61 ms·

Yup. Happened to me. Big corporate decided most of our floor were surplus to requirements. Got an email on Sunday telling us to be in early on Monday for an off

by edent 7y ago

Yup. Happened to me. Big corporate decided most of our floor were surplus to requirements. Got an email on Sunday telling us to be in early on Monday for an off-site meeting. Got handed my redundancy / compromise agreement and told not to return to the office. And, the kicker, told my non-compete meant I couldn't work for a competitor during the redundancy process. It was devastating and emotionally wrecking. It was like being dumped, out of the blue, from a multi-year relationship. And being told you couldn't see anyone else. I went through all the classic stages of grief. And then... I contacted my Trade Union and explained the situation. They took a look at the contract I'd been given, passed it to a very expensive lawyer, who made a couple of phone calls. The next week I was free to work for whoever I wanted and was paid ~7 months salary (tax free). Join. A. Union. Your employer has more lawyers than you do. Pay a couple of quid per month to have decent legal representation on hand when you need it. That layoff was the best thing to happen to me. Shook me out of my cosy job, forced me into building my own consultancy, and taught me the power of solidarity.

bitcoinmoney 7y ago
Are there unions for software devs?
- edent 7y ago
  I was - and still am - a member of https://www.prospect.org.uk/ https://www.prospect.org.uk/ It may be more appropriate for you to join a union which is recognised in your workplace. You can find one at https://www.tuc.org.uk/join-union https://www.tuc.org.uk/join-union
  - reledi 7y ago
    Could you clarify what it means for a union to be recognised in your workplace?
    - walshemj 7y ago
      This may be UK specific, but as Vice chair of the New Digital division of Prospect the quick version is: Recongnition is where a union has a formal agreement to negotiate collectively either by mutual agreement or via the legal process (similar to the us system) However unions will still represent members individually I have done so in the past. The union that has the majority of technology workers who are union members is Prospect - this is tech in the widest sense.
      - colourgarden 7y ago
        FYI the “we save you money” link on the homepage leads to a 404 - https://prospect.org.uk/about/well-save-you-money/ https://prospect.org.uk/about/well-save-you-money/
- mooreds 7y ago
  Google pointed me here: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/9481/are-there-any-unions-for-software-developers https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/9481...
Scoundreller 7y ago
Totally depends on jurisdiction, but where I am, labour lawyers will usually do a free consult, and can extract their ongoing costs if an employer underpaid you owed severance and termination pay if you were suddenly fired. Sane employers will pay lawyer costs if they know they’d lose in court. But that’s Canada.
- dx034 7y ago
  It's the same in most of Europe. A letter from a lawyer can be worth much more than from an employee and lawyers won't charge you if they expect the employer to pay the cost anyway.
- goatinaboat 7y ago
  In the UK your employer when laying you off has to pay up to £250 to cover a lawyer looking over the severance agreement. Source: personal experience.
ultrasounder 7y ago
Kudos on starting out on your own and love your landing page design. Very minimalist and mobile friendly.
jkp56 7y ago
The way you said it - "join a union" - made me think that unions may be a good idea in software if anyone can join and leave any time. This would be like insurance that funds a big nonprofit with very motivated (and well paid) lawyers. 250 usd / month shouldn't bankrupt a software dev and 100k such devs (a large corp) would bring 250 M/year. There's definitely a room for a few unions in the US with 200-500 m/year budgets. The first thing to do would be banning non competes at the federal level.
- mtnGoat 7y ago
  Although the idea is promising, 250 a month is too high. At 100k, your bring home is roughly 70(varies greatly by state). And then you'd pay almost 5% of that to a union to help insure your job. My mom's Union fees were well below 1% of her bring home.
  - hiram112 7y ago
    Should be deductible at least. Unfortunately, I did Google it, and they are not, though they were before the recent tax law (though they were counted employer expenses which meant almost no 'normal employee' would be able to do so). That being said, we're a smart group. We should easily be able to find some loophole just like all the big corps do. Couldn't we form a LLC, all become members, and use the fees as an investment loss each year? When it pays out a severance, pay taxes on the income as you would with employer provided disability insurance. But yeah, even a $100 / month would be enough, I think, to start it off. Let's get 1000 members * $100 * 12 and that's $1.2M a year. To start, hire two very good lawyers at $250K / year and a few other auxiliary staff, create a union-only forum that's easily searchable, and start populating it with anecdotes.
    - jkp56 7y ago
      I think a union is a different structure than LLC and plays by different rules. Regardless, the first step should be talking to a proper attorney who can explain what requirements need to be met to make this organisation a union.
  - 7y ago
mkhpalm 7y ago
Non-compete usually don't hold up in court in our field. You have to remember that somebody has to prove damages somewhere. Who do you think every court sides with when you're the only one who can demonstrate damages and they were the ones who let you go? So unless you worked for a car wash and then go open a car wash across the street. Its not even worth thinking about.
- edent 7y ago
  I'm sure that's true. I'm also sure I don't want the stress of having to prepare for a court case.
pts_ 7y ago
Makes me want to lawyer up for relatively small shit than this but nonetheless shit, for an employer calling me low energy on taking a day off for flu and then telling me that my next 6 months' leaves are withdrawn.
0xfaded 7y ago
I agree that the employee/employer relationship is highly asymmetrical. I'm now an employer of one, in Europe, and I can tell you I passed up on many candidates where the screening error bars should have been acceptable, but the error multipled by cost of firing were not. I suspect this actually a negative pressure on diversity as well, since any unconscious uncertainty is multiplied by the risk, regardless of how hard we try to control for our internal biases. A pooled legal team is probably a good idea to take care of the truely illegal stuff and provide advice based on industry standards. For knowledge workers at least, I believe union style employee protections are going to reduce the opportunity of average and below workforce and not benefit the top either.

