> I trusted them yesterday, I trust them today.

The problem is, before the layoffs, the employee may have felt they had an obligation to do right by the company. Once they're fired, it may no longer be the case. Some may very well become spiteful, act on their vengeance, & seek immediate retribution.

The risk posed by an employee going rouge is what most CEOs are playing for, especially as in GP's case, for a company as large as Google, where they need to plan for all possible failures and scenarios, some of which may or may not have happened before hand.

In France you can't layoff people on the spot, there is a 3 months notice. And I've yet to hear about employees going rogue.

Maybe in US laid off employees can go rogue because they're treated like shit in the process?

Notice doesn't mean they must be allowed to keep working. It just means they need to be paid.

US laid off employees also get 3-6 months of full pay and benefits. They just lose access to the building and their work devices immediately. I imagine it's no different in France.

> US laid off employees also get 3-6 months of full pay and benefits.

Some employers may decide to give a few months of pay and benefits to laid off employees (although 6 months would be unusually large) but it is definitely not required and is not always done. Mass layoffs of 100+ people need to be announced 60 days ahead (but without naming who will be laid off) but there are no requirements for any kind of severance.

There's no legal requirement, but literally every company that is not bankrupt does it because otherwise they will face huge numbers of wrongful termination suits.

That's not true in every sector.

After college I worked for a large regional manufacturer. They laid off about 10% of their employees, I got nothing.

Severance pay is a white collar benefit.

> I imagine it's no different in France.

He literally just told you it’s different in France?

He said that with incorrect information about how layoffs in America work.

No I didn't. I know how layoffs works in America because I've been laid off in America.

You know how it worked for you. What you described is not a legal requirement and many other people have had different experiences.

I think we’re all aware of how layoffs in the US work because there’s so godawfully many of them (that get publicised on HN). It’s very clear to me that 3-6 months of severance is very much not the norm. Being walked out immediately by security very much is.

Those two things are not mutually exclusive. Usually both happen. You usually get 3+ months of severance on your "don't sue us or badmouth us" paperwork and then security escorts you out.

It is a genuinely terrible idea by the CEO though. Yesterday you paid them, today you don't. If you think that doesn't change your relationship, you have to be a fool.

    > It is a genuinely terrible idea by the CEO though.

Maybe in your culture, but not all. In many cultures (people have shared numerous personal stories here), there are more humane ways to handle layoffs rather than treating former employees like a trespasser/thief/criminal one microsecond after the announcement.

In my country there are very strong labor protections. You can not fire someone here from one day to another, if they are laid off they have a long time where they are still employed by the company. There are also many companies which will not do layoffs at all, the only way to get fired is for serious misbehavior.

This is the culture where I am from. Nevertheless I absolutely believe that work relationships should be professional relationships, based on the employer paying for the employees time. Mutating that into "trust" will only create problems. The only thing I trust my employer with is him fulfilling his legal obligations towards me and I will fulfill my legal obligations towards him.