Auth0 truly did an amazing job on hiring for culture, being transparent and living their values.
The pre-acquisition Glassdoor reviews were astounding and back this up.
For myself, working at auth0 was truly life altering. It was the first time I was in a long standing multi-national environment.
It was the first time I was deeply exposed to other cultures and ways of living.
As a side effect of working at Auth0, This exposure completely reshaped my worldview and thoughts on luck and privilege. Watching Argentina inflation fluctuate as people I spent 8 hours a day with struggle to pay their bills and provide for their families as I live stably with no worry I really internalized how much pure raw luck plays in setting us up for life: Who we’re born to and where we’re born.
I traveled some in college to not so tourist friendly places and then worked as an expat in IT and I feel so fortunate for the same takeaways I am bitter and cynical as an American but defend the other at home and abroad because it made me keenly aware of our shared perspective It always makes me often wallow in guilt it took a privileged family to kick that off and let me learn it far away and not build up such empathy at home.
When I read shared experiences like ours on the Internet it reminds me of what I think is the one true value of this tool for humanity I wish it was used for that the majority of the time by most people but oh well!
Word choice can help your thinking. We all receive different struggles and decide how to respond.
The way you describe your 'luck', I read as "random good fortune" tinged with some guilt for being a 'have' when there are so many 'have-not's.
I prefer 'blessed', and not in the corny #blessed way, to describe my condition. To me, I was given much because so much is expected of me by God, by universe and by my higher self.
The extent to which I am blessed is a component of my calling to improve the total human condition.
If you lean in to that way of thinking, you obligate yourself and that can be as heavy a burden as you choose to make it. That choice and the freedom to decide how to fulfill that obligation are a part of the blessing.
To naval gaze and feel guilt is natural but fruitless stinkin' thinkin'. Motivating oneself with gratitude and humbling oneself by giving glory are ways to power through guilt.
> I prefer 'blessed', and not in the corny #blessed way, to describe my condition. To me, I was given much because so much is expected of me by God, by universe and by my higher self.
How do you avoid this leading to a feeling that you, and anyone else "blessed", is more important that others? Should we really assume that the condition of one's life is an indicator of both the existence of a higher power and of that person's relative importance to it?
The feeling of being “blessed” is the recognition that a substantial component of your current fortune is due to circumstances outside your control, whether due to a higher power, support from family/friends, raw luck, or the kindness of strangers. The proper and typical response to this feeling is one of gratitude, not self-importance, and the desired response is to contribute in various ways to the blessing of others (i.e. pay it forward).
It’s only when we lose the salience of that “blessed” feeling, and we start to take our circumstances for granted, that leads to our feeling of greater importance than others. It’s a slippery position no doubt, but the alternative feelings are: guilt (that I’ve received unfairly), anxiety (that what I’ve received may not be enough), jealousy (that what I’ve received is not enough), or pride/self-satisfaction (that I’m primarily responsible for what I’ve received). And honestly, it’s pride that is the true gateway to that feeling of self-importance you describe.
What you're describing is better captured by the word "lucky". "Blessed" is lucky plus an acknowledgement that this luck was granted to you on purpose by a higher power, so you deserved it in a karmic way (though not operational way). It really irks me too.
Someone/something divine must do the blessing. This is in the definition of bless, so how do you conclude it doesn't? To gain the favor of a god/goddess means the divine creature believes you deserve it, even if you don't think it to be so.
Christianity explicitly states pride is a sin. They’re not supposed to pray for God’s favour in this life but to be given the strength to be good so they can be allowed salvation in the next life.
I never said you did, I just used it as a counter to what you said: that blessing is about getting favour in this world from a divine being. It helps that it's also the world's largest religion.
In fact, Christianity explicitly glorifies suffering and martyrdom so the Christian God is hardly giving good things to good people...
And none of it was originally written in English. The English words were chosen because of their definitions, so that it made sense. I’m not sure what you mean by this.
In other news, I come from a family of Christian pastors and I’m quite informed on what words mean in the Bible and which ones actually matter. You are mixing several ones into a single word that has a singular definition that is well defined.
> "Blessed" is lucky plus an acknowledgement that this luck was granted to you on purpose by a higher power, so you deserved it in a karmic way
The karmic component would make it a reward. So much as you are blessed with resources, you are then able to make sacrifices that aren't necessarily enviable.
I definitely understand it from the angle you're describing, though similar to a sibling comment I'd see that as "lucky" more than "blessed".
The OP comment was removed ,but if I remember right it was specifically calling out their life circumstances as being given by god specifically, and a view that this is both a purposeful prioritization of that person and a responsibility to use gods blessings.
I wouldn't even argue directly against that view, mainly because I strongly believe that everyone has an absolute right to freedom of religion. I would have been curious to hear more though, because at least how I remember the OP describing it there was more to it than a recognition of the circumstances they were born into and how it compares to others less fortunate.
I am an average, flawed and vulnerable human. I am aware everything I value and love including my life can be taken from me.
Should that happen, I don't consider that a special punishment from God any more than my current condition is a special gift.
I'm here for a blink and then I am gone for the rest of long time. This brief opportunity to improve things and make earthly living less hellish for those who come after me is the blessing that I am thankful for.
> I was still caught a bit off guard. What about that high-priority project I was helping to lead? What about the training I was scheduled to deliver? What about the offsite next month?
This is the part that always confuses me. I understand why they treat employees as disposable, but it's like they don't care about continuation of business either.
I feel like everytime I've quit a job, I cared more about my succession plan than my employer just because I have professional standards I set for myself. It makes no sense to me.
> and learned an enormous amount about what it means to build and run a people-first company
Seems at odds with this bit at the beginning:
> And then it happened, I got the email. Slack didn't work. My laptop restarted and came back with accounts missing. It really, actually happened. And even though the writing seemed to be on the wall, I was still caught a bit off guard.
This industry (not specifically this company) fires people in a way that is not as people-first as all of the declarations make out.
If people want it to be people first through and through... know that every right that you ever had was earned through a union.
This is a good question. A lot of people, all over the world, put a lot of work into something and getting acquired turns stock options worth $0 into options worth a lot more than that. It’s just my $0.02 but, knowing the founders and who they are, I’m fairly sure this was more about giving back to the folks that made it happen than it was a purely business decision.
Also, Auth0 was investor-backed so there was likely a lot of pressure to sell at the price being offered. I don’t know how all that works exactly but I can imagine that this kind of decision is made by more people than just the founders.
The management was people first. The owners were VC. So maybe the original owners didn't care enough to interfere with the working management policy. The new owners do.
So.. "incidentally people first just until we can exit."
> and learned an enormous amount about what it means to build and run a people-first company
He's talking about Auth0.
> And then it happened, I got the email. Slack didn't work. My laptop restarted and came back with accounts missing. It really, actually happened. And even though the writing seemed to be on the wall, I was still caught a bit off guard.
Talking about how that culture no longer existed -- it's fully Okta now. The Auth0 culture essentially erroded until it finally just no longer existed. This of course happened at a different pace across differnt organizations. Unfortunately, I'd say ours was probably one of the earliest to get hit.
---
As an aside, I was part of same team (also laid off), and had an especially unique viewpoint.
I joined Auth0 in 2020 -- months before the acquisition. I joined because of the culture and the amazing people I get to work with and learn from. I had a lot of fun and we built some amazing things. After about 18 months I decided to join a local startup, itching to get back to a much smaller arena, building something from the ground up. Applying all the great things I've learned in my career thus far. Long story short, as most starups go, especially during COVID, it didn't pan out.
I kept in touch with my old colleagues, now my friends, who approached me with a potential new opportunity. They did warn me things were different now, but I was excited to get to work with great people again.
Coming back it was starkly different. Gone was the magic that was once there. A lot of familiar faces were still around, but so too were a lot gone now. I can feel the beating of the Okta drums more loudly now.. there just felt a lot of separation between leadership and us dreamers at the bottom. I felt like I was just back at a corporate company now, more worried about writing OKRs and how they made my boss/division look good verses actually making our customers lives better. There was a constant dread in the air.. verses excitement.
