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I worked at Google for -10 days

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Re: I worked at Google for -10 days

#171

Post by dehrmann »

ghaff wrote: post #145
bbarn wrote: post #106

Advice about what to do after you've already done something else isn't very useful, but when my wife and I moved internationally for her new job, we made sure to have it be a slow process. First she went, rented a short term apartment, while I moved all of our belongings into a storage facility, then once she felt good about the position she found us a nicer more permanent home, then I sold our home in the US, the ca…

This is far more sensible advice than all the "there ought to be a law" (in which jurisdiction?) comments on this thread and probably also more realistic than trying to figure out how to protect yourself 100% against any eventuality. Even without moving internationally, managers change, executives decide to cancel projects or cut back headcount, etc. Sure, that can happen a year down the road too. But if something is…

> in which jurisdiction?

It'd be the country of employment, but that presents a huge enforcement problem for people like this. Navigating your own country's legal system is hard enough, but another country's?

Re: I worked at Google for -10 days

#172

Post by cortesoft »

no-2-wk-notice wrote: post #23

This is why I suggest not giving two weeks notice when leaving a job for another. Instead send a resignation email the morning you start at the new company. This seems fair and reasonable given that companies are willing to pull offers.

Every single job I have had since my first have been working with people I worked with before. If you burn all your bridges every time you change jobs, you are going to have a bad time.

Re: I worked at Google for -10 days

#173

Post by code_runner »

blcknight wrote: post #39
sashank_1509 wrote: post #7

There’s no great solution to this apart from the economy and company doing well so that this doesnt happen. I’ll lay out the reasons below: 1. Let’s say we pass a law that prevents offers from being revoked. This will make hiring much harder and increase 5 rounds to like 10 and involve many more committees and even then most candidates other than sureshots getting rejected. 2. Ban revoking offers only for overseas em…

Why do you think rounds would be higher if an offer is unrevokable? That makes no sense to me. At the very least, companies rescinding offers should make a payment equal to a few months of pay. This trend of companies revoking offers and saying "too bad, sorry you quit your job, sold your house and most of your belongings for us."

i'm not saying that the company has no responsibility... any company (even one as massive as google) can do better than an email and "so bad so sad".

However, regardless of economic factors, the process of quitting your job, selling your house, and most of your belongings is inherently risky! In this case its VERY high risk VERY high reward (at least in my estimation).

This definitely disadvantages people needing to relocate for that dream job, but we can't eliminate the risk of such a massive decision.

Re: I worked at Google for -10 days

#174

Post by ResearchCode »

mschild wrote: post #67
champagnepapi wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This will make hiring much harder and increase 5 rounds to like 10 Not sure if I agree with this... Is hiring in European countries with stronger labor laws harder? AFAIK the number of rounds is the same. In European countries they have the concept of probation period to protect against an employee who isn't the right fit. We do as well in America, it's just called "at-will employment", so it's pretty much your enti…

Different on a country-by-country basis but generally not really. For example, it's pretty common to have a 6 month probation period in Germany where both the employee and employer can quit/let go at any time with a 2 week notice period.

You can negotiate that clause away. An employer that wants at-will employment periods should pay US wages or at least contractor rates for those periods.

Re: I worked at Google for -10 days

#175

Post by PragmaticPulp »

zippergz wrote: post #82
cleansy wrote: post #8

Time to learn about a relocation clause in the general employee agreement: Clause [X]: Relocation Expenses and Redundancy Protection The Company agrees to reimburse the Employee for reasonable and necessary relocation expenses incurred by the Employee in connection with the Employee's relocation to the work location specified in this Agreement, subject to the terms and conditions set forth herein ("Relocation Expense…

Please get back to me once you've gotten a multinational corporation to agree to this (or any other candidate-provided clause) for a non-executive employee.

Getting a completely custom legal document from a big company is not going to happen outside of extraordinary circumstances.

