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End Of Days Compensation Packages?
Waiting for the Axe to Fall asks: "I work for a larger webhosting company that has plans to consolidate one of its west coast data centers with an east coast location which they already have in place. Forget that this is a bad idea in terms of geographical redundancy--it is going to happen. The company did inform all west coast employees about the move, roughly a year in advance. This was done Im sure to ease the shock and fear of loosing ones job. This affects a small group (8-9) of employees, all of whom are tied up in operations and the data center specifically. If you were in this situation (as one of the employees), what would you require/want/wish for in this retention plan? The benefits of staying with the company, until the end, must out weight the risk of being jobless; or is this not the path you would choose? Would you leave as soon as the announcement was made?"
"As employees, the group decided to go to management and request a 'retention plan' of sorts. This is a contract that outlines specific benefits to stay with the company through the move, and help getting the systems across the country without service interruption. The support of these few is a requirement, due to the vast array of legacy and non standard systems. The job could otherwise be done with consultants, however going this route would take substantially longer, and would be at a much greater cost to the company. So, it is truly in their best interests to have the staff that has managed these systems for the past 5-8 years stick it out."
Because if your resume is as grammatically flawed as your post then you're going to be serving me fries w/ my Big Mac.
Standard Severance - 4 weeks + 1 week/year of service, sometimes capped at 5 years of service. (This varies. Well placed executives may get years of severance, and store clerks may get none)
A "Stay to the Bitter End" Bonus - Approximately an additional 4 weeks of salary or $10,000 for those who stay until the very last day they are needed.
Immediate release from all restrictions in your employee agreement with regards to working for competitors.
Verification that the conditions of your termination will allow you to collect unemployement.
Find a new job now. Tell the hiring managers that your bonuses will keep you at your current position until the closing date. Don't fret about taking an hour here or there to interview; it's expected. Besides, they're already going to let you go soon. They need you and they're not going to fire you. It's time for you to start thinking about greener pastures.
Later, if they hire you back (and it may happen), offer to do so for a 25% raise, but settle for no less than 10%. If you don't have a new job, don't let them know about it. Your new "consulting" position prevents you from speaking about it.
The world will not get better through technology. We must seek to be better people.
Let me describe what happens when you stick around in a doomed office/company/branch/whatever. Morale gets low, standards of professionalism relax. No one will expect anything from you except to show up, maybe occasionally answer a question or reboot a failing host. You'll start coming to work in sweatpants, playing solitaire all day long, taking two hour lunches. You dream up ways to spend your severance package.
Sounds like a lot of IT workers' dream job, right? But the general attitude is not a good one. You can forget about being motivated to find a new job. A couple of months of coming in to play solitaire, and you're barely motivated to get up to take the two hour lunch. The most common topics of conversation are how many days are left and wouldn't it be nice to be the one guy that gets to keep his job. No new projects to add to your resume. If you're lucky, you get to list "decommissioning" as something you did at this job. What an accomplishment. It takes five thoughtless seconds to power down a server running the product of ten years' loving work. If that's what you want out of your final months with your employer, then read no further.
But if you want to use this time postively, here's my advice. Get your resume together and start interviewing ASAP. See if you can get your current employer to give you a paper promotion now - it may help you get a foot in the door at other firms to have a more important-sounding title. Tell any company that makes you an offer about the severance package, to see if they'll match it, or at least give you something as a signing bonus. Even if you don't get the bonus, if you like the new place, go. Now. If the prospects outside look slim, talk to the dreaded East Coast management team. Find out if there are any opportunities for you to go out there. If nothing else, showing initiative in that way may get them to throw you some additional work, or a leadership role in the decommissioning. The key is to stay motivated, stay focused. Delete the games from your PC. If there are people in your group who are going to stay with the company, talk to them, find out what new projects are going on, if there's anything you can do to help.
Above all, don't let yourself be fooled into thinking that because you're on the chopping block, you're not worth anything. That's what all those negative behaviors I mentioned before are all about. "They think I suck, they don't expect anything out of me, so I'm going to suck, and I'm not going to do anything." If you get trapped into that cycle, it may take longer for you to recover than your severance package can carry you. Just don't fall into the trap.
So, to sum up, do what you need to do to stay motivated and enthusiastic. If decommissioning projects are what you love, stay, and be happy about it. Enjoy your severance. But if you need to have new and engaging projects to work on, I would advise you to get out as soon as you possibly can, severance or not.