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Twitter Layoff Started Today
- stocknoob 4y ago“ many of these folks won’t be able to sell the shares they earned. The money they need pay bills and keep them afloat if and until they get new employment. When severance ends, that’s it.” It’s Twitter’s responsibility to not only offer severance, but make sure employees keep an emergency fund?
- hprotagonist 4y agosucks being like the normies, don't it?
- stocknoob 4y agoSeriously. They are working for a huge name-brand tech employer, and have the best chance of getting a new job (see the LinkedIn replies), but oh yeah, if they run out of severance, and have no emergency fund (because reasons), and their shares are temporarily locked up, whatever will they do? Take out a 401k loan like a plebe?
- ahepp 4y agoYou can't take out a 401k loan if you don't work there any more. In fact, that's one of the major drawbacks of 401k loans. If you leave employment, you have to repay the loan within a set time period, or treat it as a disbursement. That said I agree, complaints about "what will happen when my severance runs out!" did elicit a bit of an eye roll.
- commandlinefan 4y agoI'd never heard that... can you roll it over into an IRA and take a loan against that?
- CoffeeOnWrite 4y agoMaybe, but have you tried getting a loan approved with no income?
- heavyheavy 4y agoIts a loan against yourself
- CoffeeOnWrite 4y agoBanks still want to see evidence of your ability to pay it back.
- loeg 4y ago401k “loans” are a misnomer. There’s no underwriting or leverage. It’s an unpenalized withdrawal with payback (as opposed to regular early withdrawals, which are penalized).
- CoffeeOnWrite 4y agoAs discussed upthread, 401k loans are not generally accessible to unemployed people.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- tomatotime 4y agoYou technically cannot take out a loan against your IRA. You can do a withdrawal and payback though - I believe there are some tax considerations / early withdrawal risks
- assttoasstmgr 4y agoThey'll be left to deal with serious intractable life issues, like having to switch from San Pellegrino to store-brand seltzer water.
- metadat 4y agoTwitter employees are well-compensated with base salary, and generally highly skilled. They're going to be fine, who wouldn't want to hire ex-twitter? The job market is still hot for techies. The writing has been on the wall since Mollusk started chasing the purchase.
- baskethead 4y agoJob market is definitely not "hot". I think there are still jobs out there but lots of companies are tightening up severely.
- metadat 4y agoIncorrect, it's still a feeding frenzy, just not everywhere. No guarantee about next week, but for now it's strong demand.
- commandlinefan 4y agoLooks like it was HR/recruiters who were most impacted, though - I imagine Twitter HR folks are well compensated compared to most, but we're not talking about engineering salaries here.
- throwaway5959 4y agoSeriously. I wouldn’t be surprised if the lowest total comp was in excess of $200k/year. If you can’t have 6 months in cash sitting in a high yield savings account on that, there’s no amount of severance that will help you.
- lumost 4y agoIs it surprising that highly compensated employees also value security and other benefits?
- yieldcrv 4y agoThen the writing was on the wall for months, but actually years
- onion2k 4y agoSomeone who earned 150k cash and 50k stock might be able to save, but they'd probably just keep their stock as their "emergency fund". Twitter are blocking them selling that stock. Effectively Twitter are laying people off and putting a freeze on their savings account. I think it's reasonable to have a little sympathy for people in that situation.
- baskethead 4y agoOnce they leave the company they are free to sell the stock. They are not beholden to a stock blackout anymore.
- onion2k 4y agoThat isn't how it works unfortunately. If the shares vest during the blackout period they're only released to the employee, or former employee, once the blackout ends. The employees can't sell these until the blackout is lifted. Currently there is no end date set.
- 4y ago
- schnebbau 4y ago> The money they need pay bills and keep them afloat if and until they get new employment. How will these people that were making well into six figures possibly survive?
- qbasic_forever 4y agoNow go look at the cost of a home or apartment in San Francisco or nearby towns. I'll wait...
- stocknoob 4y agohttps://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2022/03/05/twitter-employees-can-work-from-home-forever-or-wherever-you-feel-most-productive-and-creative/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2022/03/05/twitter-em...
- schnebbau 4y agoI guess they'll have to lower their cost of living like the rest of us?
- falcolas 4y agoMoving is not cheap. Short of moving, lowering your cost of living in SF is going to be absurdly hard (especially while dealing with the mental fallout of being laid off).
