It didn't happen to me, but I heard that it's not unusual for an employee here to be laid off even though he/she has very little left until retirement. How true is that? How frequent are such cases?
6 replies (most recent on top)
As the writer of the first reply stated, what exactly is a retirement date, at least in the US? In tech companies I've never heard of anyone short of very senior management that uses the term specifically. There are no pensions in most tech companies so it's not like a job that has one where you can say, even years in advance, "I'm retiring in May 2023 when my pension vests".
You quit whenever you want for whatever reason, and there's nothing specific to retirement.
I think one thing that needs to be added to posts on this site is country of poster. That way employees can ignore replying to questions/comments that are specific to a particular country or countries.
Krause cut a lot of the older workers at CA and Symantec, along with hundreds of others who thought they were safe after the first round of layoffs. But he keeps cutting until he hits the minimum required headcount to run a declining legacy software business.
He's considered by Wall Street to be an expert in staff reduction
Seems HR and Directors specifically target those over their mid forties. I suspect they are even given incentives and bonuses for doing so… everyone on my team fifty plus is gone. As my director said, getting “new fresh blood” helps our team. And, HR doesn’t mind.
Older workers are typically higher paid workers so while it is difficult to prove age is the reason, they di get whacked by lots of companies during lay offs, and Citrix, in my experience, was no exception. From a cost analysis perspective, if they know your retirement date, you might actually be safer as keeping you might be less expensive than paying out the severance, which again for older workers is likely to be higher both because of wage differences and years of service.
Don't assume any particular malevolence other than Greed. But greed is pretty damn malevolent.
Even if you have a year to go, it's still cheaper to pay you severance than it is to pay your salary and benefits for another year.
How would they know when that is? Plenty of people work well into their 60s and even to 70.