They’re moving Twitter HQ into Vault 108.
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Most employment contracts in tech in the US aren’t really contracts per se, but more “employment agreements.” When we think of contracts, we think, "I’ll do this for you for this amount of time, and will get paid this amount per week, and will do X amount of work per week. " Tech contracts in the US are more like, “We’ll pay you for doing the things in your job description for whatever term we (or you) deem fit. We expect you to fulfill the terms of your job description.”
And the job descriptions are usually something like:
“Senior staff software engineers are responsible for meeting the requirements set forth for them by product management and the executive team. They’re responsible for meeting these projects on time and on quality. In some cases they’re responsible for leading a team. This position does involve on call rotations and may involve travel. This position is goal oriented and the goals to be met are set by management with team consultation.”
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Yep. I’m no expert by any means, but it sounds like the Twitter contracts specify the severance, though.
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Until Xmas, when I gift you Noel Skum.
ETA: missed the inspirational link to @anothernewbbaccount
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The ones my friends were under did not. However, there was a comment that “previous policy would be followed”, which should be a verbal contract, and previous policy was 2 months + everything that would vest/payout in those two months. And that is a verbal contract in and of itself.
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It gets worse! Twitter HR’s new framing of the email “I agree” button is that if you don’t press it, you’ve resigned (and thus get no severance*). That’s not how these things work, legally. They’re just being blatantly illegal. Lawsuits are already in progress.
*Though apparently even the employees promised severance don’t seem to be actually getting it, so…
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I have a stupid question for the Americans here. What makes an employment contract a (proper?) employment contract? Or to put it differently, surely every employee enters into some kind of agreement that distinguishes them from people who aren’t employees. What’s that then?
It’s an employment agreement. It is most definitely a contract, but it’s not the type of contract that people think about when they think about contracts. People tend to think of contracts as these things that are weighted to provide benefit for both parties. Employment agreements are not written to benefit the employees, but rather the companies. There’s usually only one thing for consideration for the employee in the contract and that is compensation and PTO. There’s numerous things for the employer, including assignation of all created property, NDA enforcement, social media rules and regulations, company equipment rules and regulations, grievance and arbitration agreements, etc. And of course, there’s usually no back out clause for the employee, no penalty clauses for the employer, and no severence mentioned. Employment can end at any time based on notification from either party and the contract is then extinguished. The whole thing is severable as well, which means if any parts are declared null or void or illegal, the remainder is still fine. Unless the employer does not want it to be, in which case employment terminates immediately.
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Yup. It’s always, “I make good money, what point is a union? They will just take my money and give me nothing in return.” These are also the same people who go places like Blind and complain about how they aren’t paid fairly compared to their peers, how they are overworked, and how badly they are treated. 
Musk firing a huge amount of the workforce and then telling those who remain “ok now work harder to make up the shortfall” must be some sort of 4-D chess level business genius I just don’t understand. This sort of demand may work at a startup where morale is high, teams are small, and there’s a lot of passion to create something new. It doesn’t work when morale is already no doubt in the shitter and there’s no clear or coherent vision from the top.
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I think US is like common law countries isn’t it? Offer, acceptance, and consideration. That’s a contract. The difference in other countries is that you can’t contract away statutory rights, which come from employment law. So the EU Working Time Directive which mandates a certain minimum ratio of paid holiday for example.
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Yeah. I just think when people hear “contract” they think they have something that is negotiated and protects the rights of everyone involved and kind of gives both parties near equal footing. Like a pro sports star contract or a movie star contract. So when people hear higher paid tech people are under contracts, they assume that means our contracts are like that.
In reality, there’s no room for negotiation usually, you get told what you’re making, your job description rarely has any any concept of “40 hour weeks” or anything like that, and you’re told to take it or leave it.
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Plus we don’t know how the schedule was before. Some teams could have been crunching from home, without the commute overhead.
Ugh, I hope they have good project management software, as they triage the work as it was. (If it protects against assigning five projects to one person, and assuming that all five will be completed on time, Musk will probably fire it.)
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That would be any of them - as long as management likes the graphs and charts and stuff it spits out…
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Do those frontend colleagues wistfully glance at you between bites, wondering what life would be like away from Google, et al?
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I just checked, about 75% of US workers are At Will employees meaning they can be let go for any reason unless that reason is illegal but for the most part an employer can just walk in and tell any employee they’re fired.
Anyone with a contract is lucky.
Our country sucks on so many levels.
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This can happen with most contracts, too in the US. Especially for tech workers.
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It’s sounding like hundreds if not thousands of twitter employees have opted to resign, the anonymous tech social networking site “Blind” which does verify employment through work email addresses had a poll for twitter employees and roughly 73% said they would absolutely be resigning today.
People were hanging up in a meeting at 5PM where Musk was trying to win them back.
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Short thread:
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Hard to spend 40 hours in the office when you can’t get in, ain’t it?
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