Tech sector severance

Big Tech severance has converged on a narrow band. The major US employers pay a fixed base plus an accrual per year of service, and the formulas now cluster within a few weeks of one another: Meta and Google sit at 16 weeks base plus 2 weeks per year, Microsoft at 12 plus 2, while Amazon runs a tenure-based pattern of roughly one week of pay per six months of service layered on top of the 60-day notice required under the federal WARN Act.

The cash formula is rarely the dominant economic factor. Equity treatment is. Amazon's back-loaded RSU schedule — 5 / 15 / 40 / 40 across four years — means a layoff before the year-three cliff can forfeit the larger share of a grant, while Microsoft's 2026 Voluntary Separation Program accelerates vesting through the next scheduled vest and gates eligibility on a combined age-plus-tenure sum of 70. Across every employer the package resists individual negotiation on the base number; leverage concentrates at the edges — near-cliff equity acceleration, extended COBRA, non-compete narrowing, and release-of-claims carve-outs.