> So- in addition to losing their jobs, which Twitter assured employees would not happen
I'm not that old, but even I remember a time when companies, at least in principle, would invest in their employees (via stable employment, regular raises, mutual trust) in return for employees investing in the companies (innovation, extra effort, dedication, championing the company brand). Today, we have this:
- Companies using the barest of excuses, or none at all, to lay off employees. Because it makes good business sense.
- Companies lying, deliberately and freely, to employees about upcoming layoffs, in order to "stave off panic". Because it makes good business sense.
- Companies laying employees off in the most impersonal fashions possible (large Zoom meetings, automated email, SMS). Because business sense, etc.
- Companies literally escorting laid-off employees out of the building like criminals, on the premise that a suddenly-former employee is an incipient criminal.
- Companies stiffing people on severance, based on a cost-benefit analysis which concludes that the potential legal bills will cost less than a fair and reasonable severance. Because, again, it makes good business sense.
In spite of the downsides of unions, this turn of affairs is really an argument in favor of universal unionization.
>> I'm not that old, but even I remember a time when companies, at least in principle, would invest in their employees (via stable employment, regular raises, mutual trust) in return for employees investing in the companies (innovation, extra effort, dedication, championing the company brand)
Well I am old, and I don't remember the time you claim to recall.
I've never championed a company brand and I just threw up in my mouth a little even typing that.
>even I remember a time when companies, at least in principle, would invest in their employees (via stable employment, regular raises, mutual trust) in return for employees investing in the companies (innovation, extra effort, dedication, championing the company brand).
Has there ever been really any difference? I know rose colored glasses make people think times past were better in many cases, but I find no evidence that things in this regard are really any different for the majority of people.
For example, this [1] FRED historical data series shows layoff rate to be extremely flat for 20 years. BLS used to track some series also that were flat for as far as I can find data. Here's [2] a slightly different dataset that is flat back to 1967.
Any solid evidence that things have ever been any different?
> In spite of the downsides of unions, this turn of affairs is really an argument in favor of universal unionization.
Unions often drive out workers at the benefit of those getting union jobs, lowering employment. For example, see [5] and similar papers.
EDIT: 2 more datasets [3,4], back to 1919, still pretty flat.
> I'm not that old, but even I remember a time when companies, at least in principle, would invest in their employees (via stable employment, regular raises, mutual trust) in return for employees investing in the companies (innovation, extra effort, dedication, championing the company brand).
So I'm in my mid 40s, and my earliest memories of company-labor relationship, has always been one of union crushing, layoffs, and pitting towns against each other to see which factory or mine was going to close first, before offshoring. But then again, I grew up in the deindustrializing midwest.
I'm not saying this rosey world never existed (I believe lifetime quality employment still existed in the 1960s), but it's been like this for more than half a century.
In the past there were companies that treated their employees well, and also companies that didn't. I am pretty sure that all the points you mentioned are not new developments of the last 20 years.
In the present there are also both kinds of companies. Are you sure you aren't comparing the worst of today's companies to the best of the past's?
> Companies literally escorting laid-off employees out of the building like criminals, on the premise that a suddenly-former employee is an incipient criminal.
It doesn't take many incipient criminals to ruin things for everyone. You'd do it to if you've ever had an employee steal or embezzle from you, and it's a lot more common than you might think.
#4 "escorting out" is usually a result of applying #1, #2, #3 and #5 to a person and realising the affect those actions might have on them, just more good business sense!
I think that there is a cost to companies operating this way, but the cost is largely unseen or harder to account for. Arguably doing everything opposite of those points can be "good business sense" too. For example, going with the mindset of investing in your employees.. two of the points below:
> Companies using the barest of excuses, or none at all, to lay off employees
The intention is to streamline everything and cut costs and improve efficiency for the business. However, doing the opposite here helps preserve tribal knowledge (possibly leading to better business outcomes). It helps improve retention because it creates an environment where employee isn't constantly optimizing for the best compensation and looking to jump ship at the first better opportunity.
> Companies lying, deliberately and freely, to employees about upcoming layoffs, in order to "stave off panic". Because it makes good business sense.
Doing the opposite leads to employees being more focused at work. Instead of prepping for the next interview, they can focus their energies on company initiatives.
I’m not that old either. At least I tell myself that. It might even be true.
