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A message from Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson: 11% workforce cut
- thenewwazoo 4y ago> I take responsibility for those decisions, as well as the difficult decision to do this layoff. I had to stop reading. How can a human being be this tone deaf? You know what's difficult, you great insensitive oaf? Getting laid off. Are you stepping down, Jeff? No? Then stop making it about you. To anyone who ever has to do lay-offs: this is a masterclass in what not to write.
- ProAm 4y ago> How can a human being be this tone deaf? You know what's difficult, you great insensitive oaf? Getting laid off. Would you rather him say we 'are letting go our lowest performers'?
- adamc 4y agoYes. I would rather not sugarcoat reality.
- ergocoder 4y agoThis will reduce the chance of the laidoff employees of finding new jobs...
- cbozeman 4y agoYes. It matters why they're being let go. Here's where, "I take full responsibility for:" is acceptable. "... dropping you because we automated your job away." <-- acceptable. "... dropping you because, frankly, you're not very good at your job." <-- extremely acceptable. Hell, I was even told this when I was 16 years old and working at a shitty second-rate Lowe's clone called Sutherland's (and he's right, I wasn't good at my job, I didn't give a shit about stocking shelves - I was always helping people). "... dropping you because I fucked up on judging the market and I gotta make sure the company stays attractive to investors." <-- not acceptable, also fuck you, also, you step down and appoint someone else. YOU fucked up. Not them. That's what "full responsibility" looks like. Responsibility isn't, "Oh I made a booboo, here's 3 months pay and some other shit..." Love him or hate him, Dr. Jordan Peterson is correct with some of his "rules of life", one of which is, "Tell the truth, or at least don't lie." When you say, "I'm taking full responsibility for this problem," that means you incur all negative consequences - and I do fucking mean - **ALL** negative consequences. Otherwise, just say, "These cuts are not ideal; unfortunately, they have to be made because I'm beholden to certain aspects of modern capitalism." That's what people want to hear. They don't want to hear platitudes that don't even make them feel good, but assuage the other person's conscience. If your conscience is bothering you, it's because you know what you're doing isn't right. You may still have to do it, but don't fucking be a shitbag about it. Don't spout out some lines that "sound" good at a cursory glance. Tell the truth, or at least don't lie.
- junofan 4y agoThis stuff just comes from templates. The templates optimize for people not freaking out. I wouldn’t read so much personal emotion into it.
- cbozeman 4y ago"I wouldn't read so much personal emotion into it." Tell that to the son who wanted to go to baseball camp this year and can't now, or the daughter that wanted to have violin lessons and now Daddy or Mommy can't afford that. Your actions have consequences. Not just for you, but for others. To reduce it down to a goddamned template is not only insulting, but frankly deserves an old-fashioned jaw jacking.
- aprdm 4y agoIt isn't true that it is the lowest performers.
- adam_arthur 4y agoShould just be honest about the mechanics and fundamentals of the situation. "We were too optimistic in our projections and overhired, thus we need to cut headcount to meet our goals." Anything else is just insulting to the intelligence of their employees
- iLoveOncall 4y ago> To anyone who ever has to do lay-offs: this is a masterclass in what not to write. The stock being up 10% today would like to disagree with your statement. There are no words that will make firing 11% of your workforce humane, so, yes, bullshit corporate newspeak is 100% appropriate.
- InCityDreams 4y ago>To anyone who ever has to do lay-offs: this is a masterclass in what not to write. Incorrect. To anyone who ever has to do lay-offs: this is a masterclass in what to write. Let's try and keep things honest, eh?
- aliqot 4y agoIt's not okay for race or class to take any part in any hiring/firing/layoff decision.
- ajg36 4y agoWhat about casting a part for a Dungeons & Dragons movie?
- thenewwazoo 4y agoInstead of simply negating and accusing me of being dishonest, perhaps you could expand a bit and explain why you disagree with me. From the site guidelines, > Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
- hammock 4y agoGiven what he did, what ought he have written instead?
