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Severance

lcamtuf.substack.com

31–40 of 105 posts

Re: Severance

#31
post #11

One 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…

You should have been straightforward and told them to go fuck themselves. Laying people off by a brief call is for cowards.

Is a long one better?

Most programming jobs are remote. What's the alternative, exactly?

Re: Severance

#33
post #10

Are cherry09 and steve_ AI agents?

I thought they were real people, in a near future where everyone is so dependent on AI that not even a company so callous as to fire by video call would even think of depriving another human the tokens they need to get by.

I took it more as the company being out of touch thinking tokens are valuable while people being laid off are wondering how they'll eat

Re: Severance

#34
So a black mirror short story, as a meeting notetaker transcript love it!

One cool touch would be a 2 bullet AI summary at the end with em-dashes.

Re: Severance

#35
post #32

The "macroeconomic" phrase sounds like $AMZN. Kept hearing this until the new buzzword showed up; AI.

Why don't they say "Suprise suckers, we are a BUSINESS and you are a SUPPLIER and we don't need to order from you again. Yes sure we said FAMILY but we meant in the borrow your car keys sense of the word. Enjoy job hunting. BTW we have some open positions, let us know if you know anyone."

Re: Severance

#36

“What about health insurance?” “Your enrollment will end on the last day of this month, and we will be providing every affected employee with information about extending their coverage through COBRA.” “The last day of the month, so, today?” “Yes, that is correct. On the other hand, our OpenAI and Anthropic accounts are paid quarterly, so you will retain access to your chats and may continue using these tools until th…

Don't forget they lay you off the Thursday before a 3 day weekend, as close to the middle of the month as possible. So the "coverage to the end of the month" is more like 10 days of coverage

Re: Severance

#37
post #11

One 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…

[dead]

Re: Severance

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought they were real people, in a near future where everyone is so dependent on AI that not even a company so callous as to fire by video call would even think of depriving another human the tokens they need to get by.

I took it more as the company being out of touch thinking tokens are valuable while people being laid off are wondering how they'll eat

Several interpretations:

1. All human, and interpreted like you suggest (out of touch company offering tokens as severance rather than something actually useful to people).

2. Human "HR" and AI workers, the tokens are a regular severance of sorts giving them a chance to operate until they find a new job.

3. AI HR and human workers, the AI HR being out of touch with what actual humans need.

4. AI AIR and AI workers, which matches the reason to have the tokens in (2).

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