6 ms·

I'm a retired developer, successfully avoiding management through my career. This is sooo bad, and I can come up with several things to do better, but I'm havin

by ralphc 7y ago

I'm a retired developer, successfully avoiding management through my career. This is sooo bad, and I can come up with several things to do better, but I'm having a hard time figuring out what would have been a _good_ way to do this. You have to lay off hundreds of employees, ideally all at the same time to avoid rumors & backchannels, and do it remotely. How do you pull that off?

tyingq 7y ago
I've had to do it as a leader...hundreds laid off. I flew around the globe and had a lot of face to face meetings.
- phalangion 7y ago
  Not really something to encourage at this time.
  - tyingq 7y ago
    Physical one on ones, yes. Conference call mass layoffs, with misleading subject lines though...that's just lazy and disrespectful. Orchestrating 400ish one on ones via Zoom wouldn't have been that much effort. I assume they could have spread it across several leaders. Edit: From their careers page..."while prioritizing a culture that celebrates diversity, inclusion, and integrity"
    - LanceH 7y ago
      How about calling an "all hands" meeting and telling the employees who are staying to sneak out to lunch? Been there. Work everyone hard until that last day. Do it on the last day of the month so they have no health insurance the next day. Been there.
      - tyingq 7y ago
        It's especially awful when it's a company that pushed some agenda about integrity, loyalty, etc.
        Ididntdothis 7y ago
        The golden rule is the more they talk about it the less they have it.
jefftk 7y ago
I think you gather a bunch of trusted delegates (probably senior managers) and make a lot of 1:1 video calls
- alistairSH 7y ago
  Even if 1:1 was untenable, at least team level discussions, not 400 at once. At live, not some robot-voiced dystopian nightmare meeting.
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago
  > make a lot of 1:1 video calls 440 people. Take ten senior people, CEO included, and divide the list into groups of five. News is delivered to bunches of five at a time, calls capped at five minutes, with one-on-one follow-up calls to be scheduled for later in the week. After forty-five minutes, you’d be done. Those forty-five minutes will be mayhem, and you probably want to disable company services at the start of that process, but it would be better than this. (Next up, do the same thing at the team level to reassure those staying.) This is one of the costs of a flat hierarchy, by the way. You don’t have managers who can work in parallel.
  - woah 7y ago
    That sounds like a recipe to get the exact same kind of article as this one written
SuoDuanDao 7y ago
My fantasy response would be to invert the company's 80/20 hours and let everyone who wants to stay on for 25% of their former hours and 40% of their former pay. Then only lay off people who didn't take that offer to make up the difference. But having to actually lay hundreds of people off? TBH I'd probably outsource it to a group of specialists. I could see myself delivering bad news to a handful of people but that many... I'd be useless a few hours into the first day.
- thinkingkong 7y ago
  You cant do that without immediately opening yourself up to being sued for “constructive dismissal”. Theres no good way to do them. It always sucks.
  - JumpCrisscross 7y ago
    You’d also be more likely to lose your top performers.
    - SuoDuanDao 7y ago
      You wouldn't have to let go everyone who doesn't take the deal if some people did. But everyone who doesn't would be taking the risk that they're not as valuable as they thought. I'm sure some of the 40% who were let go would have been valuable to keep around for their talent, even if their actual job disappeared with the customers.
  - SuoDuanDao 7y ago
    It's so weird to me that you can dismiss people 'at will' but not offer them reduced responsibilities and pay to stay on. I get that we don't want people doing the professional equivalent of being an awful partner until your S.O. initiates the breakup, but surely it would be useful to let firms get creative when drastic measures are genuinely needed.
ikeyany 7y ago
Not by a disembodied voice? I was thinking a video led by executive leadership or head of personnel.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
andrewaylett 7y ago
I'm not a manager. But I've been in organisations where staff were being laid off. They've all started by telling _everyone_ that the layoffs were coming, then holding individual meetings with everyone who might possibly be affected to discuss what that means in practice. You avoid the rumours by being transparent about what's going on. It's not like it's not going to be public in a few hours anyway.
- torstenvl 7y ago
  That is absolutely the worst possible way to do that. Your workers will become paranoid and anxious. They will "go to ground" as is the natural instinct of any prey animal. All of this makes the lay-off process much, much worse for those affected, it also hurts the morale and productivity of those who remain.
  - samstave 7y ago
    And they will start backing up anything and everything they can to take with them.
    - ginko 7y ago
      Why would they do that? Do you trust employees so little?
      - whatshisface 7y ago
        Let's say you trust one employee a lot maybe with a 1 in 1,000 chance of defecting. The formula is 1-(1-1/1000)^n, so if you're sacking 1,000 people that's a 63% chance of at least one defection.
        oblio 7y ago
        If you're firing 1000 employees and 1 "defecting" (war time vocabulary you're using there, referring to treason, by the way...) and your business is in trouble, then your foundation is very shaky. Plus if I were your competitor I could probably head hunt 5-10 of your key lay offs and probably have them recreate your IP just based on their collective memory, anyway. This paranoia should stop. It's covered by NDAs and such, anyway.
postingawayonhn 7y ago
Start with an all hands video call (raises no early suspicions) to explain the company's situation and the need for layoffs. As soon as the need for layoffs is explained send an email to every employee notifying them of whether they are being laid off or not.
- IshKebab 7y ago
  Exactly. Pretty obvious I would have thought.
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  In my view the direct managers of each employee should have a one-on-one with the laid off people to explain the situation. Takes some courage though.
room271 7y ago
It's really not difficult to think of many ways that would have been an improvement over what they did.
xkcd-sucks 7y ago
Why is preventing "rumors and backchannels" so essential as to take priority over trust and human decency?
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  Because Bird is big a enough company that the people calling the shots feel responsible to the organization, not responsible for the organization and it can be argued that "preventing rumors and back-channels" is good for the company. This kind of change in thinking happens to almost all organizations as they grow and takes a lot of effort to avoid, it's not unique to VC funded startups though that environment certainly makes it harder to prevent. Edit: Just to be clear I'm not defending Bird or absolving them of blame, I'm just describing how these things can happen.
  - Nextgrid 7y ago
    It's insane that companies become "big" when their whole product and business model is unsustainable to begin with. And at least if you're operating at a loss you'd think that you would do everything in your power to stay small and not spend even more money on lots of employees unless absolutely necessary.
  - asveikau 7y ago
    Sounds like they let themselves grow "big" irresponsibly if they need such a layoff.
- michaelt 7y ago
  Large-scale corporate change has a natural dichotomy. If news gets out before all the details are finalised, so no-one is blindsided by the announcement when it happens, some people will have lots of time to have sleepless nights and complain about how they're not being told whether they still have a job; and people you hoped to retain will start sending out CVs. If news is kept secret until you know every last precise detail, people will be upset this problem has come out of nowhere without them being warned, and that they weren't trusted with secrets, and that they weren't consulted on who in their team would be fired. And of course, in an announcement to 400 people, you'll have at least one person who'd have preferred the other option...
racl101 7y ago
Exactly. Everybody can be a critic but few people have the faintest idea of how to do this without prolonging the suffering. If it leaks and you have a mutiny that's a disaster. Really, it's very lose-losel People will feel betrayed no matter what.

