3 ms·

I've had to lay off a decent number of people over the course of my career. The way I have always justified it is that I'm keeping the company healthy, and allo

I've had to lay off a decent number of people over the course of my career. The way I have always justified it is that I'm keeping the company healthy, and allowing far more people to keep their jobs in doing so. I'm sure there are cases where restructuring was done to the detriment of the business. I don't believe I've personally participated in any of those. That is part of the reason I took those jobs. Someone was going to do it, and I felt that I could do it in a way that kept the business healthy and was as respectful and careful about the humans impacted as possible (ensuring severance, having 1-1 conversations with every impacted person on my team, etc). For context I was an executive brought in to restructure software companies after they were purchased or tucked in by the LBO side of a PE firm.

Symmetry 8y ago
In theory it would be better to cut everyone's pay than to lay off some people. But this brings lots of complications. https://www.econlib.org/archives/2013/09/why_dont_wages.html https://www.econlib.org/archives/2013/09/why_dont_wages.html
- jmvoodoo 8y ago
  A lot of these morale problems happen after layoffs as well. If the layoffs are deep enough it makes sense to move the entire company to a different city and completely reboot. In those situations I've seen as much as 90% of the company churn in the course of the year. Once the dust settles it's basically a new company and can feel like a high growth startup.
- jjeaff 8y ago
  Would be interesting to take a vote from the employees. Would they rather take a collective paycut or have x% chance of getting laid off?
- gdy 8y ago
  And the best employees, who can find a new job even during recession, will leave.
  - aaron_m04 8y ago
    There's more to a job than pay rate. If the best employees leave because of a recession-time temporary pay cut, maybe the company culture was rotten and the company deserves to go down!

Symmetry 8y ago

In theory it would be better to cut everyone's pay than to lay off some people. But this brings lots of complications. https://www.econlib.org/archives/2013/09/why_dont_wages.html https://www.econlib.org/archives/2013/09/why_dont_wages.html

jmvoodoo 8y ago
A lot of these morale problems happen after layoffs as well. If the layoffs are deep enough it makes sense to move the entire company to a different city and completely reboot. In those situations I've seen as much as 90% of the company churn in the course of the year. Once the dust settles it's basically a new company and can feel like a high growth startup.
jjeaff 8y ago
Would be interesting to take a vote from the employees. Would they rather take a collective paycut or have x% chance of getting laid off?
gdy 8y ago
And the best employees, who can find a new job even during recession, will leave.
- aaron_m04 8y ago
  There's more to a job than pay rate. If the best employees leave because of a recession-time temporary pay cut, maybe the company culture was rotten and the company deserves to go down!