[daenz]

According to this[0], the absolute most generous package is the Netherlands, which offers 1/3 of your monthly salary for each year of employment. To receive 14 weeks of salary, you'd need to work at a company for 10 years. Coinbase was founded in 2012.

Other "European" countries have much worse severance packages. So what Coinbase offered seems to be better than even the best country in Europe.

0. https://www.claimsattorney.com/2020/05/understanding-severan...

EDIT>> Correcting years

[arrrg]

Long notice periods typically soften the blow in Germany. After the first six months (where both sides can call it quits with two weeks notice and without cause) the notice period is four weeks to the 15th or last day of the month (and firing people without cause is no longer possible). There are some circumstances when that notice period is not relevant (if the employee is caught stealing, for example), but those don’t matter here.

From 2-5 years it’s one month (to the last day of the month), from 5-8 years it’s two months, eventually maxing out at seven months after twenty years. That’s the notice period for the employer. It can and often is asymmetric but can never be shorter for the employer than for the employee.

However, these are the legal minimums. Many employers will have longer notice periods in their contracts which apply to both sides. Something like three months or so isn’t uncommon.

Severance pay can even lead to problems with the mandatory unemployment insurance (which in most cases will pay you 60 – without kids – or 67 percent – with kids – of your last net earnings for a year) that can reduce the payout from that insurance (and then it becomes a game of calculating severance vs unemployment insurance, which can be annoying).

[rocgf]

You are comparing apples and orages.

Coinbase was generous, it could have chosen to give them exactly 0 and that would have been legal.

You're taking the best case scenario in one case and comparing it to the norm in another country.

[daenz]

The person I was replying to was taking the norm in another country and suggesting it is as-good-as-if-not-better than what Coinbase offered.

[SahAssar]

Different countries have different laws, but at least in sweden it is common to be part of an income guarantee program (a-kassa, usually via a union but can also be outside of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment_funds_in_Sweden). You get around 80% of your income for the first two thirds-ish of a year (200 days) and 70% for the rest of the year.

It's obviously good that this is handled outside the employers control.

After that you get the normal unemployment benefits from the state which is capped at a low but livable level.

It is (in sweden) abnormal (and illegal) for companies to just fire people without cause, and the valid causes are pretty restricted. One of the few valid causes are lack-of-work (arbetsbrist), but even that triggers negotiations between the employer, the employee and the union, and is usually a last-in, first-out thing. The employment contracts are always including a fixed notice (I think it's 3 months regulated by LAS, can be lower if your on a trial employment up to 6 months).

As an example, the klarna downsizing was major news in sweden a second time because of their obviously illegal way of handling firings.

> Other "European" countries have much worse severance packages.

Please give me a source.

[daenz]

>Please give me a source.

The source is in my post. They cover France, Luxembourg, UK, and the Netherlands, and the first three are worse than the Netherlands.

[mlyle]

> which offers 1/3 of your monthly salary for each year of employment. To receive 14 weeks of salary, you'd need to work at a company for 3.5 years,

1/3rd of a month is 1.44 weeks. To get 14 weeks, that would be 10 years.

You're right in that Europe generally provides less severance, but they do tend to sign fixed term, renewing employment contracts with rather lengthy notice periods for either side to terminate it. E.g. in Switzerland, statutory minimum after 1 year of employment is end-of-calendar-month + 2 months of notice, but typical agreements extend this.

Also, there's the whole concept where regulators are involved with layoffs and negotiate for payments and assistance in many jurisdictions.

[daenz]

Thanks for the correction!

[meheleventyone]

Don’t mistake the legal statutory minimums with normal practice.

[daenz]

Are you suggesting that European countries regularly offer severances to all employees that exceed what is legally required? Can you provide a source?

[Marsymars]

I don’t know about Europe, but in e.g. Canada, employees are generally entitled to common law severance, which is significantly more than the statutory minimum severance. e.g. https://www.monkhouselaw.com/how-much-severance-pay-should-i...

[baq]

Yes, anecdotally, no recent evidence, though expect to gather some in the next year or two.

The last time my company laid people off it have very generous severance packages, way above the legally required 1/3 months depending on duration of employment.