MegaBux Inc. bought our small ag-biotech firm in 2018. I had developed a high throughput product screening system for natural products against a bunch of animal diseases. The program worked and we identified a bunch of candidates (I also developed the list of things to screen) for botanical/natural solutions to animal diseases. I should have guessed that I was on the chopping block when after finding out some of the things we screened actually worked, I got replaced as PI on the project by someone else much younger. A couple months into 2020 all the folks at the R&D center (including me) got laid off. They did pay severance to us- and mine took me out to October of that year due to my longevity with the firm that was purchased. A couple months after that, a bunch of the junior staff (who were well trained in my methods) got hired back. I was almost 69 at the time, so it was probably time to retire anyway. I was very lucky. This is so familiar! At least I made my stack and can live comfortably on my SS and pensions.
high-tech solution for measuring and promoting old tech efficacy? investors looking at this “How is this supposed to make us more profitable as a company?” CTO in response “…We could sell the information to other companies… or even trade it with third parties like individuals, or even organs of government…”. Investors: “Interesting! We would need to be careful with how we would go about doing that, no?” CTO: “sigh Time to reorganize the department again. and this time I must be sure to purge the lead designer on the software, so they don’t form any attachments to the use cases of the sale or propriety of the resultant information from the project”
Being sarcastic got me fired. Twice.
I got laid off about five and a half years ago, at the start of Covid. The meeting was with my manager and his boss (who I was also friendly with). I got a meeting invite and asked if we could push it back an hour so I could drive my wife to work, they said sure. I told my wife on the drive that I was getting laid off. Sure enough, I was. They paid me five weeks severance and gave me resources to file for unemployment. It was due to Covid causing a huge drop in money coming in, which was understandable. Honestly, I didn’t like my job, I had already hired a company to rewrite my resumé. So it worked out. At least my boss and his boss had the spine to do it personally. I’ll always give them credit for that.
Man, I was on that manager side, having to lay people off because of some bad decisions from upper management.
I usually do everything I can, like give them recommendations letters, try to get them as much money as possible that they’re owed… Literally bend over backwards.
Everyone takes that news differently. One guy cursed me out, kicked some shit and stormed out. And I just got up and cleaned it all up because brother, I get it.
When I’ve had to let people go, I’ve always believed it important to do it personally. It’s difficult, but it’s part of the duty of a boss to face the person they’re letting go.
I’ve been accused of being cold when doing it, but that’s because I don’t feel like I have the right to show the emotional impact on me when it’s someone else’s life being wrecked.
I’ve also violated company policy several times and given glowing reviews of former staff instead of simply confirming they worked at the company.
Interestingly for me, the bosses I got along with always got fired first. Both companies I got laid off from had several rounds of layoffs, and in both cases my boss was round 4, and I was round 5 several months later.
HR lady once spit a whole ass pack of lies about my work performance, and had cut off my email access so I couldn’t prove her wrong, which would have been trivially easy. Realized before I spoke up that if the HR director is lying this bad, there’s no reason to even try to “prove” I’m right, just a really toxic company.
I remember years and years ago when I still a regular employee I got into work one morning to find I no longer had access to any git repos. nothing. Well already knew the reason right then and there. I usually got in before everyone else so by the time people were coming into the office I was packing my stuff up to leave. People were all “where are you going?” I said “well I either got fired or laid off so I’m leaving, I’m not sitting through a bullshit meeting telling me why I was laid off”
wiped the laptop, wiped my externals, walked out, went and sat in a coffee shop to revise my resume. I got a call like an hour later asking me where I was and why I didn’t attend the meeting I was apparently schedule for. I replied with “you laid me off” few minutes later they email me back saying they’ll just send my ROE and last paycheque in the mail and then proceeded to explain why I and a few other devs were laid off. I didn’t bother reading the rest of it.
Then I decided to become a freelancer and never looked back. best decision I made.
What REALLY annoyed me about the whole thing was I thought I was good friends with the IT guy that set up access to everything, he was the one that revoked my access the night before and didn’t tell me. I was literally having a beer with him that night and he never said a word. out of everything that hurt the most. never spoke to him again.
To give benefit of the doubt maybe IT guy was told HR already let you know? Still sucks overall good choice in freelancing.
no. I was talking about projects I was working on with him. he knew, he let me talk about them and said nothing.
If IT guy thought they new, why not bring it up, offer consolation, maybe buy a few rounds…you know, human with empathy stuff?
Great story on how you handled it. And totally agree with you on the IT guy. What a douche that he just couldn’t give you a heads up.
the insulting thing out of it is I paid for his beers! he KNEW I was getting laid off and didn’t say “hey…maybe I should be paying for these” nope, gladly accepted my money. He tried to contact me after the fact and I just blocked him.
