Comment by Volundr
3 years ago
> She shared that she was nervous about disclosing too much information because she had to sign “a bunch” of documents upon her dismissal
You do not have to and almost certainly should not sign any paperwork when being fired, laid off, or even leaving voluntarily. The exception here is the company may offer you a severance package to sign some paperwork waiving your right to sue. Even then if you can afford it it's a good idea to run it through a lawyer first. But signing stuff for free? Don't do it, you have nothing to gain.
Last time I was laid off, I got $90K to keep my mouth shut. And you know what I did? I shut the hell up, and I'm not even all that thrilled to post about it anonymously here. It was all fairly amiable as well.
Yep, that's exactly what I mean. Paid to sign, sure thing, probably want to run it by a lawyer first to make sure the terms aren't too crazy and your getting a good deal, but for free? Forget it, nothing they are going to ask you to sign will help you, only them.
Even when being fired for cause severance is sometimes possible. All depends on how much they want those papers signed.
Yeah, it was pretty clear that they were paying you a decent chunk to not cause any trouble; I didn't need a lawyer to tell me that, but I agree that couldn't hurt as long as they aren't exorbitant. Honestly, it's my best piece of advice for any company that has to get rid of someone - money makes it better, and it's one thing that company did fairly well. I had a problematic co-worker who got fired in one spectacular event (like you see in movies) after getting into a dick measuring contest with a director or VP (forget his exact title at the time) after causing a serious outage. As far as I know he got a decent check out of the thing even though he absolutely deserved to be let go.