Twitter Layoff Started Today

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ingridjohnson_twitter-layoffs-started-today-there-are-activity-6950869057071980545-1Q4t

by amrrs • 4 years ago

263 332 4 years ago

linkedin.com

stocknoob5• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

sucks being like the normies, don't it?

stocknoob5• 4 years ago

Seriously. 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?

metadat2• 4 years ago

Twitter 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.

baskethead5• 4 years ago

Job market is definitely not "hot". I think there are still jobs out there but lots of companies are tightening up severely.

commandlinefan2• 4 years ago

Looks 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.

throwaway59597• 4 years ago

Seriously. 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• 4 years ago

Is it surprising that highly compensated employees also value security and other benefits?

onion2k2• 4 years ago

Someone 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.

qbasic_forever2• 4 years ago

The median home value in SF is ~$1.5 million. A typical mortgage on a home like that is ~$4-5k per month. So you're assuming folks have $25-30k in liquid cash hanging around all the time. Not unrealistic but certainly not everyone working at tech companies there has that kinda cash. And that's before you factor in other costs like property taxes, insurance, etc. that you'll need to cover too.

throwaway9870• 4 years ago

While saving 6 months might be possible, I would love for you to point me to a high-yield savings account.

falcolas3• 4 years ago

Let's pretend some of these SF twitter employees have families. $4k in rent monthly, 4k in general living expenses (these are based off median figures available publicly) A bit over $96k in living costs.

Assuming that $200k in total comp includes about 25% in stock (based off publicly reported comp packages for twitter employees), and a combined state/federal 35% tax rate... They have no spare money to save without a second income with $97,500 in take home pay.

TinyRick• 4 years ago

Please show me a "high yield savings account" that comes anywhere close to the ongoing >7% inflation.

edgefield• 4 years ago

$200K in a HCOL area with a family is middle income and you’d be hard stretched to save much if anything.

onlyrealcuzzo• 4 years ago

If you need 6 months to get a job in this profession, something is wrong.

Even the slowest companies take 2-3 months to get an offer. Maybe it takes you a month without a job to be interview ready.

Honestly, the vast majority of people would be better off taking a month of work to prepare for interview full time to get a better job...

rad88• 4 years ago

I'm financially illiterate. Where can I find a good high yield savings account?

Willish42• 4 years ago

This is an asinine assumption. I doubt even 10% of recruiting employees at Twitter have a HYSA, let alone make in excess of $200k/year. As stated below [1], those affected seem to be recruitment (which lines up with the LinkedIn post's user profile saying they are in recruiting).

Even ignoring this, there are thousands of situations where layoff + stock blackout can be financially devastating even for people with "well off" jobs. The entire reason it's recommended to keep a 3-6 month emergency fund is for emergencies - surprise medical costs + reduced pay on disability if you get cancer/car accident/etc. or struggling with a dip in household income from a spouse losing their job during a second-in-two-years recession. If one of those happens to you and _then_ you're laid off, you'd probably be more sympathetic.

Over half the U.S. lives paycheck to paycheck. It doesn't require a ton of imagination to envision why even people living in the bay area working at Twitter might be in dire economic circumstances after a layoff and stock blackout.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/twitter-lays-off-third-of-talen...

brd529• 4 years ago

It was 30% of the recruiting team that was laid off today which almost certainly includes recruiting coordinators, sourcers and other entry level non technical roles. It is a challenging time to be looking for a job if you are a recruiter, so I hope these severance packages are generous.

TimPC4• 4 years ago

Honestly if you’re paying a mortgage at current rates, 6 months income is an excessive amount to hold out. Assuming that’s $100k, you’re paying somewhere around $5600/year by not paying down your mortgage more aggressively.

I have a lot of sympathy for someone who’s plan for savings was “if I get fired I can”: (1) use my severance money (2) sell my stock (3) get a loan against my home

Only blackout periods blocked (2) and falling home prices blocked (3).

phillipcarter2• 4 years ago

Hoo boy, where to begin with this one. You do realize that there are people who broke into tech despite coming from extremely poor backgrounds, and use most of their take-home money to support their families, right? Or students with massive student loan debts that they are currently paying down? Or even just people from median financial backgrounds but have to support their families in a high CoL area?

leetrout• 4 years ago

What "high yield savings accounts"??

