alt Hacker News>And yet here you are shaming me for my kink of making compensation contingent on provided service...
The service to get a severance has been provided prior to termination.
You're aware that severance is commonly proportional to length of service, right?
Not length of expected lifetime after being fired.
Keeping one's mouth shut isn't a "service".
Neither is a non-compete clause, for that matter (which is illegal where I am), so better figure out how that is possible given that it perfectly fits your definition of "compensation contingent on provided service".
>Severance is compensation given up front in exchange for the labor/service of signing and following through with the severance agreement.
Calling putting a signature on a piece of paper and staying silent "labor" wins the Orwellian dictionary redefinition of the day for me.
Didn't know I was doing labor by doing nothing at all.
Pray tell, where do I get to perform such hard labor and get paid handsomely for it?
Hope the answer isn't "some of the companies that I performed labor for in the past" (in a normal, human, dictionary sense of the word "labor"), because the payment that you get after performing labor - and only after doing so - is called "compensation".
> The service to get a severance has been provided prior to termination
And here is the root of your misunderstanding.
You seem to be under the impression that because some companies occasionally scale severance based on tenure, it's comp for work already performed. Severance is like tipping in that it's not required at all.
Keeping one's mouth shut is a service. They're paying for it. So would be not competing with the company, if it were legal to enforce. Not sure why you think otherwise, just your personal vibes I guess? Maybe look up what an economic "service" is.
Maybe you're confused because as you say, no one has ever offered you money to keep your mouth shut?
This service only gets paid for when the recipient has credible things to say.
Similarly, some people get paid tons of money to just say their opinion, and here you are doing that labor for free too. The people getting paid have valuable information to offer, which someone else either does or does not want shared.