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>I will say that 3 months of severance for folks who involuntarily leave, and 2 months for folks who voluntarily leave is very generous for a company that is in trouble. It's very close to industry leaders like Netflix and Zappos, and much more than they would need to do.

Not really. This type of layoff (more than 50 people, and an entire location) would seem to qualify under the WARN Act (60 day minimum notice.) So two months full pay in lieu of notice would be the minimum.

As for the voluntary leaving...well, why would anyone leave voluntarily unless there was a sweetener?



Interesting on the WARN act. I didn't think it applied in Arizona. Or is because Zenefits is a CA based company?

It's interesting to me in that in most companies, if you're not happy, they counsel you out (or start documenting performance) and then you get nothing. If this were a deliberate "We need to get to 20% reduction" then they would have just picked another 11% to go.


IANAL but there are exceptions for "Faltering company", "Unforeseeable business circumstances" and "Natural disaster"

A skilled lawyer might be able to make the case that being a total garbage fire of a company falls under one of the first two.


The WARN act applies everywhere in the US. Some states (including CA) have stricter versions.


Thanks for clarifying. Is this new? I know that I've seen less notice during dot com bust 1.0, and in mid 2000s Wall Street.



It doesn't apply to all layoffs, only those where the companies have 100+ employees and layoff 50+ employees. There are also some exceptions in the case of bankruptcy.


I think it would be very hard to enforce in bankruptcy. I recall running into this at another company too. Just surprised that it's not universal. I think in Wall Street they do a lot of wink-wink nod-nod that it's performance based when they lay off 5-10% of the workforce right before bonuses get paid.




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