It seems like the kind of risk-averse cover-all clause a corporate lawyer would try to shoehorn into an agreement. I don't exactly blame them - many companies were caught with their pants down when AI became mainstream, as they were being crawled for all their data and they had nothing in their ToS that would allow them to stop it.
The protocol XMTP is built to last forever and will outlive us all, the name of the company is a reminder that if the company ever went away that the protocol must be able to live on. Requirement for decentralization.
Not a new idea by the way. Especially in Germany where labor laws are strong and companies are generally less hostile, some try to avoid doing layoffs by offering cash payments for retiring early or quitting. 25k would be considered quite a low offer though (and that is in Germany, where wages are generally much lower and taxes much higher).
Which part of Germany and which companies are these? I have never heard of such arrangements. Even if there were, these payments will get eaten up by taxes and will leave peanuts. Hell, instead of such, I heard more stories of claw-backs(asking for refunds of paid salary because termination date was 7 days before the end of month or more or less…)
This is a US company… so how is health insurance being handled?
COBRA costs are a couple thousand dollars for families, and even that’s not available to employees who choose to voluntarily quit. Either the CEO is ignorant of the reality or employees will wind up paying a fairly expensive cost for that $25k one-time cashout. I hope they know this.
If I were in the position of wanting to quit like that, I’d ask the employer to sweeten the deal by throwing in 6mo or so of health insurance coverage.
> COBRA costs are a couple thousand dollars for families, and even that’s not available to employees who choose to voluntarily quit.
COBRA is available in the US regardless of the reason for quitting a job. I quit a large company job to try launching my own startup and was using COBRA for family health care. It is not cheap, as you say (my top-of-the-line medical+dental+vision coverage for myself, my wife and the kids was ~$2500/month), but the option is certainly there.
But I think the main approach to this type of voluntary severance bonus is for people to move to another employer, not to the unemployment. I know a few people who took such offers and they all quickly pre-arranged their next step before signing buyout offers. In fact this is one of the big problems with buyouts at large corps: the people taking buyouts first are good engineers that can find jobs anytime and this is the group the companies want to keep. My 2c.
Thanks for asking, agree health insurance costs in the US are high and a real concern. We fully cover the costs of health care (medical, dental and vision) premiums for our US employees and their dependents, so they don't pay a dollar towards coverage while employed. Additionally, for those who opted to take this offer, we did include COBRA coverage to help offset those costs for them as well.
Presumably some of the newly acquired employees don't share the same goals or ideals, or are entirely redundant. Offering bonuses for voluntary resignations relieves some of the pressure with onboarding, trying to find new positions, or a morale-sapping layoff.
I posted this as a reply, but to a dead comment so it got lost.
Telegram also kinda tried something like this with the TON blockchain, and more recently with Mini Apps. It’s even quite easy to make TON payments with their telegram wallet. Buuuut they recently launched Telegram Stars, a more traditional non-blockchain premium currency, and their terms of service are that all payments for digital goods must be through stars (so not cryptocurrencies), because this allows them to give Apple and Google a cut, to not break the App Store/Play Store rules about digital goods/services.
So I imagine this messenger would run into similar problems: if you want to be on the apps stores, they probably can’t use cryptocurrencies, because Apple and Google want their 30%
The post presents this like it's a novel and noble idea. Yet, nowhere does it mention the term severance(or redundancy pay). I guess I should applaud them for voluntarily following what would just be standard labor laws in some places?
We're using blockchain as an identity layer, so that people do not need a phone number to use secure messaging. The messages live on a decentralized network, with storage abstracted. Meaning, all of the messages themselves do not live onchain.
Crypto allows for protocols to be monetized in new ways that actually help with fundamnetal problems of existing protocols like SMTP. For example, we can have a bulk-sender fee structure for rate-limiting, so people can pay for more timely delivery. This helps mitigate spam and increases quality of messages sent.
Node operators share in the revenue, so it really is decentralized messaging and economics, in which anyone can participate and earn.
Telegram also kinda tried something like this with the TON blockchain, and more recently with Mini Apps. It’s even quite easy to make TON payments with their telegram wallet. Buuuut they recently launched Telegram Stars, a more traditional non-blockchain premium currency, and their terms of service are that all payments for digital goods must be through stars (so not cryptocurrencies), because this allows them to give Apple and Google a cut, to not break the App Store/Play Store rules about digital goods/services.
So I imagine this messenger would run into similar problems: if you want to be on the apps stores, they probably can’t use cryptocurrencies, because Apple and Google want their 30%
> Crypto allows for protocols to be monetized in new ways
You've lost 99% of your potential users by drilling down on this. The people that use Matrix and OMEMO today aren't going to give your protocol the time of day; current iMessage, WhatsApp and Telegram users aren't likely to start paying for what they use for free.
Good luck. Just remember that all of your peers on the Blockchain failed to make crypto mainstream, one-and-all.
> Building the world's most secure and decentralized messaging app
Uh huh, cool, let's look at that app's terms and conditions agreement:
> 3. Unshut Labs may terminate your access to the app at any time and for any reason, without notice.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think thats what we in the bussiness call "not decentralized". This whole startup seems like a sham, and 25k being low makes a lot of sense.
I’m getting mixed signals; the company name is Ephemera - with “ephemeral”, meaning “lasting a very short time”[1].
[1]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ephemeral