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Comment by Jsharm | Hacker News Reader

Is there functionally anything bad about getting fired vs resigning? In this situation or any?

I know that in some jobs if you resign they don't have to pay out to the end of your contract. If they fire you they do (unless you're in breach on contract I suppose).

Also if you resign it can be more difficult to get social welfare benefits.

Fired has legal implications. They will do it, but if they don't get all the paperwork right you can sue for wrongful termination. Thus they would rather not fire you if they can get you to resign.

If they are going to fire you and offer your the chance resign. While it means you resigned and thus you can't sue, it also means that when (if...) someone checks references they will say "yes, he/she worked here, and left of his own will". Since any big company will not say more than that no matter who good you are this is a perfect reference and you start over. If you are fired they have to say instead "yes, he/she worked here and until fired"

Note that fired is very different from being laid off.

What's the difference between fired and laid off? Fired is for bad performance/professional errors and laid off is because of downsizing, right?

Yes. In many countries being laid off is called being made redundant, which is more descriptive. Redundancy means they are axing your role rather than yourself.

Thank you. I'm not a native speaker, so I'm usually mixing close enough expression/words.

This is one case were I would expect even native speakers to not fully know the difference.

Basically your reputation, if you get fired it looks bad for you.

Ironically, Andrew Mason insisted on being fired rather than resigning for reasons he did not agree with. So he chose being fired in order to preserve his reputation. (part 2 of the Gimlet "Without Fail" podcast - very excellent coverage)

It was also explained well in the article.

I'd say PR, having to manage how the story goes around.

If you get fired you might not qualify for unemployment benefits, depending on jurisdiction. Not applicable to executives I suspect, but there it is.

It's really the other way around, at least in my state. If you quit or voluntarily leave, then you aren't eligible for unemployment. If you are laid off then you are eligible for unemployment. Whether you can collected unemployment for being "fired" depends on the circumstances of termination. Again, this might vary locally.

I think this is important to clarify because this could affect the people here, not because it affects the subject of the article.

In this state, it's very hard to keep even employees who just stop showing up from drawing unemployment, if they go through the process of signing up for it. There are state employees whose job it is to bludgeon employers into acquiescing on this issue. If the employee got fired and wasn't arrested for crimes committed at the workplace, there's no way she's not getting unemployment.

Getting fired by Trump is quite an honor, and it helps with tell-all book sales.

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