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According to some comments from employees, the company had an all-hands meeting where everyone was sent home and told to check their email over the weekend to f
by Deimorz 8y ago
According to some comments from employees, the company had an all-hands meeting where everyone was sent home and told to check their email over the weekend to find out if they're being laid off or not: https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/af1n7f/spacex_will_reduce_its_workforce_by_10_percent/edute2h/?context=2 https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/af1n7f/spacex_will_...
- viraptor 8y agoWhatever the reasons for the workforce reduction, this way of doing it is just unnecessarily cruel.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago> this way of doing it is just unnecessarily cruel The right way to lay off varies culture to culture. I worked on a trading desk. 1:1 personal lay-offs followed by security cleaning out your desk seemed unnecessarily cruel. An e-mail out of hours—and an offer to schedule a phone call—seemed far more gentle. In other cultures, the human touch matters. Given SpaceX’s results-oriented culture, their approach seems appropriate. The goal was to prevent those not getting laid off from seeking new jobs while keeping those being laid off from panicking those staying. Letting everyone go home, finish their after-work schenanigans, and then—before recruiters have a chance to nip—deliver the news is a good balance for the relevant parameters.
- jcroll 8y agowhat is the less cruel way to lay off 10% of your workforce
- viraptor 8y agoTell the affected ones immediately. Don't tell the other 90% that they're potentially getting fired tomorrow. Treat people with respect and be transparent when you hold power over them.
- cyberferret 8y agoWell, rather than a "Don't come Monday" email on a weekend, which effectively gives them 0 working days notice, giving those employees say, 2 weeks notice that they will be terminated at least gives them a chance to re-train for another position or get their resumes together to try and find another job while still getting an income to pay for rent, food etc. FAR less 'cruel' to give them an opportunity to plan their exit and give them the psychological space to get used to the fact. EDIT: In light of the 'read the article' responses and downvotes, I wanted to clarify that my comment here is directly addressing the question "what is a less cruel way of laying people off" against the purported scenario above of people being told on Friday to go home and check their emails to see if they still have a job on Monday.
- FPGAhacker 8y agoThis rarely happens because of liability and security. It’s pretty common to be walked out by security after packing up your stuff when you are laid off.
- rhizome 8y agoAKA the first 10 minutes of the movie Margin Call.
- hermitdev 8y agoHeh, a hedge fund I worked at didn't even let you back to your desk. You were immediately escorted out by security. "Your personal effects at your desk will be mailed to you." Suppose there were exceptions to say grab keys, wallet or a purse, but you weren't packing up everything.
- mulmen 8y agoFrom the article: "SpaceX is offering a minimum of eight weeks’ pay and other benefits to laid-off workers, according to Shotwell’s email. The company will also provide assistance with career coaching, resume help and job searches." So SpaceX is giving employees two months to focus their full efforts on finding their next job. This seems less cruel than telling them they will lose their jobs and then expecting them to keep working.
- pointillistic 8y agoTo tell people face to face, to have the courage instead of hiding behind the impersonal email. Basic etiquette.
- mulmen 8y agoI've been laid off face to face. It's not enjoyable. The logistics of safely laying off 10% of a workforce really prohibits this anyway.
- rleigh 8y agoIt's not enjoyable, but it's still the right thing to do. As for the logistics, each member of staff can be talked to by their immediate manager, making it scale easily. Matter of fact, this once happened to me, and my boss was as clearly upset to let me go as I was to leave. But everyone being let go was informed and given their notice as soon as the workday started, so there was no uncertainty or delay.
- mulmen 8y agoWhat if the managers are fired too? Should they be kept on just long enough to fire their reports? Is that somehow more humane? Employment is a business deal. If you consider your relationship with your manager to be personal then you have an unhealthy view of your job.
- taneq 8y agoDo it progressively rather than telling everyone "go home and start guessing whether you'll come back." Hack and slash will always have casualties, and you'll lose good people. If you go down the chain asking people confidentially whether there's anyone they feel the team would be better off without, then you can work on removing the weakest links without making the entire company feel like they can't trust you.
- mulmen 8y agoWhat's less cruel? Face to face meetings? Layoffs suck, how is this particularly egregious?
