[pkteison]

Yes, surprise firing is technically an option for almost all employees, including the long-term engineering staff talent at wealthy tech companies. It's reciprocal - the employee can quit with no notice also. A very very few public faces, world famous leaders in their field, will negotiate different deals - but the general long-term engineering staff isn't at that level.

I think it's not a point of competition, especially for the talent worth competing for, for several reasons:

1) People don't value the protection as much as they value the freedom of being able to quit, and you only get one or the other. Basically: "I'm good at my job, why do I need protection? But another offer might come along and I might want to leave."

2) People believe it won't happen to them / they have control over it. (I think this is generally true - don't do boneheaded things, keep being good at your job, you won't get fired.)

3) I prefer working somewhere that has the ability to fire bad coworkers. It leads to less bad coworkers.

4) Surprise firings are not really common, and when they do happen, the examples seem to make sense - people get fired for doing obviously bad things (or for being horrible, but that is usually a drawn out process and not the surprise described here.)

5) If you don't announce it, it will be difficult for your next employer to learn the circumstances, so you can always just get another job. (Companies in America tend not to answer questions about why prior employees left, it's mostly up to you to spin the story in the next interview. Most companies (in tech at least) don't even bother checking references because it's unlikely to be productive.)

6) The worst cases of fired-for-no-good-reason are already legally protected

If it was extremely common then this would probably change, but so far in my career it just hasn't seemed like a big concern.

[pmiller2]

> It's reciprocal - the employee can quit with no notice also.

Except it's really not. The potential consequences for an employee quitting without notice are far greater than the consequences to the company of summarily firing someone. And, the company has far more power in the employee/employer relationship the vast majority of the time, because people typically have one job and companies have tons of employees. People also tend not to have the kind of savings in the bank that can let them just shrug off a surprise firing.

So, no, it's not reciprocal due to the power imbalance inherent in the relationship.

[prostoalex]

Can you elaborate? What consequences are there for an employee who gave a same-day notice on Friday to start a new gig on Monday?

I can only think of company witholding the final check for longer than usual, but that's understandable with how payroll is cut at some large orgs.

[pmiller2]

I was more referring to damage to one's professional reputation.

[prostoalex]

I don't really buy that. Unless you're at the C-level, you know nothing about how the person working next to you quit their previous job.

The only exception being them volunteering such information, but even in that case an abrupt notice of termination paints the story teller in a positive light of him (finally) seeing the light and moving away from sinking ship that is her old job to the unbridled rocketship of opportunities and awesomeness that is her new job.

[arcticfox]

Since when is quitting damaging? Obviously there are a handful of extenuating circumstances where you really leave an employer out to dry, but in the general case there's nothing wrong with quitting a job.

[asuffield]

I'll just point out that in the UK and most of Europe we don't see a reason why this should be reciprocal. You can quit at any time, but you also can't be fired without a reason if you've worked at a company for more than 1-2 years.

It doesn't stop people from firing bad coworkers, and it appears to have no negative effects on employment.

[mercer]

> People don't value the protection as much as they value the freedom of being able to quit, and you only get one or the other.

That's not true, at least not in Holland (and I suspect much of Europe).

As far as I know, I cannot be fired without good cause, but I can quite any time I want. So clearly it's not necessarily one or the other (outside of wherever you're working).

[Pinckney]

I don't get where 100M comes in. Part of his compensation was in stock, and they can take that away? How does that work?

[shasheene]

My understanding is the stock options gets released overtime ("vests") following a fixed schedule.

So it's basically part of the compensation he hadn't yet earned...