It's strange, but in some ways its almost like a feeling of mourning. That meme about not knowing when you're in the good old days is very true. Goodbye Auth0 <3
That wasn't my point, my point was firing someone via email is heartless, and that employers should have the decency to speak to a person and let them know why.
The system access can still be removed at the same time.
I don’t think there’s a good way to lay people off in the remote work era. With emails at least you get a standardized message across. with all hands on deck Skype meetings you can come across as the devil by just mispronouncing 1 word. With Skype 1on1s you expose your remaining employees to embarrassment on TikTok like that one woman recently did.
You trusted them with that access yesterday, and they are not being fired for cause (eg. stealing company secrets), so why don't you trust them today?
This sort of thing only really happens in US companies (see lots of other comments in this thread on this), and maybe that should be a clue this isn't "security practice".
> You trusted them with that access yesterday, and they are not being fired for cause (eg. stealing company secrets), so why don't you trust them today?
Yesterday, behaving in a manner that would result in your continued employment had clear, short term incentives like receiving further income. The company had leverage in that if you were to behave inappropriately they could terminate your employment and take away that income.
Today, the company has terminated your employment and taken away that income. The only reasons to not be malicious are long term consequences (future employment prospects, criminal charges, etc) and personal values.
People in general are notoriously bad at aligning their actions with long term incentives or consequences (especially consequences). You're testing this out in this employee for the first time in a situation where they're under much higher anxiety and stress than normal and you no longer have any real leverage over them.
I'd imagine the difference in the US has more to do with the short notice period and lack of social safety net making being terminated a much more impactful event for the employee.
Exactly this. The company just subjected the individual to an enormous amount of stress that didn't exist yesterday coupled with the fact that the long-term payoff to them of "don't act like a jackass at work" has just changed a lot.
Yes. That’s the unfortunate part of being laid off. So to protect the individual from himself and the company from the individual it might be actually better to just lock people out.
Funnily, nobody has such empathy towards a company when the employee lays the company off. Then everyone is like „suck it up company, suck it up boss”.
I'm fairly certain when an employee lays the company off, they do them the same courtesy and immediately lock them out from their life as well.
Also, if you'd like more empathy, in both directions, there is nothing in the US _preventing_ you from extending an employment contract with a well-defined layoff & severance process. Most companies choose not to do so, to preserve options. Well, you made your at-will bed, you get to lie in it.
If you're a manager caught in the middle: Yep. It sucks. It's also predictably part of your job, so make sure you're compensated accordingly. (You can't manage for an extended period without being forced to lay off somebody at some point. ZIRP stretched that period, a lot. It's still a thing that's part of the job)
Fired employees are much more likely to do something malicious, either by sabotaging systems or stealing proprietary data. The incentives are totally different.
In addition to what others said, there’s also a compliance aspect.
Even if 99% of laid off staff will react fairly and reasonably, it only takes a few to do serious damage, potentially to your customers.
Even on a small scale, those laid off can cause some harm: “losing” things, getting extremely enthusiastic with decommissioning equipment, or even filling the company cars with fuel right before giving them back to the hire company.
as a potential client, they were also night and day different. I had great sales conversations with Auth0, and they had so many easy to follow examples, tutorials, etc. Very helpful engineers on the call, who asked questions about our environments, etc.
A sales call with Okta just left me feeling dirty. It felt a lot like my sales calls when I was an Oracle customer. All about how many products they could push on us, no good technical explanations, and of course, huge pressure to 'sign this contract before the end of the month to get this great price'.
I wanted to go with Auth0, but then they got aquired, and we just said hell no.
Auth0 wasn't perfect (I would've like fewer pages), but it was pretty damn good. I learned a lot there and had one of the best managers of my career there. I also was the only employee in my country for several years and still felt very included. It was telling that I was able to chat with Eugenio myself even as a lowly IC. Okta's main claim to fame seemed to be a great sales team, though your explanation sounds like that wasn't great either.
> know that every right that you ever had was earned through a union
This really isn't true. Lots of these perks are because there was loads of money sloshing around, and a competitive hiring environment drove the culture to be as attractive as possible for employees.
It has been interesting to read the comments here. At places I've worked I've always worked my full notice (usually months), however when other people have quit they've been locked out of their systems, and some escorted from the premises. Perhaps I come across as a naïve/nice/non-malicious. My roles have always been in some of the most sensitive positions within organisations. Often without a clear successor so perhaps the worry was about not being able to fix things if I was to become disgruntled. (Or simply not knowing if they could lock me out... as crazy as that sounds!)
That was brilliantly written and summarised. Seems that Auth0 really did walk the walk in terms of developer experience and support. Thanks and good luck!
> I was being exposed to engineering concepts that just weren't a thing in agency work: unit testing, CI/CD, git hygiene, release management.
As someone who’s worked at an agency that’s grown from twenty engineers to hundreds over the last five years, what? Even when we were small and scrappy we still wrote unit tests…
My experience was 100% different (but also 6+ years ago). Margins just weren't enough to build it into estimates and it was nearly impossible to sell it to clients as a line item.
It's difficult to find a good balance between engaging with your work and colleagues, and the reality that your employer-employee relationship is a business relationship that could be severed at any time. Reading this post reminds me of that.
I can’t help but wonder about all the people who can’t express themselves as well as this Author. No shade on them, Im glad to have read about their journey. But the cynical part of me wonders about all the other affected folks, and what their perspective was about their tenure.
This was on my mind when I published it. I know, personally, other folks who did not have as fond of a memory as I do and others who are in a tough spot because of these layoffs (visa issues, financial hardships, etc). I certainly don't mean to imply that I represent all views here but it seems to have resonated with a lot of my former colleagues (who were the audience for this post).
I yawn at these posts because you should expect in life to be churned and when flavourless thrown out. Pick yourself up and move on.
Should I care that someone worked at Auth0, SpaceX, Amazon or Google when they're just another company that pays you money? How is it any different to where I work?
I've done them all, banks, animation studio, enterprise, corporate, sme, porn and can tell you every single one is the same.
It's the corps vision of fairy dust that alludes the employee wrong is what. "Work for us and live a life of wonders and giggles *"
Do a lot of companies actually fire people via email? That seems very cold! Most of the companies I've worked for they will call you into a meeting with your boss and HR and then have security walk you out after gathering your things. Not ideal, but at least has a human element. If this person was remote then it could at least be done via phone.
Once I got laid off via 1:1 call.
Once I got laid off via a mass call with HR, they canned my entire department at once (300+ people).
Once I got laid off via bulk bcc'd email because I was on vacation and missed the last-minute mass call with HR.
This has never happened to me, but I am absolutely 100% positive some companies just shut your access off, send you an email to an account you can't log into any more, and move on without a second thought.
For small layoffs its possible to do it individually. If you're firing hundreds or thousands of people, there isn't enough HR to go around and a lack of IT people to individually cut people's access throughout the day. Laid off in 2012, they just put hundreds of us in an event room and let us all go at once. I'd prefer an email and not have to do the walk of shame back to my desk with a box.
More resources for "normal" business. Laying off large number of people isn't normal business and so there would be no expectation you had HR/security resources just sitting around waiting for that type of an event.
Yes it does. When working remotely most communication, and even work, is usually done asynchronously. Which makes email or instant messaging system the most appropriate way to communicate you are no longer part of the company.
I'm not sure the JWT characterization is fair, but in a world of open-source, auth doesn't feel like something you should have to pay a subscription for.
Auth0 does a lot more than just a JWT. Sure, it's more expensive and probably not something you'll need, and if you do; why? But it's definitely not just a JWT.
It's to no one's advantage for employers to give a reason. It just invites pushback/argument. Better to just say "you can't fight management/VPs/people above our pay grade" and move on.
The bitter truth is your employer has a lot more lawyers than you do. For all the talk about how well-compensated and in-demand tech workers are, the reality is usually different.