- cyberferret 8y agoSeriously, if you cannot see that "fire by email" is far more impersonal and disconnecting than compassionately meeting with the employee 1 on 1 and giving them a definitive exit path along with the financial support to do so, then please do not ever work in HR or be responsible for employing people in the future. To subject ALL your employees to the 50/50 prospect that they will have a job come next working day is tantamount to playing Russian Roulette with them using a gun with a 2 bullet chamber - one loaded. The psychological toll even on the 'survivors' will be brutal.
- zorga 8y agoA business has no responsibility to financially support an ex-employee. If it does so, it's a gift, not something that should be expected.
- fzeroracer 8y agoAnd employees have no responsibility to stay at a company that treats ex-employees like shit. Actions like these are a great way to demoralize your workforce and entice higher-level employees to jump ship.
- Marsymars 8y agoIn many jurisdictions, such a responsibility does exist as mandated by law.
- zorga 8y agoNot in this country.
- rhizome 8y agoI imagine it's possible that dehumanizing layoffs like this will put SpaceX at a competitive disadvantage, its lunch eventually getting eaten by companies who do care enough about their employees to interact with them in person regarding the business of the company and their place in it, good or bad. This would come out in increased efficiencies due to no surprise-axed-or-not email always threatening to land in their inboxes.
- WheelsAtLarge 8y agoFrom what I've read about Musk, doing it this way is part of his management style. People's feelings come second to getting things done efficiently. Well, efficiently as he sees it.
- omeid2 8y agoThere is nothing efficient about ruining people's weekend while they are being fired. This could have been done by sending out the emails at the end of Friday without making people nervous and worried over weekend.
- dilyevsky 8y ago+1 good way to have the remaining 90% to think long and hard about working some place else.
- UnpossibleJim 8y agoI actually like what Musk has done, technology wise, but if this management style doesn't point to him possibly being on the spectrum, I'm not sure what will.
- m0zg 8y agoI disagree. What would be more cruel is to keep people guessing for weeks, or to do several smaller layoffs. That's how it's usually done, and it utterly decimates the morale, and causes the best people to leave. The best way to do a layoff is to cut once, cut deep, and do it quickly. And of course to not be an asshole and offer severance compensation to folks who were laid off.
- viraptor 8y agoYou can still tell everyone immediately at the end of the day. Or just send the email on the weekend. You don't have to say you're going to do it first and keep everyone worried.
- m0zg 8y agoYou can't when you're dealing with 6000+ people. Likely even the managers didn't know so as to avoid feeding the rumor mill. They'll now need to make up their minds about their reports whom they wouldn't mind losing.
- cortesoft 8y agoNo way are the managers going to all stay late on Friday and figure out who to fire on Saturday. Those discussions have already happened, and they know who is being let go.
- m0zg 8y agoThis is Musk we're talking about here. He might have decided this over lunch a few hours before the announcement.
- Too 8y agoAre you saying top executives selected 10% out of all 6000 employees without consulting their direct managers who to fire? That would be a random 10% sample at best. Obviously managers would be involved in deciding who is worth to keep or not.
- purplezooey 8y agoI think we can all agree it is chicken shit to not tell people in person.
- dilyevsky 8y agoLooks like Lumberghs of hn disagree.
- Dylan16807 8y agoOh of course, anyone that disagrees with you must be an idiot taking the perspective of a bad boss, even when they're talking about their experience being fired.
- rco8786 8y agoThere’s no good way to do this. At least this way they find out in the comfort of their own homes. How would you do it?
- teainspace 8y agoHow would you execute a 10% layoff at a company sensitive to employee sabotage? I agree I would prefer a face to face personally, but I don't see another way here. To drag it out another way would leave the company and its operations highly exposed to those individuals leaving in my opinion.
- 77pt77 8y agoStandard technique to avoid confrontations.
- glitchc 8y agoWonderful, all hail Elon, the next Howard Hughes. Seriously, can modern CEOs actually grow a pair and actually face their employees rather than hide behind tech?
- ryanmercer 8y agoThat's brutal. Back around 2008 my OpCo laid off employees for the first time in it's hundredish year history at the time when our current owner laid off people from every OpCo. It was almost as savage, they went around the office of 70-80 people and grabbed some people at what seemed like random, took them in one door of the conference room and asked them what personal belongings they needed immediately, got those items and had corporate security see them off the property with their severance information. At least that wasn't "go home and worry all weekend" though. Great way to sabotage company-wide morale SpaceX.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- protomyth 8y agoThat would be a horrible e-mail to get caught in a spam filter.
- rbobby 8y agoHmm... someone mean could certainly have some fun sending fake emails to other employees.