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This may be a little cynical but: "With our culture of bringing our whole selves to work and seeing team as family, with shared values we live by,..." In the

This may be a little cynical but: "With our culture of bringing our whole selves to work and seeing team as family, with shared values we live by,..." In the American business world, you are an employee until you aren't. Confusing being an employee with being "family" is a mistake, both for the company and the employee. When times get bad, companies do what it takes to survive, including throwing employees overboard. That's just a fact. Buffer may have thought it was different, but that flow-chart of how they decided who to layoff was entirely about how an employee can help the company, not how the layoff would affect the employee. That's not how normal families make decisions. I have no problem with any of that, but anyone who thinks that way has another thing coming. All of this isn't to say that Buffer was thoughtless or callous in how they handled it. From the outside, it looks like one of the better handled layoffs I've seen. But still. Don't confuse your job with your family. It's a business relationship that is only maintained as long as it is in both side's interest to do so.

justinzollars 10y ago
The most money I ever made was with a group of fellow startup friends, who I considered my family. Being a career warrior might work for you, but that idea worked for us.
- harryh 10y ago
  I'm glad it worked out for you. That's great. But what would you have done if one of those friends had stopped coming to the office. Or just did bad work. Would you have let them stay on forever or would you eventually have fired them? That's the difference between family and a team.
  - justinzollars 10y ago
    let me point out too many people have the down vote. This place is turning into stackoverflow.
jc4p 10y ago
This is so 100% on point. I think the Netflix NYT article from yesterday had a more realistic tone regarding the "family" aspect: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/19/magazine/can-netflix-survive-in-the-new-world-it-created.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/19/magazine/can-netflix-survi... > The key concept is summed up in the 23rd slide. “We’re a team, not a family,” it reads. “Netflix leaders hire, develop and cut smartly, so we have stars in every position.” Your last sentence here is really important. If that's the mindset a person is in, when a business-centric action happens they won't feel as betrayed. Trust me, feeling betrayed while also fully logically knowing you shouldn't feel betrayed because it's a corporation in a capitalist ecoystem is such a bad feeling.
- whatever_dude 10y ago
  > cut smartly I actually think this is important. Working with an asshole is a big problem, and I fully admire leaders who know when it's time to let someone go because the situation cannot improve. It certainly beats working in a caustic environment because people are afraid to fire someone.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - bduerst 10y ago
    Wasn't Netflix referring to cutting people when they became idle? Their whole motto is "we're a professional sports team" so if you can't play ball (or there's no longer a ball for you to play with) then you're cut from the team. This was different from the family viewpoint where a company takes an employee and tries to grow them or find new work for them. They're not really referring to "culture" fit, team compatibility, or even cutting assholes, just whether or not you can provide value to Netflix at that moment.
    - ErikAugust 10y ago
      The problem I have with pro sports analogies is that productivity is much easier to quantify and track in sports than most businesses. One usually must spend a decent amount of time/energy tracking and making the case for their own productivity, which of course, lowers their actual productivity.
kordless 10y ago
While I agree with your points, I think the ongoing assumption we can effectively emulate the emotional response of the ones who are actually are affected is starting to really get in the way. The expectation humanity can eliminate all suffering is unreasonable. That expectation is, in my humble option, an inefficiency driven by unreasonable sympathy. When I say "unreasonable" I mean laying blame where it isn't ours to lay. Consider the cost of unbounded empathy. The Internet, and systems we are building, contributed to the unbounding. Now the employees...they have a right to feel whatever they want about all this. They are the ones experiencing this, as you so well point out.
- compiler-guy 10y ago
  I've both layed people off and been laid off. I have a pretty good idea of what both sides feel like. Both sides suck. Really bad. It hurts like hell. Probably worse to be layed off than do the laying off.
  - dave2000 10y ago
    Probably? Odd thing to say. If someone actually believed that they would quit rather than lay someone off.
    - compiler-guy 10y ago
      That only works if quitting yourself saves the other people. At least in my situation it wouldn't have.
jes 10y ago
I'd say no relationships, including family relationships, should be maintained if they aren't in the long-term self-interest of all parties. In other words, every relationship is a trading relationship, and the currency of the realm isn't always, or even often, monetary in nature.
- harryh 10y ago
  How many times do I have to get annoyed at my kid for waking up in the middle of the night before you're OK with me kicking him out of the house? Keep in mind that he is currently 11 months old...
  - jes 10y ago
    Kicking your child out of the house for doing what a child does is not in your long-term self interest or his.
    - terrywilcox 10y ago
      Correct. Put him up for adoption instead.
      - jes 10y ago
        I'm unclear as to whether this was meant to be sarcastic or not. My point is this: Children have a certain nature; part of being a child is development of the ability to regulate one's emotions. Loving, thoughtful parents will (hopefully) learn about such things, such as Dr. Porges "Polyvagal Theory" and then be able to help their children with this process. I am not suggesting that people should abandon important relationships on a whim. I apologize if I was unclear on this.
        terrywilcox 10y ago
        No sarcasm at all. Child abandonment is clearly bad for the child and can see the parent thrown in jail. Adoption is the better choice for both parties. I think you perhaps missed the broader point though. If you're raising children as servants to take care of you when you're old, then yes, self-interest is a good reason to keep them around. They will also likely act in their own self-interest and ditch you. Otherwise, raising a child requires a great deal of self-sacrifice with absolutely no guarantee that you'll even get the satisfaction of a job well done. It's a total crap shoot and even the emotional return on your investment is likely to be poor. Acting only in your own self-interest is a good way to stay single and childless though. At least you'd have plenty of time to read Ayn Rand.
