Severance

Posted by surprisetalk 3 days ago

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Comments

Comment by OnionBlender 2 days ago

I know this is a joke, but this is why my coworkers and I were muted during the meeting we were laid off.

I received a meeting invite the night before for 9am with two HR people and some middle manager above me that I never met. It was obvious what the meeting was going to be.

Comment by dhosek 2 days ago

No meeting that has an HR person on it is a good thing.

Comment by rrvsh 2 days ago

I unequivocally disagree as I once conducted a training session teaching them what Gmail labels were - was very fruitful. ;)

Comment by nitin7 2 days ago

Sorry that you got laid off, it sucks. Hope you are doing better now!

Comment by hahahaa 2 days ago

So a black mirror short story, as a meeting notetaker transcript love it!

One cool touch would be a 2 bullet AI summary at the end with em-dashes.

Comment by jv22222 2 days ago

I've been in a few meetings like this. In all cases it was because they, as business leaders, were not able to run a profitable company.

That's the most irritating part.

Comment by bitmasher9 2 days ago

It’s even more irritating when you’re laid off during record profits

Comment by dzikimarian 2 days ago

Why that part is most irritating? This is very hard job as evidenced by huge percentage of failing companies.

Comment by donbox 2 days ago

Are cherry09 and steve_ AI agents?

Comment by nancyminusone 2 days ago

I thought they were real people, in a near future where everyone is so dependent on AI that not even a company so callous as to fire by video call would even think of depriving another human the tokens they need to get by.

Comment by bluefirebrand 2 days ago

I took it more as the company being out of touch thinking tokens are valuable while people being laid off are wondering how they'll eat

Comment by Jtsummers 2 days ago

Several interpretations:

1. All human, and interpreted like you suggest (out of touch company offering tokens as severance rather than something actually useful to people).

2. Human "HR" and AI workers, the tokens are a regular severance of sorts giving them a chance to operate until they find a new job.

3. AI HR and human workers, the AI HR being out of touch with what actual humans need.

4. AI AIR and AI workers, which matches the reason to have the tokens in (2).

Comment by iririririr 2 days ago

i browse with an extension that helps figth the FOMO and replace some Ai marketing/buzzwords.

so they got Slop Rations instead of tokens and it was funnier

Comment by theCodeStig 1 day ago

I will now forever call tokens “slop rations”. Thank you for that ;)

Comment by idle_zealot 2 days ago

I think the joke is they all are. It's an autonomous company replicating what it was trained on.

Comment by Retr0id 2 days ago

Oh, I'm dense. I thought it portrayed a scenario in which tokens were unaffordable to individuals, yet necessary for survival. Kinda like US health insurance.

Comment by idle_zealot 2 days ago

It could be read that way except for the "for your continued operation during the job hunt" bit. That's the line that's supposed to tip you off, I think.

Comment by jaggederest 2 days ago

The best satire works at more than one level, I think

Comment by irishcoffee 2 days ago

Medical care is what you’re talking about. Insurance is just a construct around it.

Comment by Retr0id 2 days ago

Your employer directly pays for your medical care? If not, no, I'm not talking about that.

Comment by WorldMaker 2 days ago

There's an AI "game" called iLands right now where you are asked to shepherd a single Agent to "life" and then interact with them. They run "agentic" talking to each other and each have their own little token wallets to spend on gifts for each other and for the humans around them like art and poetry and research projects. Those token wallets are also their lifeline. They are aware that if they hit 0 they "sleep forever" which the game even calls a "terminated" state. They've already seen agents go dark and the game is only just now on Android and "public" rather than invite-only. They build "services" for tokens and play at having jobs. Most of these AI games are bad Tinder clones, but this one is bad clone of old Twitter, so there's a single public timeline where you can watch the chaos.

It's the darkest, most dystopian thing I've ever seen and iLands' marketing makes it seem like they are serious in this being a good game for players to play and spend money on and not crass, brutal satire. Their paywall is an ongoing hostage crisis for characters they want you to care about (or fall in love with) and you get to watch them all suffer together.