I dont know of any over 2%

kurupt213• 4 years ago

The cost of a modest lifestyle in SF would strain a Twitter salary

abeppu4• 4 years ago

You and a bunch of others in the thread are starting from the presumption that these people were very well compensated. But we don't have to make _only_ assumptions, you can look up some perhaps stale and perhaps biased self-reported numbers. The most convenient of these to access for recruiters at twitter (who seem to be the ones impacted) guess a median compensation of 137K, with around 94k of that as base. I think that base is just about at median income for SF for a single earner (though of course they could live elsewhere).

Other people in this thread are talking about what I understand to be hypothetical engineers with 400k compensation, and it sounds like that doesn't describe this situation.

https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Twitter-Recruiter-Salaries-... https://sfmohcd.org/sites/default/files/Documents/MOH/BMR%20...

schnebbau2• 4 years 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_forever2• 4 years ago

Now go look at the cost of a home or apartment in San Francisco or nearby towns. I'll wait...

InTheArena• 4 years ago

People tend to spend money in relativity to what they earn.

https://thehill.com/changing-america/resilience/smart-cities...

The same forces that encourage rampant consumerism in people who can't afford it, do it to people who can afford it - and then suddenly discover that they can't.

daenz• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

Well, they can go on unemployment, which has a max benefit of $450 a week in CA.

onionisafruit6• 4 years ago

Last 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.

sokoloff2• 4 years ago

The 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.

janstenpickle• 4 years 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?

abeppu4• 4 years ago

Well, 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.

rocqua2• 4 years ago

Sounds like employees planned to use vested shares as their emergency funds?

jpollock3• 4 years ago

Many 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-9408...

https://www.redfin.com/CA/Mountain-View/237-Houghton-St-9404...

madeofpalk2• 4 years ago

Seems unwise. You can always be fired or otherwise lose your job.

penneyd2• 4 years ago

Plenty of spots in the East Bay that are way below your quoted hypotheticals.

mathgladiator• 4 years ago

Holy shit, seems like bad personal finance. I never consider stock in my budget, how did this come to be?

jrockway• 4 years ago

I used to get paid in stock. I had a plan on file to auto-sell it every month, and then I reinvested the proceeds so I had less financial exposure to my employer. The exact scenario is if the company stops doing well, then your job is going to go away at the same time the stock becomes worth $0.

The other side of the coin is that you pay significantly less taxes if you hold on to the vested shares. They increase in value after vesting, and you structure your sales such that you take a long term capital gain. A lot of my coworkers did that, and have a lot more money than me. But it's a gamble, and you should always weigh your gambles by how badly you can afford to do.

(I hate getting paid in stock, but it's advantageous to the employer, so it will always be a thing. With auto-sale, it's a very similar risk to being paid in cash, except that you have a lot of annoying paperwork to do every year. But you just pay someone to do that.

Oh, and if you're a new FAANG hire, please just find a professional to do your taxes. I did it myself and fucked it up a number of times. The IRS does not like fuckups, and extremely competent professionals will do everything for you for a small amount of money.)

loeg2• 4 years ago

Aren't vested shares in a public company just shares? Once they're no longer employees, they shouldn't be subject to any trading blackout.

twblalock4• 4 years ago

Depends on the terms of the stock plan agreement.

hn_throwaway_992• 4 years ago

Yes, 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.

aatharuv3• 4 years ago

Agreed.

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.

reaperducer2• 4 years ago

It’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_145• 4 years ago

I 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?

dmix3• 4 years ago

That'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.

hn_throwaway_992• 4 years 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.

dunkelheit• 4 years ago

One 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• 4 years ago

Always 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• 4 years 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.

yupper322• 4 years ago

Almost 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-talen...

__derek__• 4 years ago

I 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• 4 years ago

I’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.

yupper322• 4 years ago

For 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_• 4 years ago

WSJ 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-talen...

itslennysfault• 4 years ago

makes sense. They've been in a hiring freeze for a while now. Not much sense paying recruiters to sit on their hands I guess.

dmix3• 4 years ago

Explains why this is being posted on Linkedin like it's a blog.

honkdaddy• 4 years ago

Slightly controversial, but I think most companies could cut the fat from their talent team by 30% and their hiring pipeline would not change. I’ve seen firsthand how a lot of recruiters operate and it’s remarkable how inefficient they can be.

ghostbrainalpha• 4 years ago

Could 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?

baskethead5• 4 years ago

Companies 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• 4 years ago

Companies should also remove your trading window when you exit the company.

