[arcturus17]

Very sorry to hear that, though you seem to have a fairly good outlook about it.

Excuse me if it's callous to ask this at this time, but as I've been observing layoffs and been hearing that people are immediately shut down from their systems, I'm wondering: how do they communicate it to you if you can't access your email? Do they reach out to your personal email, call you, send you a letter?

I might understand revoking access but if the only immediate means of communication of termination are not being to access your systems, and thus having to deduce that you've been laid off, that would be fucking abhorrent.

[bad416f1f5a2]

When my company did layoffs recently I got to peek behind the curtain a bit. It started with an all-hands video call from the CEO announcing the layoff. HR had loaded emails to send immediately following the call directly to your company email that either said "you are not fired" or "you are".

For those who were fired, infosec ran a script during the CEO call to pull their access packages for production systems, crank the data-loss protection systems on their laptops up to high, boot them from Slack, and prevent them from sending & receiving emails to non-HR folks. After their "fired" email they received an invite to talk with HR to provide updated contact information. Then infosec pushed a new password to their account & force shutdown their workstation.

If it sounds brutal, it was. But the layoffs I was involved at a previous company were handled much differently, more traditionally: CEO announcement at 9am, and then you spent the rest of the day agonizing and waiting if you're going to get a :15 private calendar invite from your manager titled "Employment", or if you'd make it to the end of the day with no news (good news!). I'd almost argue that moving fast was more merciful than this, but that's easy for me because I wasn't fired either time.

[jethro_tell]

When I worked construction and a job was ending, you'd find out Friday if they needed you back.

They'd put your name on a list Monday and other jobs could pick you up if no one did, you'd have someone from HR come by and walk you through cobra insurance and hand you the forms for your unemployment, and then you had 30 minutes to pack your shit and go.

Weeks on end of wondering every Friday if you had a job next week. This was during 2008/10 and all our jobs that we had won got sent for rebid and the company declined to bid on them again. Lost all the work we had lined up and no one was hiring.

I was a real grind, guys expecting kids and hoping to get the baby delivered before the lost their health insurance.

[stonecharioteer]

what happens to your equipment? especially if you're remote?

[bad416f1f5a2]

The Helpdesk didn't know until after the RIF happened as some of them lost their jobs too. But every fired employee will get some return-labeled boxes shipped over to them, and are asked to pack up their equipment & send them back. Most companies who do these layoffs still count you as an employee for the duration of your severance, and your only real job requirement is to pack up your equipment and drive it to the UPS store.

Towards the end of their severance time, Infosec will run a remote wipe so if their endpoint ever connects to Wifi it'll get nuked. They tend to wait a bit to ensure there's not something on the laptop that needs to be recovered for the company – or the employee says they had some critical personal things on it. Either way the only way they get it back is by sending it back and letting the Helpdesk pull the data.

Worst case, an employee doesn't send stuff back and we write it off. It's really not a big deal. Mandatory FDE + device wipes when a laptop comes online means any data is protected, which is 100% of what we're concerned about. No one cares if an employee gets a "free" MacBook that's a few years old.

[jcadam]

Last company I was laid off from (a few months ago) said they would deduct from your severance (I forget the amount, but was more than the Macbook was worth) if you didn't return it.

I did not test them on that and just returned it.

[bad416f1f5a2]

In the US I think there are varied state laws on what's legal and illegal in that area. This is obviously complicated by any employee agreement that you might've signed up for when you joined the company.

I think the basic decision was "a 2021 MacBook is now worth less due to deprecation than the time it'd take HR/legal to figure this all out, so screw it and let's mark it disposed for $0"

[edude03]

They send you a box and you send it back basically. Though, the last company I left they made me pay for box and shipping (fine) but are refusing to reimburse me for the ~$200 shipping (no so fine)

[itake]

Some companies let you keep it, some companies want you to mail it back so they can pay for it to be recycled properly or stored in a closet.

[newaccount2021]

if your severance package is "good enough" in your opinion, you mail it back in the box they send you

if your severance package isn't "good enough" in your opinion, you keep it and reformat it...eventually they tell you that your severance will go away unless you return the equipment

most returned equipment will just become e-waste, no one is going to breathe life into my four year old laptop

I see a lot of companies just telling people to keep it and use it as they see fit

some security types freak out about former employees being able to access "confidential" information on their own laptops after being terminated...newsflash: if we wanted to mail this stuff to North Korea we could have been doing it five times a day

[steve-atx-7600]

I don't understand why it's necessary to treat employees with such sudden distrust. It is necessary to immediately cut off all access? These employees aren't being fired because they are suspected of perpetrating a crime, right? I I understand the need for layoffs, but I can't respect an organization/leadership that treats people so coldly. This behavior also affects non-fired employees that may have a need to ask knowledge transfer questions.

Since I'm fortunate enough to be an experienced SWE living in the US, I can afford to add D.O. to my list of "will never work for" employers and discourage peers from ever joining.

[apocalyptic0n3]

From the administrative/IT point of view, I understand it entirely. It's a simple risk/value proposition. If an employee gets mad they were laid off (and that does happen) and decides in a fit of rage to start deleting Slack channels, damaging or even just accessing production environments, deleting shared logins in the team password manager, downloading company/employee/customer/client data, stealing company IP, etc., they could seriously hurt the company. Even if what they do is illegal or you can sue them afterward, it's a very significant short term loss and in some cases, they may be able to do damage that cannot be reversed like deleting Slack channels.

Obviously, every company should have good access controls in place that would prevent this from a regular employee. But that's not always possible and at the end of the day, some employees have to have those privileges. It's easier to just immediately lock them out of anything and avoid any potential damage. It seems cold to you (and it probably is), but even one ex-employee going rogue before lock-out could be disastrous. And that's without going into the "ex-employee drags down team morale by ranting about company/job" aspect and in many cases insurance companies will require it. It's just not worth it, even at a much smaller company than DO like where I work.