You need someone in your corner to help you fight for your rights.
Well I worked in both EU(Ireland) and US for the same company on the same projects the comp difference is huge. So all the safety nets might buy you more peace of mind but pragmatically you are better off just having an extra rainy day fund from the portion of extra income you get in the US.
This is true, but the number of "hidden" fees associated with living in the US make the difference slightly less stark than it seems at first, and a catastrophic health event can set you back to 0. The difference is biggest when working in tech, of course, and for the most part it is usually still worth it, depending on desired lifestyle.
I'm trying to understand what are the "hidden fees". Different fees, extra fees, annoying fees (when compared to some other country) I can wrap my head around those, but what fees are "hidden"?
If I was sure it would not become just another layer of corporate bureaucracy one has to navigate sure. In my possibly biased experience the people climbing any type of power structure are same type personality wise be it union or corporation or goverment agency
How does joining a union prevent someone from being laid off after a merger? Unions have their place, but I'm skeptical that someone–especially a presumably high-paid employee–could collectively bargain their way out of a planned post-merger mass firing.
It doesn't prevent someone getting laid off. It makes sure that the process is fair and legal. It ensures that at-risk individuals have a chance to apply for available internal roles. A Union can use their legal powers to enforce proper compensation for an individual who is laid off and that remaining staff are protected.
Your question is a bit like asking "how does insurance stop my house catching on fire?" - it doesn't; it makes sure you have some protection if the worst happens.
The tradeoff is that people lose their ability to bargain individually, which is why you rarely see unionization of high-paid workers in the US. I think whether it makes sense for an individual to unionize really depends on their ability to negotiate. The more highly paid that a worker is and the more unique their role is, the less they have to gain from unionization vs looking at internal job postings and hiring an attorney as needed.
It absolutely does not mean that. Unions help set minimum standards, not maximum ones.
I've worked in private companies where the maximum comp is set by management and they do not allow individual negotiations. And I've worked in heavily unionised organisations where I was able to negotiate a better deal for myself.
Do you really think your unique talents will save you from a lecherous boss or protect you from being discriminated against?
And, if you wanted to sue, how much will an attorney's retainer cost? Hint - probably a lot more than you Union dues!
I've negotiated raises without being unionized. I've paid lawyers for contract negotiations. It still stands that in this specific instance it doesn't appear that the suggestion of unionization is relevant. Notably absent from your story is your job title, salary, whether you were personally unionized, and any mention of anything the union actually did for you personally. I'm not saying unions are generally bad, but they aren't magic, and I wouldn't expect one to prevent you from being fired in a merger generally much less in a tech startup.
Sure! Looks like you aren't an American, which explains the disconnect. According to Glassdoor, senior engineers typically earn twice as much in Seattle than London. That's not including the value of stock options that would come from being at a successful startup, which could easily be 10x a person's annual salary on IPO or acquisition, although that is more difficult to generalize. Obviously your individual situation may be totally different. Point being, Yank developers are not usually desperate to form unions.
Anyone have any idea how this would/could work for a company with employees in many different countries? Especially if the number of employees in your own country is low? (Single or low double digits.)
It depends on so many factors. Are you actually employees or contractors? Do they pay you from a subsidiary registered in your country?
I've somewhat seriously looked into this a while ago and my main takeaway would be: a) contractors can't unionize and b) you can unionize locally, as long as you get signatures from X% of the employees in your country.
Also, and I can't stress this enough, reach out to some already established union in your own area and ask for advice. You're gonna find out some things that are not easily googleable.
Each country has its own unique employment laws. So you would need a different Union in each country.
In the UK, for example, it doesn't matter how small your employer is - you still have the right to have your Trade Union representative with you in certain meetings.
Right, having someone in meetings is nice, but I'm thinking more in terms of collective bargaining, being involved in layoffs (e.g. making sure that every effort has been made to move/retrain people) and all that.
It's true that collective bargaining units will be per country, since legally the employer will have an entity in each country that is subject to local laws.
In practice, unions have international links and often collaborate in the case of an action relevant to the same employer in multiple countries. The details are very much case-specific.
> Anyone have any idea how this would/could work for a company with employees in many different countries?
Technically, that company should have a subsidiary for each country they're employing people full-time in. So you'd work with the local union + local subsidiary, just like it was a local company.
Unfortunately like student unions they don't keep the focus on their actual remit and delving into irrelevant politics: https://palestine.utaw.tech/advocate/
The point of a union, to me, is to get society to a point where you are in control of your life. You as an individual but also you as a group, regarding your origins, your gender, your sexual orientation, your skin color, or your place in the employer/employee relationship; in short, whenever you live a situation of oppression, be it small or large.
Having a lawyer helps, because it helps you fight these attacks. But larger than that, changing the situation, the society, the relationships so that you do not undergo any oppression based on your situation.
The goal, to me again, is to live in a more communal, solidarity-based environment. Telling about the genocide happening in Palestine because of their ethnicity, destroyed by their colonizer neighbor, and supporting them is totally on-topic.
Not irrelevant at all, military technology is a large part of the UK's tech sector, and arms exports to countries with poor human rights records are in the billions.
> In IT we have it pretty easy and can rebound without as much hassle as other domains, so we think we're kind safe. We're not.
Seems even people in the US aren't actually that well off, as the author said they'd experience "acute financial stress" if it wasn't for the severance:
> [...] and was told that the severance offered would give me at least a few months free from acute financial stress [...]
I think for most it's not a matter of "can't afford", but rather closer to "don't think it's a use of money that will benefit me over the alternative."
As a parallel: I can easily afford to buy a new car; I choose to buy used cars because it's a better use of money than the alternative.
I believe this discounts the very heavy anti-union propaganda that we've all been subject to since... forever.
I'm not even from the US (I'm from Brazil) but here, similarly, most have a very bad view of unions, fueled by employers that, of course, don't want to give workers any power.
It's always ironic when we see today's workers continuously losing rights that were achieved mostly through unions (with a fair share of blood) actively hate unions without ever truly looking into them.
Smart people always assume they are immune to propaganda, and objectively investigating where those feelings come from is not something most take the time to do. Confirmation bias plays a big role here.
Unions do have to overcome that history as well as the "free rider problem", but I don't think that's particularly unique to them versus any other "If you will give me money and power, I will make your life better" proposition.
We get advertised travel, lifestyle, nutrition, convenience/utility, and entertainment products all the time. Most of those things over-promise and turn out to underperform their promises (yet not their price tags) and so people who are generally happy with the status quo need some activation energy and convincing to give up money and power now in hopes that this new thing being advertised/promised to them will deliver on its promises. That seems entirely rational to me.
I don’t get it why the US company layoff culture is so different from what I’m familiar with, the European one. What are they afraid of that people need to be locked out? That one brings a gun to work? Here you get laid off, get a notice, are expected to continue working for a while (but depending on your work ethic you’ll take it easy), consume your remaining PTO, complain to your coworkers about what happened during a farewell dinner. So much more humane.
At my second job, the company terminated an employee for poor performance and intended to let them stay on a short term to wrap things up and then start their severance. The first evening (or maybe the first Friday evening), that dev stayed late in the office and deleted the source trees from as many machines as he could get access to (this was 1996, so most machines didn't have logins) and wiped the hard drive on the revision control server.
That experience (and the amount of loss and wasted time in reconstructing as best we could) heavily colored my view of the risk-reward ratio of letting terminated employees have continued access to premises and systems.
If I have any doubts about the future behavior of someone who just received very shocking, disorienting, and angering news, it is my job to protect the company and other employees much more than it is to allow the terminated employee continued access.
> Given that this is the US, he was probably sued and is still in prison.
Like most things in life, it depends. You'd have to get a prosecutor to agree to accepting the case to bring charges against the individual. They'd have to decide if there was enough evidence, they'd have to decide if they thought they could convince a judge/jury, then they'd have to decide if it was even worth their time. In 1996, that might have been a more difficult thing to do than today.
