Among the ways you can do layoffs, this is one of the better ones for sure. People who are kind of checked out already anyway can get a nice paycheck on their way out and start looking for something new, while people who still have something important to get out of the job get the option to stay.
Consent matters!
I’m 4 weeks away from my voluntary redundancy. I was planning on leaving the job this year anyway, as I wanted to move, so to get a nice paycheck with it was a definite bonus.
Of the people that chose voluntary redundancy, it was mostly those without ties to the area, those that could move, young enough to re-skill, or old enough to retire. The ones that were forced into redundancy have families, mortgages, history in the area, enough baggage to cause inertia. Part of my reasoning to take the voluntary redundancy was to help save at least one person from that.
So absolutely, consent matters. It just sucks that this is happening at all.
The company’s stated reasons for redundancy was to move skills to other locations in the country. This is after a year’s long effort to co-locate in order to facilitate collaboration. What it really seems to be is that our location has very high staff retention, and therefore high salaries, and the company thinks it can hire younger and cheaper elsewhere. The skill and knowledge lost with this move is staggering, everyone can see that, but profit is the most important factor the company cares about, so it’ll inflict its own wounds to get profit up. Capitalism is weird.
I got laid off a couple of years ago by a large tech company (rhymes with Brisco). It sort of sucked, but it was part of a mass layoff of about half the employees who had come into Brisco when our original small company was acquired by them. Interestingly enough, everybody who was laid off was single and childless - all the people who were married and/or had kids were kept on. At least until this new round of layoffs, because fuck everybody we’re going with AI.
My work did this a few years ago and one guy who was planning on retiring took it. He got a full extra year of pay and 2 or 3 years of medical insurance out of the deal.
Absolutely, I’d happily take a redundancy payout from my current job.
Was given the option about 6 years ago at IBM. Jumped at the opportunity, unfortunately wasn’t approved. “no, we still have a lot of work for you”
Ended up leaving 3 months later, ah well
I mean if there are severance packages, I wouldn’t say no.
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Damn, wish I could get fired by ibm
Yeah, being laid off by a huge company can be a lot less awful than a smaller one because they pay you off pretty nicely.
I was laid-off in 2022 and got a pretty nice severance, and my new job pays 40% more. I wish I had known how relatively quickly I was going to find another job because I would have enjoyed my time off a lot more. I personally don’t know anyone who has been laid-off and ended up worse off.
my friend was laid off last june by ibm and still hasn’t found a job
Yeah, sorry if I came across as aloof, I do know that it’s tough out there, but I do believe that most people come out ahead after a layoff. But there are still many others who don’t, and I do recognize just how lucky I am.
no you didn’t no apology necessary, it’s a very subjective experience and I wanted to share another side of it :)
Hope that’s true for me! I’m 2 months in and no strong leads. Trying to work my network though.
Hang in there… It took me 3 months to find a job and I worked my ass off every day of those 3 months sending out resumes, reworking my resumes, doing applications, having interviews with headhunters (which I’m retrospect was likely a waste of time since they really didn’t do anything for me).
I certainly didn’t want to come off as sounding like getting laid-off was easy, because it was an extremely stressful time of my life, buy I do think back on those 3 months and how I would have liked to have been doing literally anything else other that marketing myself.
And I will say that as a social network LinkedIn is shit, but it does seem to be a good place for job hunting. Make your profile look like someone they’d want to hire, and then try to be that person on the interview (and maybe even the first few months on the job, of you can).
This is called a VRIF, Voluntary Reduction in Force, and usually comes with a sizable severance. Lots of people close to retirement at my last job took the offer because it was worth it.
Severance package? Unemployment? References?
Yeah, I’d take it.
Unemployment and references should be the norm, nothing to request.
Well unemployment is. Severance isn’t.
That’s probably why the person you replied to specifically left that one out when mentioning just the other two out of the three.
The picture is bullshit, most people taking voluntary severance would be giving each other high-five’s and pumping the air.
Can we all agree that photo was created by ChatGPT and not an artist. Maybe they ought to put their money where their mouth is.
IBM already silently reduced more tan 5000 positions globally two years ago, creating a separate independent company called Kyndryl. Ernst and Young did the same before that, three years ago outsourcing half of the IT department. Silently.
If someone volunteered to be laid off wouldn’t that invalidate their unemployment?
Generally it is proffered with a severance package that invalidates the unemployment. The package is likely better than what you’d get with unemployment and saves the company money by not increasing their unemployment insurance.
Wow, IBM is still around?
Our tech leans heavily on AS400s, if you can believe that. And we have 98% market share in our space. They’re complex, but they work, and don’t fail.
Yeah but they don’t do anything anymore. They create nothing, they innovate nothing, they build nothing. They’re a “service company” now. It’s not at all a shock that they’re failing to anyone but them themselves. IBM should never have green lit that brainless brain drain shift of focus.
Having worked for a couple chip design shops, and now at ibm… ibm is the one of a few companies pushing the envelope in chip design. You just don’t need what they make, so you’ve never heard of it.
