Happy Friday, readers! Writing to you from New York City, I'm Jordan Parker Erb.

A vacation sounds nice, right? The weather here has turned icy and I can't help but think about being somewhere more warm and less gray.

For some laid-off tech workers, that thought isn't confined to just daydreams — some employees told us that since they've been laid off, they've taken the opportunity to finally go on vacation. So today, we're looking at layoffs from a different angle: being set free.

Shall we?

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1. In Big Tech, getting laid off can mean taking a fancy vacation. With several months of severance pay on the way out, many freshly unemployed tech workers see their current job status not as a desperate situation, but as an opportunity to take a break abroad.

• While the typical US worker receives little to no severance pay when they get laid off, firms like Facebook, Snap, and Twitter have been relatively generous. Facebook, for example, offered laid-off workers six months of pay.

• Some laid-off tech workers have racked up few years of sky-high pay, frequent bonuses, generous stock awards, and now, decent severance — so some are thinking, "why not travel?"

• Insider spoke with employees who said layoffs gave them the freedom to plan lavish vacations, like cross country road trips or European vacations.

See where other "freed" tech workers are headed.

In other news:

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