If you keep someone on board with the intention of letting them go later, you do them a disservice by making them think they have a steady job. It stops them from looking for something else and missing possible opportunities.
If you tell them you will fire them, then you do them a disservice wasting their time if you don't expect them to work anyway.
That's why a severance payment makes sense. Pay them what they would have been paid but don't make them work.
Yeah, no, this is a privileged position. Even if I might opt to take that posture myself, it's not a normal position.
Most people have a need for an income and also, don't hugely differentiate between their work being BS or not. Also, many people who think they are not doing BS work, might very well be doing BS work.
Most people have families, responsibilities, children, parents that need support, mortgage payments, car payments, healthcare needs etc. - and work for the money, not some notion of 'impact'.
You'd rather stay at a dead-end position until a lack of money forces you to be laid off by a broke company that can't afford cushy terms?
The alternative is being fired early, given several months of pay, months of free healthcare, early grants, help if you're an H1B holder, and help from your old company in getting a new job...
There are bad layoffs and there are ok layoffs, I'd say this is an ok one.
I loathe to hint to you that 90% of jobs are 'dead end jobs'. There is no 'promotion' waiting for you arbitrarily. It's a steep hierarchy and most people don't want to perform to compete.
Moreover, in a downturn, it's rare that people are going to just jump off to a promotion, and rolling the dice is quite risky. Responsibilities, family, mortgages, etc..
I think a lot of the posture here is coming from young people in tech jobs who have a somewhat different situation than others, and, who might not realize how much risk is involved here.
It's almost always better to have the option to keep a job than not. If people don't want to stay they can leave.
I have no idea how you can claim to understand risk... then decline a guaranteed X months of pay for an uncertain number of months of pay that might even be less than X.
And the whole diatribe about dead end jobs, while packed full to the gills with angst, is just misunderstanding: usually dead end job means the job continues without upward mobility. Here it means you get terminated once things go from "bad" to "really bad" for your employer and you have no idea when.
> Seems like the option of continuing to "work" for your employer while finding another job is net better than that option.
I guess it depends on the person. My mental health would be 100% better knowing I have guaranteed income for X months and can freely spend my time working on getting a job and decompressing. As opposed to knowing I'm on a sinking ship but still having to half-ass 8 hour days for appearances.
Also recruiters who have been let go now are in a way better place than recruiters who are on ghost ships right now and will be let go deeper in the thick of the brewing storm...
Seems to me it obviously helps that person, but I generally don't understand corporate-speak so I might be missing something.