> Also, this is an insanely childish way to act
Yeah? And? So? Are you attempting to say that no non-American has ever acted irrationally or childish? I have a few history books that would disagree
Is that the lesson to learn here, really? An employee makes a stupid thing and the leadership didn't look into its security practices to avoid this type of attack?
Potentially, yes. Someone could go nutty before being dismissed, and it just be Tuesday. That's why there's things we often refer to in this industry as backups. If it is just a software bit of mischief, you should be able to recover from that without too much down time. s/disgruntled employee/ransom ware/ and it's really no different.
Not "terminating" your employees and having meaningful conversations on how it goes after they know they're let go helps a lot.
That forces the employer to come up with actual explainations someone can digest, and gives the employee time to be rational and plan the pivot.
There will still be ugly stories, and preemptively removing accesses will be needed in some cases, but that's by far the exception and not the norm, and we usually know when that will be the case.
> and the leadership didn't look into its security practices to avoid this type of attack?
It sounds like they very much did, starting with physical security. Especially in that time period, physical access was probably the biggest component even.
The lesson is that employees should only have access to the resources that they need to do their job at all times, and that there should be a fine-grained permission system to check if someone can read or read-write to all these resources.
Even when I am working on my projects, by myself, I use different accounts to access my services, depending on the role. At first it might seem crazy, but if you learned how to do this and you automate this process, it is a life-saver if you suddenly find yourself need quick help from some contractor or if you want to give a backup key to a trusted friend as a way to say "here is what you need to do in case something happens to me".
Also see the case of Shannon You[1] where the person in question leaked the trade secrets for BPA-free liner production used in soft drink cans for being fired.
So because the company hired a criminal sociopath, every other person laid off until the end of times must be treated the same way? Certainly there are better ways to handle even this crazy scenario you mentioned.
That feels so inhumane to me. If you don't see your employees as humans, instead as mere resources and, as soon as they are laid off, threats, then we can say it makes sense.
Similar things have happened in my ~12 year career which leads me to believe it is not as uncommon as your comment would portray it.
The first instance I can recall, a developer was terminated and his access was revoked. He goes home, waits until midnight, then tries logging into as many systems as he can. He apparently had saved a WordPress password on his Google Drive. He logs into WordPress and defaces a bunch of pages on the corporate website. FWIW he was one of my reports and he did not come off as a sociopath or unstable and his actions surprised me.
Second instance at a different startup, a marketing guy is terminated but was allowed to hang out at the office for a bit (for some reason management decided to fire him on a Thursday morning knowing he carpooled with several other employees). I felt bad so I took him out to lunch. At lunch he tells me he had a feeling he was about to be fired so he dumped the ~400K+ database of emails in our HubSpot account to sell to a competitor. I told him that was easily the dumbest idea he's ever had. I text the CEO from the bathroom to warn him. He's trespassed from the building upon our return. Oh, and he suspected I tipped them off and so he keyed my car.
Third instance at my own company, I terminated a contractor and removed their access to all services immediately. They attempt to run a series of reports on vendors, contractors, and other sensitive data from the admin UI without realizing their session was invalidated. I get the error notifications and add more granular permissions to the admin panel.
Is it inhumane? No. Is it rude? Yes. I think you have no choice _but_ to treat these people as humans. Humans do human things and act out for a variety of reasons and you have to expect that. Are they inherently bad people? No.
I can definitely understand that assuming everyone is not a sociopath is very naive. But the reason I say this is inhumane is not about the security implications.
There's a whole plethora of issues around layoffs that are often ignored. I recall looking at Slack's people list constantly to see which accounts were suddenly marked as "deactivated". People I had great relationships with but never exchanged personal emails simply gone. That dread of "what the fuck is happening" and "am I next?" overcoming you. Some people scramble to create sheets with contact information from those who were laid off.
That's absolutely inhumane.
I survived 3 layoffs in the past few years and I can still distinctly remember the awful feeling each of those left me with. I can only imagine how much worse that is for those affected.
We can separate the security parts from the human parts. Companies choose not to do that, for whatever reason that I simply cannot understand. Especially companies with so called "human resources" should be extremely prepared for situations like this, to make sure everyone is actually treated well.
Recently we had that viral video of a person that recorded themselves getting fired with zero reasoning of why. That's the kind of shit that happens with these layoffs. Bad management at its worst.
In short, I agree with you with regards to security implications. But those can be solved with proper access controls and planning. What I don't agree with is everything else around it. Not once I have seen companies laying off people handle this in any manner that I would describe as humane.
You don't have to be a sociopath or a criminal to be able to do harm to a company. There are some positions where clients loyal to the person rather than the company like sales or some form of producer/manager depending on the industry.
There are stories of sales teams going in and grabbing their rolodex (instantly dating the stories) so they could use the contacts where ever they land next. They could also reach out to the contacts to attempt to poison them towards the company, libel be damned.
Because they don't trust institutions, if someone that is working for a company and does something bad, or is shown to be corrupt, it will affect the public perception of the company, not of the individual.
Also, because Americans don't trust institutions, a lot of the internal processes and cultural values are upheld by the individuals, and how strongly this is done depends on the individual's power and ability to influence. This applies to all levels of the organization. This allows for the organization as a whole to be more dynamic and effective, but the downside is that this works only when the individuals have a vested interest in the organization.
When there is a layoff, or even when a simple individual is fired, this mutual alignment is removed and all bets are off. Except for fear of legal retaliation, the individual is no longer bound to the organization. This can lead to things like:
- Executives preempting the communication of their firing and using it to swing internal opinion, or even taking key team members away with them, like Sam Altman vs OpenAI.
- Employees with access to (supposedly) restricted areas copying sensitive information: E.g, sales reps getting data from all their clients to contact them and move them along.
- Plain old espionage / sabotage. Don't forget, if a company is laying people off it means they are not doing well, and if they are not doing well means they certainly want to keep as much of what is "really happening" to themselves. Fired employees can use their internal communications to gather evidence from their boss wrongdoings, find internal memos and share with journalists willing to get a scoop, etc.
Well I am an American that doesn't trust institutions by default, so to that end I fit your description here. I'm not sure how universal it is though, we have plenty of institutions here that people do trust and depend on every day.
In this context, I think it's less about an individual's trust of institutions and more the institutions mistrust of the individual. Companies don't have to send fired employees home immediately, they only do this because they don't trust the individual to act appropriately. There's probably a bit of a death spiral there, where both sides continue to mistrust each other further, but the individual lacking trust of institutions alone wouldn't get them locked out as soon as they're notified that they've been fired.
> Companies don't have to send fired employees home immediately, they only do this because they don't trust the individual to act appropriately.
Companies don't have agency or feelings. If company leaders expect people to do their jobs properly only because they are getting paid, it's already an institutional failure, because it's not taking into account that individuals are fallible.
If the company does not have an established process to protect itself from human error, whether accidental or intentional (like an disgruntled employee going rogue), when shit hits the fan all its leaders can do is to find blame in the individual. But instead of blaming people and hoping that we can force everyone to avoid mistakes, a better alternative would be to design a system that can withstand human nature and fix the institutional process so that that error doesn't happen again. The problem is that to do this takes time and most company CEOs can not see much beyond the next fiscal year.
I could have been more clear here. When I mentioned companies there I was referring to the people running the companies. Of course a company has no feelings or agency, companies are just a legal structure around a collection of people. Don't get me started on the absurdity of arguing that companies are people, that ruling was terrible.
I don't think its reasonable to assume that a company could ever have full safeguards in place to ensure that a bad actor employee could never cause meaningful damage, unless you are okay with a completely trustless system. Companies must trust their employees at some level, generally the level of trust grows in relation to the employee's responsibilities.
Its unreasonable to assume that any system can be 100% foolproof, if that's a requirement it just shouldn't exist. In the case of companies, they have to accept dome level of risk that employees can cause damage, whether intentional or not.
> Companies must trust their employees at some level, generally the level of trust grows in relation to the employee's responsibilities.
