Comment by seiji | Hacker News Reader

Comment by seiji | Hacker News Reader

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Remember, you can fire them at any time, with or without cause.

People keep saying that around here. It's technically true (the best kind of true?) but it's not exactly how the real world works.

In the real world (meaning: actual companies, not startups with 2 weeks runway), to fire an individual (mass layoffs are different), you first put them On Notice (a Personal Improvement Plan saying "we, the company, believe you are not a good employee. you have X amount of time to improve"). Next, you wait 6 months. Then you review their progress against their "plan," you find any excuse for them not meeting their plan (plans can be subjective), then you say "Sorry, you're fired, here's a severance package."

So, firing an individual involves interdepartmental paperwork, getting legal potentially involved, and a (hopefully not trivial) payout.

Mass layoffs are essentially the same except you don't give 3-6 months notice and just immediately unload lots of people at a company, but hopefully still give them a payout.

In either case, I think why people throw around "at any time" is they want to convey you should have zero-loyalty towards any employer since they can unilaterally act against you. That is quite true. Never trust your employer to be benevolent towards you and always lookout for yourself before sacrificing things for the benefit of only the company.

That sounds great, but most of the time I haven't seen it that way. I work for a large, mutual insurance company. We just fired a "manager" without doing a PIP etc. Just told him his job was gone in 30 days, do your best to transition responsibilities and you'll get a decent severance (9 months IIRC).

This was someone who IMHO should have been canned 5 years ago, but until 6 months ago had a powerful ally shielding him. Now that the ally has moved on to greener pastures, the ax has fallen.

Two years ago, we fired a VP in IT basically for not filling out his TPS reports. Someone who had worked for the company for over 30 years. Fired him for "cause," meaning he'd lose out on his pension. That lasted for about 45 minutes until his lawyer made it clear that he wasn't going to go quietly into the night without a pension valued at over $5M.

So sometimes the niceties of HR policies are enforced, but if they want to fire you, you're gone.

Prior to this I worked at a small startup that had been around for 2 years. Got cancer, was told that I'd be employed til my treatment was completed. I worked every day, made a point of not being a burden to my team members, and was fired the week of Christmas (with 4 months of chemo to go). The company was being acquired, and didn't want any dead weight on the payroll. (Get it?)

Didn't get severance, but luckily I didn't need COBRA due to my wife's coverage. Screw them. Look out for yourself or you'll find out how loyal they really are to employees.

> Prior to this I worked at a small startup that had been around for 2 years. Got cancer, was told that I'd be employed til my treatment was completed. I worked every day, made a point of not being a burden to my team members, and was fired the week of Christmas (with 4 months of chemo to go). The company was being acquired, and didn't want any dead weight on the payroll. (Get it?)

Jesus Christ. Do you mind sharing who they are?

I think we see eye to eye here? I personally believe a lot of my engineer friends do not realize that they need to manage their career as much as they manage their technical skills. And that's why I suggested getting an outside opinion about one's market value annually (and if turns out to be a compelling valuation, take it).

You don't need to interview with a bunch of other teams to find out what your market value is, though. You can research average salaries for the job in a given region. The reason tech people interview without intention of taking the offer is to negotiate a raise with their present company (I agree that's not a good idea, and anyway, it's better to leave and get a new job if you want a raise).

Nice job generalizing, you wouldn't work in HR, would you?

IMO the answer to whether you leave or not is "it depends."

I've taken the counter once for a 25% raise as I was in the middle of a project and I cared about finishing it, but I usually leave if I find out I'm significantly (20% or more) underpaid (twice).

Glassdoor and meetups do not give personalized information about one's value. They only give average compensation data. The only way to get what you personally are worth is for you personally to get offers. Feel free to disagree.

I suspect most of this is about unemployment insurance and being able to deny a fired employee insured benefits.

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