Ask HN: Can I ask for more severance pay? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Can I ask for more severance pay?

38 pointsthrowawayhnhn25 comments

Throwaway, long time HN participant.

Yesterday, without warning, my whole team was laid off. We didn't even get to finish the day or tidy up loose ends, document anything, etc.

After 9 years at a financial company, currently as a Quant, I am being offered only 3 weeks severance pay. When I started we were passing spreadsheets back and forth!

I want to ask for more. How does one go about this?

I received an overnight delivery with standard paperwork and I must sign to get the severance pay.

The timing could not be worse. I am a remote employee and I need to remain a remote employee. I can't relocate. I live in such a remote area that there are no jobs here. My wife and I are undergoing IVF, mortgage payments, my wife is back in school getting an RN degree with 18 months left to go. Starting to feel the stress today.

Any advice?

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You may have more leverage than you think. The documents that they want you to sign are really important to them.

We had an employee refuse to sign them after we fired them, for cause. A few weeks later he asked for a larger severence than we initially offered. We offered a month's worth of pay, and he wanted way more than that if I recall correctly. We said no. He then lied, said he was fired for racial discrimination. Threatened a lawsuit. We caved and gave him an extra month of severence. He signed the papers and took his two months of free pay.

Aside: I personally hired this person. I noticed big performance problems early, and personally mentored him for six months before coming to the conclusion that we needed to let him go. I was the one accused of racism. It hurt. I lobbied for more time to turn this hire around, I gave him so much attention and extra time to turn things around. Only to be lied about in the end. Worst moment in my career so far. I wanted to fight any lawsuit-- we had tons of documentation and evidence that the fire was 100% performance related including commits demonstrating clearly these problems (and extensive notes documenting the improvement plan). But our employement lawyer and the CEO figured it would just be easier to give the severence.

Anyway. You may have more leverage than you think. Though, just be ethical about how you handle it. They really need you to sign those papers just to tie up the legal loose ends.

I guess you learned that valuable lesson that it is never too early to fire. It is not that people don’t want to change, it is they can’t. Trying to change causes such cognitive dissonance that it can only be resolved by blaming others, normally the person trying to help them change.

Can I ask why you hired him in the first place?

Everything's negotiable, but the wisdom of trying it depends on the strength of your negotiating position. Many severance agreements simply reiterate obligations to which you've already agreed in employment/non-compete/non-solicitation agreements. If this is the case, you have basically no leverage. If they're asking for substantial concessions (say, you have a 3 month non-compete and the severance agreement extends it to 12), you've got more of a shot.

I was laid off last year, but in Canada so might be different where you are. Here is my advice:

Everything is up to negotiation. You do have leverage, your lawyer will tell you how much.

The process would be:

1. Don't sign anything.

2. You hire a lawyer who specializes in employment disputes. If the severance package has a deadline, your lawyer will email the company saying they represent you and need more time to respond.

3. You meet with your lawyer and explain your situation. My lawyer explained to me that when you get laid off, your company is breaking your employment contract. That means they have to provide you with compensation to make you whole. The amount of compensation depends on your skills, experience, job level, age, health of the job market and any other specific circumstances. Basically, the company has to compensate you enough money that would make you whole - which is be employed again. The compensation is based on the time it will take you to get a new job. 3 weeks is kinda short. Also, there maybe rules-of-thumb: in my city in Canada, we expect to get a minimum of 1 month of salary for each year you worked with the company. I have seen some very generous companies give 2 months of salary per year worked.

4. The lawyer will write up a demand letter asking for more severance. From that point on the lawyer does all the communications with the company. My company also offered employment services to help me find a new job which i didn't need, so my lawyer said ask the company to pay that to me in cash... was like $5K. My lawyer said there is zero risk in sending a demand letter - never will get a worse package.

5. Depending on the size of the company, they may expect that a certain percentage of employees will dispute their severance package - which means they already planned to give complainers a bit more... as in, already authorized, you ask, they give... easy.

6. My company said "No" to the demand letter. They pointed out that there were many jobs that I would be hired for and my severance is enough. They provided the job postings that I would be suitable for.

7. In response, my lawyer told me to go through each job posting and write a couple sentences of why I am not qualified for them. My lawyer sent that to the company.

8. Company responded with a higher severance, an extra few months of salary on top of the 1 month per year and the $5K mentioned above. The legal costs were less than $2K.

Interesting, how did you find that lawyer? (google? personal contacts? Approached a law firm?)

I was referred to a lawyer by a friend who was laid off previously. Many people were being laid off at this time.

Also, I worked with lawyers at the company I was employed with. I asked one lawyer who I got along with to refer one. That referred lawyer was too expensive (big name law firm who works for corporations).

If you don't know any lawyers, you can ask anyone who works with lawyers. For example, if you have a friend who is banker or real-estate agent. Their lawyer will know other lawyers.

Most importantly, you should have a conversation with a couple lawyers (ie. interview them): "Here is my situation, do you think I can get more?", "If we ask for more, how do you go about it?", "To keep costs down, do you have a legal associate to do the work?".

Since you are interview them, calling local employment lawyers that you find on google is OK too. The 15 minute phone call is free, lawyers have to do marketing/business development too.