Hard disagree. People should be trusted with the things they need to perform their role, and no more than that. You would not give access of a production database to a CTO just because they have more responsibilities than a sysadmin, and any CTO that tries to bludgeon their way into getting access to it should be considered unfit for work.
It sounds like we actually see that the same, I'm trying to make a slightly different point.
Say I'm a software developer specifically working on the frontend library for an authentication service. The company needs to trust me with access to parts of the system and infrastructure pertinent to that feature. I very much agree that I should be locked out of other areas that I don't need for the job, for example I shouldn't have access to employee records, accounting, etc.
Once I am fired, though, the company has to continue to trust me to not misuse the parts of the system that I do already have access to. If I am fired but allowed to stay for a transition period and my permissions aren't revoked immediately, the company is trusting me. If I am fired and immediately blocked, its a sign that the company didn't trust me rather than an indication of my own mistrust for the company/institution.
You could continue to work on things, but your access would be set to read-only and you'd lose commit rights, or you'd be working on a completely separate branch and as part of the transition process someone else on the team would have to be able to report they have successfully merged worked from your tree to the main one.
Going back to my original point in this thread, aren't you describing how the post-firing lockout is based on the company's mistrust of the employee rather than the other way around, right?
My point was never that there aren't security protocols that could be used, only that its not relevant whether the employee trusts the company in that scenario.
But it's the existence and application of these security protocols that can make all the difference, and having these protocols in place shows already some type of institutional maturity.
With the proper protocols in place, a company doing layoffs signals "we trust you can still perform your role as a developer, you can still communicate/collaborate with your colleagues and you can even access the source code (because who really is going to check if you are deleting the code repo from your machine?), and the removal of write-access to the systems can be seen as a smoke test if the transition can be done orderly", while the standard current procedure just says "Through no fault of your own, you will be seen now as a potential threat so we will treat you as toxic material".
Very rarely; maybe i misunderstood your point. You're saying it's an institutional failure, but not one of the leaders? So, it's the governments fault they allowed corporate structures to function this way? Or maybe you want to blame the board of directors?
Well, there are not many countries where people actually trust institutions (and, above all, the government). Perhaps Germany, Nordic countries, Netherlands, Japan, maybe a few more.
In Switzerland, we work with the government, and are generally OK with it, but proceed cautiously, as if it could explode any second. In Spain and France already, government is considered an inefficient nuisance. In many places in South America, the government is an adversary. In Russia, government is your arch-enemy, and you do everything possible to either hide from it, perhaps in another country, or actually damage it (unless you are evil and work for them).
So "trusting institutions" is a foreign, alien concept for most of the world.
I don’t think that many people trust _corporations_ anywhere. In the US, people at least can have some stake there, by owning stocks etc, which makes them more engaged. Stock markets in Europe are laughable, people rarely invest there, except through their bank funds.
The vast majority of employment in the US is so called "at will," which means an employee can be fired at any time for any reason, except an illegal one. And good luck with proving it was in fact an illegal one. Our "contracts" are barely worth the bits we use to store them. Why would we trust the company at all in this situation? It would be a mistake for every single person to take management at face value.
Americans tend to be more extreme and very individualist. Very distrustful of organizations and institutions. Many of the early European settlers were escaping religious/state persecution as well as the powerful trade guilds that dominated life in Europe at the time. I think a lot of this comes from the German immigration to the US, Germans to me seem a lot more tribal than the English. Maybe due to Germany operating as a collection of tribes and UK as an expansionist empire. Could be beer hall culture vs pub culture. When visiting Germany it was notable how small groups of people who didn’t know each other barely interacted.
If I needed help burying a body I would only ask my American friends. Friends from most other countries wouldn’t help and just encourage me to turn myself in. Not that I’ve needed this help but if I needed to do something where it was us against the world I would pick Americans to join me. I found it more difficult to make friends with Americans, they tend to maintain far fewer friendships, but the few they do maintain are held more strongly.
Because losing your job is really a bummer everywhere, but in Europe you've got a lot of things covered by the welfare state (how well, it's a different discussion), so it's less stressful, which reduces the probability of people being really pissed.
In the US, you're probably out of healthcare in the blink of an eye, may have no severance, no coverage, no unemployment benefits, and in some cases it'd mean deportation.
I'd be fine with getting money for healthcare from my employer (especially if it was in a special pre-tax account, like a 401k that I could then use to purchase healthcare), but my being tied to whatever 2-3 plan options the head of HR and company president were wined and dined for seems a little crazy to me.
It is the case in much of EU also: In Germany most of the healthcare is covered by the employer. In Denmark, where I reside, you get an extra coverage with most (tech-)employments that provides access you wouldn't have otherwise.
Yes, the employers pay, but you do not lose your healthcare immediately after being fired. The state provides it for you as part of the social security net. I don't know specifically about Germany or Denmark, but I suppose it's the same across the EU.
In France you can keep the insurance you used to have from the employer who fired you, but you'll have to pay for it out of pocket. I don't know whether you'll also keep the same price or if it'll be adjusted up (since you presumably don't benefit from whatever deal the employer managed to get).
If you don't have this insurance (mutuelle), the State does provide the social security (it's provided either way, the mutuelle is on top of this).
But this is basic social security. If you're in a car crash or something, you're mostly covered. If you need work done on your teeth, you're on your own.
When I needed to spend the night in a hospital after breaking my wrist, basic social security covered the ambulance and the actual procedure of putting my arm back together, but had I not had a mutuelle, I would've been on the hook for the hospital stay.
I stayed a few times at the hospital and the price was something like 20€/day. Quite affordable, especially that the price is decreasing when the stay is longer.
It may be a bit more (would need to dig the bill but it was of that order of magnitude) and I am writing this do that a non-EU person does not get the idea that it was 1000€ a day or something.
It's the same in the UK. But the interest difference with the IS I've noticed is the effect of price anchoring: because everyone has a provider of last resort, the private providers compete on features and price. IIRC my employer payed ~100gbp for Bupa, while my current employer in the US pays ten times that for my current provider.
Also, in Germany the cost of insurance is tied to income. So I went from the bizarre situation where I went from paying ~500€ while employed to less than 200€ now that my business is not generating substantial revenue.
It is the bizarre idea of socialized healthcare, were all (publicly insured) Germans share the costs and pay according to their ability to do so, while even poor people (or founders like you) can afford to have all necessary procedures done without going bankrupt.
I don't mind socialized healthcare, but this is what taxes are for. Having an "insurance" system where the premium people pay is not related to actuarial risk is indeed bizarre.
I completely understand the shittiness of this issue and I'm not from a developed country, but I mean, this is the reality of a temporary work visa, no?
I might be more pessimist/realist, but until I receive a permanent residency visa, I'd treat everything as temporary, ready to move back in a couple days notice.
In (some?) other countries work visas are not tied to employer but rather job category, and the length of time waiting for permanent residency is usually 2 years. In the US an H1B can be transferred once you reach the portability threshold if you can find another employer, and depending on the country of origin you can be waiting for permanent residency (green card, not citizenship) for 2 decades. An L1B is tied to an employer and you're effectively illegally in the country as soon as you're laid off. In practice the government gracefully gives you a week to completely uproot your life and get the hell out. I was lucky, I went from arriving in the country to receiving citizenship in ~10 years, but the 4 years trying to get permanent residency were the most stressful of my life, and being spared by layoffs did little to help. Even being privileged knowing you can go elsewhere, and fully open eyed about the situation, it still sucks.
Well there are temporary work visas out there in various countries that are fixed-term, e.g. a visa holder is entitled to stay in the country for 2 years. If they lose their job they're still entitled to stay for the remainder of the term, and have plenty of time to find other work (which doesn't require any sponsorship). Examples of this include the J-1 visa in the US which is explicitly a 2-year inextensible cultural exchange visa that lets you work whatever job you want.
The thing that makes the H-1B and visas like it insecure is their being tied to employer sponsorship. I don't think that's inherently unfair - the whole point of the visa is to bring in skilled workers in valuable industries.
