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If you have to fire so many people at once, it means you've fucked up. They should have never been hired, or individually fired a while back, or whatever. It m
by smabie 6y ago
If you have to fire so many people at once, it means you've fucked up. They should have never been hired, or individually fired a while back, or whatever.
It means the company is making a dramatic shift in how they do things. While this could be good (mass layoffs often mean that the company has finally realized they have a problem), what is definitely means is that they've made a lot of mistakes. It's essentially admitting that they've made suboptimal decisions.
That is why it is reported on, not because it's a morally bad thing or whatever.
- irjustin 6y agoTo say you've fucked up in the face of a global pandemic seems a bit obtuse. The current state of normal is not the same way to operate when there is no COVID. Sort of like saying we should have always operated like the bubonic plague never went away even after it did. Treating the situations the same is too dogmatic.
- smabie 6y agoA company should be responding to new information as it comes in and immediately act. People should have been gradually been fired since the start of covid, not all at once months later.
- shap3 6y agoFiring people in a continual, drip-feed fashion is devastating to morale of the remaining workers who are fearful they may be next, and sends a message of a slow, rotting decline. Conventional wisdom if you're going to let a large number of people go is to do it once, do it correctly, and act decisively.
- smabie 6y agoYou may be right, I hadn't considered the human element. But to clarify, the point of letting go small groups at a time isn't to eventually fire 900 people. It's that you're taking a Bayesian approach and constantly charting a new course for your business. The risk with firing 900 people all at once is what if, in a month, everything is good and they need them all back? By only letting go of small groups of people at a time, you both hedge yourself to future risk while also staying open to future up swings. It's like rebalancing a portfolio: you adjust your allocations gradually as new information comes in. This is better than one day deciding its time to sell everything or buy everything.
- irjustin 6y agoAgreed on the parent comment, the human element is very real. Morale especially during a time of global pandemic is a knife edge to manage. > The risk with firing 900 people all at once is what if, in a month, everything is good and they need them all back? By only letting go of small groups of people at a time, you both hedge yourself to future risk while also staying open to future up swings. Again you're looking at it too closely to a machine. Machines don't care and pure efficiency says this statement is correct/better. If you treat your staff like a portfolio, you are not carrying the tenants of being a good leader. That's not to say that people don't do that. It happens all the time - treating employees sub-human, merely pawns to be sacrificed. A portfolio is a portfolio and the analogy does-not/should-not carry well to staff lest we all be slaves where literal ownership of other humans is acceptable again.
- amonteiro 6y agoBusiness is all about calculated risks. You can't tell the future, so you make decisions based on your best guess on how the future will play out. The covid downturn happened over 3 months (feb - april). To start laying off people you have be sure there's no recovery happening around the corner. For example, you may bet that business will improve in may, june, july that will save their jobs and your business outlook. I'm obviously over simplifying since projects, release dates, projected ad revenue and a 100 other factors play into it. It's easy to sit on the side lines and judge it with the history behind us, but reality is more complicated.