forkandwait 10y ago
My rule is this : if I have equity then I am family. No equity, I am just an employee.
- kybernetikos 10y ago
  Some startups take your equity off you if you leave.
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    Or push you out to claw back the equity they granted.
  - carc 10y ago
    They can't just take away equity that's vested to you. And any equity that hasn't vested isn't yours.
    - kybernetikos 10y ago
      The shares are yours, but the company reserves the right to buy them back at the lower of the current price and price you paid for them, which it does when you leave. http://stockoptioncounsel.com/blog/standards-ownership-canthecomanytakebackmyvestedshares http://stockoptioncounsel.com/blog/standards-ownership-canth...
      - carc 10y ago
        Why are you saying something like it is always true when it is only true given a certain clause is present? It says right in your link that that's only possible when your employment contract says it's possible. Seems dishonest of you. I never saw anything like this when I worked at an early stage startup, and it's obviously something an employee who reads their employment agreement would ask to be taken out. I'd never work at a company with that clause.
        kybernetikos 10y ago
dahdum 10y ago
"Buffer may have thought it was different, but that flow-chart of how they decided who to layoff was entirely about how an employee can help the company, not how the layoff would affect the employee." I read that chart differently, they are retaining their longest tenure staff in each area without regard for ability. Seems a lot more "family" like to me.
- terrywilcox 10y ago
  If I kept my longest tenure family members and laid off the new ones, my kid would be pretty unimpressed. Family does not work that way. The term you're looking for is "buddies".
hopsoft 10y ago
> Don't confuse your job with your family. Reminds me of this terrific article from David Brady. https://heartmindcode.com/2013/08/16/loyalty-and-layoffs/ https://heartmindcode.com/2013/08/16/loyalty-and-layoffs/
- blacksmythe 10y ago
  >> (our VP) specifically named you because your piece is finished. That is really poor, short-sighted management.
  - wavefunction 10y ago
    It's a good way to find out about the quality of the officers in your firm.
- univalent 10y ago
  Thanks for sharing. I wish someone had given me this advice years and years ago before I sank my 20s into a soul-less corporation for no benefit.
  - selectron 10y ago
    Hopefully you at least got paid, so there was some benefit.
- DrScump 10y ago
  <The blow was softened by my getting a ridiculous severance package–all my vacation days paid out in cash before I walked out the door that day, plus six weeks of severance pay...> But as it turns out, that was two weeks of severance plus the bonus he had already earned implemented as four weeks of extra severance. Ridiculous, indeed.
  - pm24601 10y ago
    Even more ridiculous: The final pay check, in full, is required to be paid on the day of severance. (at least in california) This include earned vacation.
antisthenes 10y ago
Not only is it not cynical, but should be taught to every college student, regardless of major and specialization in their general business elective class. There is very little overlap between a family (or even a friendship) and a business (unless the business is mandated by law to provide benefits similar to what a family does - which it usually isn't)
- st3v3r 10y ago
  Taught to every Junior High student.
CodeWriter23 10y ago
I think it would have been a better decision to lay off 3-4 more people and let the remaining employees keep their perks and annual salary increase. 3% doesn't keep up with inflation. Maybe make that 4-5 people and create an incentive fund for those who kick some ass and help the company fight its way back from its mistakes.
- baby 10y ago
  That might have been the plan to profit from that announcement to get rid of the perks. In the long run, if your company keeps growing in size, the perks might hurt.
  - CodeWriter23 10y ago
    I have a feeling their blog post in a year from now is going to be about how Buffer worked its way through a bunch of employee churn and training new hires, and how growth suffered. I think the outcome from some extra layoffs and foregoing the pay cut would be a post about how employees enjoyed high morale and rallied Buffer back into growth. And how sacrifices by the founders while maintaining pay and benefits through a tough time generated high employee loyalty.
- vertis 10y ago
  3% absolutely does keep up with inflation[1][2] (whether it adequately compensates for increased experience as well is another matter). The last 10 years US inflation was 3.2,2.9,3.8,-0.4 1.6,3.2,2.1,1.5,1.6,0.1 according to the world bank[2]. Giving the US an average inflation rate of just 1.96%. [1]:http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-inflation-rates/ http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-infla... [2]:http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/FP.CPI.TOTL.ZG http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/FP.CPI.TOTL.ZG (Have to search down the page for it)
  - TrickedOut 10y ago
    Those may be inflation figures given my the government, but real life has real inflation -- like things that are not counted in the world bank inflation period. Could of questions to think about: - In real life, how much has your rent gone up by? - In real life, how much have your medical premiums and co-pays increased? - In real life, how much have your drug co-pays gone up?
tn13 10y ago
> "With our culture of bringing our whole selves to work and seeing team as family, with shared values we live by,..." This is total BS that employers might say to employees but either people will be foolish to believe so. In India I worked for a large company that indeed operated like family. The company avoided layoffs by cutting salary of high performing employees to retain non-performers. Promotions were based only on number of years of service and not ability etc. But that is why I left for USA. Employers should not feel ashamed to lay off people. It is not the case that people cant find other jobs. In fact being honest and transparent about it can help people find other better jobs. Similarly employees must leave the company at the first sight of the distress and go for greener pastures.
- st3v3r 10y ago