What I do think is shitty about the H-1B in particular is just how short the grace period is to find a new sponsor. 60 days is a tight schedule even for a skilled worker in a good market, and layoffs don't tend to happen in good markets. It definitely opens up visa holders to exploitation by employers, and temporary downturns can end up kicking out a lot of valuable people.
There are other countries with skilled worker visas with more generous grace periods - e.g. Ireland's Critical Skills Employment Permit allows you 6 months to find a new job if you're laid off. I don't see the problem with that if the visa holder can support themselves financially over that timeframe.
Unfortunately, if you are a chinese or indian citizen on an h1b the wait time for a green card is outrageously long. You can't really live in a "ready to move back in a couple days notice" state for decades. People buy homes, getting married, and have kids.
In the US there's an H-1B Visa program that allows skilled workers to come over as a path to citizenship. However the program is fraught with all manner of requirements like company sponsorship. Changing jobs under the H-1B program results in your journey to citizenship being reset, and current bureaucracy and politics have resulted in that journey taking upwards of a decade or more.
As a result of policy, H-1B workers will take substandard pay, abuse, and burdens to maintain a job with a company willing to sponsor them until they can get their Green Card. This creates a from of indentured servitude.
The knock on affect is that it lowers wages for everyone because there's a vast pool of skilled workers willing to accept lower pay from a company willing to maintain sponsorship of them for 10+ years.
Imagine on year 9 you get laid off, now your indentured servitude got extended another 10 years if you can find a new sponsor.
Cobra enables continued healthcare, many states have unemployment benefits, and I believe in all cases (?) you have some number of days to get a new visa sponsor.
The way you speak of all of these things just makes it obvious you've never been laid off and in the position to need to utilize these things. COBRA lets you keep your existing plan, but you pay for the entire premium. In most cases this is $1000-2000 per month. For someone in survival mode and needing to find where to cut costs, 2k per month could be more than their rent.
The max unemployment benefits for any state is not going to cover much of anything, you better have savings to fall back on.
And for those on H1B, there is a 60 day grace period. Maybe in 2021-2022 it was extremely easy, but today? A lot of people will be lucky to get through a full interview loop in that time.
I haven’t been laid off, you’re right. I’m just saying the GP made lots of absolute claims that aren’t absolutely true. Of course many European countries have bigger and better safety nets than the US, but it’s not like the US has none.
Most of the world (which isn’t the U.S. or Europe) is even worse.
Looks like you never actually had to pay for COBRA out of pocket. It's not financially feasible for the large majority of people, especially those who didn't have to pay out of pocket for their coverage previously. A single person can be ~$800USD, and if you want to cover dependents in your family, at least double it.
My partner is losing their healthcare very soon and it's cheaper to pay out of pocket for regular doctors and prescriptions than pay for COBRA. You basically have to be in the hospital for COBRA to be worth it.
Paying one's own insurance when you don't know how long you'll have no income is outrageously expensive. Last time I changed jobs I just went without because the COBRA offering was so expensive.
I have no clue how unemployment works. I don't think I've ever paid into it?
You should look up what max unemployment benefit payments are for your state, because they probably won't cover rent/mortgage if you live in any moderate CoL area.
You need to have some serious savings to pay out the monthly cost of COBRA. The last time I was in this position, it was ~$1,800/month to cover my family.
I had that experience with a US mother company of a European subsidiary (of a subsidiary). CEO swings by, as he does once per year, and fires the whole dev team, including the local branch manager, because they'll take over in the US (they couldn't, and then bought a competitor instead; the original product is still running, 15 years later), and we were told to leave the building. I had a program building something for an unusual client project, but I had to close the laptop, and that was €60k down the drain, probably more if the project had been successful. Since then, I've avoid companies with US ties.
I was laid off in Sweden by an American parent company and all work ended the second it happened. It was funny because they could have asked me to keep working, but I guess a paid vacation was nicer for me anyway.
Garden Leave (sometimes "Gardening Leave") is the technical term for this. You get paid, and they might insist on you not taking up any new job until the contract term ends, but they explicitly do not want you to do any work or come to the office or anything like that.
There's a parallel and equally wasteful but popular practice of insisting on taking on CxO employees of a purchased outfit for some prolonged period, perhaps as insurance, except that you've got no useful or interesting work for them to do. Unlike Garden Leave they're not fired - one of my friends was even told they could expect a substantial pay raise, but the job is now awful so their goal will be to wait only until as many options/ bonuses/ etc. as possible have irreversibly turned into hard money and then quit ASAP.
It's like OK, I could do something actually interesting next week or, I could sit in tedious meetings with idiots for 24 months, then pay off my mortgage, and retire immediately with $$$$$. Ugh.
If you know you'll be dead in a year, obviously the former is the right choice. But you probably won't be.
Sure, and they had to pay until the end of the contract plus compensation or offer other positions, but they can make you leave the building. It's theirs, after all. And foreign companies have it easier for certain claims, especially regarding finances and profitability, which is the main ground for rightful dismissal, so a lawyer told me.
Sure - in most EU countries, especially to the east, they get some additional money (usually 1-6 months of wages + unused vacation days). That's about it.
I don't know why people think it's not possible to fire people in the EU, but it is and it's a normal thing. It just costs some money.
It is possible, but if someone does whatthe parent described like that in Europe, you get more than that and you could walk out of there with your laptop and nobody would be able to stop you, and if they did, you'd probably get more than 6 months of wages.
There is a process to firing. EVEN in the US there is a process of firing. The big lie is that most people are fed, is that in "right to work" states you have no legal recourse. You do, but not if you take the severance and sign your leave papers, because you panic right away. Something I didn't know either in the US.
The most important rule my (senior) friend once told me is to document everything, especially when your bosses make you do something that you feel uncomfortable with. Print emails if you have to and put them in a folder that you might never have to open if you're lucky.
The fact there is a process doesn't mean you get guaranteed access to building and infrastructures.
You are technically still employed and paid but the company can refuse to let you step inside or connect to the network. You also can't work for another company without their agreement until the grace period is over.
> I don't know why people think it's not possible to fire people in the EU, but it is and it's a normal thing. It just costs some money.
It varies across Europe as well. Some countries, like Sweden, have more protections than others (no matter if union member or not), as an example. You cannot fire someone unless they demonstrably neglect their work duties and the firing overall needs to be objectively justified. Then the notice period depends on how long you've worked there, and more conditions I surely can't remember right now.
Compared to Spain that has "disciplinary dismissal" for example, where "insubordination" or "lack of discipline" could be enough to get you fired.
Insubordination is definitely grounds for termination in Sweden. One of the easiest and fastest ways to get your self fired.
Your boss tells you to unpack a crate, you say no, boss tells you "f*ck off and never come back". Perfectly fine legally and you don't get any severance pay either.
There is some nuanced to this, as you have the right to refuse unreasonable requests and you are allowed to have a bad day if you have a longish good record etc etc.
For a knowledge worker it is more difficult to define what a reasonable order is and what constitutes insubordination, but the basic rules are the same.
For Sweden in addition to what's stated above, if the reason for being fired is downsizing of lack of work, the law for employment protection (LAS) also states that the people laid off have to be in the reverse order of their hiring. To the latest to be hired is the first to let go.
Exceptions can be made if justified, not dug into the details of how that works.
In many countries in Europe it is hard to fire individual worker who has permanent contract.
However, another story is when mass layoff is going on. For example in Poland group of 9+ workers can be fired without any real reason. Downsizing! With 3-6 month notice period, of course.
Depends a bit on specific laws for every country, but you usually have to go trough proper process and announcement, and follow special rules if you're firing a big quantity of employees. Musk skipped that in the massive Twitter layoffs and it bit him in the back (for example, when firing the whole Spanish staff [0]).
