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Forwarded anonymously on request. Please reply to the
list if you want the original poster to see your message. EJR
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I love my job, but am worried that my company is not long for this world.
So, reluctantly, I'm going to look for employment elsewhere. I consider
myself a decent negotiator, and have been happy with the agreements I've
made on the last couple jobs I accepted. But I've learned a lot about
negotiating from this list, so I want to poll you on this issue:
Have you ever negotiated a severance package into your agreement? Is this
ever even *done* in our line of work?
It's been my experience that only executives ever get to do this; that
our jobs are too low on the food chain for us to be able to make such
requests or demands. But I've also learned that nobody's going to give
you anything unless you ask for it.
The main reason I'm contemplating leaving my current job is that there's
no safety net. Although most of the people my company has laid off
received nice severance packages (owing to government regulations that
make such packages mandatory when a certain percentage of the workforce
is laid off), I fear that by the time *I* get let go, there'll be nothing
left in the till. But all the executives here will be taken care of by
their severance packages, which were written into their contracts when
they joined the company.
This is NOT an "Oh, the unfairness of it all" rant. The rules for
executives are always different than the rules for the worker bees. I
accept that.
But am I accepting too much, by thinking that it's "not my place" to ask
about severance arrangements when I'm negotiating a job offer?
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Forwarded anonymously on request. Please reply to the
list if you want the original poster to see your message. EJR
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