5 ms·

I would be surprised if any CEO would ever actually say there are layoffs until they happen.

danaris 4y ago
As true as that may be, I think it's indicative of some fairly deep-seated problems in our culture, and it very much needs to change.
- lbotos 4y ago
  This sounds more combative then I mean, so do take it in the best light: In what ways do you think it can be different?
  - danaris 4y ago
    Well, I have a short answer and a long answer to this. The long answer would be more or less an essay, and involve a lot of fairly far-left (at least from an American perspective) views, like "we should be basing our society and our work culture on the benefit of the workers, and of all humanity, rather than the corporate overlords" and "we need to radically restructure our corporate hierarchies, which would lead to it being much less likely that there would either be "layoffs" as we know them now, or a small executive class that could conceal their imminent occurrence from the rest of the company". But for today, I think I will stick with the short answer, which points in the same direction, but is smaller in scope. I think it can be most clearly expressed in two parts: First, we need to work on reducing the toxic levels of deceit and secrecy in our corporate culture. Hide everyone's salary, hide the metrics we're evaluated on, hide how poorly the company is doing—all of this is designed to make things either more convenient or more profitable for the executives and shareholders, at the expense of the workers, and at the expense of basic honesty. I'm not saying everyone needs to be 100% open about everything all the time; that's fairly obviously too extreme. But the company itself (and, by extension, its executives and other core officials) needs to be more transparent with its workers, especially for as long as it is effectively their sole source of income. Second (and very much related), we need to find ways to break the mindset that the stock price is all. An awful lot of the deceit and secrecy—and, in fact, many of the other detrimental behaviors of companies and their executives—stem from the fact that the people at the top are obsessed with making sure the share price keeps growing. I think the way the stock price is treated by execs—and the stock/option-heavy compensation packages they often get—were probably based in something helpful and rational to start with (operating under the assumption that a higher stock price means a healthier company), but to the extent that that's true, it's fallen victim to Goodhart's Law ("any measure that becomes a target ceases to be a good measure"). How do we do these things? Haven't a clue, honestly. Our system is majorly messed up at every level right now, and chock full of feedback loops, so nearly anywhere you try to start will be resisted strongly without first improving things somewhere else...but conversely, any place you can make a difference will start to make it a little easier to improve things elsewhere.
DocTomoe 4y ago
Musk announced Twitter layoffs happening - and he hasn't even finalized the purchase of the company.
- skeeter2020 4y ago
  I think it's a mistake to look to people like Musk for good examples of empathetic, compassionate management that can be broadly applied. Ditto for Jobs (whose crown he's apparently taken up as the poster child for wanna-be successful sociopaths)
daniel-cussen 4y ago
It's counterfactual.
bombcar 4y ago
I've seen it be done, either publicly or privately; in smaller companies I've even seen people be told "you will be laid off at X date if we don't get Y funding" as a heads-up; especially when the management doesn't want to lay people off.
- arlcode 4y ago
  Yeah had that happen and it was clear why (small company closed down) Starting from 6 months the CEOs explained how things are and what would need to happen in order to avoid it. Two months prior they layed everyone off (including themselves) which is double the legally required minimum period. In the end we closed down the office together and parted ways. Most people had offers lined up and at least one colleague of mine ended up with a former customer. The CEO "advertised" him during the final call with the customer.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Yeah, I've been "laid off" by the same person three times in my career; each time he worked to hire me back as soon as he had a new venture going.
senectus1 4y ago
I worked for a mining company that was bought out, then announced there would be restructures and layoffs. it took 9 months for them to start.. by the time they did moral was so low they could not hire for new positions or replace needed skilled labor. the sites name was mud state wide. (Western Australia). I never want to go through that experience again. I got out after 8 month by asking for voluntary redundancy.
gumby 4y ago
Actually if you have more than 100 employees in a US location (which Unity does) you are required to give 60 days' notice per the WARN act. https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/termination/plantclosings https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/termination/plantclosings
- yakak 4y ago
  They pay out 60 days of notification pay in their severance packages and still don't notify. Technically, you can refuse that and I would guess that you would remain a worker who isn't allowed in the office.
- SpicyLemonZest 4y ago
  Their description here is misleading. Even if the employer is large enough to be covered, WARN act requirements only apply to "plant closings" where some particular site is shut down or "mass layoffs" which have to include either 33% of the people at a site with 150+ people or 500 people overall. Their detailed worker guide makes this clearer: https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/ETA/Layoff/pdfs/WorkerWARN2003.pdf https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/ETA/Layoff/pdfs/Worke...
  - labcomputer 4y ago
    WARN was written before remote work was common. I'm very curious to see how WARN is interpreted by the courts for remote workers. There is no case law as far as I know, and a quick ctrl-f of that DoL PDF for "remote" has no results. For example, is each remote worker considered to be working at a different "plant" (their home)? If so, it seems like the WARN act could never be triggered for remote workers. So a loophole is that fully remote workers don't get WARN protections. That seems to clearly violate the intent of the law, which is that reasonably-large businesses should give advance warning of layoffs. Or, are all the remote workers collectively considered to be working at one "remote plant"? In that case, WARN would be triggered if a company of, say, 20k people lays off as few as 3 remote workers in each state. That seems silly also. What about hybrid workers, where 1000 people "report to" or are "based at" one office, but nobody ever actually shows up (or maybe they do, but only for team-building exercises twice a year)? Are those workers truly "working at" that office site (and thus covered by WARN), or are they working at 1000 independent sites (and thus not covered)?
spookthesunset 4y ago
I've been in a startup where they gave advanced warning about layoffs. One major side effect is that productivity goes to sub zero because of the uncertainty of it all. After going through that, I can see reasons for both keeping people in the dark and giving advanced warning. Layoffs (or re-orgs for that matter) are never easy.
qbasic_forever 4y ago
IBM and HP in their waning years were pretty upfront in quarterly reports that their older staff were a liability and they were actively working to manage them out through early retirements, layoffs, etc.
- mathattack 4y ago
  Is that legal?
  - qbasic_forever 4y ago
    No and there are currently investigations ongoing: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2022/02/12/ibm-accused-of-ageism-older-workers-are-dinobabies-who-should-be-made-an-extinct-species/?sh=1442d482129c https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2022/02/12/ibm-accuse... Companies have many ways they obfuscate or hide layoffs of older workers though, there is very little legal protection as long as the company isn't so stupid and brazen as IBM (i.e. leaves a trail of evidence in emails).
Sharlin 4y ago
In Europe it’s commonly illegal to lay off people before negotiations (which may sometimes be rather one-sides but nevertheless there are rituals to observe).

