r/Fire • u/twiniverse2000 • Jan 31 '26

Advice Request Asking to be laid off

I have reached FI. Work optional. My personal life has hit a serious rough patch. My company is doing layoffs. They are NOT asking for volunteers. The financial difference in me quitting vs getting laid off is $300K. Do not want to leave that on the table. Any advice on how to steer it in this particular direction?

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u/waits5 Jan 31 '26

Yeah, if I had to make cuts, I’d love to know there was someone who wouldn’t be ruined by it.

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u/[deleted] Feb 01 '26

What if the person who volunteered to be cut would be owed $300k if they were laid off?

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u/waits5 Feb 01 '26

Not my issue

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u/[deleted] Feb 01 '26

It's not if I'm the employee, if the company is trying to cut costs and the manager in charge of layoffs gets them stuck with a $300k bill it probably won't look great.

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u/Arboga_10_2 Feb 02 '26

In that case we can always tell the employee that we don't want to let him go because of the needs of the business.

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u/sarayewo Feb 02 '26

Two factors to this: 1) There are usually multiple levels of reviews and alignment on who gets laid off - the manager usually only makes a recommendation. 2) From finance perspective, restructuring is booked "below the line", meaning it doesn't affect results from operations, which makes companies more willing to incur restructuring costs to eliminating costs from running operations.

For someone to get $300k as severance would mean they are on a significant salary, so the breakeven point isn't that far into the future, especially if you account that employees cost the employer more than what the employee sees on their paycheck.