  "Employers should not feel ashamed to lay off people." On the contrary, they absolutely should. It means they failed. Management should be punished for letting it get to that point, not rewarded for doing it as they often are.
  - slededit 10y ago
    Some businesses are cyclical, and we really don't have a more formal setup for employees that are only needed for 2-3 years of a 5 year business cycle.
  - zeroxfe 10y ago
    Failed at what? The feedback loop between investment and return is extremely long in companies, and it is almost always impossible to tell if you're overshooting (until its too late.) And slowing down does not work at startups, especially in hugely competitive markets.
rdoherty 10y ago
I agree 100%. I've worked for multiple companies that say "we're a family", then lay off people with no warning or remorse. Businesses are not families.
- compiler-guy 10y ago
  From my perspective, it's not so much the "warning or remorse" (or lack thereof) as the fact that the company _will_ do it. The Buffer guys clearly feel remorse, and wish they had better sense about warning. They regret that the layoffs are necessary. But they are still doing it--which they should--its the people (including themselves) who deceived themselves about the relationship they have with the company that are in trouble.
- x0x0 10y ago
  They're families when it benefits the business. And businesses are cutthroat capitalists when it benefits them. All that family nonsense is just to talk employees out of looking after their own interests. Your relationship with your employer is inherently antagonistic, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you some BS. That doesn't mean you can't work well together, but sometimes your interests align with the company, and sometimes they don't.
  - rtpg 10y ago
    Well there are degrees to this. Buffer seemed to want not having to fire people, but made a mistake. You can compare this to big game companies, which have no problem hiring a bunch of people and then laying them off when the project is done. All the disadvantages of being an employee (IP assignment for side projects, low pay) with all the disadvantages of being a contractor (no income stability). Companies do what they need to in order to survive, but that doesn't mean that the people running the companies are always 100% soul-less
    - x0x0 10y ago
      I'm pretty sure founders at Buffer feeling real bad about firing folks doesn't make the experience any better for the fired folks. Three to six weeks of severance is a tight turnaround to get a new job, particularly for non-engineering employees or remote employees. And, guessing based on their ramp-up and lifo scheme, they're probably firing some employees inside their first 6 mos. ie they most likely recently left a job for Buffer. I understand there's no promise of lifetime employment, but that's a serious dick move.
segmondy 10y ago
Companies want you to be family so you can give more. In a family system, the family tends to fend and tolerate dysfunctional members. Usually it's the company that is the black ship and everyone tolerates and busts their ass carrying the company. Once things get tough, the family analogy gets thrown out the window and it's all business.
unabst 10y ago
Family and community and culture happen organically so long as we are all humans. The company is what is structural and functional, with its existence depending solely on the performance of its functions. The problem is that the structure that gives rise to these functions are real humans. That is why restructuring implies firing people. In the beginning the rewards from the human elements are far greater than the performance of the company. It could even be all you've got. You could have no profits, be in stealth, just prototyping, etc. Here the company could just be a promise written on a napkin or a handshake between founders. It could dissolve any minute. Eventually though, once the company grows to the point where it hires people and makes money and pays taxes, the value of the company begins to far outweigh that of any individual member, or of any organic human elements that tends to adjust themselves anyway. This is when the company you founded might turn around and fire you. But congratulations, that's also when you know you've (sort of) made it... The takeaways is to know your function. So long as you do, you should be able to predict if you belong. And if you know you don't, you should expect to be let off, knowing only that the people running the company are doing their job correctly.
OliverJones 10y ago
And, don't confuse your family with your job. Family relationships ("better/worse, richer/poorer, sickness/health") are unbreakable, by original intention at any rate. Job relationships ("voluntary, subject to termination by you or company at will, for any reason or none, with or without notice, at any time") are not even close to family relationships. Until we get job-divorce judges like we have family court judges, with the power to divide assets, the idea that a workplace is a family is wishful thinking, at best.
dave2000 10y ago
"With our culture of bringing our whole selves to work and seeing team as family, with shared values we live by,..." It's moronic drivel, isn't it. Apart from being nonsensical (how can you bring less than your whole self to work, unless you've had some sort of psychotic breakdown) and the poor English ("seeing team as family") it just reads like corporate babble. It's not a family. I care about my family. I don't care about my job, its stakeholders, its values, its products or its customers. It's just a job. I'm a wage slave so I do it for the money and for no other reason at all. Whenever I see a company stating their values I immediately lose any respect I might have had for them. It's as if they've been on a fact finding trip to north Korea.
- mstade 10y ago
  I agree with you. I have other reasons why I do the job I do, but would never do it if the money wasn't there. At the end of the day, the feel-good nonsense has no place in business decisions, and that really goes both ways in an employer/employee situation. You can like your job, even love it, but if you're not looking at it as a business transaction you will get screwed one way or another. Replay job and it for employee and them, and the same holds for the business. It's a mindset thing, and has everything to do with professionalism and nothing to do with touchy feel goodness. Polite but firm negotiations where both parties feel good with the outcome can be achieved no matter whether you like each other or not. (Although the friction may vary along that axis.)
- baby 10y ago
  > I don't care about my job, its stakeholders, its values, its products or its customers. It's just a job. I'm a wage slave so I do it for the money and for no other reason at all. I guess that's what a decade of bad management and shitty start-up/big-corp work does to you. Personally, I'm happy that some people have an optimistic enough view of "the work" to want to change that reality, and make it a positive and good experience when enough money is involved to do so. If you read more into Buffer you will see that it is indeed not your typical company.