As true as that may be, I think it's indicative of some fairly deep-seated problems in our culture, and it very much needs to change.

lbotos 4y ago
This sounds more combative then I mean, so do take it in the best light: In what ways do you think it can be different?
- danaris 4y ago
  Well, I have a short answer and a long answer to this. The long answer would be more or less an essay, and involve a lot of fairly far-left (at least from an American perspective) views, like "we should be basing our society and our work culture on the benefit of the workers, and of all humanity, rather than the corporate overlords" and "we need to radically restructure our corporate hierarchies, which would lead to it being much less likely that there would either be "layoffs" as we know them now, or a small executive class that could conceal their imminent occurrence from the rest of the company". But for today, I think I will stick with the short answer, which points in the same direction, but is smaller in scope. I think it can be most clearly expressed in two parts: First, we need to work on reducing the toxic levels of deceit and secrecy in our corporate culture. Hide everyone's salary, hide the metrics we're evaluated on, hide how poorly the company is doing—all of this is designed to make things either more convenient or more profitable for the executives and shareholders, at the expense of the workers, and at the expense of basic honesty. I'm not saying everyone needs to be 100% open about everything all the time; that's fairly obviously too extreme. But the company itself (and, by extension, its executives and other core officials) needs to be more transparent with its workers, especially for as long as it is effectively their sole source of income. Second (and very much related), we need to find ways to break the mindset that the stock price is all. An awful lot of the deceit and secrecy—and, in fact, many of the other detrimental behaviors of companies and their executives—stem from the fact that the people at the top are obsessed with making sure the share price keeps growing. I think the way the stock price is treated by execs—and the stock/option-heavy compensation packages they often get—were probably based in something helpful and rational to start with (operating under the assumption that a higher stock price means a healthier company), but to the extent that that's true, it's fallen victim to Goodhart's Law ("any measure that becomes a target ceases to be a good measure"). How do we do these things? Haven't a clue, honestly. Our system is majorly messed up at every level right now, and chock full of feedback loops, so nearly anywhere you try to start will be resisted strongly without first improving things somewhere else...but conversely, any place you can make a difference will start to make it a little easier to improve things elsewhere.

