[cldellow]

I'm open to the idea that there might be some employees who would find this more humane.

However, I think a lot of people really struggle with uncertainty. During these six months, especially in a large corporate environment, there would be a lot of horse-trading. Employees will seek assurances they won't be fired. They may avoid projects or people they think are likely to get cut.

At the same time, the business likely has an idea of where they want to go. The "in" managers will navigate their preferred people to safe projects. But there isn't room in the boat for all of their employees -- after all, the business has announced the target for layoffs.

This was my experience when I was at Microsoft during their horribly ill-conceived layoffs in 2009. They basically announced that there would be 3 rounds of layoffs tallying up to 5,000 people over the next several months. It was... incredibly demoralizing.

I still remember one fellow on my team who got fired in the 2nd or 3rd round. He took it poorly (understandably!) and then ripped into the people who didn't get fired (also understandable, but still really shitty).

I don't really know that the advance warning helped him. I think he knew he was likely to get fired when layoffs were announced. Being a dead man walking... not very good for anyone, really.

[kmonsen]

I struggle with uncertain, I struggle even more with not being able to pay the bills. I think I’m not alone.

Uncertainty is important in general but right here right now I’ll take it.

[cldellow]

I think you're saying that if you were being fired, and you were given a choice of:

(1) you're fired immediately, with 3 months severance pay

(2) 6 months notice, at the end, you're fired with no severance pay

you'd prefer the second choice?

That's reasonable!

The uncertainty I was describing in my comment applied not only to the fired employees, but to the ones who were being kept. From the company's perspective, there's value in providing clarity to those employees. That's why they'd rather pay 3 months severance (and get no labour from the employee) vs paying 6 months notice (and, theoretically, getting 6 months of labour from the employee).

[kmonsen]

That makes sense, but I think there will be lots of uncertainty in the company after the first wave of layoffs. It’s quite likely there will be more.