- shane_b 4y agothere’s a zero percent chance people will be laid off and be happy. same with seeing people be laid off. there is no right thing to say
- WalterBright 4y agoI know a handful of people who have been laid off. Each one was very angry about being laid off - it was unfair, the boss always had it in for me, etc. The ones I talked to a year later would ruefully admit it was a net positive for them. They were forced to reevaluate their careers and make corrections. One, for example, said it gave him the kick in the pants to start his own business, which he'd always wanted to do. Another told me it gave him the motivation for getting clean from drugs (the reason he was laid off was showing up for work high).
- whatshisface 4y agoCompanies laying people off are not doing well, and it is a lot easier to do well in an environment that is doing well.
- WalterBright 4y agoBeing laid off is a lot less traumatic to people than getting fired, so layoffs are done to periodically let low performers go in a way that preserves their dignity, and makes it easier for them to get another job.
- whatshisface 4y agoHe could have tried to direct the reader's sympathy towards the people getting laid off, rather than himself who is not going to suffer anything because of the decision he's making. If you are doing something nasty because of "just business," the minimum standard in corporate messaging you're expected to achieve is writing an announcement that is itself just business (and not a humanizing self-administered interview like you're getting an article in a magazine or something). All of the big corporations that you do not want to work for did not invent corporatespeak because they are uncreative or unwilling to engage with human emotions, they invented it because that is the least infuriating way to communicate that they're shutting down a division for offshoring.
- encryptluks2 4y agoIt really is comical hearing the major news tell everyone, "Look at this number here, everything is okay. The economy is great. Biden is doing a great job," while gas prices are creeping back up to $5/gallon and people can barely afford housing, and there are constant layoffs.
- anonymouswacker 4y agoIt's comical if you're the court jester, but to most of us peasants, this is horrible. Our worst fears are coming true. The system is failing, but it's too big to fail.
- pessimizer 4y ago> people can barely afford housing Your scheduling is off. Right now we're attacking Biden for falling housing prices. We'll have to wait until prices start rising again to attack Biden for rising housing prices.
- encryptluks2 4y agoI keep hearing about falling housing prices but rent prices have only been increasing.
- wpietri 4y agoFor sure. Thank goodness the labor market has indicators pointing different directions (extremely low unemployment rate, more jobs than job seekers; but also more layoff headlines than usual). That way people can attack him for both the terrible lack of workers and the terrible lack of jobs.
- JoeAltmaier 4y agoReally? After they went up precipitously and now are returning to the previous (still unaffordable) level? Hardly a great benefit to the public. The lessening of another crushing blow I guess.
- chowchowchow 4y agoCreeping back up? Don’t see it here. https://www.gasbuddy.com/charts https://www.gasbuddy.com/charts
- tibbon 4y agoWhen CEOs say they take full responsibility, I think they should take a material cut in equity and compensation. Otherwise it is just empty words for them to feel no consequences except a better balance sheet. Or better yet, step down and let someone else run the show
- coredog64 4y agoThis came up in the Patreon discussion yesterday. Twilio is giving decent severance packages (12 weeks plus week per year of service) and is accelerating vesting. Both of those impact the bottom line and should have a material impact on C-suite compensation.
- bosie 4y agoThat is a very proxy-ish 'taking responsibility' that might never materialise though
- jjulius 4y ago>Both of those impact the bottom line and should have a material impact on C-suite compensation. Italicized emphasis mine. Time and again we've seen that this isn't the case, to the point where I won't bother holding my breathe to see if the CEO is impacted financially down the line. I'd rather start seeing CEOs highlight the fallout they themselves will receive in these layoff announcements themselves.
- ergocoder 4y agoThen, this should be agreed before taking the CEO role. If a company decides to reduce my compensation mid way, I will be freaking flipped. In this case, they could reduce the CEO's salary, but then it would go into the situation whether twilio would be better with a new CEO given the current CEO's performance in the past 10y. The answer would be a huge no.