by ralphc 7y ago

tyingq 7y ago

I've had to do it as a leader...hundreds laid off. I flew around the globe and had a lot of face to face meetings.

phalangion 7y ago
Not really something to encourage at this time.
- tyingq 7y ago
  Physical one on ones, yes. Conference call mass layoffs, with misleading subject lines though...that's just lazy and disrespectful. Orchestrating 400ish one on ones via Zoom wouldn't have been that much effort. I assume they could have spread it across several leaders. Edit: From their careers page..."while prioritizing a culture that celebrates diversity, inclusion, and integrity"
  - LanceH 7y ago
    How about calling an "all hands" meeting and telling the employees who are staying to sneak out to lunch? Been there. Work everyone hard until that last day. Do it on the last day of the month so they have no health insurance the next day. Been there.
    - tyingq 7y ago
      It's especially awful when it's a company that pushed some agenda about integrity, loyalty, etc.
      - Ididntdothis 7y ago
        The golden rule is the more they talk about it the less they have it.

jefftk 7y ago

I think you gather a bunch of trusted delegates (probably senior managers) and make a lot of 1:1 video calls

alistairSH 7y ago
Even if 1:1 was untenable, at least team level discussions, not 400 at once. At live, not some robot-voiced dystopian nightmare meeting.
JumpCrisscross 7y ago
> make a lot of 1:1 video calls 440 people. Take ten senior people, CEO included, and divide the list into groups of five. News is delivered to bunches of five at a time, calls capped at five minutes, with one-on-one follow-up calls to be scheduled for later in the week. After forty-five minutes, you’d be done. Those forty-five minutes will be mayhem, and you probably want to disable company services at the start of that process, but it would be better than this. (Next up, do the same thing at the team level to reassure those staying.) This is one of the costs of a flat hierarchy, by the way. You don’t have managers who can work in parallel.
- woah 7y ago
  That sounds like a recipe to get the exact same kind of article as this one written

SuoDuanDao 7y ago

My fantasy response would be to invert the company's 80/20 hours and let everyone who wants to stay on for 25% of their former hours and 40% of their former pay. Then only lay off people who didn't take that offer to make up the difference. But having to actually lay hundreds of people off? TBH I'd probably outsource it to a group of specialists. I could see myself delivering bad news to a handful of people but that many... I'd be useless a few hours into the first day.

