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I was laid off 2 months ago and I’ve never even seen a severance letter
- hijinks 4y agoremember people, most employment lawyers work on contingency for this reason. They only get paid if you win. Most people don't know that and think it'll be too expensive to take on their old company
- rib3ye 4y agoAre you saying twitter is legally obligated to pay severance because musk said so on twitter?
- greenhorn360 4y agoThey're legally obligated because of the WARN Act.
- gedy 4y agoI'm not defending Twitter but it sounds like this person may still be getting paid (due to WARN), just hadn't got severance letter.
- shagie 4y agoThe WARN act does not mandate severance. It does, instead, mandate that the employee is given a 30 (edit: California is 60, federal is 30) day notice that they will be laid off. It would be completely within the law to say "you will be laid off on Feb 4" and require you to work until Feb 4, and not have any sort of additional severance pay. Severance pay is not required under California law. https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/finalpay.pdf https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/finalpay.pdf > There is no legal requirement under California law that employers provide severance pay to an employee upon termination of employment. Confusing severance pay, WARN act, and the common practice of garden leave can make it harder for people to understand what they are entitled to.
- Supermancho 4y agoThis seems like a long-winded couching of the simple premise that would explain what happened. The tweet/author is misrepresenting the situation or was promised something he isn't legally entitled to, regardless. > mandate that the employee is given a 30 day notice that they will be laid off ie maybe he was terminated with notice and it wasn't explicitly labeled a severance letter.
- mc32 4y agoSuing a company is typically not beneficial for the worker or ex worker. Unless the payout is greater than what remains of your lifetime earnings projections. A person with litigious history carries a kind of scarlet letter around their neck. No one wants to risk being the next target. Think: would you want to bring on a cofounder who sued their previous cofounder? Maybe you would, but many would have second thoughts too.
- CGamesPlay 4y agoWhy would the ex-worker disclose it? Are there many known cases of this happening? Also, I think founder- or exec-level employees probably have a different hiring experience than J Random Line Worker, regardless of past litigation history.
- mc32 4y agoA BG check would show that as they are public record. One option is to threaten a lawsuit and then hope to settle for a smaller amount.
- BenFranklin100 4y agoThat’s interesting, I didn’t know that. Is that the case if it was settled out of court? Often employee labor disputes are settled out of court if the lawsuit is less than $30-50K.
- bhouston 4y agoAs someone who has been sued and settled this didn’t affect anything, I still raised money, gained business partners and grew the business. Business disputes happen. In many ways suing or getting sued in business is like losing your virginity. It seems like a big deal before it happens the first time but then anfterward it isn’t a big deal and just stuff that happens. I feel you are spreading FUD to protect one of the richest guys in the world and telling little people who have been abused here to just take it.
- htag 4y ago
- encryptluks2 4y agoJust a warning about contingency-based lawyers. First, read and re-read any agreements they send and know what you're getting yourself into. Hiring a contingency attorney may seem great cause it is easy, but if they are doing a terrible job and you want to fire them then be prepared for them to say they are still entitled to whatever percentage you agreed to with them no longer doing anything. A 30k settlement may seem great to a contingency attorney because they may get 10k for essentially sending a few letters that you could have sent yourself. They also may already have pre-arranged agreements and relationships with the big companies that represent the company you are suing to essentially pay you as little as possible. Don't settle for less than you deserve and definitely don't rely on a contingency attorney to tell you how much you should settle for. Make them work for you and not the other way around.
- P_I_Staker 4y ago> They also may already have pre-arranged agreements and relationships with the big companies that represent the company you are suing to essentially pay you as little as possible. This is illegal, but I imagine I could see something like this happening naturally and cynically... you get similar effects with realtors and recruiters. Still, there's plenty that are honestly and earnestly do their job for the most part. Often times these people can make deals happen. Taking a relatively basic deal instead of going to trial is often a good call. If he knows he can get something pretty decent and you have to risk $30K+ for a long shot chance.
- tw98521358 4y agoYeah but did you get paid for the time
- ggm 4y agoIANAL but is this legal?
- __sy__ 4y agolegal, yes. judicious, no.
- roperj 4y agoSince you have the legal background can you explain how the CEO publicly stating in writing “Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50% more than legally required.” is not actionable at all? Also how is this definitely not a WARN act violation?
- ninth_ant 4y agoBlatantly lying in a public statement is not against the law, depending on the circumstances. Otherwise the man would already be in fairly deep trouble.
- borski 4y agoThere is nothing to signify that he isn’t already going to be in fairly deep trouble. He has been sanctioned and fined for past violations based on his tweets, for example by the SEC.
