This is what I hate about the internet rage machine. No research was done by people automatically assuming that the company was just going to send the employees packing with “thoughts and prayers”.
That’s very generous severance and the company doing right by its employees.
I don’t know how long the process is for non US citizens. But in my over 25 year career, and changing jobs eight times as a software developer, it has never taken me more than a month from actively looking to having a couple of offers. 14 weeks and bonus and paid out PTO is more than enough.
>This is what I hate about the internet rage machine.
I think the issue (also related to how we interface with the internet) is that most of these replies completely dodged the question. The OP was asking about personal accountability, not about "how are your going to make this as palatable as possible?"
Consider two scenarios:
(1) A manager fires half their workforce, but gives them a generous severance. In response, the manager gets a massive bonus.
(2) A manager fires half their workforce, but gives them a generous severance. In response, the manager forgoes their salary for a year for being the one making that decision.
The second has personal accountability because they are making a personal sacrifice beyond what they expect from their subordinates, even though the employees are affected equally. I'd be willing to bet one organization has more institutional trust than the other.
My ex worked in a tiny office, the company got into trouble and her boss was asked to cut $###K from payroll. He had to cut at least one person that they really needed. It was bad.
In theory he had to cut her too, because he was something like $30K short of the goal and her salary as an office admin would have more than covered that. But then he’d have to do her job. His solution was to cut his own salary enough to hit the target to the decimal point.
They landed a new contract a handful of months later and were eventually able to hire back one of the people they lost.
I think he may have even backdated some raises they missed out on. He was her best boss.
Does it not matter when you're deciding on employment though?
If the through-line wasn't obvious, it's that leadership quality matters. Trust matters. When you decide to stay with a company or invest in a company, you don't have the privleged access to know that their actions "won't have any effect" on your ability to pay your bills in the future. In the context of uncertainty, leadership quality matters.
No, any job is just a method to exchange labor for money. I expect nothing from them but to keep their end of the bargain. I keep myself in a position where I just need a job, not the specific job.
A job is not a marriage. I’ve been through many “uncertain times” in over 25 years.
I depend on my savings, network, skillset, updated resume and updated career document, not “trusting” a for profit company.
Do you not expect anything out of your teammates? Do you have no expectations from customers? From politicians?
At a certain point, how you manage interpersonal relationships can limit your path. Sure, you can just devolve everything down to a transaction (even a marriage) and maybe that works for you. And you can create a life free from any obligations or commitments, outside what you want for the aesthetic life of your choosing.* But it doesn't seem like it would be the type of existence many people envy.
* David Brooks book "The Second Mountain" does a good job explaining the downsides of this approach.
> Do you not expect anything out of your teammates?
I expect the same from my coworkers as I expect from myself - that they do their best work for 40 hours a week.
> Do you have no expectations from customers?
I work in the cloud consulting department of BigTech. The expectations of my customers are spelled out in detail by high priced lawyers.
> From politicians
Hell no.
> At a certain point, how you manage interpersonal relationships can limit your path. Sure, you can just devolve everything down to a transaction
A for profit business and your relationship with your company is transactional. Especially in any large company. The CEO of my company wouldn’t know me from the other 1.6 million people that work at the company.
I had "trouble" finding work over the summer. But the actual details are that I was asking for $275k and $300k at two companies. Both gave me a verbal offers, but hiring froze. The third company, gasp, wanted me to come into their office (20 minutes down the street).
I also lived through 2001 and 2008. I think the last 12 years of perpetual growth have created some amazing expectations from people. I can only hope that, once I get laid off, I'll have to "settle" for some $175k job in an office after my 3 months of severance runs dry.
I have some health issues that started in the 2008 recession. So every time they flare up I think about that trauma.
I kept my job through that but it was a very head-down situation. Just put up with this shit until the market recovers. Then the company had a good year and so a bunch of us stayed to get the bonus. So February 2010 saw nine of us who had quit in 8 weeks, sitting in a bar celebrating our exodus. I asked if it was worth it (staying for the bonus).
One person said yes. Another said maybe. Seven people regretted staying. The bonus amounted to less than 20% of salary and we were under market at the time.
We used to have coffee and discuss how much we hated our boss Mike (not a pseudonym. Fuck you Mike, you brown nosing ladder climber). My peer called our favorite table the Conspiracy Table.
Listen, Software Developers should not give up whatever we got so far. If we pushed for these salaries and quality of life, hold on to it. Don’t sit here and tell the tribe “some of you want too much”.
Few professions earned this quality of life, doctors and lawyers, and I can promise they aren’t sitting around going “maybe we’re spoiled, maybe we oughtta curtail our expectations”.
No, take the life you have and don’t go backward. Most people working aren’t given an ounce from their industries, many of them still fight for basic stuff to this day.
Tech should not be okay with these levels of lay offs and still revere these companies. This is the stuff the car industry did when they just offshored jobs, and collapsed entire cities (Detroit). Why should we be okay with the same playbook?
Absolutely! I declined multiple offers this summer because they would have been pay cuts. We agree.
> Few professions earned this quality of life
Well that is a can of worms. I'm going to guess Doctors deserve much better. I think the unfortunate reality is that, maybe, tech workers haven't earned this quality of life. Instead, we are the lucky recipients of decades of growth. This is something that isn't even shared in Canada or Europe, much less Asia, in terms of salary.
> This is the stuff the car industry did when they just offshored jobs,
Agree, this is going to be bad. Now that we have shown productivity with work from home, how tied are companies to these high USA salaries?
I'm not ok with it. But I also remember that when I'm running around looking for a job, the people with that job are making the demands. This is something that tech workers haven't actually experienced for a decade, but every other industry has.
> okay with these levels of lay offs and still revere these companies
Revere these companies? Founders are taking risks to make a LOT of money. They aren't here to make employees money. I don't revere these companies, and I don't put any stock in their Family Friendly or work life balance encouraged, marketing nonsense.
> Absolutely! I declined multiple offers this summer because they would have been pay cuts. We agree.
This is financially nonsensical. Every month you delay working you have to make more to get the same amount over the course of the year.
Just to make up a number, if your target was $120K and they offered you $110K and it took you a month longer to get $120K, you would need to make over $130K just to reach $120K.
I would take close to what I wanted and then change jobs if something better came along.
That’s very generous severance and the company doing right by its employees.
I don’t know how long the process is for non US citizens. But in my over 25 year career, and changing jobs eight times as a software developer, it has never taken me more than a month from actively looking to having a couple of offers. 14 weeks and bonus and paid out PTO is more than enough.