- jmathai 4y agoI don't understand the hate towards high cost of living areas. Making a few $100k in a HCOL area is similar to making $100k in a LCOL area. You don't live like a king if both your income AND expenses are higher. Both people in this example have a lot more in common than I'm reading into from your comments.
- rayiner 4y ago> I don't understand the hate towards high cost of living areas. It's all the whining. These folks are privileged to have options, choose to live in certain areas, and enjoy the benefits (higher pay, more jobs if they get laid off, amenities, etc.) of those choices. But they still complain. I honestly don't get the psychology. Is it some sort of defense mechanism for folks who don't want to admit they're the elites that they decry? Rent costs an insane amount in SF—and its driving out long time residents and minorities—because Facebook engineers make $500k/year. It's not "billionaires"--how many houses can Zuck buy? It’s the tens of thousands of rank-and-file employees making 5x the US median household income.
- mc32 4y ago
- whymauri 4y agoI don't understand the connection between the BA article and Twitter layoffs.
- mc32 4y agoUnreasonable demands and expectation driven by ideology. Severance, yes. But what do they expect beyond reasonable severance? At the salaries these people receive, they should be better prepared for a downturn. Frothy economies don't last. Be the Ant, not the Grasshopper.
- d23 4y agoMaybe it's because I just re-watched it, but it reminds me of Walter in The Big Lebowski connecting everything to Vietnam.
- onionisafruit 4y agoWell, there isn't a literal connection, Dude.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- NoraCodes 4y agoI'm fairly sure most Soviet thinkers spoke Russian.
- daenz 4y ago>When severance ends, that’s it. What does that even mean? Is there some expectation that they receive paychecks after severance when they are no longer employed?
- mateo411 4y agoWell, they can go on unemployment, which has a max benefit of $450 a week in CA.
- onionisafruit 4y agoLast time I was at a company that had blackout periods for employee trading, it didn't apply to former employees. I quit on a Friday and exercised then sold all my options the next Monday while my former coworkers were still in their blackout periods. Hopefully it is the same at Twitter.
- sokoloff 4y agoThe blackout policies are a tiny part an employer policy and a large part an anti-insider trading policy. If you learned of what might be material, non-public information while an employee, then got fired/laid off/quit, that only puts you in the clear with respect to the employer's policy (what are they going to do? fire you a second time?) but does not put you in the clear with the SEC.
- thrown321 4y agoThe SEC won’t do shit in this case with respect to your personal shares in a company you just left.
- onionisafruit 4y agoI agree. I’ve rarely had any insight into finances, so that wasn’t an issue for me. I keep my head down and write code.
- janstenpickle 4y ago> It’s Twitter’s responsibility to not only offer severance, but make sure employees keep an emergency fund? Where's Twitter's emergency fund?
- abeppu 4y agoWell, founded in 2006, they went public in 2013 when they weren't yet profitable, and finally had their first profitable year in 2018. Musk is paying a meaningful premium. So it seems like they've actually had a pretty good run of getting everyone else to be their emergency fund.
- rocqua 4y agoSounds like employees planned to use vested shares as their emergency funds?
- jpollock 4y agoMany people are extended enough that their stock is considered part of their compensation for buying a house. I know many people that sell all of their stock every month to make sure they have enough to live in the Bay Area. What's the mortgage on a USD$2m 1300sqft house? Looks to be $11k/mo? So, total comp should be at least US$400k to be considered affordable. Using South Bay, I don't know where a Twitter engineer would live in San Francisco... https://www.redfin.com/CA/Sunnyvale/1063-W-McKinley-Ave-94086/home/1095620 https://www.redfin.com/CA/Sunnyvale/1063-W-McKinley-Ave-9408... https://www.redfin.com/CA/Mountain-View/237-Houghton-St-94041/home/907543 https://www.redfin.com/CA/Mountain-View/237-Houghton-St-9404...
- madeofpalk 4y agoSeems unwise. You can always be fired or otherwise lose your job.
- forgot_old_user 4y agocant that be said about buying a home anywhere?
- analog31 4y agoYes, a difference is price. My 4 bedroom house in flyover country was a bit over $200k, and we had the cash from having worked for about 6 years after grad school for a flyover salary while continuing to live like grad students. We went through a variety of simplistic formulas for "what you can afford" and entered half of our incomes to get an idea of what we actually wanted to spend.