- s1artibartfast 4y agoTo start, for it to be actionable you need evidence that someone wasn't paid for their 60 or 90 days
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- cjensen 4y agoNo because it violates the WARN act. [1] IANAL but if they paid 60 days severance as Musk promised, that might legally be considered 60 days of employment and would not violate WARN. But they didn't actually do that despite Musk's assertions. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_Adjustment_and_Retraining_Notification_Act_of_1988 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_Adjustment_and_Retraini...
- CoastalCoder 4y agoDoes anyone know the legal category of promised severance pay? I.e., is it treated like an owed wage, or something else?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dkokelley 4y agoWas Sam laid off or terminated for cause (and was the cause justified)? Not a lawyer, but other than lying or an administrative screw up it seems like a for-cause termination might explain the situation.
- whatever1 4y agoYou cannot terminate half of the company “for cause”. The cause of this scale has a name: Layoffs
- dkokelley 4y agoWhy couldn’t 1 person be terminated for cause, even in the midst of a layoff? Imagine a company going through layoffs when it discovers an employee had been embezzling funds. Does that employee have to be treated the same as the ones who are simply being laid off? What if that employee WAS going to be laid off, but then the embezzlement was discovered? I guess that’s what the lawyers help to decide…
- jakelazaroff 4y agoThis is an inane hypothetical. We all know that's not what's going on here.
- dkokelley 4y ago> This is an inane hypothetical. I’m sorry. You’re right. I did not mean to insinuate that Sam was embezzling from Twitter.
- borski 4y agoThey could, but that would require proof and documentation, and at least a discussion with said employee about said cause. Firing someone for cause is actually quite hard, especially in CA, unless there is an obvious transgression like a crime being committed. Laying people off is “easy” in comparison, provided you pay out the required 2 months of severance.
- klyrs 4y agoSo... if your employer hasn't made a bona fide attempt to give notice... are you owed back pay?
- crackercrews 4y agoHas Twitter stopped paying anyone that was laid off? I thought they were continuing to pay for quite some time.
- toast0 4y agoAssuming California... Upon termination of employment by the employer, final wages are due immediately with some exceptions not relevant here; and if not, wages continue as a penalty until the situation is resolved or 30 days, whichever is shorter. If you quit, final wages are due in 72 hours or on your last day, whichever is later. There's also some notice requirements under unemployment law for any termination by the employer, but I'm not sure if those have penalties. There's also the WARN act requirements.
- PixyMisa 4y agoIf he hasn't been paid all this time, then certainly yes. If he was given notice (which he was) but didn't receive the formal letter containing all the details, then maybe. Depends on exactly how the state laws work in California.
- hgsgm 4y agoHow can he be laid off without a severance letter? Wouldn't that make him still employed and not being paid?
- borski 4y agoA severance letter is not notice of being laid off. They are often separate, and the former is required in the state of CA when the layoffs comprise a large enough percentage of the employees thanks to the WARN act.
- anonreeeeplor 4y agoThis is called “having your cake and eating it too.” Simply don’t pay office rent and let them sue you and drag your feet forever until they negotiate for lower rent or go bankrupt. If you know commercial real estate are about to go bankrupt if they can’t collect rent, then you have a lot of power. Wait nine months without paying and they will be too busy being bankrupt to afford lawyers to sue you into submission. Musk seems to know it so maybe they cave and he gets 1/2 price commercial space. Announce everyone gets a giant severance then … just don’t pay. While claiming you did on twitter or will. I have less sympathy for land lords. I think they did an effective job completely Turning public opinion against twitter employees. Painting them as dead weight and woke stooges for the FBI. Now we find out - Yeah they aren’t getting paid for being laid off as promised. But now they are so painted unfavorably he might be calculating no one will actually care. The ex employees can’t do anything? They never even “got laid off.” Watching this play out it’s clear that musk is playing total hardball with the legal system and exploiting the loop holes and edge cases. It’s shocking to see it play out like this. And for whatever reason he can somehow : is likely to somehow walk out of it with his reputation intact since so many people are cheering for it.
- baby 4y agoSorry but I'm not sure I understand your comment, I think you would gain some benefit in trying to make it clearer and more structured as it's quite long and feels more like a rambling.
- silisili 4y agoMaybe it's been edited, but it seemed pretty clear to me they were describing the ways Musk is trying to 'cheat the system.'
