At will employee?

Fayz

Is it common for job contracts to state that you are an

"at will employee and that nothing in the letter will be deemed to constitute an agreement of employment for any specific period of time. This means that either you or the Company may terminate the relationship at any time, with or without cause, and it is understood that neither party has an obligation to base a decision to terminate the employment relationship on any reason other than the intent not to continue the relationship."

netsysllc

Not sure about NY but in AZ it is normal

joelsfood

Normal here (and most places, going by the maps)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment

thomas_

Yep, pretty normal.

scaredoftests

Yes, normal in Maryland as well..

TomkoTech

https://www.rocketlawyer.com/article/what-states-are-at-will-employment-states-ps.rl

Mooseboost

I've worked in both NC and SC, and in both cases it was normal.

Kreken

Normal for NYC too.

TomkoTech

With that being said, employers still have to dot their i's and cross their t's to make sure the terminated employee can't/doesn't file a lawsuit based on some perceived injustice.

markulous

Yes, but any decent company is not going to ever fire you for no reason. Most jobs that I've had, you had to really screw up bad to get canned. Like threaten a manager or start yelling at a customer.

TomkoTech

Well we recently had a guy who worked with us for a few months. It was becoming evidently clear that his credentials were highly overstated on his resume, and his personality clashed severely with everyone else in the office. The boss took him to lunch in order to have a conversation with him and basically tell him to start looking for another job. Thankfully before the boss did that the former employee asked to speak first and gave his 2 weeks notice stating he didn't think he was a fit for us. But it was the definition of at will right there.

markulous

Sounds like a good reason though.

apr911

It should be noted that a contract employee differs from a contractor employee... Typically when you see a job listing stating "6-month contract" what they are really saying is you will be an at-will employee of a 3rd party that has been contracted to provide an employee for 6-months. Only the contracted employer is guaranteed payment of any sort and the contracted employer will likely release you at the end of the contract unless it has been renewed (after all they're no longer being paid by the primary company)

This confuses people because they see "contract" and assume they are a contracted employee.

With contractual employment, the company and employee are making certain guarantees to each other that are then put into an enforceable civil contract and both the company and employee are bound to make good on the terms of the agreement. If the contract states the company will pay $120,000/yr for 1 year, the company is legally obligated to employ you for 1 year or pay you $120,000 even if the company decides to let you go before that 1 year for reasons other than cause.

As a general rule, companies are smart enough about this to protect themselves so the contract will contain a clause releasing the company from liability for firing you for specific cause such as becoming unemployable (i.e. you fail to maintain the minimum requirements for employment such as criminal record, citizenship/visa/ability to be employed in country, etc) or committing gross-misconduct so you cant get fired 3 months in for insubordination and still expect to collect the remaining 90k on contract.

Further, the company will usually also include a penalty or buy-out clause that releases the company from further liability for firing you with sufficient notice for a no-cause or no-fault reason such as the position being made redundant through reorganization, merger, etc or general downsizing. Buy-out/penalty clauses will usually be a statement that the company agrees to give you x number weeks notice and to pay the lesser of some fixed amount or the amount remaining on the contract thus if the contract is 10k a month with 2 month notice and a 20k penalty, the company can "fire" you 3 months before the contract runs out by buying out the contract for 30k (10k x 3 months remaining) with each month thereafter costing the company less (2 months = 20k, 1 month = 10k, contract expiration/0 months = 0k) or 5+ months before the contract is up by paying 40k (10k x 2 month notice + 20k penalty); 4 months being the point where the penalty cost and the buyout cost are equal.

These penalty clauses are also seen in executive employment agreements and are so-called golden parachutes because they are typically quite valuable for the executive (e.g. $1M worth of shares vested over 5 years is only 200k/yr but triggering the penalty clause might see those shares become fully vested immediately).

In addition, there may be penalty, reward (such as a completion bonus) or incentive (such as stock or 401k vesting) clauses that apply to the employee should the employee fail to complete the terms of the contract by quitting, not producing the required work product or being fired for cause. In theory, you could end up having to pay the company for quitting, being fired or failing to produce the contracted work product or otherwise forego some form of reward or return some granted-incentive.

These clauses also exist in at-will employment; typically they involve things which you dont yet possess so they're "incentive" clauses not penalties (i.e. stock options or 401k employer match vesting) but in some cases you may have to pay back the company for quitting, this happens particularly if an incentive is paid up front such as paying for relocation or providing a signing bonus. Typically these upfront incentives have a time requirement and quitting or being fired for cause before reaching that requirement will require you to pay back the incentive to the company.

