6 ms·

This is mostly a US thing and I can't really fathom it. In central Europe you get a notice and you are usually expected to continue to work during the notice pe

by yreg 3y ago

This is mostly a US thing and I can't really fathom it. In central Europe you get a notice and you are usually expected to continue to work during the notice period. Even at banks, etc. From what I hear, it sounds like in US you are immediately considered an enemy spy or saboteur and need to be escorted by security. I can't imagine how chaotic it must be to take over work from someone who was fired like that.

Almondsetat 3y ago
Do you think that maybe those security procedures exist because big companies have been bit once too many times?
- yreg 3y ago
  No I don't, because the procedures make very little sense to me. I'm not going to suddenly turn into a criminal when a company terminates my contract. If I'm not trustworthy after they fire me, then I couldn't have been trustworthy before either imo. Afterall, as I said we don't have those procedures around here and it's no problem. We would find them weird (culturally).
  - dylan604 3y ago
    You'd be amazed at the number of people that do not take measures in anticipation of this day ever happening. If you give someone with access to critical information no notice about their dismissal, they might not have actually backed up their emails, contacts, or any other work product. If you are the leadership and don't take this action and that "rare" small number of people that might do something untoward does do something, then you are left holding the bag. So, as they say, better safe than sorry. I've even be present when actual criminal activity has been committed, but no charges have been brought but the company is still offered the use of actual police during the dismissal/escorting off premise without making an arrest. So, I guess I'm happy for you that you've never had to experience the darker side of things, but, it's part and parcel around here now of the process.
    - dekhn 3y ago
      Backed up your emails? You can't take your google emails with you when you leave.
      - dylan604 3y ago
        What? I'm not talking about your personal emails. I'm talking about your emails through your company email domain. What has all reasoning just gone out the window in this thread?
        dekhn 3y ago
        If you work at google, you don't get to backup or take your @google.com emails home. Are you saying you typically take your company email domain emails (IE, "me@work.com") away after you leave a company? I worked at Google for over a decade, I'm pretty familiar with their policies and throughout silicon valley.
    - CydeWeys 3y ago
      > If you give someone with access to critical information no notice about their dismissal, they might not have actually backed up their emails, contacts, or any other work product. That would be terrible IT if users had to explicitly back up any of their work. Hardware fails, or gets lost or stolen. Any even semi-competent company should have source control, regular IT-managed backups, etc., such that work isn't lost for any reason. Also ... why would you need to back up your emails? I can't even imagine a circumstance in which being let go would cause all of your emails to be deleted? They'll just give someone else access to your inbox on the email server if necessary.
  - Almondsetat 3y ago
    Do you work for Google in Europe? Or Amazon? we are not talking about small local IT companies
    - yreg 3y ago
      I'm talking about European companies, so no, not Google or Amazon. Say multinational banks.
  - fulladder 3y ago
    Here is what I have observed. The use of various procedures (like asking someone to immediately leave the office) is actually mainly driven by managers' and HRs' fear and/or inexperience with layoffs. Basically, these people get together, it's a tough situation for them and not one they have any personal experience handling, and they sort of convince themselves that it's safer to do things in a very cold and impersonal way. By the time the next recession hits, all of these people will have moved up to higher management rolls where they aren't doing the laying off themselves, so the next "generation" starts from scratch and again convinces itself that it's safer if we do everything in a cold and impersonal way. I think this is how you end up with all these silly procedures. I've seen people react unpredictably and emotionally in the workplace, but the layoffs I've seen have actually been entirely smooth. The typical laid off employee is either thinking about the vacation they're going to take (Silicon Valley good times thinking) or how they're going to find a new job (any other industry at any time). The last thing such a person wants to do is trash their own reputation by behaving unprofessionally, and they certainly aren't going to sabotage the employer. But since the managers doing the laying off typically have never done it before, you end up with the kind of weird outcomes described here.
hot_gril 3y ago
2 weeks notice is typical in the US. You may be asked to work the final 2 weeks to hand over the job. But I guess Google doesn't want that, which kinda makes sense given what broad ACLs most employees have. Technically they're still employed for at least 2 more weeks, just locked out.
- dgfitz 3y ago
  2 weeks is typical if the employee quits. Never have I seen a layoff happen (personally) where the employee gets any sort of notice beyond “come with me” as they’re walked to HR and then out the door. Worst one I saw was, at the end of the day, they fired the guy who walked out 400 people, poor soul was just the very last one.
  - cameronh90 3y ago
    In the UK, the company I was working for laid off about half the dev team but made them work their six(!) months notice. It’s not uncommon in finance to have ludicrously long notice periods, but conventionally you are just put on gardening leave as the purpose of it is for your knowledge to go out of date. However, the company was in such dire straits that they couldn’t afford to just pay people to do nothing for six months and thought it would be a good idea to have them work out their notice. It wasn’t. Those people did sweet FA during their notice and were actively harmful to the company culture for obvious reasons. I don’t think making it completely impersonal is great either, but it’s best for everyone to end things quickly rather than hanging around.
    - CydeWeys 3y ago
      > In the UK, the company I was working for laid off about half the dev team but made them work their six(!) months notice. Yeah, that's a completely different situation. Those employees had employment contracts requiring six months' notice. So they're gonna be paid for six months at the end, and they might as well be producing value for the company the whole time. Meanwhile in the US we mostly don't have employment contracts. Anyone can be fired/laid off at any time for almost any reason, and that takes effect immediately. The one caveat is that WARN notifications might required 60-90 days notice depending on the state and size of the layoff. But for whatever reason, employers here don't want their employees working for those last months like they would in the UK.
switchbak 3y ago
Most of my onsite work has been in Canada. One time I was laid off - and spent the next day polishing up what I was working on to set up the person who had to take it over. Then I grabbed a beer with my coworkers! Being escorted off site would seem really bizarre. You were trusted to the utmost a second ago, now you're Bill Cosby all the sudden.
- fulladder 3y ago
  This is actually quite common. I've seen a variety of situations where a person was fired or laid off, but allowed to stay on for some time - usually a week or two, although the most extreme one I personally saw was a guy who stayed for more than 6 months. (Nobody could figure out how to get him to leave and he was known and respected in the industry so they were reluctant to force him out.) I think the "escorted out by security" might be something that happens more in the movies and maybe some very large and impersonal companies. Haven't seen a lot of layoffs up close, but I kind of doubt it's the norm.
  - yreg 3y ago
    You are talking about US, right? Thanks for the data point, because most of my knowledge is from hn/reddit/movies, so I don't know how prevalent this "you are fired, leave the premises immediately" procedure is.
armchairhacker 3y ago
I know some European companies disable your access and just keep paying your salary to get around the mandatory notice period.
- hyperhopper 3y ago
  That's literally what Google and other tech company do when required.
  - hot_gril 3y ago
    Yep. And Google lays off people in Europe too.
tracerbulletx 3y ago
It's a pretty socially deranged situation. The whole dynamic is weird, half the time your manager is telling you who just gave you a great performance review a week ago, but now has cut off emotions to deliver a list of bad news they probably got that morning, and everyone has survivors guilt for a few weeks before convincing themselves maybe it's ok because now they're safe only to be caught in another round a few months later.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ChatGTP 3y ago
Where I work people get “unpersoned”, they are removed from slack immediately, no time to say goodbye, email is ransacked and they’re removed from GitHub. This happens to people who had been loyal employees for 10 years. America is weird like this. Obviously you can go find them on LinkedIn and talk that way, but it seems unnecessarily hostile.
- steelframe 3y ago
  > Where I work people get “unpersoned” Knowing this can happen to me at any time, I make sure that I'm already connected outside of work with anyone I care to know beyond our time with our temporarily-mutual employment.
  - ChatGTP 3y ago
    It just seems so unnecessary though? Why is it done this way? One minute you're there working your ass off, next minute you're digitally frog marched out of the office? It's odd.

