My dad was offered a buyout when he was around my current age. It included 10 years seniority added to his pension and health insurance until Medicare kicked in. He never looked back.
Question from an European: Why did they need to be so generous? From what we hear over here you have at will employment so they can just fire you on the spot, no need to pay anything, no? But then I read stories like these which are the opposite. I'd kill for something like this over here.
Paying an expensive senior (older) employee to quietly and happily go away without raising a fuss may have saved money in the long term. I am sure they did not offer the same deal to everyone.
I think for them likely better to preserve a relationship rather than have it adversarial in future. It would definitely pay dividends over the potential issues it may cause.
To retain and recruit talent, and protect from lawsuits (you usually have to sign a release to receive severance/a buyout). Generally only difficult to recruit and highly in-demand employees get these packages - most people over here would also kill for something like this.
Wrongful termination lawsuits are a thing, and the law protects workers from various things, including age discrimination. There are also limits on mass layoffs. All of these combine to make firing people much harder than folks think, especially at larger companies, and especially especially when large numbers of people are affected.
In short, don’t believe Internet memes. The US isn’t the capitalist hellscape disaffected commenters pretend it is.
I’m not quite at the point where I want to quit, but some people have turned off their brain, and it frustrates me.
They don’t think critically, let the LLM add random stuff, and then let the LLM argue for them on GitHub. When I talk to the human they have no idea. But 60s later they post a 3 page essay explaining they remembered and why x or y.
The thing is, I can tell why the LLM threw it in. It picked up on a side discussion in the comments, but we agreed in person to do something else in a different PR. Now all of a sudden it added a whole bunch of stuff unrelated to this PR.
This last week was one of my most challenging weeks in my ~20 year work life. I work in big tech, but am a relative latecomer to it (6 years). I'm a manager, and someone who was a very senior IC, a mentor, and work friend of mine, became my manager 6 months ago. It was a "boiling frog" situation that blew up spectacularly last week. I had to talk to my skip-level manager about it and the only viable solution was me leaving my team behind to go manage another team. I'm still bummed about it and taking some time off before starting the new role.
Do I want to be fired? No, because the job market sucks, I make good money, and I live in a HCOL area with a mortgage, a wife and a young kid. I need to sustain (and grow) this for another 10+ years minimum before having any kind of financial independence.
Spent most of last year on a project that got cancelled in January. Got moved to a new one that doesn't have much actual work, long stretches of waiting, scope shifting, and nothing is shipping.
I'm digging myself into a hole of self-doubt. I wish I were working on something with real users!
Of course, I'm doing interviews, but it hasn't been an easy ride. If I were fired I'd have more time for prepping, at least.
Also, I had some SS credit so my net monthly payment is $2480 after Medicare Part B. Expect to pay another $70/month for Medicare Part D (prescriptions) and $630/month for Medicare Medigap (F or G usually), so that leaves about $1800.
Never get Medicare Advantage, it's a scam. Also, traditional Medicare in 5 states is a scam because of the care-denying, for-profit WISeR prior-authorization AI bullshit. Medicare doesn't include vision, dental, hearing, hearing aids, or long-term care.
I’m having problems with too many competing projects recently, so I had to reach to my boss and ask to leave most of them. It was not even the workload but the constant context switching that did it.
Currently waiting a month to check how things change, but if there is no change in my stress levels, I’ll look for a way out.
My rant for the day is having these non-deterministic agent flows that I have to evaluate with even more slop code is rapidly killing my passion for quality engineering.
I dont have a intern , so technically i cannot be fired :(
My dad was offered a buyout when he was around my current age. It included 10 years seniority added to his pension and health insurance until Medicare kicked in. He never looked back.
Sadly, nobody is willing to pay me to go away.
The trick is to be on one of the two extremes in terms of skill. Suck harder?
I'm clever but too industrious. Clever and lazy seems to pay better.
Question from an European: Why did they need to be so generous? From what we hear over here you have at will employment so they can just fire you on the spot, no need to pay anything, no? But then I read stories like these which are the opposite. I'd kill for something like this over here.
Paying an expensive senior (older) employee to quietly and happily go away without raising a fuss may have saved money in the long term. I am sure they did not offer the same deal to everyone.
I think for them likely better to preserve a relationship rather than have it adversarial in future. It would definitely pay dividends over the potential issues it may cause.
To retain and recruit talent, and protect from lawsuits (you usually have to sign a release to receive severance/a buyout). Generally only difficult to recruit and highly in-demand employees get these packages - most people over here would also kill for something like this.
Wrongful termination lawsuits are a thing, and the law protects workers from various things, including age discrimination. There are also limits on mass layoffs. All of these combine to make firing people much harder than folks think, especially at larger companies, and especially especially when large numbers of people are affected.
In short, don’t believe Internet memes. The US isn’t the capitalist hellscape disaffected commenters pretend it is.
I’m not quite at the point where I want to quit, but some people have turned off their brain, and it frustrates me.
They don’t think critically, let the LLM add random stuff, and then let the LLM argue for them on GitHub. When I talk to the human they have no idea. But 60s later they post a 3 page essay explaining they remembered and why x or y.
The thing is, I can tell why the LLM threw it in. It picked up on a side discussion in the comments, but we agreed in person to do something else in a different PR. Now all of a sudden it added a whole bunch of stuff unrelated to this PR.
This last week was one of my most challenging weeks in my ~20 year work life. I work in big tech, but am a relative latecomer to it (6 years). I'm a manager, and someone who was a very senior IC, a mentor, and work friend of mine, became my manager 6 months ago. It was a "boiling frog" situation that blew up spectacularly last week. I had to talk to my skip-level manager about it and the only viable solution was me leaving my team behind to go manage another team. I'm still bummed about it and taking some time off before starting the new role.
Do I want to be fired? No, because the job market sucks, I make good money, and I live in a HCOL area with a mortgage, a wife and a young kid. I need to sustain (and grow) this for another 10+ years minimum before having any kind of financial independence.
Spent most of last year on a project that got cancelled in January. Got moved to a new one that doesn't have much actual work, long stretches of waiting, scope shifting, and nothing is shipping.
I'm digging myself into a hole of self-doubt. I wish I were working on something with real users!
Of course, I'm doing interviews, but it hasn't been an easy ride. If I were fired I'd have more time for prepping, at least.
I want to get fired from my job search. We'll have to see if SSDI (been about 6 months since applying) or a job opportunity comes through first.
It took me 9 years and a SS lawyer to get SSDI.
Also, I had some SS credit so my net monthly payment is $2480 after Medicare Part B. Expect to pay another $70/month for Medicare Part D (prescriptions) and $630/month for Medicare Medigap (F or G usually), so that leaves about $1800.
Never get Medicare Advantage, it's a scam. Also, traditional Medicare in 5 states is a scam because of the care-denying, for-profit WISeR prior-authorization AI bullshit. Medicare doesn't include vision, dental, hearing, hearing aids, or long-term care.
I’m having problems with too many competing projects recently, so I had to reach to my boss and ask to leave most of them. It was not even the workload but the constant context switching that did it.
Currently waiting a month to check how things change, but if there is no change in my stress levels, I’ll look for a way out.
My rant for the day is having these non-deterministic agent flows that I have to evaluate with even more slop code is rapidly killing my passion for quality engineering.
Still eagerly waiting for AI to take my job.
Remodels are not a lifestyle, I'd rather built systems than dining rooms
Quiet quitting/firing/etc.. all died in 2024 dude.
Late 2022, but yes.
I'm keeping the dream alive!