One doesn’t recognize a well packaged lie overnight. Or at least I didn’t. Took burnout to realize the company I was willing to give it all for never really meant all of those sweet things it told all of us. And that was true long before I worked there. The wrapping was nicer. Have you heard of a “pension?” Some of the older employees, by tenure, would talk about them. They sounded just magical. Wonder where those went. Not the only perk that has vanished with time, but perhaps one of the most notable.
But it took too long to see it. I didn’t really want to. It hurts getting your heart broken.
> I remember a time when companies, at least in principle, would invest in their employees
I remember that time too, back before we had armies of employees with nebulous job titles like "Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Advocate". Maybe someone realized some of these positions don't actually create any value, product, or service. Or as you put it, "Because business sense, etc." My impression is Twitter has extremely high overhead costs, and the gravy train has run out of steam.
People can stop buying products that don't agree with them. It might not be in your financial cards but if it is a free product there is no excuse - it makes good business sense.
Seriously. I wouldn’t be surprised if the lowest total comp was in excess of $200k/year. If you can’t have 6 months in cash sitting in a high yield savings account on that, there’s no amount of severance that will help you.
Many people are extended enough that their stock is considered part of their compensation for buying a house. I know many people that sell all of their stock every month to make sure they have enough to live in the Bay Area.
What's the mortgage on a USD$2m 1300sqft house? Looks to be $11k/mo? So, total comp should be at least US$400k to be considered affordable.
Using South Bay, I don't know where a Twitter engineer would live in San Francisco...
Twitter employees are well-compensated with base salary, and generally highly skilled. They're going to be fine, who wouldn't want to hire ex-twitter? The job market is still hot for techies.
The writing has been on the wall since Mollusk started chasing the purchase.
It’s Twitter’s responsibility to not only offer severance, but make sure employees keep an emergency fund?
Wait till they get new jobs and find out that in the real world companies don't have RSUs, rooms full of toys, flexible hours, gold-plated healthcare plans, company time to work on your own projects, and free cafeterias staffed by gourmet chefs.
I mean, Twitter is keeping them from liquidating the shares that they already own and have vested. It's easy to imagine that keeping savings in shares of a company as opposed to cash is reasonable.
How screwed would most people be if the stock exchanges all closed down and they were fired?
Depending on how Twitter does things, if the employees got RSU's, taxes due (federal, state, etc.) got correctly deducted on vesting.
Unless people deliberately reduced their tax deducted from their RSU's (which may not be doable), or have lots of other income on which tax is due, they won't be screwed over on taxes. And if they have lots of other income on which tax is due, they're less likely to be living paycheck to paycheck.
>“ many of these folks won’t be able to sell the shares they earned.
i don't see any problem here. Just do a short sell. Not being an employee anymore makes you not a subject to the short-selling prohibition for employees, doesn't it? When you get access to your long shares you can close your short simultaneously with selling the same amount of the long.
One problem is that companies like to talk about these stock grants as if they are as good as regular salary (and employees seem to play along, using terms like "total comp" and ascribing some definite dollar value to it). But they really aren't. So it is a bit of a deceptive marketing.
Last time I was at a company that had blackout periods for employee trading, it didn't apply to former employees. I quit on a Friday and exercised then sold all my options the next Monday while my former coworkers were still in their blackout periods. Hopefully it is the same at Twitter.
I’ll second those questions; I work at Twitter and am on vacation at the moment. I saw this and immediately checked my work email and major slack channels and I see no signs of any layoffs being announced. It’s possible the person claiming it has some inside information or that the layoffs are targeting specific departments and not mine I suppose, but I’d love to see a second source or more detailed information.
My understanding was that this sort of stock sale blackout is typically an internal thing to avoid insider trading liability, but if you've been laid off, you would no longer be internal and therefore no longer subject to the blackout. Is that not how it's structured here?
Could anyone explain to me in simple terms how it's possible to have a blackout on Vested stock?
I was under the impression that once I'm "vested" the stock is now mine and I own it like any normal stock.
Are "vested" shares something different? Could I say for example sell my shares on Robinhood if the blackout wasn't in effect or are they held by some third party?
The stock is yours, but while you are still an employee of that company, there are certain windows (usually around quarterly earnings announcement) during which you atent allowed to sell or buy. This is done as a safeguard to prevent insider trading. Once you are no longer an employee of the company, none of those restrictions apply, you are welcome to sell/buy the company stock whenever you want.
