points by _heimdall 2 days ago | 0 comments
Unless something has changed drastically since I worked at MS, they absolutely can do mass layoffs without having to buy out contracts.
Sure they offer severance, industry norm is usually 1-2 weeks of severence per year of employment, but in no way are they contractually limited to only lay people off for cause.
Firing an individual is different, on that front they are careful how its handled to avoid being sued and having to settle. Employment laws also vary by country, I'm mostly familiar with US laws.
[–] somenameforme 2 days ago
[–] _heimdall 2 days ago
Oh gotcha, I may have misread you comment!
In comparison with what I've seen in big tech layoffs over the years, this offer is pretty "generous" in comparison. I'd assume any layoff following this would be as well, at least beating the 1-2 week per employed year norm.
What I was responding to is somebody above thinking that Microsoft was being "generous" with this deal - what I was saying is that they were almost certainly just sticking to greediest possible behavior that stays within the bounds of the contract. You can describe billion dollar multinational corps in quite a lot of ways, but generous isn't one of them.