[_heimdall]

For better or worse, it isn't a company's job to pay laid off employees until they find a new role.

The industry standard for severance is 1-2 weeks pay per year at the company, paying out roughly 7 months is a big deal (and yes, an acknowledgment of how rough they know the job hunt will be).

[harimau777]

Disagree. If a company puts someone in a precarious situation then they have the obligation to take responsibility. After all, its management who failed to keep the company successful. Unless we are saying that the C-suite doesn't actually deserve their massive compensation packages.

[gcr]

Not in tech. Larger severance packages are common.

Going forward, I wonder if severance packages should be a point of competitive recruiting advantage

[_heimdall]

Are smaller tech companies also commonly doing larger severances? I've only been laid off once and its when the company was basically out of money, but my understanding was always that it was only FAANG and similar that considered larger severance packages.

[bluGill]

They are for CEOs and have been for decades. We call them "golden parachutes", and a lot of people hate them.

[_heimdall]

I assumed we weren't talking about CEOs though. Can't say I've ever heard of a CEO being impacted by layoffs.

[bluGill]

CEOs get fired once in a while. It is different but the same.

[_heimdall]

Not as part of a layoff, though yes they can get fired. If they play their cards right apparently they can also be rehired days later and install a board that better suits them.

[shimman]

Maybe it should be the companies job, being jobless in the US is a potential death sentence and since we don't have universal healthcare, universal childcare, or universal higher education/vocational training the onus should be forced on the companies to provide welfare for workers since they are so adamant about not paying taxes to create a welfare system that doesn't mean homelessness or death.

There is also no industry standard for severance, it's not federally mandated and not a guaranteed benefit.

[_heimdall]

I'd be very hesitant to throw out so many of the fundamentals that made America into what it has been for the last couple centuries.

The goal, at least here, is to expect individuals to mostly take care of themselves rather than depending in the state or some other authority to do it for them.

Universal healthcare, guaranteed indefinite severance, universal childcare, etc are completely antithetical to our system. Maybe the majority is ready and willing to throw that old system out, but if so we need to do it by focusing on the fundamentals rather than getting distracted with higher level implementation details.

[danaw]

you mean that system that has created the most wealth inequality in many decades if not ever?

[IG_Semmelweiss]

Yet people risk their lives to go in illegally. Something doesn't track.

Its because, inequality is not the problem.

The problem is the ability to move between income levels. That coefficient used to the highest in the US. Rich people could and did go poor. Poor people could be rich.

That index was always the highest by far in the US, but now its decreasing. That's the real issue.

[jrajav]

It can be simultaneously true that the US has a serious wealth inequality problem (and other serious problems), and that other countries have problems far more severe, causing people to want to relocate to the US.

[danaw]

i recommend investigating what the root causes are for most the undocumented immigrants coming into the US and why their countries are destabilized (hint: the cause rhymes with Shamerica)

[_heimdall]

Empires often create increasing wealth inequality as they begin to fail, that's not unique to the US.

[sofixa]

> Universal healthcare, guaranteed indefinite severance, universal childcare, etc are completely antithetical to our system.

I don't see how that follows. How is your system that different from e.g. the UK, which manages to have all of those things (severance is not indefinite and is unemployment).

[_heimdall]

Unless I'm drastically misinformed, the UK is dealing with a mountain of issues including immigration, economic problems, and quality of the healthcare being provided.

[sofixa]

First of all, are those problems you would say do not exist in the US?

And if that's the case, I'd disagree. But would any of those problems be somehow explained by the differences between the British and American systems? Especially when countries with very different systems (like all of continental Western Europe), and the US, have then too.

[_heimdall]

Many (all?) of those problems do exist in the US as well. My point, though, was that the US was historically based on ideas that don't align with welfare programs. I only raise the issues in the UK because you were comparing the two and it seemed important to note that though the UK has many welfare programs, it isn't going well for them currently.

Toy original point, the US was based on individual freedoms and rights that simply didn't exist in the monarchical UK system. For much of the US's history the, albeit politically idealized, expectation was that you come here and make your own way. We didn't have a feudal system and didn't depend on a monarch to run many details of our daily life. We have seen more and more of that creep into the American system over the last century or so though, and yes we are coincidentally also running into many of the same issues seen in more socialist European countries today.

[cortesoft]

I don't think it should be the companies job, but I would be ok with it being paid for by taxes companies pay.

Requiring companies to do all of these extra things just gives larger companies more and more advantages, since they have an economy of scale to provide go government-type services.

I don't want my company to be in charge of my whole life. Let them pay taxes to a government that can provide those things equally for everyone.

[_heimdall]

What's the difference in it being a responsibility of the company and it being a program paid for by races paid by companies?

I mean this as a genuine question, in case that isn't clear. To me the latter is just socializing the cost across multiple companies, but I'm happy to be wrong here.

[rileymat2]

Unemployment taxes/benefits are largely like that. And they are experience rated, so high risk pay more.