Simplified a lot, and in general conditions, on Spain:
- You have to announce it at least 15 days before ( unless it's a disciplinary dismissal ) or pay for those 15 days of salary
- Pay for any unused vacation days and pending salaries
- An "objective reason" is needed for the firing [1]
- If there's no proper "objective reason", you have to reinstate the worker or pay 33 days of salary per year worked by the user [2]
- If the layoffs involve certain number or percentage of the workers, you have to go through certain legal process and get government authorization [3]
Twitter didn't go through the process in Spain, to avoid paying the stocm options that were going to vest very soon, but then the firings were declared illegal and they had to pay proper severance and for the stock options too... [4]
In some parts of Europe, it is very common to do “mutual termination”, since you cannot easily fire someone just on a whim. If you use the “redundancy” excuse, companies are usually prohibited from hiring again on the same position for 6 months. If you want to fire someone and not face this, there’s a very detailed process of what you have to do, before you can justify termination (documented first warning to the employee, steps they need to take to improve, second warning, proof that they didn’t so what was asked of them, etc).
Virtually no one goes through this, and they opt for mutual termination, and generally a person can negotiate a severance package for their signature (I have seen examples of people negotiating almost a year’s salary as severance), and they are out immediately.
But this is also a scare tactic and people get caught by surprise and sign anything, sometimes without any severance. During this past year, as mass layoffs were happening in waves, people got more informed about this and were smarter in negotiating their exits.
>I don’t get it why the US company layoff culture is so different from what I’m familiar with, the European one.
Not trying to single you out, but these kinds of comments always baffle me.
Around the world, we have different religions, cultures, languages, customs, currencies, holidays, skin colors, legal structures, etc. And then someone is confused why people on the other side of the world don't do things the same way.
For me, as a product of all of the things above in the US, if a company tells me they no longer need my services, then I am not going to keep working for a while. That doesn't mean I am going to be spiteful, but just that I acknowledge their decision, and so I will move on to something else. To me, continuing to work alongside (former-ish) teammates in a dead man walking situation seems strange, but I can see why it might work in Europe.
Not sure which part of Europe you are referencing, but from the layoffs I've seen and heard of (DACH) the procedure was always to lock the person out immediately after the layoff call/meeting. If that's good or bad is rather subjective, personally I would rather walk out the door right after.
One might have enough time to send their farewells, but that's about it - you are still getting payed until the end of the notice period of course. (let's not talk about severance packages, they are either non existent or a joke - you often also have to sign an NDA prohibiting you to talk about the package and the layoff in general).
So basically companies pull the same questionable stuff in Europe as well, it's far from the fairytale you sometimes read about. (there are always exceptions ofc)
Sure, you can always say no to a couple of grand. (referring to voluntary severance packages, not whatever the legal construct of your country guarantees - which btw is a laughable amount most of the time)
Not sure, I haven't seen mass layoffs, but individual ones. Normally it's a contract ending not being renewed, or the trial period, often the employee is then still active for 1-3 months; till the contract ends.
It's rare it's immediate and if it is there needs be an agreed fee for termination.
At least in Norway the guiding principle in law is that the employee can and must work out the grace period, and locking an employee out is illegal. It's possible to mutually agree to exceptions or be granted an exception - but the latter is rare.
I think the answer is pretty simply due to the difference in laws. In the US no notice is legally required. As you noted, employees that already know their employment is shortly coming to an end generally don't perform to the same level. Therefore it is in the company's interest to give no advance notice whatsoever until employment is officially, actually terminated.
In every European country, there's a legal requirement to give notice. And therefore there is an incentive for the company to maintain amicable relations during the notice period to try and prevent trouble.
Well, yes, but actually no: you can easily give notice then lock them out, you just have to pay them over the entire notice period as the law says. It's not commonly done but in special cases of really bad blood, it will. The law is there to protect the employee income, not to force the employer to give them work.
This has been my experience in most cases. When an employee is terminated, they are sent home and paid the rest of their time, to avoid risk of vengeful acts or whatever.
What bugs me: in most companies, especially ones where people do mostly knowledge-based work like Authy does, almost everyone has some kind of unique information on them. No matter how good your project management and code base, most people carry some kind of valueable knowledge in their head that only becomes apparant as soon as they are not there anymore: something like how to log into certain systems, backup schedules, currently pressing issues etc etc.
In my opinion the most important thing that needs to be done during offboarding is transfering as much of this hidden knowledge as possible into the company.
How do they proceed operating after kicking people out without prior notice? Do those projects just get stomped and started over with new people?
The big difference between those two cases is when it's the company's decision, they have plenty of opportunity to plan for the transition and may frequently conclude that they've done enough for the transition before the conversation with the employee.
Not only do you have to give notice, but here in Norway you also have to include employee reps and follow a strict process. Part of that process is to define criteria for how to determine who should stay or go. Then after notifying the employees about the ongoing reduction, each employee should have the opportunity to discuss with their superiors how they fit the criteria or if there are other roles in the company they could fill. And then at a set time the actual layoffs will be announced.
So it's virtually unheard of to show up, hear about layoffs, and not have a job the next day. Unless it's a situation where the whole company is going bankrupt or so.
The notice period is mostly monetary. 30 days notice means you should pay for that time, but having the person actually work is optional (if you're being terminated)
If you’re asking about resigning as an employee, it seems to work the same way: legally speaking, you could just stop showing up from one day to the next.
I imagine most of the time people will have the courtesy of giving 1-2 weeks notice if possible.
It's not just courtesy. For many local companies, the business owners will know each other and will let other business owners know if someone quits without notice, and so it's harder to get hired after that if you don't give notice.
That said, sometimes the company will decide that they'd rather you just go, and they'll tell you not to bother giving notice and you can leave immediately. Someone in another comment said that was because of bad blood, but it's also because of risk and it's unlikely that a person will be very productive during a short notice period.
When there's a tricky hand-off, though, the company might ask for and incentivize a longer notice period, too... So nothing's written in stone.
This does seem to be a lot more common in the US, I actually had this happen to me while working for a US company and the author's experience was very relatable – I was immediately locked out of my accounts and couldn't even say goodbye to the people I had been working with for the last several years (I was working remotely at the time).
But I've seen it in the UK too... Specifically one corporate I worked for sent a mass email to everyone on a Thursday afternoon saying something along the lines of "please ensure you're in the office tomorrow morning". Then on the Friday morning people were called into a room one by one, told they had been made redundant and were immediately escorted off site by security. This was just a fairly regular retail business too. Nothing that you would think required such an extreme approach.
I suppose I understand it in some ways though... If you've just told someone you've lost your job you're probably not going to be very motivated to continue to work. And suppose there is some risk people might try to disrupt business activities in protest... I think it probably is better to give employees their redundancy pay and let them move on rather than waste their time for several weeks. That said, I'm not sure why the security escort was needed in this case. The layoffs came from McKinsey's infinite wisdom though, so it wouldn't surprise me if the security escort was their recommendation to reduce risk.
A reason I’ve heard for not keeping those laid off around is that you want those who stay to look to the future, not to what was, and that’s what those who got fired will do, because they don’t have a future at the company.
I find the "lock out and leave immediately" thing to be pretty weird, and perhaps US-specific.
But! The Nordic approach is also bizarre! The norm is that employees keep working for 3 months after giving notice. There are, of course, plenty of exceptions. The "normal exception" is that if someone quits and the business thinks they are going to go to a competitor, they'll leave the premises within a few days, but continue as a paid employee for the remainder of the time -- known as "garden leave."
In either case, though, the employee doesn't start working at their new job for three months!! In my experience, it's super-stifling, especially for startups, since three months is an eternity for a new company. Of course, in the tech industry, nobody really does all that much work for at least the trailing two months, since who's going to get assigned to a new project just before they leave?
I guess this is perhaps sorta how things play out in areas of the US that allow noncompetes to be enforced, too.
> I don’t get it why the US company layoff culture is so different from what I’m familiar with, the European one.
Personal bias? Layoffs/Firing etc. in Austria in IT look very much the same. You're locked out, your devices are taken, you are escorted out of the office. That has nothing to do with being afraid, it's just a clear cut process. Why make it ambiguous?
