My dad was offered a buyout when he was around my current age. It included 10 years seniority added to his pension and health insurance until Medicare kicked in. He never looked back. Sadly, nobody is willing to pay me to go away.
The trick is to be on one of the two extremes in terms of skill. Suck harder?
Ask HN: Who wants to be fired? (May 2026)
11–20 of 25 posts
Re: Ask HN: Who wants to be fired? (May 2026)
#12My dad was offered a buyout when he was around my current age. It included 10 years seniority added to his pension and health insurance until Medicare kicked in. He never looked back. Sadly, nobody is willing to pay me to go away.
Re: Ask HN: Who wants to be fired? (May 2026)
#13My dad was offered a buyout when he was around my current age. It included 10 years seniority added to his pension and health insurance until Medicare kicked in. He never looked back. Sadly, nobody is willing to pay me to go away.
Question from an European: Why did they need to be so generous? From what we hear over here you have at will employment so they can just fire you on the spot, no need to pay anything, no? But then I read stories like these which are the opposite. I'd kill for something like this over here.
Re: Ask HN: Who wants to be fired? (May 2026)
#14My dad was offered a buyout when he was around my current age. It included 10 years seniority added to his pension and health insurance until Medicare kicked in. He never looked back. Sadly, nobody is willing to pay me to go away.
Question from an European: Why did they need to be so generous? From what we hear over here you have at will employment so they can just fire you on the spot, no need to pay anything, no? But then I read stories like these which are the opposite. I'd kill for something like this over here.
Re: Ask HN: Who wants to be fired? (May 2026)
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
Question from an European: Why did they need to be so generous? From what we hear over here you have at will employment so they can just fire you on the spot, no need to pay anything, no? But then I read stories like these which are the opposite. I'd kill for something like this over here.
Paying an expensive senior (older) employee to quietly and happily go away without raising a fuss may have saved money in the long term. I am sure they did not offer the same deal to everyone.
Re: Ask HN: Who wants to be fired? (May 2026)
#16I'm digging myself into a hole of self-doubt. I wish I were working on something with real users!
Of course, I'm doing interviews, but it hasn't been an easy ride. If I were fired I'd have more time for prepping, at least.
Re: Ask HN: Who wants to be fired? (May 2026)
#17Do I want to be fired? No, because the job market sucks, I make good money, and I live in a HCOL area with a mortgage, a wife and a young kid. I need to sustain (and grow) this for another 10+ years minimum before having any kind of financial independence.
Re: Ask HN: Who wants to be fired? (May 2026)
#18My dad was offered a buyout when he was around my current age. It included 10 years seniority added to his pension and health insurance until Medicare kicked in. He never looked back. Sadly, nobody is willing to pay me to go away.
Question from an European: Why did they need to be so generous? From what we hear over here you have at will employment so they can just fire you on the spot, no need to pay anything, no? But then I read stories like these which are the opposite. I'd kill for something like this over here.
In short, don’t believe Internet memes. The US isn’t the capitalist hellscape disaffected commenters pretend it is.
Re: Ask HN: Who wants to be fired? (May 2026)
#19Currently waiting a month to check how things change, but if there is no change in my stress levels, I’ll look for a way out.
Re: Ask HN: Who wants to be fired? (May 2026)
#20They don’t think critically, let the LLM add random stuff, and then let the LLM argue for them on GitHub. When I talk to the human they have no idea. But 60s later they post a 3 page essay explaining they remembered and why x or y.
The thing is, I can tell why the LLM threw it in. It picked up on a side discussion in the comments, but we agreed in person to do something else in a different PR. Now all of a sudden it added a whole bunch of stuff unrelated to this PR.