I hope this was made up. But it could actually be real. Satire has a hard time these days reaching the absurdity of reality, let alone surpass it.
Severance
21–30 of 105 posts
Re: Severance
#22I know this is a joke, but this is why my coworkers and I were muted during the meeting we were laid off.
I received a meeting invite the night before for 9am with two HR people and some middle manager above me that I never met. It was obvious what the meeting was going to be.
Re: Severance
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's their job to endure the discomfort of having to do the job they're paid to do. It's not your job to make it comfortable for them. That's not to say that there aren't personal or professional consequences for how you conduct yourself. Burning bridges and all that. But I feel that's completely up to you.
It takes a special kind of company for counting it as a burnt bridge for somebody that said "I hope you all fail" and gone away after being fired.
The "company" isn't the one considering it that. After all, it'll probably fail and you almost certainly won't work there. The company is just a paper entity that doesn't mean anything. But the people you say it to might think it was pissy.
Participating in the upside of working in the private sector and, more broadly, in any capitalist system, means also participating in the downside risk. Sometimes you'll be out. Don't take it personally, and do your best to jump ship at the point when you think that some bozo is steering the company toward ruin.
Re: Severance
#24One time when I was in one of these calls. It was pretty obvious it was coming, the company wasn't doing great and there were plenty of whispers. Still, I was pretty upset I was laid off, because it's just not a fun feeling. After the HR person explained the severance and COBRA stuff, I said something to the CTO like "I wish you all the best in trying to save this company, and for the sake of this conversation, let's…
It's their job to endure the discomfort of having to do the job they're paid to do. It's not your job to make it comfortable for them. That's not to say that there aren't personal or professional consequences for how you conduct yourself. Burning bridges and all that. But I feel that's completely up to you.
As a rule, you shouldn't burn bridges.
But in some occasional cases, the bridges you burn light up the way forward.
Re: Severance
#25I hope this was made up. But it could actually be real. Satire has a hard time these days reaching the absurdity of reality, let alone surpass it.
[deleted]
Re: Severance
#26You can always get together, cleanse the code of any IP entanglements, and compete with the company that just laid you off. Calls like this one are a good time to suggest it--even if only to make them squirm.
Legal in California, illegal in New York (typically 2-3 years).
Re: Severance
#27You can always get together, cleanse the code of any IP entanglements, and compete with the company that just laid you off. Calls like this one are a good time to suggest it--even if only to make them squirm.
That assumes that the code itself was what made the company competitive and brought in the money to begin with.
If I were laid off by my current employer, who has a giant sales team and likely thousands of contracts in every state with most of the existing potential clients, the odds of me being able to compete against them somehow dip into negative numbers.
Re: Severance
#28[deleted]
Re: Severance
#29One time when I was in one of these calls. It was pretty obvious it was coming, the company wasn't doing great and there were plenty of whispers. Still, I was pretty upset I was laid off, because it's just not a fun feeling. After the HR person explained the severance and COBRA stuff, I said something to the CTO like "I wish you all the best in trying to save this company, and for the sake of this conversation, let's…
Ha, that's a good one. At a job 10 years ago or so I had a similar premonition of upcoming layoffs—lots of closed door meetings between the execs, travel and expansion plans getting cancelled, etc. One day my immediate boss, who I genuinely like, walked into my office, closed the door, and told me he was gonna have to lay me off in two weeks. He said if I would handle x,y,z tasks (a few days of work) I could just stop showing up until the layoff day and he'd make sure I got a good severance. Listen, I appreciated this! it still sucked, but he wasn't supposed to tell me at all.
Anyway, a few weeks after the axe dropped, I went to an industry conference (putting out the feelers for a new job, etc) and during the keynote he walked in. I waved, and he came and sat at the table with me. After the speech, we were chatting with the others around the table, and someone asked where I worked. I said something like "well, I'm between jobs. This guy just fired me ." They laughed, and he squirmed in his chair! But I didn't let him squirm too long, it really wasn't his fault.
Re: Severance
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's their job to endure the discomfort of having to do the job they're paid to do. It's not your job to make it comfortable for them. That's not to say that there aren't personal or professional consequences for how you conduct yourself. Burning bridges and all that. But I feel that's completely up to you.
It takes a special kind of company for counting it as a burnt bridge for somebody that said "I hope you all fail" and gone away after being fired.
Well the company is an inanimate object and doesn't think anything about anything.
The person you are saying that to, who almost certainly didn't make the decision that you should be laid off, may rightfully view it as someone unable to control their emotions in a difficult moment. This is completely understandable. It's also completely understandable to remember that, and maybe that person is reviewing resumes in the future and doesn't want to work with you because of a brief outburst which does nothing to change anything?