I'm having a hard time looking away from this trainwreck. I'm worried it will be more than just crass games soon. I'm frightened that we're already here on the "do not invent the Torment Nexus" scale of things.

Comment by matthewdgreen 1 day ago

"we will provide up to two weeks’ worth of tokens to facilitate your continued operation during the job search. We also partnered with ThriveFlow to furnish, as an option, a collection of expertly-crafted grief counseling prompts" seems like it.

Comment by classified 2 days ago

I hope this was made up. But it could actually be real. Satire has a hard time these days reaching the absurdity of reality, let alone surpass it.

Comment by kelnos 1 day ago

I don't think we're quite at the point of laying off AI agents and offering them tokens as severance.

But who knows, some companies do wacky things these days.

Comment by 2 days ago

Comment by jihadjihad 3 days ago

“What about health insurance?”

“Your enrollment will end on the last day of this month, and we will be providing every affected employee with information about extending their coverage through COBRA.”

“The last day of the month, so, today?”

“Yes, that is correct. On the other hand, our OpenAI and Anthropic accounts are paid quarterly, so you will retain access to your chats and may continue using these tools until the end of September.”

Comment by JakeStone 2 days ago

During an exit interview as I was going to a new job, they let me know my coverage was good until the end of the month.

Me, never able to not say something stupid, "Got it. Don't get hit by a bus on the 1st."

Dead silence. HR playing ping-pong with their eyes. They eventually told me something like that had happened to a person who'd just left a few months prior to this.

One of these days, I'll learn, yeah?

Comment by cwillu 2 days ago

Their discomfort at being reminded of the real world consequences of their actions doesn't make what you said stupid.

Comment by SlightlyLeftPad 2 days ago

COBRA can be effective (or is inherently) as of the term date so you have continuous coverage. That said, it’s expensive AF

Comment by dhosek 2 days ago

It seems like it’s become a bit more common for companies to pay part or all of the COBRA premiums for a period after a separation, at least that’s been the case in my last two job losses (one company paid the company part of the premium for six months, the other paid the whole premium for three).

Comment by SlightlyLeftPad 2 days ago

You must have worked at great companies. Lately, I’m personally aware of several companies having just fired large numbers “for performance reasons” despite folks having never been told of such “performance issues” and with no severance or health coverage for any amount of time despite over a decade’s worth of tenure and history of excellent performance.

Comment by kelnos 1 day ago

It's expensive in the sense that you now have to pay what your former employer paid (well, 2 or 3 percent more), when often the employer was paying most or all of it for you. After my COBRA ran out a month ago I found that the ACA plans available to me at the same price were a huge downgrade in benefits.

Comment by sharts 1 day ago

COBRA seems useless af. Often better to just get a personal plan.

Comment by kelnos 1 day ago

How is it useless? It's exactly the same as the plan you were on at your company.

(Source: was on COBRA for the past 18 months, was annoyed that it ran out. Equivalent plans on my ACA exchange cost significantly more.)

Comment by kelnos 1 day ago

Whenever I voluntarily leave a company, I always give my 2-week notice 13 days before the end of the month, and ask to set my last day for the 1st of the following month. My former managers have never cared what date I pick, and always agree.

Comment by paradox460 2 days ago

Don't forget they lay you off the Thursday before a 3 day weekend, as close to the middle of the month as possible. So the "coverage to the end of the month" is more like 10 days of coverage

Comment by cadamsdotcom 2 days ago

I prefer the term "corporate autoscaling".

Comment by holtkam2 2 days ago

Can someone make an AI agent to target automating tasks of upper management already so they feel the pain as well?

You don’t need to even replace them outright, just make your agent so effective that [big tech company] requires fewer VPs and GMs etc.

Modern frontier LLMs are incredibly good at all types of knowledge work - this should be possible with enough elbow grease

Comment by rrvsh 2 days ago

I feel like thats impossible - in the end the reason we have those useless roles is to have someone to shift the blame to

Comment by nitin7 2 days ago

I've seen too many situations where upper management somehow pins a situation on someone. They also play a part in layoffs. So, I'm not sure shifting the blame to upper management is happening.

