Anecdote: I had an old co-worker who was given 6 month's notice that he'd be let go from a previous job, and his manager at the time helped him look for a new gig + gave him shining reviews and references. After the 6 month period was up, they still gave him several months of severance, even after he had found a new gig. Some companies/managers actually do care about you, and it seems like Coinbase is roughly in that court.
Getting laid off with zero warning and no severance can be a life-ruining event if it's at a bad time logistically in someone's life. It could be way worse. Always have your resume updated, and take interviews every now and again just in case.
> Some companies/managers actually do care about you, and it seems like Coinbase is roughly in that court.
Do they really tho? They rescinded offers to many foreign students on OPT visas who had turned down Ph.D programs and such, putting them in a pickle. And they did it over email.
In case it wasn't obvious, there are social contracts between folks that are established outside of the written contract. Things like, "you should try to give 2 weeks notice when possible" and "you should not hire and change your mind in a matter of months, before the person has worked for you, but after they had already turned down other hard-won options."
Folks who violate social contract are called assholes. You don't go to jail for being an asshole but some folks won't want to work with you and that's okay.
I've been chatting with some friends whose company shut down recently, basically with no warning. They are getting recruited like crazy. In my opinion that's much preferable than to being left go as part of the 20% lowest performing employees. This reads like a "culling of the herd because we can use the alleged upcoming recession as an excuse" event. I'm not sure the generous severance makes up for the "you are not in the top 80%" label.
It has the appearance of companies trying to cause a recession instead of waiting for one to occur. Coinbase admits it can't predict the future but are being precautionary in case there is a recession? If their plan is to take a worst case view then why not just cash out the whole company and shut it down on the precautionary principle? If this is an attempt to put a scare into workers to keep wages low it may backfire since worker shortages seem to be large and other companies may easily absorb a lot of workers, making it hard to get workers back later (and it takes time to train new ones). It could encourage people to leave on their own if they start hearing of the better jobs others are getting after being forced to leave, and it shows zero commitment to workers (so workers should reciprocate). It might be necessary to actually destroy many companies before this fear tactic can have some generic effect. People who died in the pandemic, got long covid, retired, or felt abused are probably not coming back (though hopefully long covid proves not to be forever.) Lay off workers during a worker shortage and you had better count on not being able to get them back easily.
Not always, and not if they are competently planned and executed. I will grant you that, in the current climate, that they are probably not competently planned nor executed.
You should always be prepared for your job to be pulled out from under you. There is no major city in the US where a software engineer with experience shouldn’t be in the top quartile of income earners for their location and have a 3-6 months emergency fund.
You should always have an updated resume, career document, be interview ready and have an active network.
Getting laid off with zero warning and no severance can be a life-ruining event if it's at a bad time logistically in someone's life. It could be way worse. Always have your resume updated, and take interviews every now and again just in case.