[mlthoughts2018]

> “The message was that there are about 7,000 people in Watson Health today and this was a cost-cutting exercise. 90 days’ notice with 30 days’ severance.”

If accurate, that severance benefit is just shameful, and simply not good enough from a large corporation. Absolutely no excuse for that degree of unjustifiable, unmitigated greed to offer so little when possibly damaging lives, especially for older workers who may face IBM-like ageism elsewhere now too.

Hard fought career advice I’ve learned: always negotiate adequate severance.

It should be a heck of a lot more than 1 month, even if you’re a junior employee. Just turn down jobs if they won’t give substantial severance agreements. Unless you’re in dire straits & have to take the job. Otherwise, don’t do it. That employer will not consider the impact that some surprise layoff has on you. Get it in writing, up front in the negotiation, and don’t waste time with firms that won’t offer it. Not worth it.

[throwaway5752]

I am flabbergasted by your reaction. This is the most IBM-like thing I have ever read. I'd be shocked if I wasn't reading this about IBM.

You're not going to get changes to your employment contract there from negotiating, that's magical thinking. And they will lay you off (sorry, RA you) without a second thought. The answer is "never work for IBM", and if you do, know this will eventually happen to you and plan around it.

[dudus]

Severance packets is probably not an easy thing to negotiate when you are trying to sign an employment contract.

[mlthoughts2018]

If it’s a serious company, it’s just an expected, standard part of negotiating, no different than salary, bonus, benefits, vacation, etc.

In general, you should ask if you’ll be required to sign any NDA, non-compete, or non-disparagement agreements, either as part of a company handbook or as standalone documents. If so, the severance package should be commensurate with the duration and condition of those.

It is common to negotiate severance equal to your salary for the duration covered by the agreements, or at least a large fraction like 30-50% of the duration, so a competitive severance package would certainly be in the range of 4-6 months of your base salary.

You can also negotiate to have company-paid insurance benefits extend past your termination date as part of severance, to avoid needing COBRA in the US.

The severance agreement should also cover anything like a company issued laptop, etc., if you are promised you can keep it after employment ends.

To get this, they’ll likely require you to sign waivers to any additional monetary claims, and draconian IP, NDA, etc., agreements. And this is why you should force the issue of negotiating severance up front and why you should walk away from companies (like IBM) that won’t negotiate.

Otherwise, they’ll announce the restructuring or layoff and then hold you over a barrel, by claiming you have to honor their company policy non-compete anyway, and pressure you to sign restrictive documents at your HR exit meeting, generally offering some insultingly low severance benefit, like only a few weeks or months of pay and no continuation of benefits.

All of this advice is specifically for junior-level employees as well. Never let anyone treat you like you cannot negotiate severance just because you’re a junior employee. Walk away from those companies.

For experienced employees, the amount of severance should absolutely be at least 6 months of pay and continued company-paid health coverage, and in many cases you can negotiate for it to fully match the duration of the non-compete or NDAs, usually 12 months.

Above all, don’t accept any baloney nonsense about “standard policies” restricting severance to a small number of weeks of pay per each year of tenure, or any of that garbage.

That’s just the standard line they feed to people who don’t negotiate. And if a company refuses to be flexible on it, walk away.

[shostack]

I hear what you are saying, but feel like it also requires the caveat of "for in-demand roles where one has leverage in the negotiation."

At this point, a junior engineer may have some of that, but I'm not sure you can really apply that to all levels of experience across all functions. I agree with the sentiment and logic behind it, I just am not sure that is actually something most people could consider.