From Amazon’s plans to lay off 18,000 employees to Meta’s decision to lay off 11,000, technology layoffs continue to grow. In fact 365 technology companies have reduced their workforce so far this year, totaling just over 105,000 employees.
In happier times, the in-office perks and benefits of big tech companies made headlines. These days, it’s the severance pay they pay that gets the most attention.
Since federal law does not require employers to provide severance pay, employees are at the mercy of their prospective former employer once layoffs are announced. And unsurprisingly, some are more generous than others. Discover some of the biggest payouts below.
U.S. workers who are part of the cohort of 12,000 employees who were laid off by Google’s parent company Alphabet will receive 16 weeks of severance pay, along with two additional weeks of pay for each year they’ve been with the company.
Microsoft
Microsoft will cut its workforce by 10,000 this year and reduce its global workforce of 220,000 by 5%. While this figure may seem small, it is believed that severance payments, lease consolidation and other restructuring costs associated with the workforce reduction will total $1.2 billion.
Sales team
Salesforce has worked out one of the relatively most generous severance packages: The 7,000 employees who are laid off will receive a minimum of five months’ pay, six months of health insurance, and a minimum of two months of career advancement.
Amazon
Amazon began culling workers in November 2022, and the latest round of layoffs is mostly retail workers. For these employees, Amazon has stated that it will provide full pay and benefits for 60 days, move to seniority-based severance pay, along with severance pay, health benefits and job placement.
When Mark Zuckerberg announced thousands of layoffs at Meta in late 2022, employees were promised 16 weeks of severance pay plus two weeks for each year of service, along with vesting of conditional stock awards and term health insurance. So far, so good. However, some former employees of Meta’s Sourcer Development Program, designed to help employees of diverse backgrounds build careers in technology, say they received only eight weeks of severance pay and three months of severance pay. COBRA.
When Elon Musk took over the reins of Twitter last October, an avalanche of layoffs quickly followed. However, Musk previously stated that all laid-off employees would receive three months of severance pay some employees say they were only given one month and are now taking legal action against the company.
Whether you’ve been hit by a recent technical layoff or you’re looking for a new challenge, the VentureBeat Job Board has hundreds of job openings at companies that are currently hiring, like the three below.
Network Engineer – Top Secret Required, Northrop Grumman, Chantilly, VA
Northrop Grumman Space Systems is seeking an experienced Network Engineer to support an IT infrastructure network consolidation program. The ideal candidate will design and plan network communications systems, provide specifications and detailed schematics for network architecture, define and develop techniques and tools for the most efficient solution to meet business needs. You need two years of experience with a bachelor’s degree in science or one year of experience if you have a master’s degree. However, candidates with a PhD do not need any experience. Those without qualifications need six years of practical experience to qualify. View more details here.
Data engineer, Autodesk, CA
Autodesk Construction Solutions (ACS) is looking for an exceptional Data Engineer to transform, optimize, test and maintain architectures for its construction and customer databases, data pipelines and processing systems, and to optimize data flow and collection for cross-functional teams. You maintain and develop a scalable database and data warehouse across numerous organizational systems, load data from a wide variety of data sources using SQL and AWS technologies, and create data tools for analytics and data scientist team members. View the full job description here.
Full Stack Engineer — Games Studio, Netflix, remote control
Netflix is looking for a Full Stack Engineer to build a mobile multiplayer game with a large team. You will be tasked with maintaining, improving and updating the backend while also building frontend dashboards that will drive the successful operation of the game. Applicants need a professional knowledge of front-end and back-end languages and technologies (React, JavaScript, CSS and HTML), familiarity with SQL and NoSQL databases, configuring web servers and working in a cloud environment (e.g. AWS). Apply here for this position.
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