skookum• 4 years ago

Are 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.

filoleg3• 4 years ago

The stock is yours, but while you are still an employee of that company, there are certain windows (usually around quarterly earnings announcement) during which you atent allowed to sell or buy. This is done as a safeguard to prevent insider trading. Once you are no longer an employee of the company, none of those restrictions apply, you are welcome to sell/buy the company stock whenever you want.

thrown32111• 4 years ago

That only applies to higher management, who would know of impending layoffs.

brk• 4 years ago

Vested shares are not special in and of themselves. However employees often have blackout periods for any kind of stock they hold - ESPP, RSU, Options, etc. In many cases even stock you purchased separately with your own after-tax money can be subject to a blackout (though the company would not have a mechanism to directly block your trades you could run the risk of SEC violations).

The blackouts apply to employees because they often have insider information, even if that information may be of minimal real value. The SEC has really clamped down on tech stock trading in the last couple of decades. Those of us who had stock/options in the late 90's dot-com boom likely participated in several stock trades that would be outright illegal today.

HenryTrois• 4 years ago

That's crazy!

andreilys• 4 years ago

IANAL but I don’t think the blackout window applies if you’re no longer an employee.

directionless• 4 years ago

It 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• 4 years ago

From that OP thread, it seems that talent and not engineering was affected.

dboreham• 4 years ago

For us old people, what is "talent" ?

redact207• 4 years ago

"recruitment", since labelling humans as resources is apparently inhumane

jdoliner• 4 years ago

Recruiting, and maybe HR.

kova122• 4 years ago

Diversity employees

aaaaaaaaaaab• 4 years ago

Talent: the ones who hire you

HR: the ones who fire you

coffeeblack2• 4 years ago

A euphemism for employee.

yodsanklai• 4 years ago

I also get annoyed by these rebranding. I don't understand why some people are so eager to push forward this new jargon.

whatgoodisaroad• 4 years ago

My 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?

onionisafruit6• 4 years ago

That's how it worked last time I left a publicly traded company during a blackout period.

dmix3• 4 years ago

How long did it last?

smn1234• 4 years ago

so 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?

onionisafruit6• 4 years ago

You can still be charged with insider trading. You just won't be stopped from making the trade.

cecilpl24• 4 years ago

You 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.

TheCoelacanth• 4 years ago

Most rank-and-file employees don't have material nonpublic information, though.

Blackout periods are more of a CYA thing.

Once you leave the company, you only have to follow the actual law, not the stricter rules that the company sets for its employees.

pvarangot• 4 years ago

You are subject to a blackout when you have material nonpublic information.

Kinda legally yes, but some mid-sized companies enforce a trading blackout by contract and with a broker-level feature on everyone just so that they don't have to do the work of telling everyone that has that kind of information that they do. Twitter probably does this because of how the LinkedIn thing is worded.

The former employees could transfer their shares to another broker and sell them with no issue if they think they are on the good side of the law, which they probably will be after severance.

caseysoftware• 4 years ago

They're mid-acquisition so the rules are different atm.

twunde• 4 years ago

I 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• 4 years ago

Elon 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• 4 years 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.

ChrisLomont4• 4 years 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

[2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS13023654

[3] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M08291USM175NNBR

[4] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M0852AUSM497NNBR

[5] https://www.nber.org/digest/dec02/whose-employment-affected-...

manyfriends4• 4 years ago

Unions often drive out workers at the benefit of those getting union jobs, lowering employment. For example, see [5] and similar papers.

This seems a bit misleading from the article you referenced:

“The researchers find that, for both men and women, more union involvement in wage setting significantly decreases the employment rate of young and older individuals relative to the prime-aged group (with no significant effects on the relative unemployment of these groups). In contrast, a larger role for unions has little impact on male-female employment rate differentials but raises female unemployment relative to male unemployment.”

Lower employment for the very young and very old is generally a good thing in places with a robust welfare state —- and certainly is overshadowed by the positives of unions, such as the lower rates of poverty, lower mortality and accident rates, and higher job satisfaction and overall wages as a percentage of productivity across many industries.

cecilpl24• 4 years ago

In the past there were companies that treated their employees well, and also companies that didn't. I am pretty sure that all the points you mentioned are not new developments of the last 20 years.

In the present there are also both kinds of companies. Are you sure you aren't comparing the worst of today's companies to the best of the past's?

