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Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

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Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#311

Post by barbegal »

Silhouette wrote: post #181
barbegal wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL but it's not always illegal. If a company has a choice between going bust and imposing pay cuts on everyone then that is perfectly legal.

Citation very much needed. I have never seen anything in UK employment rights law that says "unless the employer is in trouble". If the business is in danger of going bust because it can't afford to keep people on then it may need to make some of them redundant (and redundancy rights will then apply), but that's totally different to unilaterally changing the contractual terms of employment for the worse.

I believe s.98(1)(b) of the Employment Rights Act 1996 [1] allows dismissal for "some other substantial reason" which could be argued to cover this scenario and there is some case law such as Garside and Laycock Ltd v Booth [2]

[1] http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1996/18/section/98 [2] https://www.bto.co.uk/blog/refusing-to-accept-a-wage-cut-%E2...

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#312

Post by poooogles »

YawningAngel wrote: post #250
6nf wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they take the dismissal they get paid out immediately and they can immediately start getting government unemployment benefits. I think?

You don't get government unemployment benefits in the UK if you have >16k in savings (i.e. most programmers, presumably)

>You don't get government unemployment benefits in the UK if you have >16k in savings

This isn't true. You'll get new style JSA for 6 months [1] pending you have contributed NI for the past 2/3 years which almost all will have.

https://www.gov.uk/jobseekers-allowance/eligibility

You're talking about universal credit which yes you won't qualify for with greater than 16k savings (pension savings or HTB ISA are however are excluded).

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#313

Post by McDev »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #96
throwaway9002 wrote: post #77

Playtech in London isn't firing but cut all employee salaries by 10% across the board. The CEO just awarded himself a 30mil bonus: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/playtech-plan-to-pay-boss...

It's more than a little misleading to say that the CEO 'just' did this when the article is from 2019 Dec 4, so before the pandemic.

The bonus might not have been paid until this month though, the start of the new financial year

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#314

Post by gcoleman »

toyg wrote: post #288
t0mas88 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well... That's an overhyped media headline. In reality it is a stock based compensation over the next 5 years, based on performance of the stock price, capped at a maximum of 30 million. So it was already very unlikely he was going to get 30m (= 6 per year) pre-crisis. And given the current stock market he is probably going to get nothing for the coming two years or longer.

> based on performance of the stock price, Lulz, classic case of bad incentive: I bet revenues for online gambling are way up at the moment, now that more and more people are forced to stay home and be fundamentally unsupervised all day. But because stock markets are drying up across the board, stellar profits might well not get reflected in stock prices. Just another reason for not basing exec compensation on stock…

It depends on the type of gambling. Sports based gambling has basically disappeared. Bingo/slots/casual games are up in general I think.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#315

Post by Tainnor »

gigatexal wrote: post #79

No severance?! I, as an expat, am absolutely grateful and have changed my tune on the “European welfare state” trope to “this just makes sense”. I got let go from a Berlin based fintech and got 3 months pay plus a small severance. They did this likely because funding fell apart during the pandemic but it could have also been to cull people that they didn’t need but they did do right by us.

It's more than that. In Germany, you actually have to prove that the firing was really necessary from a business point of view. Given the current government measures (Kurzarbeit etc.) and the fact that it's not clear the role wouldn't come back in a couple of months, it's contested whether covid19 and subsequent lack of funding is a valid reason for termination. But IANAL.

Of course, just because you could doesn't mean you actually should sue. For one thing, as a tech worker you're probably better off just finding a different job; if you're someone from a different profession who has a harder time finding jobs (or you're pregnant or sick or something), it's different of course.

I am just saying this because I was fired (together with my whole team) recently for very dubious reasons and while I did get severance, I am not sure it would have been actually legal (especially after it turned out the reasons they gave us were largely bullshit). But in the end it wouldn't have been worth it going into a legal argument.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#316

Post by Kiro »

throwaway743 wrote: post #301
Kiro wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was not at the same time. The bonus was paid in December, before the pandemic.

Regardless of timing or events, the 30mil individual bonus was still taken while 10% of employee's salaries were cut. That's excessive and a slap in the face to those employees.

No-one could have predicted this pandemic and the drastic measures companies have to take. When they paid the bonus they had no idea they would have to cut salaries a few months later. The timing is essential since one event happened before the pandemic and one afterwards. We could argue about bonuses in general but that's a whole different topic.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#317

Post by rk06 »

esel2k wrote: post #284
dsfargeg wrote: post #214

Babylon Health furloughed 140 people. I think they're using this as an excuse to re-structure their organisation. The tagline is that they are furloughing 5% of staff. They've used it as an opportunity to make 30% of their mobile engineers redundant, as well as push many senior engineers on higher salaries towards the exit

So also here healthtech startup letting people go?! Why? I thought you guys would get more business in these times?!

That's a false statement.

My sister is a doctor. She told me that she is getting less patients, as only those are very serious, are coming.

Plus transport system is down, so only ambulance can be used for transporting patients to and from hospital. So this puts a limit to hospital's income source.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#318

Post by blaser-waffle »

altacc wrote: post #253
tcard wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other things equal, if companies need to pay severance, employees get paid less each month, because companies need to take into account expected severance costs in their total labor costs and there's less money left for other benefits. So all employees effectively pay for layoffs, which goes against you if you're not the one that gets laid off. (I am very much in favor of mandatory severance and generally other kinds…

Having done budgeting for hiring employees in the UK, for small and medium sized companies, the factors that went into calculating staff costs never included any severance or redundancy factors. Paying redundancy is relatively rare, so doesn't need allocated funding until you're in that process. When you're employing people you're not already thinking about their future exit. You hire based on your growth, so you're…

> When you're employing people you're not already thinking about their future exit. You hire based on your growth, so you're usually optimistic about the future and thinking about employees being long term. If not you hire contractors, who you can lay off easily.

+1 for the contractors thing. If there is already an expiration date for these people, then make them a contractor or reach out to a staffing firm.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#319

Post by brigandish »

fakedang wrote: post #168
kofejnik wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

interesting... what if mandatory severance and other (supposedly) nice things are the reason those countries are underdeveloped?

I wouldn't mind a stance which promotes human welfare over economic growth.

Since economic growth tends to go hand in hand with better access to health services and greater social freedom, it does.

I always enjoy Hans Rosling going through the stats, if you’ve time it’s well worth it https://youtu.be/FACK2knC08E

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#320

Post by buckminster »

Kiro wrote: post #199
cerberusss wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same could be said about a CEO who cuts everybody with 10% and gets a huge bonus at the same time. I'm not disagreeing with you, though.

It was not at the same time. The bonus was paid in December, before the pandemic.

So the bonus has been returned?
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