Lawyers have already come up with many ways to avoid it and companies are putting them to good use.
Companies aren't using loopholes, they're literally just following one of the options provided by the WARN Act.
And that's assuming all those 220,000 were laid off in the US which they were not.
That is not true. The fact that they are receiving severance does not change their classification as unemployed.
The unemployment rate, which is calculated using a standard approach across the country, is completely unrelated to unemployment benefits, which are handled at the state level with a high degree of variation.
In fact, workers are counted as unemployed even if the layoffs are temporary and they are expected to be recalled (e.g. furlough).
No, BLS does consider them as unemployed.
It's based on people who for the following three criteria. They: 1) don't have a job, 2) have looked for a job within the previous four weeks, and 3) are available to work at the present time.
You're correct.
To add to that, in some cases (such as layoffs), even the second criteria can be relaxed. For example, if a person is laid off but expected to be recalled, they don't need to have job-seeking activity to be considered unemployed for statistical purposes. That's just one example.
It's a really misleading stat.
I could be wrong but somebody who makes like... on average $150k-$200k/yr (average tech worker, low from what I've read here on comments, most "high level" people have total comp closer to $300k-$500k/yr but I'll ignore any stock grants and just focus on salary) is making like $12.5k/mo-$16.6k/mo gross
> The weekly benefit rate is capped at a maximum amount based on the state minimum wage. For 2022, the maximum weekly benefit rate is $804. For 2023, the maximum weekly benefit rate is $830.
> Your weekly benefit amount will be about 50 percent of your average weekly wage up to a state maximum of $857.
Just some random quick Googles since it varies by state.
On the low end these laid off people made $2,880/week gross.
The absolute max the state will provide is 30% of their gross pay, aka a 70% pay reduction.
I wonder how many will even bother to file/go through the headache/process. Sounds like that effort would be better spent burning leet code practice to find an actual job.
But I say that as somebody who isn't desperate/has ample savings. I'm sure I would say something different otherwise.
(I am not talking about myself, full disclosure, but I know people.)
The issue is that a lot of these people may have to take pay cuts and make less than what they were previously earning.
Especially if you were L4+ at Google or something. Not many companies that'll pay $350k+ for a software engineer. Those that will are not currently hiring.
From a super lame C# dev at a boring company in a flyover state that's never gotten stock comp-- I used to fear a collapse in big tech that would cause an influx of skilled devs flooding into boring companies and displacing mere mortals like myself. Now that it's actually happening I'm very amused at how unemployable the SV cohort is to normal companies. To them you're all annoying overpaid assholes that whine about tools and process instead of just doing work. They've got 10 years of experience with ephemeral front-end frameworks, while the companies still hiring deploy Java and build UIs with XML.
It's almost always easier to get a new job, when you still have one.
Plus, being an ex-FAANG is a huge bonus when applying for jobs at "normal" places or starts ups.
YMMV on this one, depending on what you consider "normal" companies (non-tech, non-coastal, non-advertising).
Plenty of those hiring managers have their own opinions about FAANG employees
Some people are being laid off for performance. Most are being laid off because they were unlucky.
Hiring managers don't have time to be super sleuths. If your interview and reference process can't weed people out, then you shouldn't be in charge of hiring people. Either way, the person who gets laid off from Amazon is going to have already shown the capacity to jump through a dozen stupid hoops by sheer process of being offered a job to work there.
"Need to explore other opportunities" is a little weaker but still works.
"This chapter in my life is over" is also popular.
I think I should make a bingo card out of these.
The most common reason for getting laid off is having the misfortune of working in a department or on a project that no longer aligns with the company's "vision" and that's no fault of the engineer.
While some people might be biased to think the laid-off are poor performing employees, these people are simply buying into the "just-world fallacy" -- why would a bad thing happen to a good worker? But the truth is, while a company might ensure a few "rockstars" survive a layoff, there's plenty of "A" and "A-" talent that gets cut without a thought.
We’re all lucky to land that great FAANG job, and just as unlucky to get laid off from it. This year should be a reminder to all of us to never take a day for granted.
Context is important. If 20 out of 120k people get laid off then I might be suspicious of those 20. But if its 20k out of 120k then it's almost certain that whole departments and teams were cut, so it's hard to say anything about the individuals.
Taking the emotion out of it and looking at a macro level though, I think the program has been abused by big tech to bring in workers who have less bargaining power and I'm all for it getting a bit of a reset. The purpose of the program is to bring in in-demand, high skill workers that employers cannot find in the US. If these employees cannot find other jobs quickly, it makes me question how in-demand their skills actually were.
5-8 years of FAANG wages is enough for someone to move back to, say, India, and retire.
It's very possible moving back home means pulling kids out of school, leaving friends, and your partner having to quit their job. None of that is fun or easy.
For example, Meta employees laid off in November are still technically Meta employees, as far as immigration is considered, and will remain so until 2023/02, at which point they will be formally terminated, and the H1B clock starts ticking (60 days).
That translates to 4-5 months to find your next H1B-sponsoring gig. It's an added layer of existential stress, but the lived experience isn't "I need to find a new job quickly or I will be deported" for H1B employees with common big-tech severance packages. While I don't want to diminish the psychological toll, it's helpful to understand that these severance packages have cushioned the intrinsic risk of working on an H1B visa significantly.
Given our environmental situation, is it really ethical to “convince” people that they need some new thing that they previously didn’t know about or want?
Re: keeping stuff free, that’s still pretty convincing and it’s mostly what keeps me going as I work on the great google ad machine. It seems like a massive social good for sites to be free to users of an economic class worldwide, both large tools and tiny blogs. Any alternative I can think of (e.g. government buys everyone google drive subscriptions, sites run off donations, micropayments) have some pretty obvious issues
A complete and fair catalog is very hard (if not impossible ) to implement. But even if you did, that would NOT be enough. You might not know you "need" a good mattress unless an ad would sell it to you. Btw, if you think a global catalog would solve all these issues why not build it yourself? It can't be that hard... There are probably only a few billion products on earth, with a few variants each. Why not just do it?
Speaking of "ethical", there are many concept in the modern world that can be seen as "un-ethical", but at the same time they make the world run much better than the medieval (or communist) world they replace: interest, inflation, income taxes to name a few.
As for the environmental situation, it is unfortunate. But I do believe that the only realistic way out of the climate crisis without a collapse-level drop in standard of living (read: starvation) is technological innovation, a process that seems to be aided a lot by a healthy economy (which results in stable livelihoods, etc). So I'd say if anything there's a moral imperative to keep the economy as healthy and productive as possible.
Losing my job means losing my status, which means having to leave the country in short notice, my wife losing her job as well, and uprooting my family (again). Sure, I would survive, but I would definitely call it a personal tragedy.
Do you ask grieving orphans if they expected their parents would live forever?
I suspect some of the 40-somethings that are turning a bit gray will have a very hard time finding a new job that paid as well as their FAANG job did. I always feel hackernews greatly overstates how easy it is for folks even working at a "top firm" to finding a new job in this current job market.
This is not a tragedy - these people are going to find jobs, good jobs. In fact it's quite likely that they will go into roles which might do something other than online advertising. You know, something useful.