you
In my experience, it's not uncommon that they'll enact your resignation immediately, and that's it. No wages, no pay, you resigned, so goodbye.
> This makes no sense. (snip) If they fire you without cause, you can make an unemployment claim against them
Companies are not necessarily rational actors, they are wholly controlled by people who can sometimes be just as rash or impulsive as any other person. Especially at smaller companies, pure spite can have a non-trivial amount of play in the hiring/firing/resigning process.
And what is the employee really going to do, file for unemployment? The employee already has a new job (that's why they resigned in the first place), so it's a pretty safe gamble they aren't going though that hassle, just for the two week gap.
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If the company falls on hard times and lays people off, that's "just business" and "no hard feelings". But if an employee leaves for a different job, that's a minor betrayal, and gets treated as such. This response is not appropriate, but I've seen it often enough to know it happens.
The two week period is for your teammates' benefit. Not your company or the project. Any manager that knows they're losing someone is going to much rather spend money on hiring and ramping up a replacement than continuing to employ the person who's leaving. She won't care what you do.
But it is just one paycheck out of 24 per year that will now be returned to the budget. Shutting the door on an employee who's trying to be professional and give 2 weeks notice makes a manager look petty and sends the message that the project is in maximum cost cutting mode - that gaining a single paycheck for one person is worth depriving the other employees of any chance of getting needed knowledge or context from the person who resigned. To me that's a sure sign that layoffs are coming.
The flip side to notice is not notice, but severance pay. Who cares if you're not required to go into work every day but the paycheck keeps rolling in?
When you get let go, neither you nor the people who depend on you at work know that it's coming. When you quit, you know it's coming and they don't. The two week notice gives them time to get the info they need from you. It's not really for the company, it's for your colleagues. If no one depends on you then it doesn't matter.
Why is it considered bad form to quit without notice, but if a company lets you go without notice, it's "just business"?