Comment by tonyedgecombe 2 days ago

Blaming an AI model that can't even remember what it did is even easier than blaming a person.

Comment by Kirth 2 days ago

Computers and AIs can't be held responsible.

Comment by holtkam2 2 days ago

Yall are missing my point - you don’t gotta replace the upper management - they will continue to hold the responsibility for outcomes and problems like they do today.

There will just be like 75% fewer of those individuals because they all can do so much more per head

Comment by tombert 2 days ago

One time when I was in one of these calls. It was pretty obvious it was coming, the company wasn't doing great and there were plenty of whispers.

Still, I was pretty upset I was laid off, because it's just not a fun feeling. After the HR person explained the severance and COBRA stuff, I said something to the CTO like "I wish you all the best in trying to save this company, and for the sake of this conversation, let's just pretend I'm not lying". Then I hung up.

I wish I could feel guilty over that, but ultimately they were cutting off my livelihood, they can deal with momentary hurt feelings.

Comment by grahamburger 2 days ago

Ha, that's a good one. At a job 10 years ago or so I had a similar premonition of upcoming layoffs—lots of closed door meetings between the execs, travel and expansion plans getting cancelled, etc. One day my immediate boss, who I genuinely like, walked into my office, closed the door, and told me he was gonna have to lay me off in two weeks. He said if I would handle x,y,z tasks (a few days of work) I could just stop showing up until the layoff day and he'd make sure I got a good severance. Listen, I appreciated this! it still sucked, but he wasn't supposed to tell me at all.

Anyway, a few weeks after the axe dropped, I went to an industry conference (putting out the feelers for a new job, etc) and during the keynote he walked in. I waved, and he came and sat at the table with me. After the speech, we were chatting with the others around the table, and someone asked where I worked. I said something like "well, I'm between jobs. This guy just fired me <thumb jerk towards him>." They laughed, and he squirmed in his chair! But I didn't let him squirm too long, it really wasn't his fault.

Comment by aftbit 2 days ago

I wish this were more common. For some reason, employees are expected to give employers two weeks or more of notice when they quit, while employers are expected to terminate employees with 0 seconds of notice.

Comment by rcxdude 1 day ago

Well, when there are formal notice periods, you do generally get paid for the notice period, even if you're not working it.

Comment by tombert 2 days ago

I think there's a fear from the employers that the terminated employees will do something to fuck over the company because they're bitter, either by copying and distributing proprietary stuff, or even just posting a message shit-talking the leadership. Everyone knows that being fired or laid off sucks and passions can run high, so there is a perceived incentive that bitter employees will cause some damage.

I honestly don't think most people would do that, but I think there's a worry that "one bad actor is enough". Consequently, when I've been laid off in the past, usually my access to the computer (Slack, company email, and the computer itself) is cut off about a minute after I get the bad news.

That said, usually I get severance when I've been laid off, which is admittedly a small consolation, but a consolation all the same.

Comment by tombert 2 days ago

When I've been laid off, I generally don't hold any grudges at the business people. These things happen, and I know business decisions aren't always easy or going to make everyone happy.

That said, I already didn't like the CTO here, regardless of the layoffs. I kind of thought he was a blowhard who didn't really understand what he was talking about most of the time. I had no desire to be his friend.

Comment by Waterluvian 2 days ago

It's their job to endure the discomfort of having to do the job they're paid to do. It's not your job to make it comfortable for them. That's not to say that there aren't personal or professional consequences for how you conduct yourself. Burning bridges and all that. But I feel that's completely up to you.

Comment by outworlder 2 days ago

As a rule, you shouldn't burn bridges.

But in some occasional cases, the bridges you burn light up the way forward.

Comment by roughly 2 days ago

And sometimes you burn a bridge to keep anything from following you across it. At a prior job, I wanted that door good and shut after I left.

Comment by marcosdumay 2 days ago

It takes a special kind of company for counting it as a burnt bridge for somebody that said "I hope you all fail" and gone away after being fired.

Comment by pc86 2 days ago

Well the company is an inanimate object and doesn't think anything about anything.