- _s 4y agoAt a first read it's a bit ambiguous - but essentially Musk is more or less "staying in the office without paying rent", waiting for the "landlord" to try and kick him out using legal means, or renegotiate for a lower rent (severance pay for ex employees in this case) or none at all, knowing that the "landlord" has no real power or means to penalise.
- abnry 4y agoMusk is known to be dishonest, but something tells me the person making this claim is an ideological opponent of Musk. I would hesitate to believe this until more information.
- viggyu 4y agoAnyone who works for a living should indeed be ideologically opposed to those who enrich themselves from the work of others. Musk is no friend of the workers, that is certain.
- bottlepalm 4y agoWhat made you think that? The fact that he tagged a bunch of reporters that will have articles written by tomorrow of complete speculation and nothing more?
- justapassenger 4y agoThis is Elon Musk 101. He lies and commits fraud after fraud for more than half a decade now. But tech crowd used to see him as a mix of Jesus and Ironman, and gave him a free pass, because he's cool. Luckily, it seems he ran out of luck with Twitter tho, and tides are turning.
- SantalBlush 4y ago>because he's cool Elon Musk is not cool, he just wears a leather jacket.
- klabb3 4y agoMore specifically the billionaire mid-life crisis starter pack: leather jacket, hair regrowth (alternatively clean shaven), designer jeans, fast sunglasses/aviators.
- stanislavb 4y agoOh, let's hope that he sells Twitter to someone else... at a big loss.
- justapassenger 4y agoAssuming there’s anything left to sale. With how recklessly he operates it, I can bet $100, that they’ll have catastrophic outage in next 1-2 years, that ends up in weeks long downtime and/or significant data loss.
- roguecoder 4y agoI'm hoping for it to get sold off in the bankruptcy proceedings. Ideally bought by Automattic: they've been doing a decent job with Tumblr.
- bottlepalm 4y agoEveryone said Twitter would have crashed and burned by now.. seems like nothing really happened and everyone forgot.
- alberth 4y agoHow was he even informed in the first place, that he was laid off? Was he verbally told? EDIT: appears this is the email people received. I can’t find an example of the severance email though. https://www.kron4.com/news/today-is-your-last-working-day-at-the-company-twitter-employees-receive-layoff-email/ https://www.kron4.com/news/today-is-your-last-working-day-at...
- raydev 4y agoPresumably email (plus getting locked out of equipment and work accounts) if this person was part of the November layoff group.
- Taniwha 4y agoMaybe he didn't check his email in time before his hardware was locked
- dkokelley 4y agoIf I remember, a set of emails went out to everyone at Twitter. You either got the “we’re sorry” email or the “you weren’t laid off” email, along with instructions if you were a part of the laid off group. https://twitter.com/MiikeCuevas/status/1588347810872557569 https://twitter.com/MiikeCuevas/status/1588347810872557569
- darth_avocado 4y agoPeople were locked out of their systems and told that effective immediately they’re no longer working for twitter and that they should expect a severance letter in the coming weeks. That never came. And anyone claiming other stuff in the comments does not have any idea what happened.
- pcurve 4y agoSounds like Musk laid off HR and Legal departments. (I'm not trying to be funny)
- thayne 4y agoPerhaps more likely, the people in HR and legal who weren't laid off and haven't quit yet are overworked and can't keep up with how many people were laid off. Although, with what is happening with Twitter, who can say.
- prvc 4y agoThis endless Musk pile-on is getting tiresome.
- throwaway2729 4y agoSorry that people suffering is getting tiresome for you.
- JoeyBananas 4y ago"People suffering" That's not how I'd describe what this person is experiencing. We're talking about 3 months pay, not a mortal wound
- brnt 4y agoWhat's bad about scrutiny?
- brigandish 4y agoNothing, if it’s insightful or provides facts or at least factually based musing that’s interesting. So little of these threads are any of that. In this page alone we have wild speculation and even a mental health diagnosis, which is always a sure sign of complete lack of insight. Some people here have asked questions (e.g. was the poster paid during those 2 months?) which require answers in order for actual scrutiny of Musk to occur and this to be worthy of HN, so the scrutiny right now should be of the Twitter post and then we can move on to Musk.
- whendoyoushrink 4y agoI scrolled through this expecting to see a comment that this was just a mistake where someone forgot - after 2 years of a pandemic - to update their address, or the complete opposite and here are X examples of the same. Shame there is zero specific evidence. Heck, I would've even accepted a "WARN act {DOES|DOES NOT} require a severance letter. I assume you received your regular payments through {INSERT DATE HERE}?". The one fact I did see was that payments were through "Jan 4" according to borski: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34255522#:~:text=reply-,borski,-40%20minutes%20ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34255522#:~:text=reply-...
