Hacker News Reader

Comment by verve_rat | Hacker News Reader

So I'm a little confused. This whole thread implies that in the States you get laid off and ushered out of the building on the same day? Is that common practice?

I understand that most(?) Of the US is an "at will" jurisdiction, but where I'm from all employment contracts have a notice period in them. So when employment is terminated, by either party, there is a 2-4 week period where the employee works out their notice.

Often in the case of lay offs there would be plenty of heads up before the official notice period as well.

Only in the most egregious cases of misconduct could an employer get away without a notice period.

View on HN

Getting laid off and shown the door immediately after (plus having your access to systems and buildings revoked) is very common.

The reason for this is because the HR person drafting this policy probably had someone take advantage of the window between when someone is told they are laid off and when they are actually terminated, and so the policy gets made to reduce that liability. It sucks for the 90% of people who wouldn't do anything, but that's how it works. Imagine getting told you're your laid off, then your laptop handed in before you even leave the meeting room, then a security guard or HR person escorts you to your desk to pack your things in a box before they walk you out the building.

Mind you, you'd probably still get some severance bonus or keep getting paid for weeks or months, but you just wouldn't be expected (or able) to work.

I dunno, as a European that sounds absolutely mental to me. How about transfer of knowledge and ownership of projects?

In the USA a layoff is usually a euphemism for termination with cause that can’t be supported in court. Because of the general litigiousness and at-will nature of most employment contracts here it usually means the employer offers a token severance payment in exchange for signing a general release.

Every layoff I've been subject to (four of them) involved a large number of people, and were related to declining business or transfer of business activity to another division. And my last layoff resulted in a significant severance package. Not sure the claim of "usually" can be substantiated.

Where I’ve worked what you’ve describing is called a reorganization.

Layoffs usually mean something is wrong with the company or division. Zillow is laying off tons of employees after making bad decisions. Knowledge transfer is less important than survival (apparently).

In the U.S. sometimes your first hint of an impending layoff is when you're asked to train your replacement. And sometimes the layoff means the project you were working on is being cancelled. My own most recent experience is that the project wasn't cancelled, but it was pared back to life support.

Many years ago I worked at a company that had many rounds of RIF (reductions in force). We always did them on Friday - people would be called in for their exit interview and IT removed their access while it happened. We were based in the US but had offices in the UK.

Because of labor laws in the UK, HR did everything they could to avoid laying off the UK office staff because the process and cost was prohibitive. We kept people in the UK office for years just because it would have been a pain in the butt to remove them even if they were redundant or basically had no tasking.

Completely true about the UK part. We have colleague that is slacking off for last 6 months (after furlough) and management is not doing anything as process is quite complicated. We are all waiting as he has some plans to leave in mid Jan to do MBA.

Quite a few US tech firms will also immediately walk the employee out of the building when the employee expresses their intention to resign, and a few will even preemptively fire you as you give your notice to avoid paying you for a 2 week notice period. I know folks who won't give notice when they resign anymore, because this has happened to them several times.

Name and shame them, please, this practice needs to be called out to prospective employees.

I think this is indeed common in the US.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com