- madeofpalk 4y agoRight - it would be unwise to take out a mortgage if you miss one month of income you can't repay.
- penneyd 4y agoPlenty of spots in the East Bay that are way below your quoted hypotheticals.
- loeg 4y agoAren't vested shares in a public company just shares? Once they're no longer employees, they shouldn't be subject to any trading blackout.
- twblalock 4y agoDepends on the terms of the stock plan agreement.
- hn_throwaway_99 4y agoYes, you are correct, some folks commented as much in the LinkedIn thread. An employer can't enforce a blackout period after they've laid you off.
- aatharuv 4y agoAgreed. Depending on how Twitter does things, if the employees got RSU's, taxes due (federal, state, etc.) got correctly deducted on vesting. Unless people deliberately reduced their tax deducted from their RSU's (which may not be doable), or have lots of other income on which tax is due, they won't be screwed over on taxes. And if they have lots of other income on which tax is due, they're less likely to be living paycheck to paycheck.
- reaperducer 4y agoIt’s Twitter’s responsibility to not only offer severance, but make sure employees keep an emergency fund? Wait till they get new jobs and find out that in the real world companies don't have RSUs, rooms full of toys, flexible hours, gold-plated healthcare plans, company time to work on your own projects, and free cafeterias staffed by gourmet chefs. Welcome to the 99%!
- HWR_14 4y agoI mean, Twitter is keeping them from liquidating the shares that they already own and have vested. It's easy to imagine that keeping savings in shares of a company as opposed to cash is reasonable. How screwed would most people be if the stock exchanges all closed down and they were fired?
- dmix 4y agoThat's a good point and I'm sympathetic but this seems to be an exceptionally rare scenario. Not many companies are in an extended stock-buyout phase by a private entity.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- hn_throwaway_99 4y ago> I mean, Twitter is keeping them from liquidating the shares that they already own and have vested. That's false, someone commented to that effect in the response thread on LinkedIn. Blackout periods for insider trading reasons can't apply to you if you're no longer with the company and you own the shares. It's possible their broker fucked up and has some snafus, but it is not legally possible for them to prevent you from selling shares after you've been fired.
- HWR_14 4y agoYou might say that's not what should be happening, but apparently Charles Schwab is not letting them sell or move their shares. So, maybe CS is fucking up as opposed to a contractual issue, but how does that change things for the employees being denied access to their money?
- dunkelheit 4y agoOne problem is that companies like to talk about these stock grants as if they are as good as regular salary (and employees seem to play along, using terms like "total comp" and ascribing some definite dollar value to it). But they really aren't. So it is a bit of a deceptive marketing.
- whateveracct 4y agoAlways try to use your "total comp" to anchor your salary at a new job. It works when the new employer isn't public and doesn't offer liquid RSUs etc. Going from X "total comp" to X salary is an improvement in itself. Not even to mention how that total comp is often bumped by once-yearly vests/bonuses - spreading it as salary means you get it asap and can walk more easily. I did it earlier this year..and the public company I left tanked next quarterly earnings report. Luckily I converted that to guaranteed salary (which is now gonna hopefully anchor me for the next gig lol)
- trhway 4y ago>“ many of these folks won’t be able to sell the shares they earned. i don't see any problem here. Just do a short sell. Not being an employee anymore makes you not a subject to the short-selling prohibition for employees, doesn't it? When you get access to your long shares you can close your short simultaneously with selling the same amount of the long.
- yupper32 4y agoAlmost no information here or anywhere else. Any other source? What roles? How many? Edit: 30% of its recruiting team: https://www.wsj.com/articles/twitter-lays-off-third-of-talent-team-11657227105 https://www.wsj.com/articles/twitter-lays-off-third-of-talen...
- __derek__ 4y agoI saw a Linkedin post from a recruiting coordinator who was laid off. Edit: This was a different person than the author of the submitted post. Uff da.
- clipsy 4y agoI’ll second those questions; I work at Twitter and am on vacation at the moment. I saw this and immediately checked my work email and major slack channels and I see no signs of any layoffs being announced. It’s possible the person claiming it has some inside information or that the layoffs are targeting specific departments and not mine I suppose, but I’d love to see a second source or more detailed information.
- yupper32 4y agoFor all we know, maybe a dozen recruiters were laid off during a hiring freeze. Which sucks but says nothing about the job security for the rest of the company or general company health. And for all we know, this person isn't giving the correct information regarding blackout windows.
