YMMV but I've never seen a tech company give less than 2 weeks pay when doing layoffs.
I'd rather take the money and not have to work while I find a new job than to have a warning that my job is going to end in 2 weeks while I'm expected to keep working.
Another "America vs Europe" (well, UK): I have my notice periods written in my contracts, whether that's one month or three months, and it is always bi-directional.
Giving up to 3 months of notice to change jobs is wild. What are the consequences if you tell them you're leaving in 2 weeks instead of the notice period?
Typically in US tech companies layoffs don't give employees a notice period, but they do give severance pay. So you stop working effective immediately but you either get a large check or continue to receive paychecks for a period. That period depends on the company but it's usually within the range of your notice period. You don't have to work during it, though.
For very senior staff they can get an injunction against you, stopping you from working elsewhere. For lower staff they can withold unpaid wages and charge you for the cost incurred of getting the temp cover up to the notice period. Given how high temp/contractor wages are compared to employee costs, this can be an insane number, especially in tech where an employee might be on £200 a day, but a contractor might charge £500-1000 or more.
The flip side is that other employers understand that you can't fill a position immediately. There's not many circumstances where a unique opportunity really appears on no notice.
In situations where you are in dispute with your employer and want to walk off, the traditional solution is to file a number of disputes and get yourself signed off as sick with "stress", then quietly negotiate a mutually agreeable exit.
this could be because the business have all the power in the relationship, especially in bad job markets like today. When they hold all the cards they can make us dance for them and they never dance for us
If you have desirable skills, why does the business have all the power? If you don’t have desirable skills and yet remain employed, how could you expect otherwise?
well personally I think the people you hear complaining about being abused by their employer are more unskilled, otherwise they would leave for greener pastures as you said. But unskilled people are people too! And they have rights and should be treated fairly
If you're getting fired for cause then it is not an amicable breakup and the norms for when you're trying to maintain a relationship obviously don't apply. Layoffs for any reason other than "the company is out of money and is shutting down tomorrow" which only pay two weeks severance would be unusually stingy.
Depending on the size of the market in your area, or the market in general, not giving two weeks is effectively blackballing yourself. The city I work in is small enough I might have trouble in the future after leaving a manager in a lurch or burning a bridge.
Is that how things should be handled? Nopers. Is it how things are due to employers having more power than employees? Yeahpers.
Just being real here though, hiring flaky employees is enormously expensive. Every hiring manager / business owner would just as soon not waste their time on it. So there are these heuristics that have organically developed for how to spot good employees vs bad. Not having the stability, foresight, or courtesy to (be able to) give notice is merely an indicator of whether you have your shit together. Similar example: an HR director once told me early in my career that drug tests (back when those were a thing) are basically just IQ tests - the company doesn’t give a shit if you smoke pot, but if you can’t control yourself enough knowing you have a test coming up or you can’t figure out how to engineer a workaround, you’re probably dumber than the candidates we want.
The system is reasonable in the sense that it’s explainable and predictable on both sides. Social convention seems preferable to me in this context to binding contracts.
I'd rather take the money and not have to work while I find a new job than to have a warning that my job is going to end in 2 weeks while I'm expected to keep working.