[jobu]

Laying off people is just a tool to get rid of low performers and cut costs. From the article:

"A manager in one unit making cuts said his team was briefed that Bezos and the Amazon brass wanted to put more pressure on managers to weed out lower performers and enforce spending discipline after the rapid growth of recent years."

Layoffs seem kinda shitty, but it's usually better than firing with cause. The worker will still qualify for unemployment benefits, and the employer doesn't have to go through the time and expense of a PIP (Performance Improvement Plan).

[lsc]

From watching friends, for higher end jobs? you are almost never terminated 'with cause' - I don't know even one programmer who got fired from a fully paid programming job (I mean, a job paying six figures, not a "shadow IT" gig.) who has gotten fired in a way they couldn't collect unemployment insurance, even after a PIP.

For low end jobs, retail and the like? it's pretty common to be fired 'with cause.' even for small things that I do twice a week, like being late or something.

I suspect that it's because employers only pay unemployment insurance on the first $7K or so of wages they pay an employee in a year, so while an increase in their unemployment insurance rate matters if they are paying retail rates, it really doesn't if they are paying programmer rates.

The funny thing is that I don't think any of my programmer friends would fight it either way; it's not worth the effort. But friends working retail? yeah, sometimes it makes sense to fight it... and their employer actually gets up in court, and argues why this person they paid almost nothing and then fired shouldn't get what amounts to a pittance.

The whole thing seems kind of unfair and messed up.

[pktgen]

> The worker will still qualify for unemployment benefits

The worker would qualify for unemployment benefits even if fired for good-faith poor performance. For terminations, only gross misconduct (criminal acts, deliberately failing to work, etc.) is disqualifying.