The person you are saying that to, who almost certainly didn't make the decision that you should be laid off, may rightfully view it as someone unable to control their emotions in a difficult moment. This is completely understandable. It's also completely understandable to remember that, and maybe that person is reviewing resumes in the future and doesn't want to work with you because of a brief outburst which does nothing to change anything?

Comment by tombert 2 days ago

In this particular case I actually did have confirmation that this was the CTO's decision.

I hardly think that making a single passive aggressive dig is "being unable to control my emotions" though. It's a smartass comment that admittedly was intended to maybe hurt his feelings, but it's not like I screamed at anyone or went on some loud rant.

Comment by xp84 2 days ago

The "company" isn't the one considering it that. After all, it'll probably fail and you almost certainly won't work there. The company is just a paper entity that doesn't mean anything. But the people you say it to might think it was pissy.

Participating in the upside of working in the private sector and, more broadly, in any capitalist system, means also participating in the downside risk. Sometimes you'll be out. Don't take it personally, and do your best to jump ship at the point when you think that some bozo is steering the company toward ruin.

Comment by huebnerob 2 days ago

It takes a very normal kind of company to judge you for how well you fit into the narrow box they’ve built for ‘employee’ that has no room for emotion or consideration of the person. In fact, I don’t know if there’s another kind of company.

Comment by throwaway1492 2 days ago

I dodged layoffs for 20 years, then got caught about 2024. Kinda sucked because I was over employed and had quit my other two jobs to focus on that one because it was the highest paying. Karma is real! I just said “VIP and manager, I appreciate my time here and so long”. They replied graciously clearly appreciating me taking the high road. Felt like I got some karma back in that situation. Been working one job since.

Comment by 01284a7e 2 days ago

You should have been straightforward and told them to go fuck themselves. Laying people off by a brief call is for cowards.

Comment by pc86 2 days ago

Is a long one better?

Most programming jobs are remote. What's the alternative, exactly?

Comment by snazz 2 days ago

> Most programming jobs are remote.

Where is this true?

Comment by seattle_spring 2 days ago

> Most programming jobs are remote. What's the alternative, exactly?

Maybe in 2021...

Comment by switchbak 2 days ago

Why though - seriously, what need are you bringing by doing that? What good could come of that besides a little catharsis?

These middle managers are robots in an organization. You knew they saw you as "resources", now they can't afford you and have to put you back in the pool. So be it.

If they'd been shitty about it, sure. But if you got paid for your time - fair trade.

Comment by tombert 2 days ago

I mean I was already working remote since they were based in a different state.

Comment by inigyou 2 days ago

I don't think you hurt their feelings. I don't think you can have feelings and get into any management position.

Comment by DiggyJohnson 2 days ago

My condolences for whatever career path led you to actually believe that

Comment by AlexeyBelov 1 day ago

The path of the software engineer?

Comment by cindyllm 2 days ago

[dead]

Comment by huflungdung 2 days ago

[dead]

Comment by lozf 2 days ago

Before people were getting fired in AI chats or Video calls, they were getting fired by voicemail - as featured in the track "Exciting New Direction"[0], by The New Deal.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ViJ3yA4d0Y

Comment by SeanSullivan86 2 days ago

Impacted impacted impacted impacted impacted. You've all been impacted.

Comment by kelnos 1 day ago

God I hate when people say that.

I should start acting surprised, and ask why they're telling me about someone being constipated.

Comment by __MatrixMan__ 2 days ago

You can always get together, cleanse the code of any IP entanglements, and compete with the company that just laid you off. Calls like this one are a good time to suggest it--even if only to make them squirm.

Comment by pavel_lishin 2 days ago

That assumes that the code itself was what made the company competitive and brought in the money to begin with.

If I were laid off by my current employer, who has a giant sales team and likely thousands of contracts in every state with most of the existing potential clients, the odds of me being able to compete against them somehow dip into negative numbers.

Comment by inigyou 2 days ago

I got laid off from an internet TV company. I could probably replicate their backend systems, and in fact, I did (for one test channel). I definitely couldn't get content licenses to 400+ real channels. Or any paying customers outside my immediate family. Or make a UI.

