alt Hacker NewsIt has legal implications, as others have expressed.
It means your position was made redundant, and it allows you to be terminated with little legal complication, but on the understanding that the same position can't be re-hired for within a period, I think it's 6 months.
Of course in reality it's not that simple, you get "made redundant" then they rephrase the job title a bit and hire someone else.
Redundancy in the real, proper form is a consultation process where they will try, if possible to relocate people into other positions, government does it all the time when there's cuts, and they'll often offer voluntary redundancy where they pay you X amount to quit, it's usually a reasonable sum and should leave you with more than enough cash in "normal" circumstances to find another job comfortably, or see you through to retirement if you're pretty close.
Sometimes it's just a way to get rid of people who are shit or you don't like.
If you're gonna lose your job, being made "redundant" is the way you want to do it.
I’ve been involved in this once. There were two of us in the QA department that did subtly different jobs. They wanted rid of the other guy, but as we had very similar roles I had to be involved in the consultation process. What they did is very specifically outline the differences and that his were the ones that were redundant. My manager and friend pulled me into a room beforehand and told me ‘you’re gonna go through some shit but trust me you’re keeping your job’. It all left me with a fairly sour taste in my mouth and to this day I’m not entirely sure it was all above board. If a company wants you gone, they’ll figure a way to do it.