Companies routinely have blackout periods where employees are not allowed to sell their shares. Typically the shares from equity grants or ESPP are done by a brokerage and they can block those shares from being sold during these blackout periods.
However, when someone leaves the company, they can transfer those shares out to their e-trade account or whatnot. I've done that before and it only takes a few days. After that you aren't beholden to stock blackout periods, unless you have Material Non-Public Information, which means you will probably have to figure out if you can sell without being considered insider trading.
Vested shares are not special in and of themselves. However employees often have blackout periods for any kind of stock they hold - ESPP, RSU, Options, etc. In many cases even stock you purchased separately with your own after-tax money can be subject to a blackout (though the company would not have a mechanism to directly block your trades you could run the risk of SEC violations).
The blackouts apply to employees because they often have insider information, even if that information may be of minimal real value. The SEC has really clamped down on tech stock trading in the last couple of decades. Those of us who had stock/options in the late 90's dot-com boom likely participated in several stock trades that would be outright illegal today.
Fwiw, as far as stock sales being blocked. You can probably easily bypass that if you prepare in advance.
There exists a standard stock transfer mechanism, ACATS, for basically "wiring" your stocks to a different brokerage. I think these transfers are also legally mandated to some extent.
My previous company partnered with ETrade, giving us a special account for stock awards. The main special thing about it were insane commission, order(s?) of magnitude higher than interactive brokers. I moved the stocks to IB using ACATS; it felt like ETrade tried to use stalling tactics like asking me to mail a paper form I think (I called bs), then iirc there was an error because the account was special so the transfer logic couldn't find it, etc. But after persisting I saved 100s of $$ and also the company had no control of the stock anymore (we had some earnings lock outs, not that it affected me).
The downside is that it might mess with automatic tax stuff, iirc dates-CBs got transferred but I had to redo something about these tx-es, maybe ISO stuff? Not sure if anything was missing for RSUs, I assume things like espp cost basis might get lost, we didn't have it.
Now I wonder if I should do the same for my current company stock... just in case.
There's an urban legend (maybe true, maybe not) about National Semiconductor, and this comes from back in the good old days of "loyalty." It may not be true, but on the other hand, when I'd say "Nazi Semiconductor" to someone who had worked there, they always smiled and didn't argue with me.
The legend was, they had a fake fire drill. Then when everyone was out in the parking lot, they told certain people not to bother coming back in again.
Edit: Snopes has a "debunking" of this at [1]. I'm not persuaded that this debunks it, since the laws protecting employees were not in effect yet way back then.
I feel sympathetic but anyone that hasn't started prepping for layoffs is simply not reading the writing on the wall, _especially_ at Twitter. Elon Musk has basically said that he wants people working 40+ hours/week in the office or you can quit to Tesla and SpaceX. There have been stories for weeks about large startups having layoffs. Finally, most acquisitions tend to end in layoffs
Minimum, you should be updating your resume/LinkedIn, and you should also look at ways to cut back on costs where possible.
I'm sorry, Twitter assured the company that there would be no layoffs? Isn't that _exactly_ what Elon Musk has been telegraphing with what he's said to the press and at the town hall? Also at this point
Most if not all of those employees had to go through interview hell in order to work there. It says a lot that employers are always hesitant to hire but when they fire it is because they have run out of time.
[+] [-] gwerbret|3 years ago|reply
I'm not that old, but even I remember a time when companies, at least in principle, would invest in their employees (via stable employment, regular raises, mutual trust) in return for employees investing in the companies (innovation, extra effort, dedication, championing the company brand). Today, we have this:
- Companies using the barest of excuses, or none at all, to lay off employees. Because it makes good business sense.
- Companies lying, deliberately and freely, to employees about upcoming layoffs, in order to "stave off panic". Because it makes good business sense.
- Companies laying employees off in the most impersonal fashions possible (large Zoom meetings, automated email, SMS). Because business sense, etc.
- Companies literally escorting laid-off employees out of the building like criminals, on the premise that a suddenly-former employee is an incipient criminal.
- Companies stiffing people on severance, based on a cost-benefit analysis which concludes that the potential legal bills will cost less than a fair and reasonable severance. Because, again, it makes good business sense.
In spite of the downsides of unions, this turn of affairs is really an argument in favor of universal unionization.
[+] [-] rufus_foreman|3 years ago|reply
Well I am old, and I don't remember the time you claim to recall.
I've never championed a company brand and I just threw up in my mouth a little even typing that.