Overseas positions are typically put together with incentive clauses. The job's themselves pay only moderate sums but the up front signing bonus that must be repaid in part (month-by-month vesting) or in full (cliff-vesting) if you leave before the terms of the agreement and the completion bonus paid on fulfilling the terms can make it very lucrative.

markulous wrote: »

Yes, but any decent company is not going to ever fire you for no reason. Most jobs that I've had, you had to really screw up bad to get canned. Like threaten a manager or start yelling at a customer.

Those types of situations would typically be considered gross-misconduct. The "at-will" employment clause is rarely used specifically for gross misconduct dismissals.

Rather its the no-fault firings such as being let go due to company reorganization, downsizing and miscellaneous other reasons or the no-cause firings which occur when you dont have any one thing that raises to the level of gross misconduct but the company decides its better to parts ways without stating a cause than it is to continue your employment.

At-will employment clauses really just mean you are not guaranteed or entitled to anything from the company and you dont owe the company anything (except in those upfront incentives discussed above) if you or the company decide to end the employment relationship.

That being said, typically a no-cause or no-fault dismissal will enable you to collect unemployment from the State whereas quitting or being fired for cause may prevent you from being able to claim unemployment. Also At-will employment clauses dont preclude the company from being magnanimous and vesting incentives or paying a severance if the company is letting you go for no-fault reasons but that is solely at the companies discretion and they you aren't entitled to those things..


In most jobs, there is a notable point of contention where at-will employment disclaimers conflict with company policy and it could be argued that an implied contract exists at an otherwise at-will employer and that is when you give notice. Under at will employment, you are under no obligation to provide any notice at all; you can walk in for your shift, say I quit and leave immediately.

It is considered professional courtesy however to give two weeks notice and many companies put in their handbook a requirement that you give a certain amount of notice. The issue that presents is an employer that requires you give notice, accepts your required notice, immediately dismisses you without pay and then states you quit. Quitting means you cannot collect unemployment and while a company can terminate you for or without cause during your notice, few will actually do so for anything other than cause because a termination entitles you to unemployment. By requiring and accepting your notice there is a legal issue in requiring you to give notice and then not honoring that notice by dismissing you immediately and saying you quit before you actually intended to do so. This is why many companies will pay you through the notice period whether they have you work during that period or let you have the time off as there is an arguable implied contract in place.

Remedymp

TomkoTech wrote: »

Well we recently had a guy who worked with us for a few months. It was becoming evidently clear that his credentials were highly overstated on his resume, and his personality clashed severely with everyone else in the office. The boss took him to lunch in order to have a conversation with him and basically tell him to start looking for another job. Thankfully before the boss did that the former employee asked to speak first and gave his 2 weeks notice stating he didn't think he was a fit for us. But it was the definition of at will right there.

This is just ridiculous. They know from jump street what kind of person they're hiring before the person is even hired. It's not that his personality didn't fit in, it's more or less he was isolated. If you isolate a resource, they will eventually regress and become un-fit. I am not calling BS on your anecdote, but I highly doubt a resource came on board without a personality check or credential check prior to the hiring.

TomkoTech

@=Remedymp

What exactly do you find ridiculous? People lie on resumes all the time. I have no idea how to respond to your "isolated" comment. What does that even mean? "Nobody puts baby in the corner"?

You can doubt it all you want. However the guy came in with a resume that stated 7 years of helpdesk/sys admin experience. He did not know simple things such as how to use switches when testing office applications. He had zero ability to use google or any other resource to search for an answer if he did not know it, which meant he was constantly deflecting issues up the chain because he wasn't able to solve them.

Remedymp

@=TomkoTech

These questions are mostly asked during a phone interview. If he has passed a phone interview, then he knew enough to get to the in person interview. At that point, an interviewer would drill down even more on protocols and incident handling, etc. You mean to tell me this candidate made it through atleast two interviews and no one knew this about him? I call that ridiculous.

I said isolated, as in his personality is allegedly clashed. Anytime you interview someone in person, you can easily pick up on their personality immediately. There are even online test that can test someones personality.

If people are seeing these problems in hiring candidates, news flash, it's not the candidate. The common denominator is the environment.

Plantwiz

@Fayz,

What made you think this is not common practice?

Several great comments explaining this above, but I am curious what made you think that this was uncommon.

PW

Fayz

Plantwiz wrote: »

@Fayz,

What made you think this is not common practice?

Several great comments explaining this above, but I am curious what made you think that this was uncommon.

PW

First real real job for a stable company not a staffing company. I wanted to get info from people who had experience and familiar with signing contracts for a company.

--chris--

Fayz wrote: »

First real real job for a stable company not a staffing company. I wanted to get info from people who had experience and familiar with signing contracts for a company.

Can confirm, is the norm for most places. Its legalese...just like the fine print on many common things. If you read, your reaction is usually "holy sh..." why would I sign this?!