> The packages for departing employees will include the equivalent of their full base pay through the end of 2026. Healthcare coverage is different across the globe, and if you’re in the United States, we’ll continue to provide support through the end of the year. We are also vesting equity for departing team members through August 15th, so they receive stock beyond their departure date. And, if departing team members haven’t hit their one-year cliffs, we are going to waive those and vest their pro-rated equity through August as well.
The announcement reads as pretty heartless to me, but this is a very, very nice departure package
They have a reputation to maintain, otherwise it will be difficult to recruit the best people in future. That being said, damn, that is a very generous package by any measure.
Meta did it based on tenure. People that were there for 10 years got about an entire year.
First packages tend to be the best. If you work for them beware, the next round won't be as good (if there is one). The economy isn't the best, but if you get an okay job offer anyway you should probably take it rather than risk you will be in the next round that is worse.
Damn. I got two weeks notice and then got shown the door with nothing. And now I get to compete with all these people who are going to be so much less stressed
> compete with all these people who are going to be so much less stressed
Well many of these folks then would prefer to decompress and chill for a few months instead of hitting the recruitment process early.
Proper layoffs require at least 60 days of notice or 60 days of pay. Maybe you weren't part of a proper layoff, but if you think you were, check out the WARN act.
I want to agree, however, it will take every bit of that time for some to find new placement. These AI cuts aren't just making it harder to keep a job, but harder to get a job as well.
For better or worse, it isn't a company's job to pay laid off employees until they find a new role.
The industry standard for severance is 1-2 weeks pay per year at the company, paying out roughly 7 months is a big deal (and yes, an acknowledgment of how rough they know the job hunt will be).
Maybe it should be the companies job, being jobless in the US is a potential death sentence and since we don't have universal healthcare, universal childcare, or universal higher education/vocational training the onus should be forced on the companies to provide welfare for workers since they are so adamant about not paying taxes to create a welfare system that doesn't mean homelessness or death.
There is also no industry standard for severance, it's not federally mandated and not a guaranteed benefit.
Not in tech. Larger severance packages are common.
Going forward, I wonder if severance packages should be a point of competitive recruiting advantage
They are for CEOs and have been for decades. We call them "golden parachutes", and a lot of people hate them.
This isn’t my experience, but I think it depends highly on the segment. We have mainly senior C++ devs (database company), and it’s still a challenge to find great engineers.
I think the current job market isn’t “one size fits all”. Having said that, obviously if they’re getting laid off, they may very well be in the segment that’s less desirable.
Very regional as well, Eastern europe is supposedly doing well, western europe (UK/NL) is doing alright, north america seems significantly worse
I've got a couple of friends that left London to go back to Poland during covid. They first continued to work remotely, but ended up switching to Polish companies because the pay was better.
Yes I think salaries are still a bit lower, but the gap has closed a lot. And cost of living is lower in Poland plus there is some tax break for self employed contractors that means you only pay ~20% tax compared to ~40% in the UK.
With those two factors you could easily end up better off overall, especially if you have kids
The kids factor is even bigger if you move back close to relatives. The ability to drop your children at grandma's instead of paying for childcare is an easy 1k a month you're saving.
Daycare is completely free in Poland since 2024 (you need to submit an application to ZUS, but there are no limits, it's always accepted), even the private ones. You only pay separately for food (10 zł per day the child is actually attending to the daycare).
I wtedy przynajmniej babcia będzie szczęśliwa pilnować dzieci.
I switched from a Polish company to a German one (both remote), but my pay is more or less the same. The difference is that in Poland to get that money I have to be a "top performer" with a lot of stress and not a lot of time, while in Germany I can be just a mid dev.
Yes Poland in particular is booming. It’s an outsource destination that’s higher skill and less risk than India.
> but harder to get a job as well.
I just tried hiring someone and received over 200 resumes that looked mostly fake. Thinking about adding a final in person interview in an attempt cut down the garbage when I repost.
I dealt with this exact problem in my last hiring phase too and used this technique to screen them out earlier: https://thomshutt.com/2026/03/24/interviewing-in-the-age-of-...
You should spend a few days thinking about how to improve your process, with more than just a final interview.
Use a good recruiter to do the dirty work for you, it’s not cheap but it’s worth the lack of hassle.
With that said, at my firm we switched to using an in-house non-technical HR recruiter using nothing but a LinkedIn Job listing and the results are exactly as you’re experiencing. Perhaps 1 in 100 is a real human with a real resume, the rest are AI being fed our job description to generate a resume.
Onsite final interviews and technical assessments are our stop-gap.
How can humans stand out to companies like yours?
I’ve considered writing informally and putting subtle typos in my cover letters, for example, to signal humanity. Is this a good idea or do recruiters look down on it?
You can't, this is the issue with an extremely unregulated industry. You want to stand out as a single individual among 10,000 similar qualified people on paper? Good luck.
This is likely an unintentional, but beneficial, side effect in thwarting labors power.
Since workers have a hard time getting interviews due to AI slop, that means they'll have a harder time developing leverage rather than being forced into accepting any job because the alternative is to become homeless and die.
What do you think can be a solution to this? I guess the problem is only going to grow as more people use AI, I'm sure someone out there is also using agentic workflows (basically spamming every job opening). Is the solution to use AI to filter the results or do you think that will not work out if the target is to find the best candidate
Have there been any better tech layoff packages in the last few years?
This is probably the best, wow.
In Europe they’re pretty much obligated to provide this package
Complete fiction. Over covid it was common in big tech layoffs to get much less severance in Europe than US.
Definitely not true in the UK. This is extremely rare for it's generosity. I've never seen anything like this in the UK.
As a general rule USA Tech is much nicer to their employees both when working and during a layoff then Europe.
Depends on the definition of "nice". Is it time or pay?
This one yes, extremely generous, but normal ones aren't.
As always, it depends on the country.
I would be quite surprised if there is one, but if there is I would like to know.