by yreg 3y ago

Almondsetat 3y ago

Do you think that maybe those security procedures exist because big companies have been bit once too many times?

yreg 3y ago
No I don't, because the procedures make very little sense to me. I'm not going to suddenly turn into a criminal when a company terminates my contract. If I'm not trustworthy after they fire me, then I couldn't have been trustworthy before either imo. Afterall, as I said we don't have those procedures around here and it's no problem. We would find them weird (culturally).
- dylan604 3y ago
  You'd be amazed at the number of people that do not take measures in anticipation of this day ever happening. If you give someone with access to critical information no notice about their dismissal, they might not have actually backed up their emails, contacts, or any other work product. If you are the leadership and don't take this action and that "rare" small number of people that might do something untoward does do something, then you are left holding the bag. So, as they say, better safe than sorry. I've even be present when actual criminal activity has been committed, but no charges have been brought but the company is still offered the use of actual police during the dismissal/escorting off premise without making an arrest. So, I guess I'm happy for you that you've never had to experience the darker side of things, but, it's part and parcel around here now of the process.
  - dekhn 3y ago
    Backed up your emails? You can't take your google emails with you when you leave.
    - dylan604 3y ago
      What? I'm not talking about your personal emails. I'm talking about your emails through your company email domain. What has all reasoning just gone out the window in this thread?
      - dekhn 3y ago
        If you work at google, you don't get to backup or take your @google.com emails home. Are you saying you typically take your company email domain emails (IE, "me@work.com") away after you leave a company? I worked at Google for over a decade, I'm pretty familiar with their policies and throughout silicon valley.
  - CydeWeys 3y ago
    > If you give someone with access to critical information no notice about their dismissal, they might not have actually backed up their emails, contacts, or any other work product. That would be terrible IT if users had to explicitly back up any of their work. Hardware fails, or gets lost or stolen. Any even semi-competent company should have source control, regular IT-managed backups, etc., such that work isn't lost for any reason. Also ... why would you need to back up your emails? I can't even imagine a circumstance in which being let go would cause all of your emails to be deleted? They'll just give someone else access to your inbox on the email server if necessary.
- Almondsetat 3y ago
  Do you work for Google in Europe? Or Amazon? we are not talking about small local IT companies
  - yreg 3y ago
    I'm talking about European companies, so no, not Google or Amazon. Say multinational banks.
- fulladder 3y ago
  Here is what I have observed. The use of various procedures (like asking someone to immediately leave the office) is actually mainly driven by managers' and HRs' fear and/or inexperience with layoffs. Basically, these people get together, it's a tough situation for them and not one they have any personal experience handling, and they sort of convince themselves that it's safer to do things in a very cold and impersonal way. By the time the next recession hits, all of these people will have moved up to higher management rolls where they aren't doing the laying off themselves, so the next "generation" starts from scratch and again convinces itself that it's safer if we do everything in a cold and impersonal way. I think this is how you end up with all these silly procedures. I've seen people react unpredictably and emotionally in the workplace, but the layoffs I've seen have actually been entirely smooth. The typical laid off employee is either thinking about the vacation they're going to take (Silicon Valley good times thinking) or how they're going to find a new job (any other industry at any time). The last thing such a person wants to do is trash their own reputation by behaving unprofessionally, and they certainly aren't going to sabotage the employer. But since the managers doing the laying off typically have never done it before, you end up with the kind of weird outcomes described here.