- Hates_ 4y agoWSJ has a piece on it. A third of the talent team, which affects fewer than 100. https://www.wsj.com/articles/twitter-lays-off-third-of-talent-team-11657227105 https://www.wsj.com/articles/twitter-lays-off-third-of-talen...
- itslennysfault 4y agomakes sense. They've been in a hiring freeze for a while now. Not much sense paying recruiters to sit on their hands I guess.
- ghostbrainalpha 4y agoCould anyone explain to me in simple terms how it's possible to have a blackout on Vested stock? I was under the impression that once I'm "vested" the stock is now mine and I own it like any normal stock. Are "vested" shares something different? Could I say for example sell my shares on Robinhood if the blackout wasn't in effect or are they held by some third party?
- baskethead 4y agoCompanies routinely have blackout periods where employees are not allowed to sell their shares. Typically the shares from equity grants or ESPP are done by a brokerage and they can block those shares from being sold during these blackout periods. However, when someone leaves the company, they can transfer those shares out to their e-trade account or whatnot. I've done that before and it only takes a few days. After that you aren't beholden to stock blackout periods, unless you have Material Non-Public Information, which means you will probably have to figure out if you can sell without being considered insider trading.
- influx 4y agoCompanies should also remove your trading window when you exit the company.
- skookum 4y agoAre trading blackout windows enforced in any way other than threat of dismissal? I don't think there's any external repercussions to trading during an applicable blackout, and trading on NPMI is illegal regardless of whether it is done in or out of a window.
- vlozko 4y agoUsually the broker that handles RSUs for the company automatically does this. They’ll prevent you from doing such trades. You could still technically use a different broker and buy/sell but that’s probably blatant insider trading.
- HenryTrois 4y agoThat's crazy!
- andreilys 4y agoIANAL but I don’t think the blackout window applies if you’re no longer an employee.
- directionless 4y agoIt often does -- basically whatever information you had, that subjected you to it, is still meaningful for a length of time. Depends on the details.
- alexandre_m 4y agoFrom that OP thread, it seems that talent and not engineering was affected.
- dboreham 4y agoFor us old people, what is "talent" ?
- redact207 4y ago"recruitment", since labelling humans as resources is apparently inhumane
- spywaregorilla 4y agoIt's because HR is associated with mundane bureaucracy tasks, whereas talent is supposed to comprise strategic that matter a lot. I tend to agree with it. They're two clearly different functions. Hiring, development, retention, vs. the boring stuff.
- onionisafruit 4y agoI still prefer the old word, "Personnel". I never understood rebranding to Human Resources.
- Consultant32452 4y agoToo many people identify as non-persons. I'm not sure if I'm joking either.
- mkr-hn 4y agoThis is a thing, but not very common in professional settings. All the it/its entities I've met were cool, so I wouldn't mind one as a coworker.
- deltarholamda 4y ago
- whatgoodisaroad 4y agoMy understanding was that this sort of stock sale blackout is typically an internal thing to avoid insider trading liability, but if you've been laid off, you would no longer be internal and therefore no longer subject to the blackout. Is that not how it's structured here?
- onionisafruit 4y agoThat's how it worked last time I left a publicly traded company during a blackout period.
- dmix 4y agoHow long did it last?
- onionisafruit 4y agoAs soon as I resigned I was free to sell shares.
- smn1234 4y agoso all you have to do if you have some great insider tips is to quit your company and exercise your options in some big, gainful ways?
- onionisafruit 4y agoYou can still be charged with insider trading. You just won't be stopped from making the trade.
- cecilpl2 4y agoYou are subject to a blackout when you have material nonpublic information. IME the blackout remains until the opening of the trading window following the end of your employment.
