the people who would leave after a layoff can do so preemptively, perhaps saving headcount for someone else?

The problem is that such voluntary separation programs tends to disproportionate attract high performers. You're losing the "10x engineer" who has stuck around because they like being here - despite getting attractive offers from the competition.

The mediocre people who dread looking for a new job during a hidden recession aren't going to leave. They can't afford the risk of not being able to find a new place of employment before the severance pay runs out.

These high performers will leave anyway if they see their environment drastically changing or feel the tide turning, except they'll do so months after you ripped the band-aid.

It's not that different from making it part of the process in the first place.

I don't think people doing layoffs are thinking far ahead. In my unqualified opinion, it's either to stop burn or to generate short term profit.

Neither of these groups are valuing long term expertise

If they were thinking far ahead, they wouldn't need to do any firing at all - they would've gradually adjusted their hiring policy in time to avoid it.

if you don't like the new direction you can leave now and get the known now severance package. All in all, I think it is right to offer people voluntary severence with package when you pull the rug out from under them as far as where they thought they were working.

Unless they're going to offer offer an insane buyout, like 1+ years of pay + benefits + some accelerated vesting, nobody who doesn't already have something lined up is going to take this offer. It's much better to stay with one foot out the door and just keep cashing that paycheck and collecting your monthly vest. Especially when you know layoffs are coming, nobody expects you to do anything until they actually pull the trigger, then there's a month or two afterwards where you can slack off because morale is in the toilet, people are still trying to figure out who's left, how the company is organized, which priorities are dead, stuff like that. Ask me how I know.

Ah, what you say makes sense, ok.

It's defensible to have a voluntary separation program with clear terms. Microsoft, for example, announced on April 23 that a voluntary separation program would launch on May 7. On that day they announced the precise terms of separation, with affected employees given until June 8 to participate. Perfectly reasonable.

What Gitlab is announcing here is that employees need to apply for a separation, at a yet-to-be-determined time under still-unknown terms, without a guarantee of acceptance, in the next 7 calendar days. Much different and just so much worse.

the order here is backwards. publish the package first and let people apply without committing. right now GitLab gets the signal before employees even get the terms.

sort of a Michael Scott approach of asking people to quit so they don't have to fire anyone.

Surely it's the low performers that are going to quit for new jobs!

Can someone explain why they're using terms like "voluntary separation window" instead of more natural language?

How would you describe “our best employees can take a severance package”?

can't find this quote in the article

It’s not - but voluntary separation with severance often leads to those with the best prospects moving on; which are often the best employees-but not always.