I agree it's a process (not very clear everywhere though), but the reasoning is 100% being afraid of what the employees can do.
If the company could keep reliably profiting off of the employee during its notice period, why wouldn't they? It's all about mitigating the risk.
Personally when I left, I've always spent weeks finishing off what I was doing, adding/updating documentation and generally passing on any knowledge that could potentially leave with me. They allow that because they're not afraid I'm gonna delete their source code, since I'm choosing to leave. If the company didn't see risk after layoffs, that's how they would react.
And let's be real here: this is mostly a threat when layoffs are not justified. So to keep it simple and streamline the process, they treat every layoff the same.
This is not the "European culture", which I am not sure exists as one on this issue.
I have seen many times people be quickly "locked out" when being laid off. A term for this in the UK is "garden leave" because you're still paid but you're told not to work or come to the office anymore.
As the case may be this makes sense in order to avoid any issues (from bad blood in the office to actively malicious actions) and, realistically someone being laid off is not exactly going to do their best work, anyway...
Edit: Personally I think a quick cut is better as it avoids having to continue going to the office when you know it's pretty much pointless and it allows to focus on your next step. The thing is that it brings home the fact that this was all a business arrangement despite all the emotional attachment we may develop over time.
Garden leave also happens in Portugal, but only when the relation between employer and employee deteriorated to the point of no return. As an example in the same company I had a co-worker layed off with 3 months notice, while in the previous year a different person in the same team was called to HR during the day, and let go - we all found out he was fired on the next daily stand up.
Well, if you're fired it's either that your performance was inadequate or that you did something serious enough. In the latter case, in general there is no notice period and in the former, well obviously they don't want you around anymore...
I've seen the 'bad blood' issue happen at a place I formerly worked at, that I refer to as 'MegaBank' (which isn't short of the truth). One was developer that seemingly left on good terms, but sneakily deleted a load of prod data as he was 'clearing down his inbox', and another that smashed up an office. Which was why, after the latter, the 'reduction in force' meetings were conducted on a separate floor with security guards.
I had a job I referred my spouse to. The team she was in had some reservations, but nothing that couldn't be addressed, essentially a bit of temperament by culture shock young talented engineers tend to have on their first or second job. But the HR person assigned took the entire next year off, so she did not get any feedback except from her boss, who said everything was fine. Another feedback round got delayed for the next 3 months because someone on the team was sick, and eventually her delayed "team feedback round" appointment changed to one with HR, in which they fired her "just in case it was still a problem".
That was the only time I've seen someone completely locked out - in Germany. She couldn't even complete the normal offboarding, because her building access was revoked, and the company didn't have an alternative process, so I had to bring it in, where people would agree with me that it was a process failure, and that they were very sorry, but not sorry enough to tell it to my spouse's face.
Honestly given Oktas recent security problems I don't blame them from be very pro-active in deactivating accounts, but the ways it's handled though is just inhumane. At least have the balls to call people, give them instructions and let them know that their account is being disabled during the call.
For companies like Okta, and a few other high security positions, it's not uncommon for companies in Europe to simply pay people do to nothing for their remaining time.
Gardening leave is usually for positions where the employee holds competitive information on active deals etc. During the gardening leave they're under NDA which allows for their competitive information to go stale before starting at a new company.
Non-disclosure, non-compete and notice are different things that you're mixing together.
Notice is compulsory -- you simply cannot let go of the employee immediately and must continue paying them for 3 months (or up to 4 months in some countries where every calendar month started is due).
Non-compete is opt-in by the employer, and allows them to prevent you from working for a competitor (for up to one year I believe). In exchange the employer must still pay your previous salary (some employers will ask employees without compensation, but that's not legally enforceable).
Non-disclosure means that you're not able to disclose company and trade secrets, similarly to an NDA. It is a standard term in most employment contracts and usually applies for one year, regardless of the non-compete being enforced or not.
It is fairly common to send people for garden leave during their notice, but actually extending it further by enforcing the non-compete is a costly thing and will only be done for strategic employees.
The UK has rules about such things. If your job is at risk of redundancy, there are formal processes to follow. If enough jobs are at risk of redundancy, there's a whole consultation process that needs to happen before people are actually "made redundant". People are expected to work while that takes place.
Money can smooth things over, though. The process is expensive, and has to be done properly, or the company can offer "voluntary redundancy" where they pay you to go away quietly. That happened to me. I don't know whether I was locked out or not, because I didn't try to log in again.
This is a typical approach for SaaS companies - especially ones that house sensitive data like Okta/Auth0. A CISO’s nightmare is someone who’s been laid off, disgruntled and still has access to the network.
I have seen a company firing one of their developer who went to Europe on a 2weeks business trip to assist a NGO to implement their tool. One day, said developer couldn't access their emails and was wondering why.
At the end, it was the NGO/client who let the dev informed.
Who would want that? The US style is the best of both worlds IMO. By cutting you off immediately the company protects itself from rogue employees who may try to harm the company while their access is still enabled.
For the employee, being cut off means you don't actually have to do anymore work for a company that's letting you go. You're either getting severance or you aren't, and I'd much rather collect severance while not having to work. In the instance that they're letting you go without severance: yes that's horrible they just pulled the rug. But usually that's a result of poor performance and you probably should've seen it coming. And frankly that's also why we have unemployment.
> What are they afraid of that people need to be locked out? That one brings a gun to work?
So I'm a Brit who briefly worked over in Alabama for a few months and yes, that was a genuine concern with some of the folks that were let go by the company. It was well known that quite a few staff members had firearms in their vehicles.
When I lived in Florida, we had a guy who, upon learning he was fired, loudly threatened to come back to the office with one of his AK-47s and mow everyone down. He shouted this across to everyone in the single-floor open office as he was being physically removed from the building. And we knew he had multiple guns because we did a few company outings at a shooting range.
You better believe he was locked out as soon as he could be removed from the building, and we had armed security there for some time after his termination.
It’s not talked about as much but one of the main reasons for American and European software developers being let go is outsourcing to places like India.
Companies save 90% of the cost of hiring someone in America.
Very soon we are going to see what happened to manufacturing jobs happen to software jobs in the US unless the government steps in. Unfortunately I don’t see anyone talk about it
> Very soon we are going to see what happened to manufacturing jobs happen to software jobs in the US unless the government steps in. Unfortunately I don’t see anyone talk about it
Outsourcing is nothing new. I don't know why you (and others) act like it is only going to happen now with remote work.
My first job in my home country, 20 years ago, was outsourcing to a US company. I was just very cheap labor.
What do you mean it’s not talked about? It was an incredibly common theme during the celebrations of remote work increases.
A: "Finally, I can work from anywhere and don't have to live in an expensive place and commute to that office every day."
B-Z: "Um, don't you think that being able to work from anywhere increases the possibility of the company to hire from anywhere as well? And that it's not guaranteed to be you or your neighbor who is hired?"
To be fair, there's also those of us in Europe splitting the difference.
Auth0 is interesting in that it kinda did this from the start - a lot of the engineering was in South America - especially Argentina (it was founded by an Argentinian after all!) and there was great talent in nearly the same time zone. I don't understand why more companies in the US don't look at Latin America for affordable engineering talent.
> don't understand why more companies in the US don't look at Latin America for affordable engineering talent.
i can only speak for Argentina. It's because the economic situation is bad and having people on payroll there is a nightmare. Constant fluctuations of exchange rates, employees asking to be paid in USD when the only legal currency is ARS, etc.
The pre-acquisition Glassdoor reviews were astounding and back this up.
For myself, working at auth0 was truly life altering. It was the first time I was in a long standing multi-national environment.
It was the first time I was deeply exposed to other cultures and ways of living.
As a side effect of working at Auth0, This exposure completely reshaped my worldview and thoughts on luck and privilege. Watching Argentina inflation fluctuate as people I spent 8 hours a day with struggle to pay their bills and provide for their families as I live stably with no worry I really internalized how much pure raw luck plays in setting us up for life: Who we’re born to and where we’re born.