I am fairly sure that I am being laid off with other Sr. Engineers tomorrow and need some ideas. Basically, I saw a calendar mistake by HR, so oops!
Meh. It’s gonna suck for a bit, but whatevers. Life is more important than a shit job. :)
Get all your questions about unemployment ready, including the forms filled in today… File asap! File as soon as they let you go.
If you have stock/equity decide now if your going to exercise it. You may have to pay taxes in addition to the exercise price.
Bring all your work stuff from home. Hand it over and get a receipt, nobody wants to play phone tag with a ex to get their stuff back.
If you have access to sensitive systems or passwords, put it in writing what you know and tell them they need to change those passwords now.
Make sure you keep contact with anyone you care about now, before you lose access to the systems.
Be the adult, let them you know these transitions are hard, compliment them for doing a difficult thing so well, make it clear there are no hard feelings. I’ve had multiple long term highly lucrative consultation arrangements after a layoff.
Props for the prep advice.
If you have access to sensitive systems or passwords, put it in writing what you know and tell them they need to change those passwords now.
I am in security, so I know the logical reasons for that even though someone is sure to say that is bullshit.
However, I left a job once and encrypted all critical passwords I knew on a USB drive and gave it to my manager. For the password, I created a riddle that only he would know. I gave my old manager (he was cool) the USB drive and walked. After about a week, he was laid off for pure money reasons. So a month goes by and I get a frantic phone call one morning asking for all the passwords to some super important systems and I was kind enough to know they had pointlessly fired the only person who would of had access. (They had blindly destroyed his remaining equipment and paperwork, so they were gone.)
Damn. You left all the launch codes on a usb stick. Rookie mistake.
It was intentional, encrypted and before enterprise password managers were common place. The key was a riddle and actual key was never actually written down anywhere. I sure as fuck didn’t trust our network, so I couldn’t store them somewhere accessible.
I am fairly sure the drive got put in our evidence safe which was then shredded with the other drives that were in there. (The company I was working for got bought by a venture capital group and nothing original was sacred.)
I heard the rumored date of layoff and booked a surgery I needed for that morning 8am. I got 2 more weeks / another paycheck because they can’t lay you off when you’re on medical leave. Everyone else was let go that morning. I also did it because I was going to lose my insurance (shit American healthcare system)
That’s beautiful. Well played.
Added bonus was at my group’s reunion happy hour my colleagues said things like ‘Damn, well played. You win’
There’s no point in doing anything but being polite and "professional"1 and doing so gives you the most leverage. If nothing else you can try to negotiate a higher severance. But it also potentially enables the best kind of “revenge”.
Like the time I was laid off and instructed to revoke my and my team’s access to systems. Yes sir… right away sir. Only the bean counters never verified that there was somebody left in the hand-off plan who could access everything.
Github admin? Not anymore. AWS root account? Who knows?
Honestly the fallout from that, including frantic begging emails for passwords about a month later, was far more entertaining than anything I could have said at the time. Best of all, the head bean counter got fired over it.
And because I was completely “professional” my boss there was super supportive and helped me get my next gig. Still checks in on me once in a while.
1 People often confuse playing the game to believing in it. Use it to your advantage.
Do what the others already said and be mature and professional. Just wear a full clown costume to the zoom meeting. No comments on it.
It depends. If there is any money on the line or don’t want to burn bridges then I’d do the smart thing, whatever that is. Otherwise I’d just skip it.
Yeah as much as I’ve fantasized about going nuclear on past employers (or more recently, when firing a client), it just doesn’t bring any good besides a fleeting moment of feeling superior. It’s not worth it, be the bigger person and keep it professional.
Always skip the exit interview if you can. It doesn’t help you or your former coworkers. It’s just an HR box-checking exercise.
Exit interviews aren’t box checking exercises, they exist to give the company a heads up if the employee seems like they’re disgruntled and might try to sue. Always skip them, it only benefits the company that laid you off, nobody else.
Fair enough, but I think it really just depends on how you look at it. From my POV it’s just a box-checking exercise in the vast majority of cases, and a waste of your time (if you’re the one quitting). But you’re right, employers are super paranoid about this kind of thing (even though they have most of the power). If it is one of those disgruntled-gonna-sue people then you are right, it’s something they need to try to get out in front of.
Does it help your co workers?
If you got fired, no, probably not.
But if you quit then you can leave them a few clues as to why you’re leaving and how they might avoid losing more staff. That can help the people you left behind.
But if you quit then you can leave them a few clues as to why you’re leaving and how they might avoid losing more staff.
The reason I’m quitting is because they didn’t pick up the clues that I was looking to leave, and I don’t want to help them avoid losing more staff because of it. The people I left behind should take the hint if they were smart.
Just because I might be leaving doesn’t mean I want it keeping being a sucky workplace. Ideally I’d move on to something better for me, and people left behind might get an improvement as well.
Well sure, because they don’t do exit interviews for people who got fired.
I know it can feel good to speak your mind, and in an ideal world it would make some impact. It should make some impact. They should listen to people who leave. But they don’t. Because it’s not the purpose of the exercise. They don’t really care about your feedback. They care about the optics only. Remember HR is there to protect the company, not advocate for workers.
