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If you're in the business of concealing responsibility, then by all means, use the word "lay off". Employers like to use "lay off" to imply that it was not the
by jholman 16y ago
If you're in the business of concealing responsibility, then by all means, use the word "lay off".
Employers like to use "lay off" to imply that it was not the fault of the management team, it's not because they're bad guys, it's just the unfortunate reality. That's partly true, it's partly bullshit, and the fact is that it affects people profoundly, and calling it a "lay-off" doesn't help things.
Employees who have been terminated like to use "lay off" to imply that it wasn't their fault, to avoid impacting their hireability. But if the ex-employee had been a net asset, they wouldn't be laying that ex-employee off, unless they were liquidating the entire company.
In practice, lean times give management, whether soft-hearted or black-hearted, an opportunity to make hard calls, in the equityholders' favour, at the expense of the employees. You can like that, hate that, whatever.
I prefer to eschew both "lay off" and "fire", and use the word "terminate", as in "one employee was terminated yesterday, and two thousand were terminated at some point last month". I do this in the hopes of being starkly clear about the simple fact of the termination, and avoiding the sugar coat. You can also use "terminated with cause", which is a legal distinction in some jurisdictions, and I think it's an interesting one.
Oh, but... if I wanted to start a thread that contrasts threads called "who's hiring", then I'd be clever and rhyme and call my thread "who's firing". And if I were responding to that thread, I'd use the word in the topic question. And I wouldn't whip out the pedantry unless someone else did it first.
end-of-rant
- kevinpet 16y ago"lay off" says it is the fault of the management team. "fire" says it is the fault of employee. In the US, the standard is employment at will, which means you can terminate without cause at any time (unless you are actually terminating for a disallowed cause, confusingly), so "terminated for cause" is a small minority of "fired". Of course, within those people who are more or less interchangeable, of course the ones let go are the poorest value, but there's a significant gap between someone who was let go because the company wanted to reduce the number of engineers they employed and someone who was let go because he is incompetent and the employer turns right around and starts advertising to replace him.
- hartror 16y agoA shareholder takes the opposite view, layoffs can be a great thing for a companies bottom line (at least in the short term).
- nfw 16y agoBut if the ex-employee had been a net asset, they wouldn't be laying that ex-employee off, unless they were liquidating the entire company. I've worked as an executive in large organizations and this is flatly untrue. Here's a few situations I've seen or participated in: - Scrap the project. Get rid of everybody who is assigned to it. - Not happy with group's performance? Don't fix the group's management, scrap the entire group. - Product X isn't doing well in the market. Fire everyone who is on the product X team, and acquire the company that makes product Y as a replacement. - Our access to cash is down, as is our bottom line. Reduce your budget by 20%, again, while maintaining coverage. (read: keep your cheap, shitty people, fire your good ones.) - We're not starting many new projects. As each existing project comes to a conclusion, get rid of all the resources. When you're trying to close a large shortfall you just accept that some good people will be let go for stupid reasons, and that's acceptable. So if you've been laid off, and some ignorant jerk tries to tell you that it means you weren't a net asset, ignore them. Whether it happened during growth, decline or turnaround, it's possible you were let go because you were dead wood; but it's also entirely possibly that you are fantastic but were let go anyway.