WalterBright• 4 years ago

Companies literally escorting laid-off employees out of the building like criminals, on the premise that a suddenly-former employee is an incipient criminal.

It doesn't take many incipient criminals to ruin things for everyone. You'd do it to if you've ever had an employee steal or embezzle from you, and it's a lot more common than you might think.

wink• 4 years ago

I've still never heard of this here in Germany. Maybe it's because you usually can't fire people valid TODAY, so they still have some runway of around 3 months and then they don't feel like they need to grab stuff and run?

oblio• 4 years ago

This is almost strictly a US perspective.

At some point you'd figure out Americans would look around the world and start asking: "are we sure we're doing this right?".

In every place in Europe I know of, you're not escorted outside of the building by anyone. You just go at a leisurely pace and drop off your badge and stuff, put your stuff in a bag, etc.

jonathankoren• 4 years ago

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).

So I'm in my mid 40s, and my earliest memories of company-labor relationship, has always been one of union crushing, layoffs, and pitting towns against each other to see which factory or mine was going to close first, before offshoring. But then again, I grew up in the deindustrializing midwest.

I'm not saying this rosey world never existed (I believe lifetime quality employment still existed in the 1960s), but it's been like this for more than half a century.

rufus_foreman4• 4 years ago

> 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)

Well I am old, and I don't remember the time you claim to recall.

I've never championed a company brand and I just threw up in my mouth a little even typing that.

mceachen• 4 years ago

I'm old too. I don't think we're old _enough_.

According to my grandparents, back in the late 1940s through early 60s, I guess it wasn't rare for people to work at a _single_ company _for the entirety of their career_, fostering bi-directional loyalty.

AlbertCory3• 4 years ago

My dad worked at a single company for his whole career (45 years).

Nonetheless, when I left my first job, he was supportive. He said "They're not loyal to you, so why should you be loyal to them?"

assttoasstmgr4• 4 years ago

I remember a time when companies, at least in principle, would invest in their employees

I remember that time too, back before we had armies of employees with nebulous job titles like "Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Advocate". Maybe someone realized some of these positions don't actually create any value, product, or service. Or as you put it, "Because business sense, etc." My impression is Twitter has extremely high overhead costs, and the gravy train has run out of steam.

mhio• 4 years ago

#4 "escorting out" is usually a result of applying #1, #2, #3 and #5 to a person and realising the affect those actions might have on them, just more good business sense!

throwaway292939• 4 years ago

I think that there is a cost to companies operating this way, but the cost is largely unseen or harder to account for. Arguably doing everything opposite of those points can be "good business sense" too. For example, going with the mindset of investing in your employees.. two of the points below:

Companies using the barest of excuses, or none at all, to lay off employees The intention is to streamline everything and cut costs and improve efficiency for the business. However, doing the opposite here helps preserve tribal knowledge (possibly leading to better business outcomes). It helps improve retention because it creates an environment where employee isn't constantly optimizing for the best compensation and looking to jump ship at the first better opportunity.
Companies lying, deliberately and freely, to employees about upcoming layoffs, in order to "stave off panic". Because it makes good business sense.

Doing the opposite leads to employees being more focused at work. Instead of prepping for the next interview, they can focus their energies on company initiatives.

catchnear4321• 4 years ago

I’m not that old either. At least I tell myself that. It might even be true.

One doesn’t recognize a well packaged lie overnight. Or at least I didn’t. Took burnout to realize the company I was willing to give it all for never really meant all of those sweet things it told all of us. And that was true long before I worked there. The wrapping was nicer. Have you heard of a “pension?” Some of the older employees, by tenure, would talk about them. They sounded just magical. Wonder where those went. Not the only perk that has vanished with time, but perhaps one of the most notable.

But it took too long to see it. I didn’t really want to. It hurts getting your heart broken.

65102• 4 years ago

People can stop buying products that don't agree with them. It might not be in your financial cards but if it is a free product there is no excuse - it makes good business sense.

AlbertCory3• 4 years ago

There'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/

m0llusk• 4 years ago

Most 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.

sershe2• 4 years ago

Fwiw, 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.

thrown32111• 4 years ago

I thought etrade had given up commissions and instead just front runs the trades..

krallja2• 4 years ago

That’s false; brokerages make enough money from retail customers with payment for order flow.

sershe2• 4 years ago

That was several years ago. Also I think even the advertised commissions on ETrade were relatively low then too, only the stock award plan account had the ridiculous ones, hence me transfering the stock out.

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