Severence is only so they can dodge regulatory scrutiny. They are not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts and was a line-item in the burden category for those employees when they were hired.
There's really no pleasing some people. Companies make cuts and don't give generous packages, they're evil. They give a package and it's just so they can dodge scrutiny.
All you are arguing for is that Dropbox should never have hired these people in the first place. Why is that better? At least these people got some years of high pay, experience, networking relationships, etc. Obviously it's disruptive, and it could be a big net negative for people who maybe jumped ship from more stable jobs only to be quickly laid off, but that's not the broad experience.
I suppose it's largely a matter of perspective but I would argue that fewer more stable jobs would likely be better for both the companies and employees.
Also, you're missing another obvious argument. Most tech companies that are doing layoffs could afford to keep their employees. Dropbox hasn't done 3 rounds of layoffs because they're on the verge of bankruptcy but rather they're just following the trend and pleasing shareholders or whatever.
So I'm not arguing for less jobs but rather less corporate bullshit.
>I suppose it's largely a matter of perspective but I would argue that fewer more stable jobs would likely be better for both the companies and employees.
How do you expect this to work? Companies hire because they think the extra man-hours is going to give them a competitive advantage. Companies agreeing not to compete each other seems suspiciously like a cartel.
They can still hire people and compete with each other? I'm just saying they shouldn't hire in mass quantities if there's a high chance that all of those people will be let go later on. It seems unethical to me but again it's a matter of perspective.
>They can still hire people and compete with each other?
That's still cartel behavior. If Google and Apple formed a cartel to fix handset prices, they could still theoretically compete with each other on features or whatever, but that'd still be a cartel.
"It's no secret that tech companies have not been hiring for sustainability and that sucks."
Does it suck? It means that someone got a job where they didn't really have to do that much and got paid anyway.
An alternative is where that job was never offered. And then we're complaining that there's no jobs.
Also, no, the solution is not to "just hire the perfect amount". Sure if we could just do anything perfectly everything is great, but how is that a reasonable demand.
What regulatory scrutiny do you mean? They don't need to provide severance, as far as California law seems concerned. I'm not a Californian, but an Internet search shows they're an at-will state. So it seems like everything is on the (legal) level.
California has the WARN act which I believe requires notice of 50 days, which people usually use to give severance. In the USA when someone is told they will be fired, usually we do not keep them on staff so severance is the usual middle ground.
It's 60 days, not 50. But 60 days of severance would be significantly less than what they are offering. They're definitely not doing it strictly to avoid regulatory scrutiny, more like to avoid bad press and a bad reputation in the tech market. When things eventually swing back up, companies still want to be able to hire the best talent, they don't want to be grouped with companies like Twitter.