That said, the relocation packages I’ve seen have been effectively similar to this. Having the offer revoked for cause (e.g. you lied) might cancel it, but getting laid off wouldn’t. Obviously not true everywhere though.

Re: I worked at Google for -10 days

#176

Post by yebyen »

ResearchCode wrote: post #163
bojo wrote: post #48

I've had a similar story happen in the past. I was living in Japan looking for remote jobs and came across Couchbase. Interviewed well with the team who all seemed excited to get someone with my experience on board, however, the hiring manager said he wasn't sure he wanted to manage someone in my timezone. He pulled me into a separate call at the end of the rounds and asked some weird questions, which in hindsight we…

What difference does it make if you're at-will. You could be let go on the first day, no reason given.

Or hours reduced to part-time, or salary cut. As long as they don't try to do this retroactively, or cut your wage below the state minimum, it's not illegal for employers to do that in the US. Fortunately for the rest of the world, the US laws are quite less favorable to employees than many other countries.

Just set your VPN to an EU zone country and google "unlawful termination" if you're from the US / set your VPN to US if from EU, and read for some eye-openers!

Re: I worked at Google for -10 days

#177

Post by skippyboxedhero »

mschild wrote: post #22
sashank_1509 wrote: post #7

There’s no great solution to this apart from the economy and company doing well so that this doesnt happen. I’ll lay out the reasons below: 1. Let’s say we pass a law that prevents offers from being revoked. This will make hiring much harder and increase 5 rounds to like 10 and involve many more committees and even then most candidates other than sureshots getting rejected. 2. Ban revoking offers only for overseas em…

On a general level sure maybe, but for this particular case, there was little economical need for Google to have any layoffs. They're swimming in money and are highly profitable. Pulling the rug out underneath a new employee who is days away from starting and moving his whole life to a new country is simply shitty behaviour.

> there was little economical need for Google to have any layoffs

There is. These large tech companies were growing headcount at 20-30%/year, maybe even more at peak. And their revenue is now flat. If you are growing headcount 20% year and revenue isn't going up, what does that indicate?

The purpose of a company is to sell things that people want, not provide welfare for the well-educated (Google is one of the worst for this, they are still massively, massively, massively overstaffed but the dual share class has insulated them...they are basically a bureaucracy attached to a monopoly...btw, almost every monopoly I have seen in the wild ends up this way, execs always go native).

Re: I worked at Google for -10 days

#178

Post by equalsione »

ssharp wrote: post #152
dheera wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there was little economical need for Google to have any layoffs The trouble is, public companies like Google aren't owned by their execs anymore. They've lost control to a bunch of idiots on Wall Street. They optimize for stock price, not employee satisfaction, not customer satisfaction.

What about Meta? Zuckerberg can't be axed and controls 50+% of the voting shares. They are still doing big layoffs and cuts. They have also always been very aggressive about growth and hiring. They are positioning it as more of a flattening, which may actually be what's happening but I'm guessing plenty of IC's are still losing their jobs there.

You only need to control about 10% to 15% of the stock to force through the kinds of layoffs and money saving activity that is happening. You don't even have to own that much, just band together with similar minded shareholders to form a voting block.

Re: I worked at Google for -10 days

#180

Post by PragmaticPulp »

cleansy wrote: post #125
zippergz wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please get back to me once you've gotten a multinational corporation to agree to this (or any other candidate-provided clause) for a non-executive employee.

I never had to deal with multinationals - not much of a corporate guy. I was reading through the comments here and it seemed to be common that "well, there's nothing you can do". Actually, there is, write it in your contract and see what comes back. If your new employer does not allow for this, at least a) you tried and b) you are fully aware of the risk that the employer might just leave you out cold. In which case,…

> write it in your contract and see what comes back

The issue is that in many countries, employees don’t actually have contracts. Lawyers will go to great lengths to ensure that offer letters are not structured as contracts. It’s important to keep the distinction in mind.

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