- dasil003 10y ago
  That's the way you see it, and to a certain extent I feel the same way. But two things: Even with unabashed cynicism there's no denying that structuring a company like a cult has a huge advantage in terms of retention, dedication, salary requirements, etc. This dovetails perfectly with SV's youth worship because young people are more likely to buy into this crap, and they are also more likely to be willing to conflate their work and social circles. Somewhat more charitably, not all companies are the same. Given the choice I would prefer to work for Apple than for Facebook because I think the former is generally doing better things for the world than the latter. On a more extreme level, I would definitely consider taking a lower salary from a company or non-profit I felt was doing really good things in the world. The point is, while "we are a family" is straight bullshit, the values of a company should matter. If I were to treat my employment as a purely mercenary transaction with no regards to anything but the transaction then I would be complicit in furthering the global corporate hegemony which unbridled capitalism is leading us toward.
AndrewKemendo 10y ago
So how do you account for companies like ours when, during hard times the CEO and CTO took no pay for two months so that they could continue paying employees? Or by offering employees the same class of stock as the founders with the same voting rights etc...?
- asdfologist 10y ago
  Would your CEO give up his life savings to pay your medical bills? Would he risk his life for you?
  - dasil003 10y ago
    Would you do it for them? Come on, is taking no pay meaningless to you?
    - asdfologist 10y ago
      You missed the point of this thread, which is whether it's appropriate to call a company a "family."
      - dasil003 10y ago
        Fair enough, I don't think it's appropriate to call a company a family. I do however think taking zero pay is a signal which, under the right circumstances, is worthy of inspiring loyalty greater than the average company.
  - AndrewKemendo 10y ago
    Maybe. That said, there are people in families who wouldn't do that. These examples aren't ones that prove or not that you act familial.
- hondo77 10y ago
  Two whole months (rolls eyes)? You think they did because of a sense of "family"? Maybe they didn't want employees leaving in this labor market and I'm guessing they didn't want to lay people off because others would take that as a signal to jump ship. Trust me, if things get bad, they'll let people go. Two months is not really bad.
sbilstein 10y ago
100% agree. I may be friends with my boss or others but the professional relationship is completely business. I don't expect that to help me out if there are cuts to be made or if I am underperforming, etc.
salmonet 10y ago
>In the American business world, you are an employee until you aren't. Confusing being an employee with being "family" is a mistake, both for the company and the employee. I would say this is just a common philosophy for successful businesses. A happy family is a wonderful unit, but that happiness depends on giving preferential treatment to the least rational people. Which is a bad business philosophy.
wangarific 10y ago
I don't think it's cynical at all, I think a lot of how people view their job has to do with their evolution as an employee. If you fall in love with the mission, like the people you work with, it's easy to conflate family and work. You spend 8+ hours a day with these folks and the people you work with most likely care about you as much as you care about them. The reality is that it's still business and decisions are made with the numbers in mind, especially when things get rough.
bogomipz 10y ago
Very good point - you are only "family" during the good times and so not really family at all. I don't think that "being an employee until you aren't" is an American-specific thing but perhaps the selective conflating of "family" with work colleagues is.
bhuga 10y ago
There's plenty of agreement with you, so I'll offer a counterpoint. When a company is small--less than 10 or 20 people--it really can feel like a 'family' in that everyone would rather see the company fail than break apart. "Layoffs" aren't realistic in such an environment; the company is either working or it isn't. As a company grows, these rules necessarily change. It's just a fact of having more people, as the momentum of the company becomes bigger than any individual. It's part of how a company grows. I've watched it happen; it's a strange thing and it feels like something has been lost, no matter how necessary it is. The change from a tight-knit team, battling for success against all odds, to a sizable company with growth curves, finances, lawyers, outlooks, audits and EBITDA can sneak up on you. I think it would especially surprise early employees and founders, who remember the days when it didn't feel like a company at all. Employment is never quite 'family'. But there's reasons to be empathetic to these founders' mistakes and choice of words, rather than a blanket "anyone who thinks that way has another thing coming."
- calinet6 10y ago
  +1, a team is still a type of deep relationship. It might not be family, but it's still important and human.
ralfd 10y ago
> Buffer may have thought it was different, but that flow-chart of how they decided who to layoff was entirely about how an employee can help the company To be fair, this is not quite correct. The flow chart shows they fired the most recent people in redundant roles. Not the "worst" performing (what I guess Netflix would have done) or highest salaried. Giving seniority the benefit of the doubt, instead of only using unemotional cost/benefits analysis, is rewarding loyalty and is protecting "the tribe".
bartread 10y ago
Spot on. The same is true in the UK. I've liked a lot of my colleagues over the years, and still count a fair few as friends, but the idea of a business being "family"? No way. Working for a company is a transaction, plain and simple, unless of course it's your company. That obviously changes things, because you'll inevitably be more invested in it - including emotionally. Learned the hard way by a man with powerful emotions.
jimbokun 10y ago
True, an employer-employee relationship is very different from family relationships. However, I would have really appreciated this level of detail and transparency when I was laid off. I think the first thing the person who called me to lay me off said over the phone was "So you probably know why I'm calling." Uh, no, yes? Is this supposed to be a guessing game?

