Not that this is really any help, but an acquaintance of mine works for HPE and notified he was being laid off yesterday, and his last day is today. He was with HP (now HPE) for maybe 4-6 years.
Why wouldn't it be legal? Virtually every US state has zero notice requirements -- tell your employee that they are being fired, laid off or otherwise no longer going to work here, pay them what you owe them immediately, and you're done.
"Two weeks notice" is a social nicety, good for maintaining good relationships and status. If you don't care about those things, you can quit or fire on the spot.
I hate that there is such a double standard with this. Corporation can eliminate my employment at any time with zero notice and suffer minimal reputational impact. If I decide to quit right now and walk out of my office, I have to worry about long lasting reputational issues and "burning bridges". I get why it's like this, corporations have all the leverage, just hate that the dynamic exists.
Almost all of the Indian IT companies have a 3 month notice period. If we were to quit before that, we may not get the service certificate which would be needed for a new job.
At the same time, they can fire us (usually being called into HR room and forced to resign) at will. Even if there is any compensation, it will be 3 months basic pay (basic is only a percentage of the full salary).
Thus we get to enjoy the bad things of capitalism without any of the protection it offers.
I don't know if it's different on the east coast but I have never met a single person whose gotten any severance. About the nicest I've seen from companies is them saying "we won't dispute your unemployment claim"
From big companies? Which ones? And my limited understanding of labor law is that Massachusetts has more regulation on this sort of thing than most states.
Read https://www.thelayoff.com and typically any big companies layoff discussion will mention the severance package being offered.
To be fair, usually when companies lay people off with no notice, in these high profile layoffs, they will include severance (aka, a fat chunk of money).
The time frame is symmetrical - both employers and employees have to give 4 weeks notice (default). In my case, the US parent company decided on 12 weeks, probably to retain the software developers.
Note that depending on unions (rare in IT) and mandatory employee representation (Betriebsrat) for big companies, firing people can be harder, especially for long-term employees.
Is the 4 weeks on the employee side a social custom that can be ignored (it is considered rude to do so here but not illegal) or is it actually a law or contractual obligation? Can you quit on the spot if say you feel the work load is unreasonable?
It is possible that the employer pays for some number of weeks, but does not require (or allow) the employee to do any work during that period. But in 2017, I doubt it. If it's a big company in an at-will state, they just show you the door and say, "Bye. Good luck out there!"
How is it legal to tell someone they won't be working at their job anymore, with one day notice and presumably unemployment benefits considering it's part of a reduction in force? I would certainly hope that remains legal.
You are unemployed. You just have some money around for a few months (usually 3 months) to look for a new job. It's tough out there to get a new job, even senior engineers have hard time getting through interviews.
Our market (Sacramento, CA) is so hungry for senior engineers (for web or mobile), I'd wager max 2 weeks to be back in the saddle. But I doubt HPE has much talent for web-stacks, likely Microsoft/.Net and SAP experience which I can agree with your statement.
We just interviewed a PM from HPE and to our surprise, he makes ~$180k a year. We hired an awesome candidate for $80k.
And no, finding a job in 2 weeks is not realistically obtainable for a senior engineer. Try 6 months to a year. This whole 'developer shortage' BS I keep hearing needs to stop.
And besides, most employers' hiring timelines (from first contact to first day on the job) are longer than 2 weeks.