[mlthoughts2018]

Yes, but many times companies will pull unmitigated dick moves and give you 2 weeks, no benefits. By comparison, even 1/3 the stated number of weeks is decent (especially for junior employees).

Still, it’s a cautionary reninder to negotiate significant severance benefits.

[scarface74]

How do you as a lowly employee "negotiate" severance benefits. You have no power. If they say "No" what are you going to do?

[mlthoughts2018]

Just don’t accept that job if they say no. Look for a new job if your current one doesn’t offer this.

[scarface74]

Good luck with that unless you're a special snowflake....

[mlthoughts2018]

It’s just a basic part of average-case negotiations for most software jobs at a wide range of companies.

People like you, who don’t negotiate or turn down offers when they don’t include severance, unfortunately end up not getting benefits they could otherwise routinely get by negotiating and being willing to say no.

[scarface74]

As a developer/architect in a major metropolitan city, why would I worry about getting laid off? In 20 years its never taken me more than three weeks to get another job - always paying more. My record was walking off a bad contract at lunch Monday with not even an application submitted somewhere, meeting a recruiter and having an offer at what was then a Fortune 10 company on Thursday. The only time I got laid off was when the company went under - meaning any promise of “severance” would have been moot. Even then I was laid off on Friday and scooped up by one of the company's clients and started working the next Monday.

Yes I was around for both the dotcom bust and the 2008 recession. Even then major corporations were hiring.

There is a much higher chance that I’m going to leave a company than a company is going to leave me. I’m going to negotiate pay, PTO, and even a title that looks good on my resume.

[mlthoughts2018]

I went through a layoff once where my whole company department (about 30 people, mostly machine learning engineers with PhDs) was laid off in a big restructuring. We were all located in a major US city.

Several of my colleagues (one with two young children and a brand new mortgage) needed well over 6 months to find their next job. Few places were hiring for their skill area and _many_ companies passed on them just because having a resume gap from the layoff is an instant HR filter.

On top of this, paying for your own insurance even with COBRA is prohibitively expensive, like $600/month for an individual, upwards of $1500 for a family.

Some other teammates affected by that layoff faced really severe ageism during months of interviews before finding a job.

In other words, your comment is hopelessly myopic and I hope you never experience the kind of grim unemployment that many people face, even developers in job-heavy cities, because you don’t seem equipped to survive it.