by edent 7y ago

bitcoinmoney 7y ago

Are there unions for software devs?

edent 7y ago
I was - and still am - a member of https://www.prospect.org.uk/ https://www.prospect.org.uk/ It may be more appropriate for you to join a union which is recognised in your workplace. You can find one at https://www.tuc.org.uk/join-union https://www.tuc.org.uk/join-union
- reledi 7y ago
  Could you clarify what it means for a union to be recognised in your workplace?
  - walshemj 7y ago
    This may be UK specific, but as Vice chair of the New Digital division of Prospect the quick version is: Recongnition is where a union has a formal agreement to negotiate collectively either by mutual agreement or via the legal process (similar to the us system) However unions will still represent members individually I have done so in the past. The union that has the majority of technology workers who are union members is Prospect - this is tech in the widest sense.
    - colourgarden 7y ago
      FYI the “we save you money” link on the homepage leads to a 404 - https://prospect.org.uk/about/well-save-you-money/ https://prospect.org.uk/about/well-save-you-money/
mooreds 7y ago
Google pointed me here: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/9481/are-there-any-unions-for-software-developers https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/9481...

Scoundreller 7y ago

Totally depends on jurisdiction, but where I am, labour lawyers will usually do a free consult, and can extract their ongoing costs if an employer underpaid you owed severance and termination pay if you were suddenly fired. Sane employers will pay lawyer costs if they know they’d lose in court. But that’s Canada.

dx034 7y ago
It's the same in most of Europe. A letter from a lawyer can be worth much more than from an employee and lawyers won't charge you if they expect the employer to pay the cost anyway.
goatinaboat 7y ago
In the UK your employer when laying you off has to pay up to £250 to cover a lawyer looking over the severance agreement. Source: personal experience.

ultrasounder 7y ago

Kudos on starting out on your own and love your landing page design. Very minimalist and mobile friendly.

jkp56 7y ago

The way you said it - "join a union" - made me think that unions may be a good idea in software if anyone can join and leave any time. This would be like insurance that funds a big nonprofit with very motivated (and well paid) lawyers. 250 usd / month shouldn't bankrupt a software dev and 100k such devs (a large corp) would bring 250 M/year. There's definitely a room for a few unions in the US with 200-500 m/year budgets. The first thing to do would be banning non competes at the federal level.

mtnGoat 7y ago
Although the idea is promising, 250 a month is too high. At 100k, your bring home is roughly 70(varies greatly by state). And then you'd pay almost 5% of that to a union to help insure your job. My mom's Union fees were well below 1% of her bring home.
- hiram112 7y ago
  Should be deductible at least. Unfortunately, I did Google it, and they are not, though they were before the recent tax law (though they were counted employer expenses which meant almost no 'normal employee' would be able to do so). That being said, we're a smart group. We should easily be able to find some loophole just like all the big corps do. Couldn't we form a LLC, all become members, and use the fees as an investment loss each year? When it pays out a severance, pay taxes on the income as you would with employer provided disability insurance. But yeah, even a $100 / month would be enough, I think, to start it off. Let's get 1000 members * $100 * 12 and that's $1.2M a year. To start, hire two very good lawyers at $250K / year and a few other auxiliary staff, create a union-only forum that's easily searchable, and start populating it with anecdotes.
  - jkp56 7y ago
    I think a union is a different structure than LLC and plays by different rules. Regardless, the first step should be talking to a proper attorney who can explain what requirements need to be met to make this organisation a union.
- 7y ago

mkhpalm 7y ago

Non-compete usually don't hold up in court in our field. You have to remember that somebody has to prove damages somewhere. Who do you think every court sides with when you're the only one who can demonstrate damages and they were the ones who let you go? So unless you worked for a car wash and then go open a car wash across the street. Its not even worth thinking about.

edent 7y ago
I'm sure that's true. I'm also sure I don't want the stress of having to prepare for a court case.

pts_ 7y ago

Makes me want to lawyer up for relatively small shit than this but nonetheless shit, for an employer calling me low energy on taking a day off for flu and then telling me that my next 6 months' leaves are withdrawn.

0xfaded 7y ago

I agree that the employee/employer relationship is highly asymmetrical. I'm now an employer of one, in Europe, and I can tell you I passed up on many candidates where the screening error bars should have been acceptable, but the error multipled by cost of firing were not. I suspect this actually a negative pressure on diversity as well, since any unconscious uncertainty is multiplied by the risk, regardless of how hard we try to control for our internal biases. A pooled legal team is probably a good idea to take care of the truely illegal stuff and provide advice based on industry standards. For knowledge workers at least, I believe union style employee protections are going to reduce the opportunity of average and below workforce and not benefit the top either.