DocTomoe 4y ago

Musk announced Twitter layoffs happening - and he hasn't even finalized the purchase of the company.

skeeter2020 4y ago
I think it's a mistake to look to people like Musk for good examples of empathetic, compassionate management that can be broadly applied. Ditto for Jobs (whose crown he's apparently taken up as the poster child for wanna-be successful sociopaths)

daniel-cussen 4y ago

It's counterfactual.

bombcar 4y ago

I've seen it be done, either publicly or privately; in smaller companies I've even seen people be told "you will be laid off at X date if we don't get Y funding" as a heads-up; especially when the management doesn't want to lay people off.

arlcode 4y ago
Yeah had that happen and it was clear why (small company closed down) Starting from 6 months the CEOs explained how things are and what would need to happen in order to avoid it. Two months prior they layed everyone off (including themselves) which is double the legally required minimum period. In the end we closed down the office together and parted ways. Most people had offers lined up and at least one colleague of mine ended up with a former customer. The CEO "advertised" him during the final call with the customer.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Yeah, I've been "laid off" by the same person three times in my career; each time he worked to hire me back as soon as he had a new venture going.

senectus1 4y ago

I worked for a mining company that was bought out, then announced there would be restructures and layoffs. it took 9 months for them to start.. by the time they did moral was so low they could not hire for new positions or replace needed skilled labor. the sites name was mud state wide. (Western Australia). I never want to go through that experience again. I got out after 8 month by asking for voluntary redundancy.

gumby 4y ago

Actually if you have more than 100 employees in a US location (which Unity does) you are required to give 60 days' notice per the WARN act. https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/termination/plantclosings https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/termination/plantclosings

yakak 4y ago
They pay out 60 days of notification pay in their severance packages and still don't notify. Technically, you can refuse that and I would guess that you would remain a worker who isn't allowed in the office.
SpicyLemonZest 4y ago
Their description here is misleading. Even if the employer is large enough to be covered, WARN act requirements only apply to "plant closings" where some particular site is shut down or "mass layoffs" which have to include either 33% of the people at a site with 150+ people or 500 people overall. Their detailed worker guide makes this clearer: https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/ETA/Layoff/pdfs/WorkerWARN2003.pdf https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/ETA/Layoff/pdfs/Worke...
- labcomputer 4y ago
  WARN was written before remote work was common. I'm very curious to see how WARN is interpreted by the courts for remote workers. There is no case law as far as I know, and a quick ctrl-f of that DoL PDF for "remote" has no results. For example, is each remote worker considered to be working at a different "plant" (their home)? If so, it seems like the WARN act could never be triggered for remote workers. So a loophole is that fully remote workers don't get WARN protections. That seems to clearly violate the intent of the law, which is that reasonably-large businesses should give advance warning of layoffs. Or, are all the remote workers collectively considered to be working at one "remote plant"? In that case, WARN would be triggered if a company of, say, 20k people lays off as few as 3 remote workers in each state. That seems silly also. What about hybrid workers, where 1000 people "report to" or are "based at" one office, but nobody ever actually shows up (or maybe they do, but only for team-building exercises twice a year)? Are those workers truly "working at" that office site (and thus covered by WARN), or are they working at 1000 independent sites (and thus not covered)?

spookthesunset 4y ago

I've been in a startup where they gave advanced warning about layoffs. One major side effect is that productivity goes to sub zero because of the uncertainty of it all. After going through that, I can see reasons for both keeping people in the dark and giving advanced warning. Layoffs (or re-orgs for that matter) are never easy.

qbasic_forever 4y ago

IBM and HP in their waning years were pretty upfront in quarterly reports that their older staff were a liability and they were actively working to manage them out through early retirements, layoffs, etc.

mathattack 4y ago
Is that legal?
- qbasic_forever 4y ago
  No and there are currently investigations ongoing: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2022/02/12/ibm-accused-of-ageism-older-workers-are-dinobabies-who-should-be-made-an-extinct-species/?sh=1442d482129c https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2022/02/12/ibm-accuse... Companies have many ways they obfuscate or hide layoffs of older workers though, there is very little legal protection as long as the company isn't so stupid and brazen as IBM (i.e. leaves a trail of evidence in emails).

Sharlin 4y ago

In Europe it’s commonly illegal to lay off people before negotiations (which may sometimes be rather one-sides but nevertheless there are rituals to observe).