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Each person being laid off deserves a private meeting with their manager where they are told this. The fact that they hired 900 people they now no longer need
by wedowhatwedo 5y ago
Each person being laid off deserves a private meeting with their manager where they are told this. The fact that they hired 900 people they now no longer need is a failing of the CEO by itself. If they work remotely, it can be a zoom meeting.
Being told in a meeting with 900 people by someone you don't know is rude and tells me that anyone in leadership in this company are people I would not like to work for. The fact that he was more concerned about his feelings than the feelings of the 900 is even more evidence that this person has absolutely no empathy and managing people is the wrong job for them.
- swalsh 5y agoNot to mention the CEO spent more time talking about how this is impacting HIM. When you're laying people off, this isn't about you. Noone cares about you, this is about the people getting laid off. You need to be concerned about their feelings, what you're going to do to help THEM.
- throwaway6734 5y ago>The fact that they hired 900 people they now no longer need is a failing of the CEO by itself How so? Business circumstances are constantly changing
- disgruntledphd2 5y agoYou don't hire 900 people over one Zoom call. At some point, you have to figure out if you are hiring too many people, so you don't end up in a situation like this.
- agrippanux 5y agoIf you’re letting go of 900 people, for the average person their manager is also being let go. In a good amount of cases, probably their manager’s manager. I think it was a good call for the CEO to do it instead of outsourcing to HR or a COO. He didn’t try to hide behind another exec. Anyone being let go - especially at the holidays - is going to be pretty pissed about it, and it was the right thing for the CEO to take the slings and arrows for it instead of an underling.
- devy 5y ago> I think it was a good call for the CEO to do it instead of outsourcing to HR or a COO. There was actually a movie about these outsourced "downziser" organizations/consultants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_in_the_Air_(2009_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_in_the_Air_(2009_film)
- astockwell 5y agoOffice Space, anyone?
- A4ET8a8uTh0 5y agoYes, but even there the consultant made a point about making the transition as smooth for the fired person as possible. The whole point was not to stir up negative emotions, which by their very nature are unpredictable.
- usrusr 5y agoSure, but the client still pays the consultant for economic reasons: soften the emotional blow to the employee being let go in order to soften the reputation blow to the company. If the employer does not care for reputation (or, what seems more likely in this case, key persons might actually like that particular type of reputation), why would they pay?
- aaomidi 5y agoTaking the slings and arrows for it by entirely protecting himself with a one way call? Nice meme
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- MonkeyClub 5y agoDoing this hierarchically is already a solved issue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Joz-tAsJ6as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Joz-tAsJ6as
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- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- sdfghderwg 5y agoLets think it through. Even if each person is given 5 minutes of personal time with the person doing the firing, at 8 hours per day assuming no breaks, that's 5 * 900 / 60 / 8 = 9 days. Almost two business weeks. That means that 900 people will have a zoom meeting scheduled two weeks ahead of time, and while they wait they see that everyone who goes into that meeting is fired. Does this sounds like a better way of doing it, to you?
- sweezyjeezy 5y agoThis was horrendous optics, basically asking to get shared virally and draw more attention to the bad situation the company is in. The CEO made it about himself / the company, that's all people are going to get from Google searches for a time to come. Managers could give them the news en masse as efficiently and infinitely more humanely.
- whimsicalism 5y agoNo, that doesn't sound like a better way, but it does sound like you aren't particularly grasping what they are proposing.
- PLenz 5y agoYour algo can easily be parallelized by increasing the number of people firing.
- treeman79 5y agoHeard many stories of it being done this way. Extreme anxiety for everyone as people wait to see if they get called in.
- sdfghderwg 5y agoMy point exactly.
- danaris 5y agoTaking the time to do it with respect for the individuals, rather than treating them all like interchangeable fodder? Yeah, that seems better to me.
- golemotron 5y agoIsn't that 'employee privilege'? People who are in business for themselves often lose clients without notice. Employees easily forget how much they are shielded from the market.
- namdnay 5y agoWell… yes? Employees trade lower revenue for greater stability
- golemotron 5y agoBut, the query wasn't about stability. It was about emotional support.
- namdnay 5y agoyes, of which you expect more when you enter an employee-employer relationship than when you are independent
- golemotron 5y agoI'm not sure that's wise.
- namdnay 5y agoI know that the zeitgeist is to say “your employer doesn’t care about you, don’t care about them etc”, but honestly in my experience the employer-employee relationship is much more stable and human than a contractor-client one
- golemotron 5y agoIt's a buffer against the market. Nice when it works, but you can't count on it fully. Sometimes the outside world leaks through. I don't think anyone wanted to fire 900 people at once in this situation.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- renewiltord 5y agoNo. At mass layoffs it's better to do it instantly and en masse because otherwise you cause massive anxiety in everyone, including those who will stay. It's also why multiple rounds of layoffs are a bad idea. Just do everything at once and move on.
- consp 5y agoUsually people still need to do something in the period before they are actually laid off. With these kind of calls it's scorched earth from there onward and I would question everything everyone does which is counterproductive.
- renewiltord 5y agoNot for these roles, I don't think. You can just lock their laptop and call it a day, which is what they did. This is fungible labour.
- DnDGrognard 5y agoThe CEO doesn't really pass the "fit and proper person" test does He
- twox2 5y agoI've worked for multiple companies that have had major reductions in force at times. When folks get laid off in a group, it has never been done 1:1. Usually the group getting let go is told all at once separately from the rest of the company. It's done per team or per department, so if you're a software engineer getting cut, you're told at the same time with the other software engineers getting cut, but yes usually the guy that runs the department will be present.