I was going to say that if the workplace is harsh and the IT guy would get fired for telling you, in his place I might not say anything and then immediately apologize. And apparently get blocked with no discussion.
But damn, letting you pay?
And it’s kind of irrelevant because you acted as if you already knew anyway, lol.
Some people dont have the guts for it.
Ready to be laid off, i can feel it coming considering the economy feels like its on stilts and my company scrapping the bottom of the barrel for projects to work on.
I don’t own anything and don’t have anybody.
Prepared for my NEET life.
If you don’t have anybody, it will be hard to be a neet. They are usually maintained by someone else (mostly parents)
Hope you will find a new job soon, It really sucks to find a job in these times 😞
The only good thing about getting laid off is 1) you can at least collect unemployment 2) It’s easier to get another job because you weren’t simply fired
Unemployment isn’t that easy to collect in a lot of states. My state’s unemployment system is essentially designed to dissuade people from collecting. Tons of red tape, rules, and conditions to wade through and if the stars are right you might start getting checks worth 2/3 the value of your original paycheck a month later.
What’s the difference between being laid off and being fired?
You het fired for being bad at work, coming in late, etc.
You get laid off for “we don’t wanna pay you anymore.”
A lay off is generally broad in scope. A department might get laid off.
Firings are usually with cause and individual. You are fired for showing up late every day. You’re laid off when they simply don’t need you anymore.
This varies from state to state across the US and probably only applies here, but if you’re fired with cause, you generally don’t get unemployment benefits. If you’re laid off you might get a severance on top of unemployment.
Particularly shitty companies will always fire as many people as they can prior to a lay off. A big part of HR’s job at these organizations is making sure they have a case to fire as many people as possible at any given time. If you’ve ever worked in any call center in the US, you’ve been subjected to this, knowingly or not. They’ll document a handful of even the slightest grievances and make sure they have two in the chamber at any given time for any given employee, so if it looks like they need to get rid of a lot of people in the near future they’ll start digging for a third infraction.
Lay offs aren’t related to your behaviour. Just that they cannot afford to keep you.
“they cannot afford to keep you.” Oh they almost certainly CAN. They just don’t want to.
You can’t collect unemployment if you get fired.
It depends. I was terminated under false pretenses, so I collected unemployment without any issues.
The specifics will vary by jurisdiction. The state I live in, you can collect unemployment if fired but it has to be determined that you were not fired for noncompliance with workplace policies or illegal actions. For example if you stole from the cash register and got caught and fired you would not be able to collect unemployment. But if you were fired for poor performance you can receive unemployment
I learned this after a recent workplace decided to make up performance reasons to fire me. The state opened an investigation to determine if unemployment benefits should be paid out, which involved asking both myself and the previous employer about the stated reasons for the discharge, if any written or verbal warnings were given, etc. Hilariously my old employer dropped the entire line of reasoning and just said “it didn’t work out” when the investigator for the state spoke with them. I also then learned that the maximum unemployment benefit in my state is only $1200/month which won’t cover most folks rents so that’s practically useless!
Goddamn that’s low. At first I read that as $1200/week, which would be the highest in the nation.
I also got termed for no reason but my state maxes out at $875 per week, low considering the cost of living here.
Yeah you can. You forfeit UI if you quit voluntarily. You’d only lose it if you got fired for doing something illegal, I think
Depends on the state but basically they have to prove it was for cause. You being late nonstop and being fired? No UE. You getting fired for “no call no show” when you ha e the phone records to prove you called in and you have no disciplinary record? You’ll get UE.
I got “fired” once in my life right before a big round of layoffs for the above reason. This was in TX so my UE got denied right out of the gate but when I appealed the company didn’t even bother showing up.
It was a pretty slam dunk case of them reaching and pulling shit out of their ass so I won the appeal.
Always appeal, especially in republican states where they default to siding with the companies.
That’s my understanding too.
The best thing about getting laid off is still getting paid but not having to go to work.
Having responsibility that they don’t want you to abuse, and having a robust social net that requires employers to pay out an employee for a specified time (mine was 3 month) is amazing. (Go Belgium)
A full 3 months of vacation and plenty of time to look for other jobs.
Since its clear you are a bad worker leave off a few important task. They can chalk it up later to themselves as proof they made the right decision when those tasks fall through the cracks.