[nickjj]

On paper I agree with all of that but in practice folks who are getting laid off already had access to all of those things every day.

Why do you trust them every day but not on the day of being laid off? Unless you're extremely close friends with them at a personal level you don't know what their state of mind is while employed without being laid off. They could do all sorts of destructive things at any point in time (both subtle and obvious).

I guess where I'm going with this one is you're always at risk for short term loss by hiring anyone. If you trust the people you hired then the short term loss outcome won't happen if you fire them. If you don't trust the people you hired then why did you hire them and give them access to do those things? All this does is optimize for bad actors and make the experience horrible for someone being fired who doesn't have intent to take the company down with them, they just want to say goodbye to their co-workers.

Plus, like you said, there could be legal actions taken against them. Who's going to risk getting sued by a corporation in the US by destroying as much as they could before they lose access? This action could potentially ruin the rest of their life from debt.

[apocalyptic0n3]

You don't. But you're also not purposefully doing something that is going induce undue stress and potentially upset or anger the employee. You don't know how anyone is going to react to being told they've been let go. That's not an easy thing to be told and I have seen people get violent afterward.

As an example, about a decade ago, we let go an underperforming employee. His reaction was to walk out of the room before the conversation had finished, take a trash can and dump it onto his desk and computer, then go outside and into his car, pull a gun out of his trunk and start walking around the building rambling like a mad man. We had to go on lockdown and wait for a police response. Prior to that moment, he had never shown a single indication he would react like that and was trustworthy, he just wasn't performing well. If he had been someone with elevated privileges anywhere, he could have instead reacted by going back home or even into his car, accessed systems, and done damage that way.

I get what you're saying, but you're discounting how big a deal it is to lose your job and the things it can do to you mentally. Some people come out the other side of that a completely different person for a while.

[jaywalk]

> Why do you trust them every day but not on the day of being laid off?

Because they had a job to care about before being laid off. It's entirely possible that being laid off triggers them to take malicious actions that they never would have when they were employed.

[edude03]

> Even if what they do is illegal or you can sue them afterward, it's a very significant short term loss and in some cases, they may be able to do damage that cannot be reversed like deleting Slack channels.

I was recently tasked with revoking access to systems during my companies recent round of layoffs. We had it timed so that when the departing employee found out they were leaving they'd already have no access.

Unfortunately for us, they were a brand ambassador and took to their personal social media to tell their followers that we were embezzling client funds (not true).

I don't know what happened from a legal stand point (if they were sued or there was any other consequences) but sometimes new customers find out they said that and are distrustful of us.

[apocalyptic0n3]

Exactly. We've had some similar issues. We also time it so they get locked out as they are being told (we do it in-person/over-call rather than via email as DO did). We've never had an issue preventing them damaging systems, but we have received a few laptops from remote employees that were clearly damaged in rage and in a few cases, had employees start calling up their clients and trying to persuade them to leave us for literally anyone else. It can be rough as a smaller company trying to convince clients they're jilted ex-employees that aren't telling the truth about anything.

[throwawaycopter]

> I don't understand why it's necessary to treat employees with such sudden distrust

To be honest, every employee should treat their employers with the same level of distrust.

It's important to have mutual mistrust as baseline for a healthy professional relationship.

[kmshultz]

Thank you for this, I had a good laugh. XD

[chasd00]

i think policies like this are related to insurance. Like the business insurance agreement dictates all access will be removed asap once a person is no longer an employee of the company. Something like that. It's not a "i don't trust this person so immediately lock their account" kind of situation.

[megous]

I guess this happens when you're treated as a replaceable cog in a machine. I had so far a very different experience with small companies I worked for/with.

I guess something to plan for, if I ever apply for a 'cog' like position. Things like saving non-company contact information for people I might be interested in communicating with in the future, keeping copies of important information/documents on personal computer, etc.

[thexumaker]

Cmon man literally every well known late stage startup, faang, and even small startups are doing layoffs like this. Your only employment options at this point if you stood to your morales are Apple, Verkada, and Levis’ Jeans

Not to mention when the money was flowing in half the talk and advice around the industry was take more money over the relationships you’ve built with your current org. Can’t have your cake and eat it too

[sokoloff]

People under intense stress are prone to act in unpredictable ways. A sudden job loss produces intense stress, therefore increases unpredictable behavior, some of which the company needs to protect itself from, others it tries to help the employee protect themself from.

[johannes1234321]

If you fire 1000 people and just 0.5% go crazy over the firing you got 5 people abusing their remaining permissions. Being strict makes it easy for the company. Especially those where employees are just a number for the executives.

[robswc]

It sucks but I'm sure its the most "logical" move.

Just curious, how would you handle it? I would love to say I would trust everyone to be adults about it.. but you never know, sad to say.

[__turbobrew__]

A disgruntled SRE with prod access can bring down an entire company. Drop the prod databases, delete the backups, done.

[kmshultz]

It was an email from the CEO to my personal email. By the time I received that email, all my IT access was already cut off: no Slack, no laptop login, no VPN, etc.

[nbaugh1]

At the place where I was laid off from we got an email to our company account right at 9 am and then 15 minute meeting with an HR contractor was setup for ~30 minutes later, after which we were locked out of our company laptops. After that, everything else was communicated through your personal email or whatever means you arranged in the meeting with HR

[saos]

> Do they reach out to your personal email, call you, send you a letter?

Personal email, phone and letter.

[AlwaysRock]

> Rolled over in bed to an email from Yancey to my personal email

Personal email. I've heard of people getting linkedin messages too.