Id say 2 months is about normal for non tech maybe 3.5 at solid companies. This also adds a week per year at the company so plenty of people will be getting 5 months+ and $5k on top of that
Fair enough. It's nothing crazy by UK standards, you'd usually get your notice period paid off (2-3 months), plus another few months negotiated by your union, plus the statutory week's pay for each year worked (1.5 weeks if you're over 40). You don't normally get to keep your devices, I guess.
Double counting the notice period is unfair IMO. You already pay for the notice period by having the notice period when you want to quit. Companies having to pay you the notice period when they fire you is symmetrical and IMO is not a severance package. Maybe that's just my assumption, but IMO a severance package is the asymmetrical pay-out when one party quits an agreement, not the communal wager you both put down when you enter the contract.
Put another way: if both parties agree on a shorter or longer notice period, I wouldn't expect that to affect any potential severance package. It's just the notice period.
We're talking about worker's comp here. In this thread specifically, the UK is brought up as having generally "better" severance packages. But that's only half the story if you count things which the workers pay the companies when they're the ones quitting.
I worked in the UK, I've had to "pay" for that notice period by hanging around where I didn't want to. It's the other side of the coin which somehow doesn't get mentioned when people bring up Europe as somehow having better employee protections. They might, but notice periods ain't that.
If I had to put as much money into a company's retirement as they put in mine, I wouldn't turn around when I retire and say, wow, great comp package. No: this was a symmetrical deal we made, this time it's working out for me--in a parallel universe it's working out for you; it's a wash.
Severance packages are comp. Notice periods are just properties of the contract. They're not a severance package.
I find this an important distinction because it lets companies pull the wool over your eyes by pretending they're being generous, when really they're just paying you the exact same thing you'd have to pay them were you the one quitting. That's not a package, that's just salary.