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points by gamblor956 3 days ago | 0 comments
The worst case scenario is not taking the offer then getting let go for performance, which means zero severance, health insurance terminated same day.

That's generally not legal in the U.S. or most of the EU. The company would have to establish a very significant paper trail to establish that these individual "performance-based" layoffs were not part of a layoff subject to WARN regulations (or their European equivalents which are even stricter). The hurdle is so large that no company has successfully pulled off such a feat, and many of the companies that tried ended up paying significantly more in penalties to their local Depts of Labor than they would have saved with this stunt.

[–] locusofself 3 days ago
I don't really know the legality of it, but I can tell you that last year around April there was quite a big wave of sudden performance terminations within Microsoft and these people did not get severance. I know because I was a manager of one of these people and had to deliver the news. I know that many of these people had had a below 100 rating on their previous performance review, but we were unaware at the time that this meant a death sentence for these employees several months later when we got the email a few days in advance of the termination. It was hundreds, if not thousands of affected people.
[–] ryathal 2 days ago
It's not that hard, you can reword almost anything to make even a high performer look like a failure. Then you just let people go a handful at a time
[–] WorldMaker 2 days ago
What's legal and what's enforceable are two different things. Also the US is extremely muddy in these legal waters because, sure, Federal laws and the Department of Labor are supposed to enforce such actions. But most US states are "At-Will Employment" states which means that companies do not even have to provide a reason for a termination, which means there's no paperwork that really gets sent to the Department of Labor to enforce anything at all.

(Not to mention that companies have spent decades perfecting the "layoffs are coming in a quarter or two, send out performance reviews now and encourage managers to be extra 'honest' and nitpick everything so that we have a written record just in case we need to fire people for performance to make the layoff seem smaller" dance, including Stack Ranking being built to be that smoke 100% of the year, every year. Still technically illegal, but if the quiet parts aren't said out loud who are you going to believe, the months ahead of time paperwork in performance reviews or that executives decided they needed harsh performance reviews months in advance on a golf course somewhere? It's not a conspiracy when it's so easy to pull off.)

[–] gamblor956 2 days ago
Sudden terminations without cause are legal.

Mass terminations without timely notice, or pay in lieu of notice, are not. Disguising a mass termination as a collection of "performance" based individual terminations is a method that many companies have tried and failed, because...get this...WARN regulations in the US and EU don't care about the reasons for termination unless it's a "for cause" termination and you absolutely need to document the cause for those.