- nerpderp82 4y agoTo the board and VC, "taking responsibility" means they should get a bonus for reducing headcount. Bulk up, gain marketshare, during glide phase reduce operating expenses and "spend" the gains earned during growth phase. Money is in charge. There is no moral element to how humans currently run business.
- COGlory 4y ago2/2 between Patreon and Twilio for CEO's 'taking responsibility', whatever that means, while their lives don't change materially at all.
- daniel-cussen 4y agoIt's an alpha primate thing.
- tpmx 4y agoFrom their quarterly results: 8,510 employees as of June 30, 2022 7,381 employees as of September 30, 2021 3,060 employees as of March 31, 2020 (!) With an 11% reduction it looks like they're going back to a number similar to what they had a year ago. (I'm assuming they haven't been growing that much during the past 2.5 months.)
- arberx 4y agoHoly shit. This is also the case for a lot of companies. It's going to be a bloodbath out there.
- treis 4y agoI just wonder where all these people came from. Like we didn't suddenly double the number of developers in the world but seemingly every tech company doubled their staff in the last couple years.
- callalex 4y agoI can only speak towards Twilio because that is where my experience is. It is a very international company. In recent years it has made several acquisitions of companies that were not previously based in the US. Maybe it is a broad trend across the industry for tech workers that used to work for smaller local companies coming under the umbrella of large US-based corporations?
- tpmx 4y agoI've seen the same; especially in B2B.
- aprdm 4y agoThat's pretty insane.
- laweijfmvo 4y agoWhat are 8500 people doing at Twilio?
- culanuchachamim 4y agoWow! Yesterday Patreon 17% of their staff, today Twilio 11%...
- xeromal 4y agoI wish there was a list. There's actually several companies that have announced layoffs over the past couple months.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ubertaco 4y agoThere's always https://layoffs.fyi https://layoffs.fyi, but there's a lot of "noise" in there from small startups, I find.
- xeromal 4y agoThank you.
- colonelxc 4y agohttps://layoffs.fyi/ https://layoffs.fyi/
- xeromal 4y agoThank you.
- Griever 4y agoThis site has been helpful for tracking all the layoffs this year: https://layoffs.fyi/ https://layoffs.fyi/
- xeromal 4y agoThank you.
- erulabs 4y agoAs a sysadmin I always feel maybe a bit callous when I read the: > We have four priorities for reaching profitability and leading in customer engagement: Investing in our platform reliability and trust, increasing the profitability of messaging... TLDR: "We're keeping all the sysadmins and firing all the developers who don't turn the crank on revenue". My whole career is about pushing the DevOps kool-aide for reliability and cohesion and velocity and blah blah blah. What are devops skills really good for for developers? Job security.
- dilyevsky 4y agoHighly doubt many devs are getting cut except the ones they planned on getting rid of anyway. This is very similar to early 2020 layoffs
- dilyevsky 4y agoOh look - he took full responsibility too! phew, that was close, guys!
- senko 4y agoWould you rather he wrote "it's all your fault for not working hard enough you lazy bums, get outta my face!" ?
- dilyevsky 4y agohttps://youtu.be/u48vYSLvKNQ?t=59 https://youtu.be/u48vYSLvKNQ?t=59
- commandlinefan 4y agoHe didn't even have the courtesy to include a picture of himself crying.
- speeder 4y agoI am mixed race, I "look" white myself, but I have an uncle for example that is "obviously black" and suffered actual anti-black racism (nothing serious, but for example police stop him in traffic whenever they see him going out with expensive car while wearing his Capoeira uniform). When I see a statement like this (copy paste from article): "Layoffs like this can have a more pronounced impact on marginalized communities, so we were particularly focused on ensuring our layoffs – while a business necessity today – were carried out through an Anti-Racist/Anti-Oppression lens." Makes me worry. What that phrase means? Apparent-white people (like me) got fired? Because they are white? In the past I failed to get into the local government-owned university I wanted because I looked white. Had to get a loan and pay for private schooling. What makes people think this sort of behaviour is good idea?