justinzollars 10y ago

The most money I ever made was with a group of fellow startup friends, who I considered my family. Being a career warrior might work for you, but that idea worked for us.

harryh 10y ago
I'm glad it worked out for you. That's great. But what would you have done if one of those friends had stopped coming to the office. Or just did bad work. Would you have let them stay on forever or would you eventually have fired them? That's the difference between family and a team.
- justinzollars 10y ago
  let me point out too many people have the down vote. This place is turning into stackoverflow.

jc4p 10y ago

This is so 100% on point. I think the Netflix NYT article from yesterday had a more realistic tone regarding the "family" aspect: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/19/magazine/can-netflix-survive-in-the-new-world-it-created.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/19/magazine/can-netflix-survi... > The key concept is summed up in the 23rd slide. “We’re a team, not a family,” it reads. “Netflix leaders hire, develop and cut smartly, so we have stars in every position.” Your last sentence here is really important. If that's the mindset a person is in, when a business-centric action happens they won't feel as betrayed. Trust me, feeling betrayed while also fully logically knowing you shouldn't feel betrayed because it's a corporation in a capitalist ecoystem is such a bad feeling.

whatever_dude 10y ago
> cut smartly I actually think this is important. Working with an asshole is a big problem, and I fully admire leaders who know when it's time to let someone go because the situation cannot improve. It certainly beats working in a caustic environment because people are afraid to fire someone.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- bduerst 10y ago
  Wasn't Netflix referring to cutting people when they became idle? Their whole motto is "we're a professional sports team" so if you can't play ball (or there's no longer a ball for you to play with) then you're cut from the team. This was different from the family viewpoint where a company takes an employee and tries to grow them or find new work for them. They're not really referring to "culture" fit, team compatibility, or even cutting assholes, just whether or not you can provide value to Netflix at that moment.
  - ErikAugust 10y ago
    The problem I have with pro sports analogies is that productivity is much easier to quantify and track in sports than most businesses. One usually must spend a decent amount of time/energy tracking and making the case for their own productivity, which of course, lowers their actual productivity.

kordless 10y ago

While I agree with your points, I think the ongoing assumption we can effectively emulate the emotional response of the ones who are actually are affected is starting to really get in the way. The expectation humanity can eliminate all suffering is unreasonable. That expectation is, in my humble option, an inefficiency driven by unreasonable sympathy. When I say "unreasonable" I mean laying blame where it isn't ours to lay. Consider the cost of unbounded empathy. The Internet, and systems we are building, contributed to the unbounding. Now the employees...they have a right to feel whatever they want about all this. They are the ones experiencing this, as you so well point out.

compiler-guy 10y ago
I've both layed people off and been laid off. I have a pretty good idea of what both sides feel like. Both sides suck. Really bad. It hurts like hell. Probably worse to be layed off than do the laying off.
- dave2000 10y ago
  Probably? Odd thing to say. If someone actually believed that they would quit rather than lay someone off.
  - compiler-guy 10y ago
    That only works if quitting yourself saves the other people. At least in my situation it wouldn't have.

jes 10y ago

I'd say no relationships, including family relationships, should be maintained if they aren't in the long-term self-interest of all parties. In other words, every relationship is a trading relationship, and the currency of the realm isn't always, or even often, monetary in nature.

harryh 10y ago
How many times do I have to get annoyed at my kid for waking up in the middle of the night before you're OK with me kicking him out of the house? Keep in mind that he is currently 11 months old...
- jes 10y ago
  Kicking your child out of the house for doing what a child does is not in your long-term self interest or his.
  - terrywilcox 10y ago
    Correct. Put him up for adoption instead.
    - jes 10y ago
      I'm unclear as to whether this was meant to be sarcastic or not. My point is this: Children have a certain nature; part of being a child is development of the ability to regulate one's emotions. Loving, thoughtful parents will (hopefully) learn about such things, such as Dr. Porges "Polyvagal Theory" and then be able to help their children with this process. I am not suggesting that people should abandon important relationships on a whim. I apologize if I was unclear on this.
      - terrywilcox 10y ago
        No sarcasm at all. Child abandonment is clearly bad for the child and can see the parent thrown in jail. Adoption is the better choice for both parties. I think you perhaps missed the broader point though. If you're raising children as servants to take care of you when you're old, then yes, self-interest is a good reason to keep them around. They will also likely act in their own self-interest and ditch you. Otherwise, raising a child requires a great deal of self-sacrifice with absolutely no guarantee that you'll even get the satisfaction of a job well done. It's a total crap shoot and even the emotional return on your investment is likely to be poor. Acting only in your own self-interest is a good way to stay single and childless though. At least you'd have plenty of time to read Ayn Rand.