All important tasks. Let them figure it out
Sometimes you can even see it through the telephone
Finally no longer having to work
It’s really been the absolute worst thing in life after “being a kid” and “going to school”I know the setup is that if you don’t job hard enough
then something even worse is coming up
living in the streets, which is illegal
then living in the man made hell
called prison, which is just another kind of schoolBut this time, by seeing it coming,
turns out there’s a way to opt out of the bad bits !Gather round and attend my layoff time tale of woe.
I worked for this company for four years. They fell on hard times and, in place of layoffs, required employees to temporarily give up a portion of their salary on the condition it would be repaid within 2 years with interest, plus increased bonuses proportional with how much you sacrificed. I voluntarily gave up 20% as the company had never had a layoff in its history (no layoffs was part of their alleged culture) and all the old timers gushed about their massive bonuses after downturns like these.
I was given my quarterly review in October and I get a perfect score. I work three weeks, then am badly hurt on the job. It requires fairly major surgery, so I’m out for almost two months.
I literally limp back, probably a little too early. The first day is fine and I’m getting back up to speed. Boss shows appreciation to my dedication as I reasonably could have taken more time to recuperate. I tell her I need to discuss accommodations as I’m still healing. She agrees and sets an appointment for the next morning. Great job HamSandwich, everyone loves you.
I arrive to the accommodation meeting to find the head of HR and my boss. I figure HR is there to help with accomodations. Nope, I’m being terminated. For performance. Huh. I ask about my stellar review. My boss tells me there were issues. I ask about the issues. She is unable to give me any examples. I ask how I was supposed to know I had performance issues when I had a perfect review three work weeks ago and no one can tell me what I’ve been doing wrong. HR boss bitch pipes in with “Ham, at your seniority level you should just know.” Fuck you, boss bitch. Fuck you.
As I’m packing up my things, I realize they cut me one day before my yearly stock shares were to be awarded. Security walks me out and tells me I’m one of many senior level employees being terminated. People are being fired for showing up five minutes late. Upper level admins are walking out in protest. It appears this was the strategy: bank on the company’s good reputation to encourage increased voluntary salary cuts, then dump as many high earners as possible if still in a downturn. My boss is a spineless twerp and went along with it. She lies and tells the rest of the department I was terminated for sleeping on the job. Fuck you, boss. Fuck you.
The company had its first round of layoffs a few months later. Those employees also lost the money they gave up. The company’s reputation is irreparably harmed and I’m currently suing them for lost wages.
Name and shame! That sounds like a horrid experience.
Ah yes, shaming shameless corp always works
Might save someone else a similar experience.
If a corporation asks you to take one for the team, don’t. “The team” will never take one for you.
I’m very sorry to hear that. I hope you win your lawsuit. Fuck those goddamn bastards.
I had a meeting with plenty of important people tagged in, yet somehow I didn’t think much, if anything, of it. Like it’s just a meeting. Which it was. A meeting to inform me I was to be let go of the company. The possibility of that only occurred to me, I think, when prompted to think about it, on another meeting I had right before that one. That’s right, two meetings back to back. Yet I was clueless…
In outside sales so everyone is working remote. I get an email around 7PM that we are going to have a meeting tomorrow (on line of course) at 3PM. I had heard that a big layoff was coming. But why a call at 3PM instead of first thing in the morning if I was going to get laid off. Later that evening I get calls from friends about the 10AM meeting. I told them I never got a message about it, but I did about a 3PM meeting.
What they did was all the people they were laying off were on the 10AM meeting. It was half the total sales force. at the 3PM meeting for the survivors, they explained to us what was going on.
This just happened a month or so ago at my place of employment… except there were no invites. No meetings. It went more like
9am: Hey, where did my chat with so and so go? Friggin teams…
11am: Now the other one is missing? Wtf?
1pm: Outside TM: Hey… dumb question, but do you have as many people on your team as you did yesterday?
Email Invite for 1:30PM has entered the chat
That HR lady is totally breedable.
I’m usually quite a big fan of not having any prjunddices against people just because they are part of a certain group, gender etc. But please just shut the fuck up. Why do some people (often enough men) simply have to think with their dick and be disgusting human beings?
It’s being gross about it and referring to her like livestock that bothers me. Breedable. Yuck.
I’d rather these cretins point themselves out so I know who not to help if they’re on fire.
This planet works on chaos and sex.
In my previous company, at about 9PM, about half the company got an invite for a 9AM meeting, and the other half for a 10AM meeting, we saw all the name in our invite of course. Let’s say the evening was hard, to guess which group was staying and which group was fired! I was in the “stay” group, this repeated every quarter and after 3 or 4 quarters it was my turn to be in the fire group, the next quarter they closed the company and fired the remaining employees.
The HR lady was like the picture.
She looked like Anne Hathaway?😯