- haolez 4y agoI believe this is driven with good intentions. Some people call this "reverse racism", and "it's not really a thing since white people are privileged". I don't agree with this view and I think "reverse racism" is just as racist as normal racism. I strongly believe that future generations will laugh at us for coming up with such an obviously wrong way of attacking this issue.
- nerpderp82 4y agoAt the risk of _going there_, I think if you are optimizing a system, freeing resources that are most easily rescheduled is a globally optimal solution. Senior engineers can be slotted into nearly any task. It has the added bonus of enabling wage suppression over the long term. Disadvantaged workers are less likely to leave an org.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jrs235 4y agoThe greatest minority is the individual. "Reverse racism" harms people too. Let's stop pretending it doesn't. Discrimination based on race is bad no matter the source. When can we start looking through an individual lens? Edit: I concur with parent comment.
- iLoveOncall 4y agoI am completely ignorant when it comes to Twilio other than hearing the name, but what is the added value compared to what AWS (and I imagine GCP / Azure) provide in terms of SMS / robocalls functionalities?
- Zaheer 4y agoNote: AWS actually uses Twilio for their text message service. https://investors.twilio.com/news/news-details/2016/Twilio-Extends-Relationship-With-Amazon-Web-Services-With-Delivery-of-SMS-for-Simple-Notification-Service/default.aspx https://investors.twilio.com/news/news-details/2016/Twilio-E...
- jamal-kumar 4y agoPrice. They do some automatic bidding on the lowest upstream connection thing that keeps things low with that, it's also got a pretty robust system for building things like IVRs and all that important stuff for keeping too many calls from flooding your lines. It's got a nice enough API with support for multiple languages which comes with pretty decent documentation. I'm not surprised they're cutting a part of their workforce at all, they're a very profit oriented company, it's what their shareholders demand. I didn't even know that AWS/GCP/Azure had VOIP to PSTN as part of their services, I don't think they're in the same business.
- callalex 4y agoThey generally have higher quality than others in the telecom business in terms of uptime and delivery success. They also have a much more expansive toolset than AWS for expanding out from being a basic text message blaster to being a full on support center, a customer relation management platform, and a customer data platform. Also their web based programming interfaces for non-coders are better. Additionally, their developer APIs don’t have as much jank as AWS.
- impulser_ 4y agoNo surprise here. All you have to do is look at their financial reports to know that massive cuts are going to be made in order to survive. You can't be burning insane amounts of cash while cash is becoming more tight. So the easiest thing to do is cut your workforce. If you want to improve your chances of not being cut, work for a company that actually makes money.
- nickstinemates 4y ago(disclaimer: I am seriously interested to learn and understand here) Reading the situation objectively between Twilio and Patreon yesterday, it seems there have been a number of companies who have over-hired and now need to make a correction. Faced with this, the companies then decide to do things like extend exercise windows, accelerate vesting, provide outsized severance packages, i.e - try to soften the blow The predominant feedback in this thread and the other thread yesterday is about "taking responsibility" and calling for the heads of the CEO's who ultimately made the decision. This is the part I don't understand. Is the blow not softened enough, i.e additional compensation? Should the leadership team have had a crystal ball and not hired? Was there severe mismanagement of resources? Were the wrong people laid off? Or, is the negative feedback centered literally around the phrase "taking responsibility"?
- renewiltord 4y agoNews like this is just a lightning rod in online forums for "haters" - people who have some axe to grind and show up with views that this information is less to have informed and more to have provided a soapbox for.
- Andrew_nenakhov 4y agoWhy people always react with such contempt for businesses when they fire people? Employees leave their jobs all the time for selfish reasons, and nobody feels sorry for business owners who are often left with difficult problem maintaining the operations without that one person with a specific skill set. Why is it so different the other way around? Class solidarity, because there far more employees than business owners?
- JoeAltmaier 4y agoThat's pretty callous to equate the harm done to a business when one person quits, to the harm done when scores are let go simultaneously. In the 2nd case folks can suffer, often more than a schedule setback or an HR event. Obviously.