forkandwait 10y ago

My rule is this : if I have equity then I am family. No equity, I am just an employee.

kybernetikos 10y ago
Some startups take your equity off you if you leave.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  Or push you out to claw back the equity they granted.
- carc 10y ago
  They can't just take away equity that's vested to you. And any equity that hasn't vested isn't yours.
  - kybernetikos 10y ago
    The shares are yours, but the company reserves the right to buy them back at the lower of the current price and price you paid for them, which it does when you leave. http://stockoptioncounsel.com/blog/standards-ownership-canthecomanytakebackmyvestedshares http://stockoptioncounsel.com/blog/standards-ownership-canth...
    - carc 10y ago
      Why are you saying something like it is always true when it is only true given a certain clause is present? It says right in your link that that's only possible when your employment contract says it's possible. Seems dishonest of you. I never saw anything like this when I worked at an early stage startup, and it's obviously something an employee who reads their employment agreement would ask to be taken out. I'd never work at a company with that clause.
      - kybernetikos 10y ago

dahdum 10y ago

"Buffer may have thought it was different, but that flow-chart of how they decided who to layoff was entirely about how an employee can help the company, not how the layoff would affect the employee." I read that chart differently, they are retaining their longest tenure staff in each area without regard for ability. Seems a lot more "family" like to me.

terrywilcox 10y ago
If I kept my longest tenure family members and laid off the new ones, my kid would be pretty unimpressed. Family does not work that way. The term you're looking for is "buddies".

hopsoft 10y ago

> Don't confuse your job with your family. Reminds me of this terrific article from David Brady. https://heartmindcode.com/2013/08/16/loyalty-and-layoffs/ https://heartmindcode.com/2013/08/16/loyalty-and-layoffs/

blacksmythe 10y ago
>> (our VP) specifically named you because your piece is finished. That is really poor, short-sighted management.
- wavefunction 10y ago
  It's a good way to find out about the quality of the officers in your firm.
univalent 10y ago
Thanks for sharing. I wish someone had given me this advice years and years ago before I sank my 20s into a soul-less corporation for no benefit.
- selectron 10y ago
  Hopefully you at least got paid, so there was some benefit.
DrScump 10y ago
<The blow was softened by my getting a ridiculous severance package–all my vacation days paid out in cash before I walked out the door that day, plus six weeks of severance pay...> But as it turns out, that was two weeks of severance plus the bonus he had already earned implemented as four weeks of extra severance. Ridiculous, indeed.
- pm24601 10y ago
  Even more ridiculous: The final pay check, in full, is required to be paid on the day of severance. (at least in california) This include earned vacation.

antisthenes 10y ago

Not only is it not cynical, but should be taught to every college student, regardless of major and specialization in their general business elective class. There is very little overlap between a family (or even a friendship) and a business (unless the business is mandated by law to provide benefits similar to what a family does - which it usually isn't)

st3v3r 10y ago
Taught to every Junior High student.

CodeWriter23 10y ago

I think it would have been a better decision to lay off 3-4 more people and let the remaining employees keep their perks and annual salary increase. 3% doesn't keep up with inflation. Maybe make that 4-5 people and create an incentive fund for those who kick some ass and help the company fight its way back from its mistakes.

baby 10y ago
That might have been the plan to profit from that announcement to get rid of the perks. In the long run, if your company keeps growing in size, the perks might hurt.
- CodeWriter23 10y ago
  I have a feeling their blog post in a year from now is going to be about how Buffer worked its way through a bunch of employee churn and training new hires, and how growth suffered. I think the outcome from some extra layoffs and foregoing the pay cut would be a post about how employees enjoyed high morale and rallied Buffer back into growth. And how sacrifices by the founders while maintaining pay and benefits through a tough time generated high employee loyalty.
vertis 10y ago
3% absolutely does keep up with inflation[1][2] (whether it adequately compensates for increased experience as well is another matter). The last 10 years US inflation was 3.2,2.9,3.8,-0.4 1.6,3.2,2.1,1.5,1.6,0.1 according to the world bank[2]. Giving the US an average inflation rate of just 1.96%. [1]:http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-inflation-rates/ http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-infla... [2]:http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/FP.CPI.TOTL.ZG http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/FP.CPI.TOTL.ZG (Have to search down the page for it)
- TrickedOut 10y ago
  Those may be inflation figures given my the government, but real life has real inflation -- like things that are not counted in the world bank inflation period. Could of questions to think about: - In real life, how much has your rent gone up by? - In real life, how much have your medical premiums and co-pays increased? - In real life, how much have your drug co-pays gone up?

tn13 10y ago

> "With our culture of bringing our whole selves to work and seeing team as family, with shared values we live by,..." This is total BS that employers might say to employees but either people will be foolish to believe so. In India I worked for a large company that indeed operated like family. The company avoided layoffs by cutting salary of high performing employees to retain non-performers. Promotions were based only on number of years of service and not ability etc. But that is why I left for USA. Employers should not feel ashamed to lay off people. It is not the case that people cant find other jobs. In fact being honest and transparent about it can help people find other better jobs. Similarly employees must leave the company at the first sight of the distress and go for greener pastures.

