Has this happened to you?
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Yep. The invite was sent at nighttime the previous day so I didn’t even show up for it. Manager had to ping me on slack to get me into the meeting to get laid off while I was still in bed slowly waking up that morning.
And I was so completely done with that company that I just broke out in laughter as soon as the call ended. Couldn’t have worked out better for me.
My (small) company got acquired by a massive West coast tech giant and six months later all the employees (but not the executives and managers) of the original small company were laid off. This was not even remotely surprising to me, and would not have been even if any of us had been given any work to do during that six months. When my boss told me I was being laid off, I laughed and said “of course I am” which surprised him as apparently everybody else was massively shocked and upset. Which surprised me as I don’t see how anybody could have possibly not seen it coming.
All things considered, this company was actually slightly decent about it, as they gave us two months’ notice and severance equal to about what we would have been able to get from unemployment. The severance disqualified us from unemployment, but at least we got the amount up front and we didn’t have to spend six months pretending to look for work.
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My friend, who works as a license renewal and hiring manager at a large tech security firm, once shared something interesting with me. He said that when hiring under his company’s DEI standards, he sometimes had to bring on someone who wasn’t the strongest candidate for the role. The goal was to meet diversity requirements, but the tradeoff was that it occasionally meant hiring someone less qualified.
According to him, if a hire brought in under those standards didn’t perform well, it could be harder for the company to let that person go. The emphasis on maintaining diversity created extra pressure to hold on, even when performance wasn’t where it needed to be. That situation, understandably, can affect the rest of the team.
Personally, I don’t have anything against DEI. In fact, I think it helps reduce nepotism, which is a positive. But I also don’t think DEI always works out the way people imagine it will. Like many policies, it has both benefits and downsides.
The reason I bring this up is because I think it’s a slippery slope when governments start drawing hard lines about who can and cannot be fired. At the end of the day, what tends to matter most is whether someone makes the company money.
Take my friend as an example again: he’s only required to bring in $250,000 each quarter, but he actually brings in around $4 million. Because of that, he has survived multiple layoffs and has even been moved to different departments, simply because his performance makes him too valuable to lose.
That’s not how DEI policies are supposed to be applied. You’re not supposed to just reverse who’s being discriminated against. DEI means that you consider equivalent factors and ensure that your hiring pipeline and methodology doesn’t improperly harm certain classes.
For example, you have two new hires coming straight out of the same college with the same degree.
One of them grew up in a rather wealthy household. Everything was paid for them. They could spend their entire time at college focusing on schoolwork and socializing. They graduated with a 3.5 GPA.
The other grew up rather poor. They had to work multiple jobs during college just to afford food and rent. They really couldn’t study except late at night and during the occasional lull at work. They graduated with a 2.8.
If you just look at the GPA, it’s clear that the first candidate is better. But if you consider the factors behind it, well, then it’s the second. That’s an impressive work ethic. It’s rather common for people like that to drop out because they struggle too much making ends meet and can’t afford to stay.
A proper DEI policy should be fighting back against misapplied policies like hiring quotas. It should be recognizing additional qualitative and quantitative factors.
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It needs to be illegal to fire people who aren’t doing a bad job in the US like they do in civilized countries
Except everyone is doing a bad job, because the standard corporate holds you to is the work of 10 people for 3% of your current wage.
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Just in case it comes up later, since I assist in purchasing for the company I work for, what software is it?
As the other commenter said there are a lot of options. I used to be in charge of imaging and we just used SCCM to deploy. I had to pass on these roles as my responsibilities changed and the team that was getting it deemed it to complicated… go figure. They complained enough and found smart deploy and they accomplished getting it because of its ability to wipe pcs.
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“Ah I’m finally getting a promotion”
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There’s all kinds of options like Microsoft Intune to corporate antivirus + data protection solutions
If my company wipes my Mac through such a system, but I have it hooked to my own personal Apple cloud account, can I go buy a new Mac and restore it?
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Charlie Kirk was a made guy, and we weren’t. And there was nothing we could do about it.
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Among other things, I was in charge of on and offboarding and buying IT gear. HR basically told me if the employee won’t return the laptop we just have to suck it up. I may be misremembering, but legally speaking, we gave them the gear, no matter what paperwork they signed. And in no case would it pay to so much as begin legal action.
And no, we don’t want the monitors. Just not worse the hassle and shipping.
And in no case would it pay to so much as begin legal action.
Unless it’s very new equipment, financially its not worth the hassle.
Same reason they dont want the monitors or adjustable desk back, shipping would cost as much as they are worth and they’ve already deprecated away most if not all of the value which the court would take into account.
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Three times now. At this point I’m used to it and expecting it and have a pre-printed letter with questions to ask.
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“What kind of compensation package am I receiving and what are the terms?”