- 4y ago
- twunde 4y agoI feel sympathetic but anyone that hasn't started prepping for layoffs is simply not reading the writing on the wall, _especially_ at Twitter. Elon Musk has basically said that he wants people working 40+ hours/week in the office or you can quit to Tesla and SpaceX. There have been stories for weeks about large startups having layoffs. Finally, most acquisitions tend to end in layoffs Minimum, you should be updating your resume/LinkedIn, and you should also look at ways to cut back on costs where possible. I'm sorry, Twitter assured the company that there would be no layoffs? Isn't that _exactly_ what Elon Musk has been telegraphing with what he's said to the press and at the town hall? Also at this point
- abirch 4y agoElon is probably not going to buy Twitter and they will have to sue him for the billion he owes them if he breaks the deal
- gwerbret 4y ago> So- in addition to losing their jobs, which Twitter assured employees would not happen I'm not that old, but even I remember a time when companies, at least in principle, would invest in their employees (via stable employment, regular raises, mutual trust) in return for employees investing in the companies (innovation, extra effort, dedication, championing the company brand). Today, we have this: - Companies using the barest of excuses, or none at all, to lay off employees. Because it makes good business sense. - Companies lying, deliberately and freely, to employees about upcoming layoffs, in order to "stave off panic". Because it makes good business sense. - Companies laying employees off in the most impersonal fashions possible (large Zoom meetings, automated email, SMS). Because business sense, etc. - Companies literally escorting laid-off employees out of the building like criminals, on the premise that a suddenly-former employee is an incipient criminal. - Companies stiffing people on severance, based on a cost-benefit analysis which concludes that the potential legal bills will cost less than a fair and reasonable severance. Because, again, it makes good business sense. In spite of the downsides of unions, this turn of affairs is really an argument in favor of universal unionization.
- ChrisLomont 4y ago>even I remember a time when companies, at least in principle, would invest in their employees (via stable employment, regular raises, mutual trust) in return for employees investing in the companies (innovation, extra effort, dedication, championing the company brand). Has there ever been really any difference? I know rose colored glasses make people think times past were better in many cases, but I find no evidence that things in this regard are really any different for the majority of people. For example, this [1] FRED historical data series shows layoff rate to be extremely flat for 20 years. BLS used to track some series also that were flat for as far as I can find data. Here's [2] a slightly different dataset that is flat back to 1967. Any solid evidence that things have ever been any different? > In spite of the downsides of unions, this turn of affairs is really an argument in favor of universal unionization. Unions often drive out workers at the benefit of those getting union jobs, lowering employment. For example, see [5] and similar papers. EDIT: 2 more datasets [3,4], back to 1919, still pretty flat. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JTSLDR https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JTSLDR [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS13023654 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS13023654 [3] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M08291USM175NNBR https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M08291USM175NNBR [4] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M0852AUSM497NNBR https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M0852AUSM497NNBR [5] https://www.nber.org/digest/dec02/whose-employment-affected-unions https://www.nber.org/digest/dec02/whose-employment-affected-...
- AlbertCory 4y agoThere's an urban legend (maybe true, maybe not) about National Semiconductor, and this comes from back in the good old days of "loyalty." It may not be true, but on the other hand, when I'd say "Nazi Semiconductor" to someone who had worked there, they always smiled and didn't argue with me. The legend was, they had a fake fire drill. Then when everyone was out in the parking lot, they told certain people not to bother coming back in again. Edit: Snopes has a "debunking" of this at [1]. I'm not persuaded that this debunks it, since the laws protecting employees were not in effect yet way back then. [1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-fired-drill/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-fired-drill/
- m0llusk 4y agoMost if not all of those employees had to go through interview hell in order to work there. It says a lot that employers are always hesitant to hire but when they fire it is because they have run out of time.
- sershe 4y agoFwiw, as far as stock sales being blocked. You can probably easily bypass that if you prepare in advance. There exists a standard stock transfer mechanism, ACATS, for basically "wiring" your stocks to a different brokerage. I think these transfers are also legally mandated to some extent. My previous company partnered with ETrade, giving us a special account for stock awards. The main special thing about it were insane commission, order(s?) of magnitude higher than interactive brokers. I moved the stocks to IB using ACATS; it felt like ETrade tried to use stalling tactics like asking me to mail a paper form I think (I called bs), then iirc there was an error because the account was special so the transfer logic couldn't find it, etc. But after persisting I saved 100s of $$ and also the company had no control of the stock anymore (we had some earnings lock outs, not that it affected me). The downside is that it might mess with automatic tax stuff, iirc dates-CBs got transferred but I had to redo something about these tx-es, maybe ISO stuff? Not sure if anything was missing for RSUs, I assume things like espp cost basis might get lost, we didn't have it. Now I wonder if I should do the same for my current company stock... just in case.
- thrown321 4y agoI thought etrade had given up commissions and instead just front runs the trades..
- Mouthfeel 4y ago