thinkingkong 7y ago
You cant do that without immediately opening yourself up to being sued for “constructive dismissal”. Theres no good way to do them. It always sucks.
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago
  You’d also be more likely to lose your top performers.
  - SuoDuanDao 7y ago
    You wouldn't have to let go everyone who doesn't take the deal if some people did. But everyone who doesn't would be taking the risk that they're not as valuable as they thought. I'm sure some of the 40% who were let go would have been valuable to keep around for their talent, even if their actual job disappeared with the customers.
- SuoDuanDao 7y ago
  It's so weird to me that you can dismiss people 'at will' but not offer them reduced responsibilities and pay to stay on. I get that we don't want people doing the professional equivalent of being an awful partner until your S.O. initiates the breakup, but surely it would be useful to let firms get creative when drastic measures are genuinely needed.

ikeyany 7y ago

Not by a disembodied voice? I was thinking a video led by executive leadership or head of personnel.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

andrewaylett 7y ago

I'm not a manager. But I've been in organisations where staff were being laid off. They've all started by telling _everyone_ that the layoffs were coming, then holding individual meetings with everyone who might possibly be affected to discuss what that means in practice. You avoid the rumours by being transparent about what's going on. It's not like it's not going to be public in a few hours anyway.

torstenvl 7y ago
That is absolutely the worst possible way to do that. Your workers will become paranoid and anxious. They will "go to ground" as is the natural instinct of any prey animal. All of this makes the lay-off process much, much worse for those affected, it also hurts the morale and productivity of those who remain.
- samstave 7y ago
  And they will start backing up anything and everything they can to take with them.
  - ginko 7y ago
    Why would they do that? Do you trust employees so little?
    - whatshisface 7y ago
      Let's say you trust one employee a lot maybe with a 1 in 1,000 chance of defecting. The formula is 1-(1-1/1000)^n, so if you're sacking 1,000 people that's a 63% chance of at least one defection.
      - oblio 7y ago
        If you're firing 1000 employees and 1 "defecting" (war time vocabulary you're using there, referring to treason, by the way...) and your business is in trouble, then your foundation is very shaky. Plus if I were your competitor I could probably head hunt 5-10 of your key lay offs and probably have them recreate your IP just based on their collective memory, anyway. This paranoia should stop. It's covered by NDAs and such, anyway.

postingawayonhn 7y ago

Start with an all hands video call (raises no early suspicions) to explain the company's situation and the need for layoffs. As soon as the need for layoffs is explained send an email to every employee notifying them of whether they are being laid off or not.

IshKebab 7y ago
Exactly. Pretty obvious I would have thought.
Ididntdothis 7y ago
In my view the direct managers of each employee should have a one-on-one with the laid off people to explain the situation. Takes some courage though.

room271 7y ago

It's really not difficult to think of many ways that would have been an improvement over what they did.

xkcd-sucks 7y ago

Why is preventing "rumors and backchannels" so essential as to take priority over trust and human decency?

dsfyu404ed 7y ago
Because Bird is big a enough company that the people calling the shots feel responsible to the organization, not responsible for the organization and it can be argued that "preventing rumors and back-channels" is good for the company. This kind of change in thinking happens to almost all organizations as they grow and takes a lot of effort to avoid, it's not unique to VC funded startups though that environment certainly makes it harder to prevent. Edit: Just to be clear I'm not defending Bird or absolving them of blame, I'm just describing how these things can happen.
- Nextgrid 7y ago
  It's insane that companies become "big" when their whole product and business model is unsustainable to begin with. And at least if you're operating at a loss you'd think that you would do everything in your power to stay small and not spend even more money on lots of employees unless absolutely necessary.
- asveikau 7y ago
  Sounds like they let themselves grow "big" irresponsibly if they need such a layoff.
michaelt 7y ago
Large-scale corporate change has a natural dichotomy. If news gets out before all the details are finalised, so no-one is blindsided by the announcement when it happens, some people will have lots of time to have sleepless nights and complain about how they're not being told whether they still have a job; and people you hoped to retain will start sending out CVs. If news is kept secret until you know every last precise detail, people will be upset this problem has come out of nowhere without them being warned, and that they weren't trusted with secrets, and that they weren't consulted on who in their team would be fired. And of course, in an announcement to 400 people, you'll have at least one person who'd have preferred the other option...

racl101 7y ago

Exactly. Everybody can be a critic but few people have the faintest idea of how to do this without prolonging the suffering. If it leaks and you have a mutiny that's a disaster. Really, it's very lose-losel People will feel betrayed no matter what.