By all means if you want to waste your time go ahead and do an exit interview. There’s not much risk or harm in doing one (unless you make a complete ass out of yourself). But it’s really just there to prop up the thin veneer that HR and the corporate lawyers want businesses to hide behind.
Some companies in my experience do do exit interviews for people who are fired. This makes more sense when you realize exit interviews are mostly to give the company a heads up if they think you might try to sue them.
That makes sense. Never heard of it, but I believe you.
At I place I worked they had a few useful people leave in a short time span. All left amicably. They took feedback from the exit interviews on board, and now they are redoing a bunch of the procedures to try and improve the way the workplace functions.
Keeping more people from quitting is helping the company.
OK, that’s good to hear. I think the situation sounds a little bit unique, but not all companies are incapable of learning.
I was very happy to do the exit interview at one particular job. I wanted to make it clear to HR that I wasn’t leaving because of the manager or the work or my co-workers but because they paid about 2/3 of the market rate in our area.
This was important to me because my manager and co-workers were great and it had gotten around to me that HR was eyeing our manager over having had a few people quit over the last year or two, when it was very clearly all about pay and nothing to do with him.
You did your manager a solid, because of the meme people quit managers not jobs.
Come in sharply dressed with a top hat, cane, and unbreakable smirk
It’s going to be over Zoom, so it would be missing the full effect. Still, I might be able to slap an outfit together and even 3D print a monocle…
Hey, look at the bright side, now you can be fired in paris! I would wait for some more ideas before picking this one though, it’s rather uninspired
Since it is zoom you can focus all your energy from the waist up!
Something something cat filter https://youtu.be/lGOofzZOyl8?feature=shared
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So I did the tuxedo thing when I left a job. Security wanted photos.
I told security that there are only two ways to leave if you know it’s going to be your last day: Head held high and dressed to the nines, or carried out by as many security guards as possible.
They thanked me for choosing the former.
I was in such situation recently and I dealt with it like an adult rather than petty teenager. Don’t burn your bridges.
My last time getting laid off, I had people loyal to me tell me well in advance so I was prepared.
You don’t end up the kind of person who has people loyal to them if you do wacky, zany hijinks and make everything about yourself, even when it objectively is about you. Don’t make scenes, don’t be dramatic, just have some questions ready about severance and what benefits are available to you.
This will pay off a lot when you go to apply for a new job and they want to talk to the people who you worked for.
If you read some of the answers, you’ll find some interesting practical ones that don’t involve burning bridges. But we should also keep in mind that the company itself matters. If some random schmuck from HR is interviewing you, and you decide to spice things up a little, how exactly is this going to come back to hurt you? It’s theoretically possible that they’ll move companies when you’re searching for a job in the future, but maybe it’s not that likely.
Depends on whether there are bridges to burn in the first place.
Advice I have heard is decline an exit interview, because those are for the company’s benefit and not yours.
Or say it’s about money to give your coworkers a hand.
If you’re being laid off I don’t know if that works.
It is my understanding that they’re going to try to get you to say something on the record or worse sign something they can deny your legal rights over.
Ah… I did miss the part about the scenario being a layoff. I agree - Not that useful in that case.
It is my understanding that they’re going to try to get you to say something on the record or worse sign something they can deny your legal rights over.
It depends on where you live. Where I live, if they get you to sign it on the spot it’s very likely unenforceable as you need time to have legal documents reviewed so you aren’t just blindly signing your rights away.
I know this isn’t the “fun” answer, but I wouldn’t. I’m a manager, and I’ve been on the other side of that situation too many times. I’ve never met a manager who wants to do it - we’d all rather have enough work for everyone. It sucks but far the most for the person being laid off, but it’s a shitty time for everyone.
Plus I’ve also hired back good employees when work picked back up down the road, so there’s the bridge burning aspect to consider.
It might be just a little bit more shitty to be laid off and have finances jeopardized than to fire someone. I don’t know the market you’re in but I’d never stoop so low to come back to a place that laid me off earlier, I’d really have to be desperate.
I also don’t accept counter offers after I turn in my resignation.
Once you said you’re going to leave, even if they counter to keep you, they’re never going to trust you. And they might cut you.
However, I would still entertain a counter offer, as long as a kill fee was included in that. Counter higher salary, and if you choose to end the engagement within 3 to 5 years, you pay me this kill fee.
That way they’re committing to retaining you, and not just keeping you long enough to find a replacement
Bring an emotional support clown
Don’t go? I mean, you’re being fired, what’s the worst that can happen so just don’t go. Go for a walk in the woods or mountains while the company is paying you…
The worst that can happen is that your severance package is dependent on attending the exit interview.
Is that legally allowed. Reminds me of that NFL video of get saying “I’m only here so I get fined” https://youtu.be/rmABbHSOTqQ?si=7GseAxob1CPn2d5P
There is no requirement to provide severance at all in the US.
Bit of you have severence in your contract can they restrict it to going to exit interview?
"That’s okay, I went on a job interview last week when I called out sick. I’ll be making more than you are when I start there.
Option 1: Be professional and polite.
Option 2: Scream Leeroy Jenkins and run through the door in the middle of it.
1/2 depends on how probable it is for you to need them in the future.
On my last day of a job I brought in chocolate for the office and did artwork on the whiteboard. Kind of just had banter and didn’t do too much work that day because… Why would I.