hot_gril 3y ago

2 weeks notice is typical in the US. You may be asked to work the final 2 weeks to hand over the job. But I guess Google doesn't want that, which kinda makes sense given what broad ACLs most employees have. Technically they're still employed for at least 2 more weeks, just locked out.

dgfitz 3y ago
2 weeks is typical if the employee quits. Never have I seen a layoff happen (personally) where the employee gets any sort of notice beyond “come with me” as they’re walked to HR and then out the door. Worst one I saw was, at the end of the day, they fired the guy who walked out 400 people, poor soul was just the very last one.
- cameronh90 3y ago
  In the UK, the company I was working for laid off about half the dev team but made them work their six(!) months notice. It’s not uncommon in finance to have ludicrously long notice periods, but conventionally you are just put on gardening leave as the purpose of it is for your knowledge to go out of date. However, the company was in such dire straits that they couldn’t afford to just pay people to do nothing for six months and thought it would be a good idea to have them work out their notice. It wasn’t. Those people did sweet FA during their notice and were actively harmful to the company culture for obvious reasons. I don’t think making it completely impersonal is great either, but it’s best for everyone to end things quickly rather than hanging around.
  - CydeWeys 3y ago
    > In the UK, the company I was working for laid off about half the dev team but made them work their six(!) months notice. Yeah, that's a completely different situation. Those employees had employment contracts requiring six months' notice. So they're gonna be paid for six months at the end, and they might as well be producing value for the company the whole time. Meanwhile in the US we mostly don't have employment contracts. Anyone can be fired/laid off at any time for almost any reason, and that takes effect immediately. The one caveat is that WARN notifications might required 60-90 days notice depending on the state and size of the layoff. But for whatever reason, employers here don't want their employees working for those last months like they would in the UK.

switchbak 3y ago

Most of my onsite work has been in Canada. One time I was laid off - and spent the next day polishing up what I was working on to set up the person who had to take it over. Then I grabbed a beer with my coworkers! Being escorted off site would seem really bizarre. You were trusted to the utmost a second ago, now you're Bill Cosby all the sudden.

fulladder 3y ago
This is actually quite common. I've seen a variety of situations where a person was fired or laid off, but allowed to stay on for some time - usually a week or two, although the most extreme one I personally saw was a guy who stayed for more than 6 months. (Nobody could figure out how to get him to leave and he was known and respected in the industry so they were reluctant to force him out.) I think the "escorted out by security" might be something that happens more in the movies and maybe some very large and impersonal companies. Haven't seen a lot of layoffs up close, but I kind of doubt it's the norm.
- yreg 3y ago
  You are talking about US, right? Thanks for the data point, because most of my knowledge is from hn/reddit/movies, so I don't know how prevalent this "you are fired, leave the premises immediately" procedure is.

armchairhacker 3y ago

I know some European companies disable your access and just keep paying your salary to get around the mandatory notice period.

hyperhopper 3y ago
That's literally what Google and other tech company do when required.
- hot_gril 3y ago
  Yep. And Google lays off people in Europe too.

tracerbulletx 3y ago

It's a pretty socially deranged situation. The whole dynamic is weird, half the time your manager is telling you who just gave you a great performance review a week ago, but now has cut off emotions to deliver a list of bad news they probably got that morning, and everyone has survivors guilt for a few weeks before convincing themselves maybe it's ok because now they're safe only to be caught in another round a few months later.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

ChatGTP 3y ago

Where I work people get “unpersoned”, they are removed from slack immediately, no time to say goodbye, email is ransacked and they’re removed from GitHub. This happens to people who had been loyal employees for 10 years. America is weird like this. Obviously you can go find them on LinkedIn and talk that way, but it seems unnecessarily hostile.

steelframe 3y ago
> Where I work people get “unpersoned” Knowing this can happen to me at any time, I make sure that I'm already connected outside of work with anyone I care to know beyond our time with our temporarily-mutual employment.
- ChatGTP 3y ago
  It just seems so unnecessary though? Why is it done this way? One minute you're there working your ass off, next minute you're digitally frog marched out of the office? It's odd.