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“How long will I stay on company benefits after today?”
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“Will there be any opposition on this company’s part in my filing for unemployment insurance?”
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“Do I have any legal restrictions in seeking employment in the same industry?”
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“I have ordered several tons of fresh steer manure on the company card, to be delivered to the lobby by later this afternoon, do you fucking like that?”-
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If my company wipes my Mac through such a system, but I have it hooked to my own personal Apple cloud account, can I go buy a new Mac and restore it?
If your Apple account is separate and the uploaded backups are untouched by the company solution, then yes (in other words, if file deletion doesn’t sync into your iCloud backup)
Note that the company might use the management tool to block you from connecting personal accounts!
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My (small) company got acquired by a massive West coast tech giant and six months later all the employees (but not the executives and managers) of the original small company were laid off. This was not even remotely surprising to me, and would not have been even if any of us had been given any work to do during that six months. When my boss told me I was being laid off, I laughed and said “of course I am” which surprised him as apparently everybody else was massively shocked and upset. Which surprised me as I don’t see how anybody could have possibly not seen it coming.
All things considered, this company was actually slightly decent about it, as they gave us two months’ notice and severance equal to about what we would have been able to get from unemployment. The severance disqualified us from unemployment, but at least we got the amount up front and we didn’t have to spend six months pretending to look for work.
The severance disqualified us from unemployment
That’s false, you should have gotten both. I got severance AND unemployment.
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The severance disqualified us from unemployment
That’s false, you should have gotten both. I got severance AND unemployment.
It’s state-dependent. And in my state, unfortunately, severance above a threshold amount is deducted from the amount of unemployment benefits you’re eligible for. I would have been eligible for something like $300 total, and this would have been payable only after nearly six months of filing claims and (pretending to be) looking for work that entire time. Certainly not worth it.
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It’s state-dependent. And in my state, unfortunately, severance above a threshold amount is deducted from the amount of unemployment benefits you’re eligible for. I would have been eligible for something like $300 total, and this would have been payable only after nearly six months of filing claims and (pretending to be) looking for work that entire time. Certainly not worth it.
I’d argue it is worth it because that $300 still came from the employer who laid you off in the first place.
I get it tho, that’s not very motivating when you’ve got all the other bullshit around layoff and job searching to deal with
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Do you mean she got caught stealing? No. Just stupid startup bosses having to fire half their staff because they had to fly Europe to New York like every two weeks and buy new macbooks when they left theirs at the airport, among other things.
Oh I was forgetting that op might live in a country with shit labour laws.
Where I am that kind of firing they need to be pretty confident you’ve been stealing or you fucked up real bad and got caught trying to cover it up rather than owning it so it can get mitigated.
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Oh I was forgetting that op might live in a country with shit labour laws.
Where I am that kind of firing they need to be pretty confident you’ve been stealing or you fucked up real bad and got caught trying to cover it up rather than owning it so it can get mitigated.
No, we have fairly good labor laws in Germany. There aren’t that many reasons why you could fire an employee legally – economic situation of the company being one – and I think they knew that argument was debatable. I think they just wanted to be on the safe side legally, and more importantly, they wanted to intimidate to dissuade people from suing for wrongful termination.
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That’s not how DEI policies are supposed to be applied. You’re not supposed to just reverse who’s being discriminated against. DEI means that you consider equivalent factors and ensure that your hiring pipeline and methodology doesn’t improperly harm certain classes.
For example, you have two new hires coming straight out of the same college with the same degree.
One of them grew up in a rather wealthy household. Everything was paid for them. They could spend their entire time at college focusing on schoolwork and socializing. They graduated with a 3.5 GPA.
The other grew up rather poor. They had to work multiple jobs during college just to afford food and rent. They really couldn’t study except late at night and during the occasional lull at work. They graduated with a 2.8.
If you just look at the GPA, it’s clear that the first candidate is better. But if you consider the factors behind it, well, then it’s the second. That’s an impressive work ethic. It’s rather common for people like that to drop out because they struggle too much making ends meet and can’t afford to stay.
A proper DEI policy should be fighting back against misapplied policies like hiring quotas. It should be recognizing additional qualitative and quantitative factors.
I often have this discussion about DEI on this platform, and someone always responds with, “That’s not how it’s supposed to work.” And you’re right, but what happens in practice and what happens on paper are two completely separate things.
The bottom line is that these lower to mid level employees are given a list of criteria and very little training in DEI itself. They’re then required to fill these slots so it looks like the company is making progress, when in reality it’s very likely they’re hiring someone underqualified.
It’s true that many companies implementing DEI have seen an increase in profit margins, but I think that’s happening because DEI pushes back against nepotism—which, in my opinion, is significantly worse than hiring someone who may be slightly underqualified.