- outside1234 4y agoUnder California law you are legally entitled to pay during the WARN period Don’t need a letter but make sure to enforce your rights
- wnevets 4y agoReal geniuses don't actually pay out severance, pay rent or even provide toilet paper!
- eternalban 4y agoJust the other day a "only 6% of people solve this" went by in my tweeter timeline: 3 people, two apples, one knife, one cut, share the apples equally. Elon belongs to that 6%.
- hinkley 4y agoUse the knife to stab one of the people, you and the survivor eat your own personal apples while standing over the corpse?
- rpmisms 4y agoThat's the correct apple.
- hinkley 4y agoWow I didn’t realize 6% of people are psychopaths. BRB I need to check my doors and window locks.
- rpmisms 4y agoCows are also spherical. The theoretical perfect solution is rarely the correct IRL solution.
- hinkley 4y agoYeah on a more serious note, I would question the engineering chops of anyone who told me with a straight face that they could cut a 'fair' 1/3 off of an apple, twice in a single stroke. And by 'question' I mean 'not going to hire your arrogant ass'. 'Fair' would include not penalizing the people who got the core, which varies by the apple and also apples are a weird spheroid/conical section. You're not going to cut a third of the flesh off of a single apple without days of practice, and a first-name relationship with the farmer. Let alone two. Such a huge part of my day job is about hedging against human error that I have a klaxon that goes off in my head whenever someone claims anything is 'easy'. Lots of things are easy to do once or twice. Do it 300 times in a row, spaced at one or sometimes two week intervals, with people dropping random questions on you while you're in the middle of doing it, without fucking it up once. Go on. I'll wait. With popcorn.
- s1artibartfast 4y agoMy understanding was that the Twitter compensation package took the form of salary payments for 3 months, not a lump sum thank you severance. California law requires payment for 60 days for large layoffs with no warning I believe. Is there anyone that can clarify? Has this person has been receiving paychecks?
- nigamanth 4y agoCan't believe that Elon isn't even giving a severance letter.
- pugworthy 4y agoIn my experience it's far better to quietly gather actionable data, then take someone to court. Get your ducks in a row and do this methodically. The court of public opinion won't send you a check. 2 times I've gotten my owed money from previous employers by using social engineering to get them to tell me what I needed to know: where they bank, when they sent me what check and how much, etc. If you are totally in the right, you can essentially get all that is due you, and even more if you research your labor laws. PS In the US, research the limits of small claims court for your state or area. In California for example, the limit is $10,000. If you are 100% in the right, you will probably win and get an automatic judgement in your favor.
- tempsy 4y agoIIRC technically all California based employees are still employed to get around the WARN issue where you have to notify employees 60 days before a mass layoff.
- pingiun 4y agothen they would need to be paid salary right?
- 8note 4y agoWhat actionable data can you get from nothing? More months of nothing?
- joshka 4y ago10K seems like a lot less than the 3 months he's owed.
- P_I_Staker 4y agoThat is a shit ton of money
- donsupreme 4y agocan someone compile the list of lies that Elon tell publicly on twitter?
- asdff 4y agoWhere do we start? "Funding secured"?
- croes 4y agoProbably the people who are responsible for it were also fired.
- Proven 4y ago[dead]
- gorgoiler 4y agoOut of interest, which shareholders ended up seeing Musk make good on the $54.20 purchase price, and did any of the regular employees get in on that deal? Was anyone’s vesting schedule accelerated due to a full (or partial) clause being triggered by the buyout? If people were selling stock to Musk that they had just vested, I wonder what the tax situation looked like on stock with a market value of $20 (or whatever it was when the sale went through) but which you sold to the world’s biggest business clown for $54.20.
- s1artibartfast 4y agoAll shareholders saw the cash, as did all employees with stock options and RSUs. This was an especially good deal for the employees because their equity would be worth a small fraction of that if Twitter followed other social media stocks. In reality, it would likely have done much worse, because it doesn't have the fundamentals of a company like FB. Future vests after purchase pay 54.20 cash instead of stock. It was a great windfall for everyone with stock or shares vesting. If not for the buyout, Twitter stock would probably be trading in the teens or single digits now.