On a different topic: you mentioned stress. My advice to you is to make sure you don't turn it into a bad time in your life. You have control. You can make it better by doing things such as losing weight, improving your golf game, traveling locally/camping (to keep costs down), visiting family, building a side project, contribute to open source. All of these things give a silver-lining and promote a positive optimistic outlook. Also, these things are great in a future job interview when they ask "so what did you do with your time off?" A fun, positive answer is best. You won't be unemployed forever.

My email is in my profile.

Reach out to me if you are looking for quant work. I might be able to help on the short term.

The papers explain what you're supposed to give up in return for your severance check. Decide if what you're giving up (your freedom to speak about the company? You won't sue them? You'll keep their algorithms secret?) is worth the 3 weeks or worth more.

Just remember: If you are in the USA and in an at-will state, they don't owe you anything upon termination (other than unused vacation pay, etc, as per your state laws)

[random advice from the internet]

If there are papers to sign in exchange, negotiation is possible, but may or may not be worth it. At a minimum it is worth closely reading what is contained in those documents. At the midlevel paying an attorney to review them is not unreasonable. At the top end, hiring an attorney to negotiate the severance contract (and that's what sign this for that boils down to) on your behalf is always an option.

When I say it might not be worth negotiating, I mean that moving forward toward a new job is a necessary step and negotiating severance is a step in a different direction (a potential distraction). On the other hand, if you have a relationship with a higher up, calling them and saying that three weeks seems a bit thin after nine years, might be all it takes...with the caveat that the context is sensitive and framing anything in a way that puts the other party on the defensive will probably backfire...they will or won't find their own way to seeing an "injustice". Let them draw their own conclusions. Heck, you might even wind up getting a position elsewhere in the organization.

Good luck.

I'm really not familiar with quant jobs, but is the company itself in good shape? And was your job going well before your team got laid off? I"m kind of curious about the three week severance. I've heard rumors that those companies can have huge concerns about employees leaving jobs for competitors if their jobs involve proprietary IP. So they have really strong non-competes they enforce buy paying ex-employees for the length of the non-compete. But that probably isn't a huge concern if they decided to only give the team three weeks severance.

I can't edit the post any longer.

There were zero employee performance problems. The company is in California. I am in NY.

It never hurts to ask but you likely have no leverage. After all the company by definition doesn't plan to have a future relationship with you.

The best opp'y is if you have a good relationship with someone higher up in the organization who's still around and might be willing to do you a favor -- possibly (though unlikely) a bit more cash, but possibly a job referral, especially useful in your industry.

What leverage? Well remember I said the company "doesn't plan to have a future relationship with you." The only leverage you really have is that they might have a future relationship with you: i.e. you don't take the severance and (lowest risk for them) you may no longer be bound by NDAs etc or (highest risk for them) you might sue them, so they're paying in exchange for you agreeing that there are no open issues between you, possibly among other things.

Also, straight cash is unlikely to appear (among other things why you? What about that other person of ${ethnicity}/${gender}/${age} different from you? That's a lawsuit waiting to happen and HR will likely quash such a suggestion.

BUT: you could offer to help "tidy up loose ends, document anything, etc" in exchange for them covering your COBRA until you get a new job / six months go by, which might be a suitable fig leaf if you know a higher up.

And the company can't extend your normal health insurance except via (taxably) paying COBRA premiums as the health plans require that eligible employees work a minimum number of hours/week, typically 32.

I don't understand why this would be downvoted; it doesn't even express an opinion, simply discusses the facts, from the perspective of someone who has laid people off.

You were laid off so you're eligible for unemployment. First, get signed up for that. Next, take a week or two to gather yourself emotionally, brush up on your interviewing skills, and refresh your resume. Finally, start interviewing for the many remote positions out there. Don't worry, you're gonna be fine.

Don’t forget to file for unemployment.

If you ask them to cover insurance for 6 months, they will probably do it given the circumstances. Health insurance is usually the most negotiable thing.

Beside that, just accept that you no longer work there and look at them just like you would look at any other company. Can you offer them something that would help them?

A good thing to offer is that, once they rebuild the team/hire new people, you can help them get up to speed. It is not confrontational, it focuses on something positive for the company too making them think about better days, and you are not committing to anything in the short term (and you probably won't have to do anything in the long term either).

Email me, we're hiring and happy to go remote.

You can always ask.

But they don't have to give it to you.

Yeah. It's certainly worth an hour of your time to ask for more. It might be worth a day of your time. It's probably not worth more (but I'm guessing).

Find an employment attorney. They negotiate severance all the time. What state are you in?

Get your resume together today, and start looking for jobs today if possible. Don't wait.

I don't see any problem with asking for more severance, as 3 weeks seems really really low. Contact the group that is handling your "transition".

Hang in there!

Don’t sign anything, find a good lawyer, get all the contracts etc. and put it in one folder. Keep the end in mind and don’t let the stress take over your thinking.

Like everything in life, its all about costs. Cost of a company fighting a lawsuit vs. giving you more money.

If the company followed their documented severance policy, what grounds would the OP have for a lawsuit? They didn't mention anything that the company did that might be grounds for suing them (e.g., discrimination, breach of contract, etc.). People get laid off all the time, and there's no legal requirement for a company to pay any severance at all (I'm assuming they're in the U.S.).

However, I don't see any downside in asking for more severance. The worst the company could do is say "no".

What country / state are you in? Check the local laws.

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