[+] [-] ChrisLomont|3 years ago|reply
Has there ever been really any difference? I know rose colored glasses make people think times past were better in many cases, but I find no evidence that things in this regard are really any different for the majority of people.
For example, this [1] FRED historical data series shows layoff rate to be extremely flat for 20 years. BLS used to track some series also that were flat for as far as I can find data. Here's [2] a slightly different dataset that is flat back to 1967.
Any solid evidence that things have ever been any different?
> In spite of the downsides of unions, this turn of affairs is really an argument in favor of universal unionization.
Unions often drive out workers at the benefit of those getting union jobs, lowering employment. For example, see [5] and similar papers.
EDIT: 2 more datasets [3,4], back to 1919, still pretty flat.
[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JTSLDR
[2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS13023654
[3] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M08291USM175NNBR
[4] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M0852AUSM497NNBR
[5] https://www.nber.org/digest/dec02/whose-employment-affected-...
[+] [-] jonathankoren|3 years ago|reply
So I'm in my mid 40s, and my earliest memories of company-labor relationship, has always been one of union crushing, layoffs, and pitting towns against each other to see which factory or mine was going to close first, before offshoring. But then again, I grew up in the deindustrializing midwest.
I'm not saying this rosey world never existed (I believe lifetime quality employment still existed in the 1960s), but it's been like this for more than half a century.
[+] [-] cecilpl2|3 years ago|reply
In the present there are also both kinds of companies. Are you sure you aren't comparing the worst of today's companies to the best of the past's?
[+] [-] WalterBright|3 years ago|reply
It doesn't take many incipient criminals to ruin things for everyone. You'd do it to if you've ever had an employee steal or embezzle from you, and it's a lot more common than you might think.
[+] [-] mhio|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway292939|3 years ago|reply
> Companies using the barest of excuses, or none at all, to lay off employees The intention is to streamline everything and cut costs and improve efficiency for the business. However, doing the opposite here helps preserve tribal knowledge (possibly leading to better business outcomes). It helps improve retention because it creates an environment where employee isn't constantly optimizing for the best compensation and looking to jump ship at the first better opportunity.
> Companies lying, deliberately and freely, to employees about upcoming layoffs, in order to "stave off panic". Because it makes good business sense.
Doing the opposite leads to employees being more focused at work. Instead of prepping for the next interview, they can focus their energies on company initiatives.
[+] [-] catchnear4321|3 years ago|reply
One doesn’t recognize a well packaged lie overnight. Or at least I didn’t. Took burnout to realize the company I was willing to give it all for never really meant all of those sweet things it told all of us. And that was true long before I worked there. The wrapping was nicer. Have you heard of a “pension?” Some of the older employees, by tenure, would talk about them. They sounded just magical. Wonder where those went. Not the only perk that has vanished with time, but perhaps one of the most notable.
But it took too long to see it. I didn’t really want to. It hurts getting your heart broken.
[+] [-] assttoasstmgr|3 years ago|reply
I remember that time too, back before we had armies of employees with nebulous job titles like "Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Advocate". Maybe someone realized some of these positions don't actually create any value, product, or service. Or as you put it, "Because business sense, etc." My impression is Twitter has extremely high overhead costs, and the gravy train has run out of steam.
[+] [-] 6510|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stocknoob|3 years ago|reply
The money they need pay bills and keep them afloat if and until they get new employment.
When severance ends, that’s it.”
It’s Twitter’s responsibility to not only offer severance, but make sure employees keep an emergency fund?
[+] [-] throwaway5959|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] schnebbau|3 years ago|reply
How will these people that were making well into six figures possibly survive?
[+] [-] daenz|3 years ago|reply
What does that even mean? Is there some expectation that they receive paychecks after severance when they are no longer employed?
[+] [-] jpollock|3 years ago|reply
What's the mortgage on a USD$2m 1300sqft house? Looks to be $11k/mo? So, total comp should be at least US$400k to be considered affordable.
Using South Bay, I don't know where a Twitter engineer would live in San Francisco...
https://www.redfin.com/CA/Sunnyvale/1063-W-McKinley-Ave-9408...
https://www.redfin.com/CA/Mountain-View/237-Houghton-St-9404...
[+] [-] metadat|3 years ago|reply
The writing has been on the wall since Mollusk started chasing the purchase.
