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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 l

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notice periods, but conventionally you are just put on gardening leave as the purpose of it is for your knowledge to go out of date.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.
gtirloni 3y ago
> it’s best for everyone to end things quickly rather than hanging around Definitely, but not by escorting people out of a building or sending an email and cutting their Slack access without notice... which is what we see all the time. Just give the person at least a day to say their goodbyes?
yreg 3y ago
From my experience, the people who are fired (or leaving) usually still provide value. Yes, they are not going to put in their best effort, but they can finish their in-progress tasks, hand over work to other people, etc. Even if they put less effort into it, it's much easier for them than for the new person who would have to pick it up with no context. However, I understand that with a massive layoff and a timescale of 6 months it could have turned out far worse than the situation I describe.
- hot_gril 3y ago
  Whenever I've seen teammates leave, they still get the remaining 2 weeks to hand things off. But it doesn't help very much other than for saying goodbye. I can see why for layoffs, the risk of letting them stay outweighs the benefit. No way is a laid off employee going to actually help in the last 2 weeks.
  - yreg 3y ago
    > No way is a laid off employee going to actually help in the last 2 weeks. To add a data point: Not only have my laid-off colleagues helped to finish and smoothly hand over tasks, but we are now actively rehiring some of them back. To be fair, the company didn't pull any BS like e.g. Cloudflare telling laid-off employees that they are underperformers. In our case, it was crystal clear that we've lost clients and don't have enough work and money for salaries to keep everyone and that that's the only single reason they are being laid off.
    - hot_gril 3y ago
      It makes sense in that situation. I'm thinking about Goog, Amzn, or Twitter laying people off basically to cut costs with no clear reason.

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.

gtirloni 3y ago

> it’s best for everyone to end things quickly rather than hanging around Definitely, but not by escorting people out of a building or sending an email and cutting their Slack access without notice... which is what we see all the time. Just give the person at least a day to say their goodbyes?

yreg 3y ago

From my experience, the people who are fired (or leaving) usually still provide value. Yes, they are not going to put in their best effort, but they can finish their in-progress tasks, hand over work to other people, etc. Even if they put less effort into it, it's much easier for them than for the new person who would have to pick it up with no context. However, I understand that with a massive layoff and a timescale of 6 months it could have turned out far worse than the situation I describe.

hot_gril 3y ago
Whenever I've seen teammates leave, they still get the remaining 2 weeks to hand things off. But it doesn't help very much other than for saying goodbye. I can see why for layoffs, the risk of letting them stay outweighs the benefit. No way is a laid off employee going to actually help in the last 2 weeks.
- yreg 3y ago
  > No way is a laid off employee going to actually help in the last 2 weeks. To add a data point: Not only have my laid-off colleagues helped to finish and smoothly hand over tasks, but we are now actively rehiring some of them back. To be fair, the company didn't pull any BS like e.g. Cloudflare telling laid-off employees that they are underperformers. In our case, it was crystal clear that we've lost clients and don't have enough work and money for salaries to keep everyone and that that's the only single reason they are being laid off.
  - hot_gril 3y ago
    It makes sense in that situation. I'm thinking about Goog, Amzn, or Twitter laying people off basically to cut costs with no clear reason.