- Andrew_nenakhov 4y agoPeople can quit en masse too. When they happens, everyone is talking about 'how horrible that place is'. I believe if you can quit easily, you shouldn't complain of you can be fired with the same ease.
- JoeAltmaier 4y agoAgain, callous to equate the two. A person quitting can be a tiny fraction of the workforce for a company, but each person fired it's 100% of their job.
- tikhonj 4y agoThere's an obvious asymmetry in power and impact! Having one of X employees leave is absolutely nothing like losing your one of one job. A closer analog would be when a business stops working with a consultant who has other clients; nobody seriously sees that as a problem.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- nyxtom 4y agoThis anti-racist non-sense is some of the most actually racist policies I've seen put forth in decades. If this is the singular means by which they decided who to fire - they are being explicitly discriminatory and should be sued.
- soared 4y agoI don’t think it’s possible to knee jerk harder than you have here. Obviously race is not the singular factor and it’s disingenuous to actual discussion to make a claim like that.
- parkingrift 4y agoIf race was considered at all then it’s… racist. Racist and illegal.
- foldr 4y agoYou can't self-monitor for racial bias without considering race. The statement suggests that they basically made an effort to check that they weren't (to exaggerate slightly) firing all of their black employees due to unconscious racial biases. In the US, it isn't illegal to per se to consider race in hiring and firing decisions. The extent of the legal wiggle room that exists for various kinds of affirmative action is quite a complex issue of case law.
- mvc 4y agoHow many decades would you say? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining
- muttantt 4y agoThey can cut 50% and still operate as usual. This is a bloated company with hundreds of employees who coast and nobody even knows they're on the roof.
- Imnimo 4y agoI feel like this may not be the best time to open with a cutesy nickname like "Twilions"...
- throwaway5752 4y agoA lot of the people focusing on certain aspects of this layoff are unfortunately taking focus off of the increasing trend in layoffs. Patreon had a similar size reduction yesterday. There are others that are not as visible. People talk about default-alive and default-dead companies, but everyone should be looking at their personal finances in the same way. Look at your savings, your debt, and what expenses are discretionary and make sure you have enough time to find a new job in a difficult labor market. We have experienced an unprecedented period of growth and good employment conditions in many areas of tech, and it has been funded by venture capital while operating at a loss in aggregate. That is not how a default-alive industries run, and capital is going to be getting even more expensive soon. There are going to be more layoffs, more closures, more competition for jobs, and slower growth or contraction in compensation.
- abadger9 4y agoI used to know jeffiel personally and let me tell you he is the sweetest person. He was incredibly humble when twilio became a darling in the sf-sv scene and (imo) he steered twilio to IPO effectively and quickly. Being a PoC, i'm disappointed people have felt so offended by the "anti-racist" comment in the statement, the person I know would mean that from a sincere perspective.
- twiceaday 4y agoThere is no need to doubt good intentions. This is precisely the kind of issue where very bad things are done under good intentions.
- protomyth 4y agoIf a more qualified person is fired over someone else because of race, then he has not only failed the company but told other employees their talent and skills are a secondary consideration. Their pain is not lessened by the color of their skin.
- exolymph 4y agoI don't care whether he's sincere about preferentially firing white people on the basis of their race. His sincerity or lack thereof is not the issue.
- qwertyuiop_ 4y ago"Layoffs like this can have a more pronounced impact on marginalized communities, so we were particularly focused on ensuring our layoffs – while a business necessity today – were carried out through an Anti-Racist/Anti-Oppression lens." He may have broken some serious Federal EEOC laws here.
- pokeymcsnatch 4y agoI was thinking that at the very least, that'll be Exhibit A for anyone who might file a suit over this.
- jdkee 4y agoLooks like an opportunity for a very juicy labor lawsuit here.
- HereIGoAgain 4y ago>"so we were particularly focused on ensuring our layoffs -- while a business necessity today -- were carried out through a Racist/Racially-Oppression lens." Fixed that for you.. And oh boy would I not want to be one of this companies lawyers in the coming months and no doubt years! Yikes
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]