3 ms·

I was a fairly junior manager at the beginning of COVID when my company decided to make a deep cut (20% of the company) in order to make sure we would survive.

I was a fairly junior manager at the beginning of COVID when my company decided to make a deep cut (20% of the company) in order to make sure we would survive. I didn't even know about the layoffs until after they happened which annoyed me quite a bit. The director of engineering for my team and 3-4 others was the one to do the calls to each laid off engineer. The 2 engineers that got laid off on my team were pretty recent hires. One was only around for a couple of weeks. They were both already contributing a good amount to the team though which annoyed me even more that my input wasn't taking into account because I would've pushed for different people to be let go instead. I offered to try and give up some salary to keep one of them because he was on a visa and would have to find a new job within 90 days or something like that. Everything worked out in the end with both engineers that were let go but the "bias for action" by executives and middle management in these kinds of scenarios pisses me off quite a bit since they usually don't ask for any input from the people actually working with the employees that are getting laid off.

pc86 4y ago
I don't mean any offense by this but it's very clear by this sentiment that you're a junior, (maybe) mid-level still. For myriad reasons, it's not always practical to discuss potential layoffs. It's certainly not ethical to discuss "who should stay?" with more junior folks on the same team who are themselves staying. It's extraordinarily likely that your managers had much better insight into what the other folks were contributing that you did. Cutting salaries to maintain team size has been tried time and time again, and every time the same thing happens: everyone takes a pay cut, the highest performers leave for more money, and both velocity and morale tank.
- rockostrich 4y ago
  I've been here more than 99% of the company and we're now at 2000+ (was ~50 when I started and was ~1000 when COVID hit). I've pivoted back to a lateral IC role but considering the size of the org at the time (not really that large, maybe 30 engineers total under the director) it was totally practical. The salary cut proposition would've been a one time thing to either give the laid off engineer enough time to find another role (because he had a temporary visa) or until we were comfortable enough to pay both of our full-time salaries (this actually would've happened fairly quickly).

pc86 4y ago

I don't mean any offense by this but it's very clear by this sentiment that you're a junior, (maybe) mid-level still. For myriad reasons, it's not always practical to discuss potential layoffs. It's certainly not ethical to discuss "who should stay?" with more junior folks on the same team who are themselves staying. It's extraordinarily likely that your managers had much better insight into what the other folks were contributing that you did. Cutting salaries to maintain team size has been tried time and time again, and every time the same thing happens: everyone takes a pay cut, the highest performers leave for more money, and both velocity and morale tank.

rockostrich 4y ago
I've been here more than 99% of the company and we're now at 2000+ (was ~50 when I started and was ~1000 when COVID hit). I've pivoted back to a lateral IC role but considering the size of the org at the time (not really that large, maybe 30 engineers total under the director) it was totally practical. The salary cut proposition would've been a one time thing to either give the laid off engineer enough time to find another role (because he had a temporary visa) or until we were comfortable enough to pay both of our full-time salaries (this actually would've happened fairly quickly).