- jurassic 4y agoNot sure what you're asking here. Anybody holding public shares (whether vested or purchased on the market) at the time the deal closed got $54.20, with the public share price converging on that price in the days/hours leading up to close (with a fluctuating discount due to the perceived risk of the deal not closing.) The market value was not $20 at the time of the close, that would be ridiculous. You might think the "true value" of the shares should have been closer to $20, but people knowing any shares they held would very likely be bought for $54.20 moved the market toward that price. This wasn't a situation anybody needed any kind of special hookups to "get in on" As for accelerated vesting: No. Outstanding employee grants converted to a cash vesting schedule. This effectively locked in the equity grants at $54.20, eliminating all upside and downside for employees. Elon moved aggressively to fire as many of these people as possible, in part because he probably felt they weren't worth that much money. This conversion to cash vesting changed nothing about the vesting timeline. The only people who were supposed to get a big pile of money after close were top execs (Parag, Ned, Vijaya, etc) with golden parachutes, but Elon tried to claim those people all deserved to be fired for cause in the first hours of his ownership in order to avoid paying the golden parachutes. I'm sure they'll fight it out in court and get their money eventually. Matt Levine wrote about this at length in Money Stuff.
- andrew_ 4y agoGuy loses all credibility when he's tagging Taylor Lorenz. This is an attention play, nothing more.
- maxbond 4y agoSure, tagging journalists is "an attention play" - doesn't mean he's lying, or that this isn't an issue that deserves attention. It's also an "attention play" when people post here telling their story about getting locked out of their decade-old Gmail account hoping someone can help them - it's the same principle here, the only way they're getting their 3 months pay is if it garners sufficient attention.
- andrew_ 4y agoYou think that tagging Lorenz is an equivalent to people posting for help on HN? She's a known antagonist with no morals or journalistic integrity. That's quite the insult to the HN community.
- maxbond 4y agoNo need to try and put words in my mouth. I never implied there was a moral equivalency between Lorenz (who I'm not familiar with) and the HN community. I said these were similar tactics. I gather from context he's tagging journalists who have covered Twitter recently. If you want to criticize his choice of journalists to tag, please do so. What I took issue with was your dismissing this as "an attention play," which read to me like you were implying that, because he tagged these journalists, we should summarily dismiss what he has to say. I don't take his tagging Lorenz as an endorsement of her reporting, but rather an excoriation for not covering the story in sufficient depth. Based on the thread I doubt they're a fan of Taibbi, who they also tagged, for example.
- lamontcg 4y ago"You tagged someone I don't like, your argument is invalid"
- Justsignedup 4y agoFrom reading the comments in this thread, it is important to remember that the #1 theft in the US is wage theft. I wish we had stronger laws punishing the rich who can just starve companies/people out rather than paying.
- amachefe 4y agoFrom the comments below, I am fast coming to conclusions that it is impossible to get a rational clear headed discussion on Elon in HN
- 93po 4y agoI've seen this for months now. We have a highly upvoted tweet that is one sided with very little actual discussion as to why this may be the case. Instead it's wild speculation about this being malicious, that Elon is Hitler, and he is micromanaging toilet paper supply. Fake news is treated as fact around here as long as it fits the space man bad narrative. Easy rebuttals here: 1. This doesn't violate the WARN act. This only requires 60 days notice, which Elon provided by continuing to pay everyone for 90 days. 2. There is no "severance letter" to receive. The severence is three months pay. 3. Twitter user didn't clarify if he was an employee or contractor. Doesn't clarify whether he was fired or laid off. Doesn't clarify whether if he was laid off if it was part of the mass-layoff or a different smaller round that didn't require 60 day notice. Didn't clarify whether he continued to be paid at all after he left. My typical disclaimer: I am not pro-Elon. I am anti-bullshit. There is a lot of bullshit happening here. I would love to be proven wrong and have clarification around the massive amount of missing information here. I am very pro-worker and absolutely want these people to get paid.
- Timon3 4y ago> 1. This doesn't violate the WARN act. This only requires 60 days notice, which Elon provided by continuing to pay everyone for 90 days. > 2. There is no "severance letter" to receive. The severence is three months pay. Are you implying that by providing severance pay of 90 days he is both complying with the 60 day limit and the severance pay? He is legally required to provide back-pay for those 60 days, the severance is independent of the back-pay. So he'd have to pay for 150 days in total.
- 93po 4y ago> Are you implying that by providing severance pay of 90 days he is both complying with the 60 day limit and the severance pay? Yes > He is legally required to provide back-pay for those 60 days I agree, but I don't think severance is necessarily independent from pedantic point of view, and technically severance doesn't "have" to be anything - it's whatever he wants it to be as long as it's at least the 60 days. In this instance I believe he provided 90 day severance both to fulfill his legal obligation and also threw on another month for goodwill.