st3v3r 10y ago
"Employers should not feel ashamed to lay off people." On the contrary, they absolutely should. It means they failed. Management should be punished for letting it get to that point, not rewarded for doing it as they often are.
- slededit 10y ago
  Some businesses are cyclical, and we really don't have a more formal setup for employees that are only needed for 2-3 years of a 5 year business cycle.
- zeroxfe 10y ago
  Failed at what? The feedback loop between investment and return is extremely long in companies, and it is almost always impossible to tell if you're overshooting (until its too late.) And slowing down does not work at startups, especially in hugely competitive markets.

rdoherty 10y ago

I agree 100%. I've worked for multiple companies that say "we're a family", then lay off people with no warning or remorse. Businesses are not families.

compiler-guy 10y ago
From my perspective, it's not so much the "warning or remorse" (or lack thereof) as the fact that the company _will_ do it. The Buffer guys clearly feel remorse, and wish they had better sense about warning. They regret that the layoffs are necessary. But they are still doing it--which they should--its the people (including themselves) who deceived themselves about the relationship they have with the company that are in trouble.
x0x0 10y ago
They're families when it benefits the business. And businesses are cutthroat capitalists when it benefits them. All that family nonsense is just to talk employees out of looking after their own interests. Your relationship with your employer is inherently antagonistic, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you some BS. That doesn't mean you can't work well together, but sometimes your interests align with the company, and sometimes they don't.
- rtpg 10y ago
  Well there are degrees to this. Buffer seemed to want not having to fire people, but made a mistake. You can compare this to big game companies, which have no problem hiring a bunch of people and then laying them off when the project is done. All the disadvantages of being an employee (IP assignment for side projects, low pay) with all the disadvantages of being a contractor (no income stability). Companies do what they need to in order to survive, but that doesn't mean that the people running the companies are always 100% soul-less
  - x0x0 10y ago
    I'm pretty sure founders at Buffer feeling real bad about firing folks doesn't make the experience any better for the fired folks. Three to six weeks of severance is a tight turnaround to get a new job, particularly for non-engineering employees or remote employees. And, guessing based on their ramp-up and lifo scheme, they're probably firing some employees inside their first 6 mos. ie they most likely recently left a job for Buffer. I understand there's no promise of lifetime employment, but that's a serious dick move.

segmondy 10y ago

Companies want you to be family so you can give more. In a family system, the family tends to fend and tolerate dysfunctional members. Usually it's the company that is the black ship and everyone tolerates and busts their ass carrying the company. Once things get tough, the family analogy gets thrown out the window and it's all business.

unabst 10y ago

Family and community and culture happen organically so long as we are all humans. The company is what is structural and functional, with its existence depending solely on the performance of its functions. The problem is that the structure that gives rise to these functions are real humans. That is why restructuring implies firing people. In the beginning the rewards from the human elements are far greater than the performance of the company. It could even be all you've got. You could have no profits, be in stealth, just prototyping, etc. Here the company could just be a promise written on a napkin or a handshake between founders. It could dissolve any minute. Eventually though, once the company grows to the point where it hires people and makes money and pays taxes, the value of the company begins to far outweigh that of any individual member, or of any organic human elements that tends to adjust themselves anyway. This is when the company you founded might turn around and fire you. But congratulations, that's also when you know you've (sort of) made it... The takeaways is to know your function. So long as you do, you should be able to predict if you belong. And if you know you don't, you should expect to be let off, knowing only that the people running the company are doing their job correctly.

OliverJones 10y ago

And, don't confuse your family with your job. Family relationships ("better/worse, richer/poorer, sickness/health") are unbreakable, by original intention at any rate. Job relationships ("voluntary, subject to termination by you or company at will, for any reason or none, with or without notice, at any time") are not even close to family relationships. Until we get job-divorce judges like we have family court judges, with the power to divide assets, the idea that a workplace is a family is wishful thinking, at best.

dave2000 10y ago

"With our culture of bringing our whole selves to work and seeing team as family, with shared values we live by,..." It's moronic drivel, isn't it. Apart from being nonsensical (how can you bring less than your whole self to work, unless you've had some sort of psychotic breakdown) and the poor English ("seeing team as family") it just reads like corporate babble. It's not a family. I care about my family. I don't care about my job, its stakeholders, its values, its products or its customers. It's just a job. I'm a wage slave so I do it for the money and for no other reason at all. Whenever I see a company stating their values I immediately lose any respect I might have had for them. It's as if they've been on a fact finding trip to north Korea.