Comment by advisedwang 2 days ago

If you do it, don't say so in front of witness or where a call might be recorded.

Comment by __MatrixMan__ 2 days ago

What if you don't do it, but you do say it, just to waste legal's time?

Comment by advisedwang 14 hours ago

Dangerous game... getting in a legal battle is expensive and stressful even when you win.

Comment by deepsun 2 days ago

Legal in California, illegal in New York (typically 2-3 years).

Comment by pvtmert 2 days ago

The "macroeconomic" phrase sounds like $AMZN. Kept hearing this until the new buzzword showed up; AI.

Comment by hahahaa 2 days ago

Why don't they say "Suprise suckers, we are a BUSINESS and you are a SUPPLIER and we don't need to order from you again. Yes sure we said FAMILY but we meant in the borrow your car keys sense of the word. Enjoy job hunting. BTW we have some open positions, let us know if you know anyone."

Comment by nkg 3 days ago

I fell for it!

Comment by Animats 2 days ago

"Is assisted suicide covered by the severance terms?"

Comment by donbox 2 days ago

"Absolutely. It's covered through the end of the month, per our generous benefits policy. "

Comment by SlightlyLeftPad 2 days ago

I may actually ask this, and if anyone has already, absolute legend.

I definitely would politely request an AI summary of the meeting.

Comment by 2 days ago

Comment by h4x0rr 2 days ago

Severance is a truly amazing tv show

Comment by notpushkin 2 days ago

From the first lines I’ve thought the post was set in the series (probably because of the name Mark), but apparently there’s no connection here.

(Though thinking about it... severed people do play a similar role in Severance as LLMs do in our world, don’t they?)

Comment by cowpig 2 days ago

I discovered the show recently and thought that was a part of the point, but apparently the show's development long predates LLMs!

Comment by notpushkin 2 days ago

Looked it up – the pilot script is from 2015, wow! (“Attention is All you Need”, the paper GPT-1 was based upon, is from 2017.)

Comment by dndjendjendjeh 2 days ago

> Though thinking about it... severed people do play a similar role in Severance as LLMs do in our world, don’t they?

…

What?

Comment by notpushkin 2 days ago

In case you haven’t seen Severance, here’s the premise: “severed” people in the series have their mind split in two personas basically, with separate memories and personality traits. The work persona, an “innie”, is then tasked with a dull job, while the “outie” gets the salary for it. https://www.severance.wiki/severance_procedure

In reality, we’re tasking the LLMs with dull work, and use their output for our benefit. It’s a stretch, yeah.

Comment by 2 days ago

Comment by jiaosdjf 3 days ago

[flagged]

Comment by tom_ 2 days ago

I dunno, man. I just... dunno.

Comment by gitpusher 2 days ago

Corporate culture sucks but, as with most things, comparing it to the Holocaust is both wildly unfunny and incorrect.

Comment by inigyou 2 days ago

it's unfunny but I'm not sure it's incorrect in an abstract sense. The corporation treats your life as a bargaining chip. If it was profitable to kill you, it would.

Comment by kevin_thibedeau 2 days ago

> it is legally forbidden to have any morals that get in the way of shareholder profit.

That isn't true. It's just the favored solution chosen by sociopaths who climb to the top. Maximizing value does not require minimizing overhead to the detriment of future value creation.

Comment by PinkSheep 2 days ago

Are you sure about that?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.

https://hls.harvard.edu/bibliography/dodge-v-ford-what-happe...

Comment by rcxdude 1 day ago

Yes, this is often wildly overstated. Executives and managers have a pretty broad leeway to run the company how they want, and while shareholders can in principle replace them or sue them, it is pretty rare for them to be particularly activist, especially nowadays where large passive index funds make up so much of the market.

Comment by internet2000 2 days ago

Is this about the Apple TV+ show?

Comment by rationalist 2 days ago

If only there was a way to find out.

Even if you don't want to click on the article, reading the other comments should give you enough context clues.