[+] [-] loeg|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hprotagonist|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reaperducer|3 years ago|reply
Wait till they get new jobs and find out that in the real world companies don't have RSUs, rooms full of toys, flexible hours, gold-plated healthcare plans, company time to work on your own projects, and free cafeterias staffed by gourmet chefs.
Welcome to the 99%!
[+] [-] HWR_14|3 years ago|reply
How screwed would most people be if the stock exchanges all closed down and they were fired?
[+] [-] aatharuv|3 years ago|reply
Depending on how Twitter does things, if the employees got RSU's, taxes due (federal, state, etc.) got correctly deducted on vesting.
Unless people deliberately reduced their tax deducted from their RSU's (which may not be doable), or have lots of other income on which tax is due, they won't be screwed over on taxes. And if they have lots of other income on which tax is due, they're less likely to be living paycheck to paycheck.
[+] [-] trhway|3 years ago|reply
i don't see any problem here. Just do a short sell. Not being an employee anymore makes you not a subject to the short-selling prohibition for employees, doesn't it? When you get access to your long shares you can close your short simultaneously with selling the same amount of the long.
[+] [-] dunkelheit|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] onionisafruit|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] janstenpickle|3 years ago|reply
Where's Twitter's emergency fund?
[+] [-] rocqua|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mc32|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] yupper32|3 years ago|reply
Edit: 30% of its recruiting team: https://www.wsj.com/articles/twitter-lays-off-third-of-talen...
[+] [-] Hates_|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] clipsy|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] __derek__|3 years ago|reply
Edit: This was a different person than the author of the submitted post. Uff da.
[+] [-] whatgoodisaroad|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cecilpl2|3 years ago|reply
IME the blackout remains until the opening of the trading window following the end of your employment.
[+] [-] ghostbrainalpha|3 years ago|reply
I was under the impression that once I'm "vested" the stock is now mine and I own it like any normal stock.
Are "vested" shares something different? Could I say for example sell my shares on Robinhood if the blackout wasn't in effect or are they held by some third party?
[+] [-] filoleg|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baskethead|3 years ago|reply
However, when someone leaves the company, they can transfer those shares out to their e-trade account or whatnot. I've done that before and it only takes a few days. After that you aren't beholden to stock blackout periods, unless you have Material Non-Public Information, which means you will probably have to figure out if you can sell without being considered insider trading.
[+] [-] brk|3 years ago|reply
The blackouts apply to employees because they often have insider information, even if that information may be of minimal real value. The SEC has really clamped down on tech stock trading in the last couple of decades. Those of us who had stock/options in the late 90's dot-com boom likely participated in several stock trades that would be outright illegal today.
[+] [-] influx|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sershe|3 years ago|reply
There exists a standard stock transfer mechanism, ACATS, for basically "wiring" your stocks to a different brokerage. I think these transfers are also legally mandated to some extent.
My previous company partnered with ETrade, giving us a special account for stock awards. The main special thing about it were insane commission, order(s?) of magnitude higher than interactive brokers. I moved the stocks to IB using ACATS; it felt like ETrade tried to use stalling tactics like asking me to mail a paper form I think (I called bs), then iirc there was an error because the account was special so the transfer logic couldn't find it, etc. But after persisting I saved 100s of $$ and also the company had no control of the stock anymore (we had some earnings lock outs, not that it affected me).
The downside is that it might mess with automatic tax stuff, iirc dates-CBs got transferred but I had to redo something about these tx-es, maybe ISO stuff? Not sure if anything was missing for RSUs, I assume things like espp cost basis might get lost, we didn't have it.
Now I wonder if I should do the same for my current company stock... just in case.
[+] [-] thrown321|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alexandre_m|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dboreham|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AlbertCory|3 years ago|reply
The legend was, they had a fake fire drill. Then when everyone was out in the parking lot, they told certain people not to bother coming back in again.
Edit: Snopes has a "debunking" of this at [1]. I'm not persuaded that this debunks it, since the laws protecting employees were not in effect yet way back then.
[1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-fired-drill/
[+] [-] twunde|3 years ago|reply
Minimum, you should be updating your resume/LinkedIn, and you should also look at ways to cut back on costs where possible.
I'm sorry, Twitter assured the company that there would be no layoffs? Isn't that _exactly_ what Elon Musk has been telegraphing with what he's said to the press and at the town hall? Also at this point
[+] [-] abirch|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andreilys|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m0llusk|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mouthfeel|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] HenryTrois|3 years ago|reply