mstade 10y ago
I agree with you. I have other reasons why I do the job I do, but would never do it if the money wasn't there. At the end of the day, the feel-good nonsense has no place in business decisions, and that really goes both ways in an employer/employee situation. You can like your job, even love it, but if you're not looking at it as a business transaction you will get screwed one way or another. Replay job and it for employee and them, and the same holds for the business. It's a mindset thing, and has everything to do with professionalism and nothing to do with touchy feel goodness. Polite but firm negotiations where both parties feel good with the outcome can be achieved no matter whether you like each other or not. (Although the friction may vary along that axis.)
baby 10y ago
> I don't care about my job, its stakeholders, its values, its products or its customers. It's just a job. I'm a wage slave so I do it for the money and for no other reason at all. I guess that's what a decade of bad management and shitty start-up/big-corp work does to you. Personally, I'm happy that some people have an optimistic enough view of "the work" to want to change that reality, and make it a positive and good experience when enough money is involved to do so. If you read more into Buffer you will see that it is indeed not your typical company.
dasil003 10y ago
That's the way you see it, and to a certain extent I feel the same way. But two things: Even with unabashed cynicism there's no denying that structuring a company like a cult has a huge advantage in terms of retention, dedication, salary requirements, etc. This dovetails perfectly with SV's youth worship because young people are more likely to buy into this crap, and they are also more likely to be willing to conflate their work and social circles. Somewhat more charitably, not all companies are the same. Given the choice I would prefer to work for Apple than for Facebook because I think the former is generally doing better things for the world than the latter. On a more extreme level, I would definitely consider taking a lower salary from a company or non-profit I felt was doing really good things in the world. The point is, while "we are a family" is straight bullshit, the values of a company should matter. If I were to treat my employment as a purely mercenary transaction with no regards to anything but the transaction then I would be complicit in furthering the global corporate hegemony which unbridled capitalism is leading us toward.

AndrewKemendo 10y ago

So how do you account for companies like ours when, during hard times the CEO and CTO took no pay for two months so that they could continue paying employees? Or by offering employees the same class of stock as the founders with the same voting rights etc...?

asdfologist 10y ago
Would your CEO give up his life savings to pay your medical bills? Would he risk his life for you?
- dasil003 10y ago
  Would you do it for them? Come on, is taking no pay meaningless to you?
  - asdfologist 10y ago
    You missed the point of this thread, which is whether it's appropriate to call a company a "family."
    - dasil003 10y ago
      Fair enough, I don't think it's appropriate to call a company a family. I do however think taking zero pay is a signal which, under the right circumstances, is worthy of inspiring loyalty greater than the average company.
- AndrewKemendo 10y ago
  Maybe. That said, there are people in families who wouldn't do that. These examples aren't ones that prove or not that you act familial.
hondo77 10y ago
Two whole months (rolls eyes)? You think they did because of a sense of "family"? Maybe they didn't want employees leaving in this labor market and I'm guessing they didn't want to lay people off because others would take that as a signal to jump ship. Trust me, if things get bad, they'll let people go. Two months is not really bad.

sbilstein 10y ago

100% agree. I may be friends with my boss or others but the professional relationship is completely business. I don't expect that to help me out if there are cuts to be made or if I am underperforming, etc.

salmonet 10y ago

>In the American business world, you are an employee until you aren't. Confusing being an employee with being "family" is a mistake, both for the company and the employee. I would say this is just a common philosophy for successful businesses. A happy family is a wonderful unit, but that happiness depends on giving preferential treatment to the least rational people. Which is a bad business philosophy.

wangarific 10y ago

I don't think it's cynical at all, I think a lot of how people view their job has to do with their evolution as an employee. If you fall in love with the mission, like the people you work with, it's easy to conflate family and work. You spend 8+ hours a day with these folks and the people you work with most likely care about you as much as you care about them. The reality is that it's still business and decisions are made with the numbers in mind, especially when things get rough.

bogomipz 10y ago

Very good point - you are only "family" during the good times and so not really family at all. I don't think that "being an employee until you aren't" is an American-specific thing but perhaps the selective conflating of "family" with work colleagues is.

bhuga 10y ago

There's plenty of agreement with you, so I'll offer a counterpoint. When a company is small--less than 10 or 20 people--it really can feel like a 'family' in that everyone would rather see the company fail than break apart. "Layoffs" aren't realistic in such an environment; the company is either working or it isn't. As a company grows, these rules necessarily change. It's just a fact of having more people, as the momentum of the company becomes bigger than any individual. It's part of how a company grows. I've watched it happen; it's a strange thing and it feels like something has been lost, no matter how necessary it is. The change from a tight-knit team, battling for success against all odds, to a sizable company with growth curves, finances, lawyers, outlooks, audits and EBITDA can sneak up on you. I think it would especially surprise early employees and founders, who remember the days when it didn't feel like a company at all. Employment is never quite 'family'. But there's reasons to be empathetic to these founders' mistakes and choice of words, rather than a blanket "anyone who thinks that way has another thing coming."

calinet6 10y ago
+1, a team is still a type of deep relationship. It might not be family, but it's still important and human.

ralfd 10y ago

> Buffer may have thought it was different, but that flow-chart of how they decided who to layoff was entirely about how an employee can help the company To be fair, this is not quite correct. The flow chart shows they fired the most recent people in redundant roles. Not the "worst" performing (what I guess Netflix would have done) or highest salaried. Giving seniority the benefit of the doubt, instead of only using unemotional cost/benefits analysis, is rewarding loyalty and is protecting "the tribe".

bartread 10y ago

Spot on. The same is true in the UK. I've liked a lot of my colleagues over the years, and still count a fair few as friends, but the idea of a business being "family"? No way. Working for a company is a transaction, plain and simple, unless of course it's your company. That obviously changes things, because you'll inevitably be more invested in it - including emotionally. Learned the hard way by a man with powerful emotions.

jimbokun 10y ago

True, an employer-employee relationship is very different from family relationships. However, I would have really appreciated this level of detail and transparency when I was laid off. I think the first thing the person who called me to lay me off said over the phone was "So you probably know why I'm calling." Uh, no, yes? Is this supposed to be a guessing game?