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Mass layoffs give you the opportunity to quickly purge poor performers without as much paperwork. It's advantageous to have regular rolling layoffs because of t

Mass layoffs give you the opportunity to quickly purge poor performers without as much paperwork. It's advantageous to have regular rolling layoffs because of this if you can justify them by economic conditions. There's also an effect of wanting to do smaller, pulsating layoffs over the course of many months or even years rather than one massive layoff of the size you actually need, because ultimately no one knows exactly how the machine of a corporation works, and you have to be careful not to cut so deep that you go beyond cutting out fat and start to damage critical systems. A rapid, 90% loss of workforce like what happened at Twitter might be what the company ultimately needed, but cutting that fast and deep is an insanely risky operation that could lead to a company hobbling along in a compensatory state until it finally falls to decompensatory systems collapse that you can't recover from.

MuffinFlavored 4y ago
What % of their work force is 11k employees? Article says 5%. Would also be curious to know what % of the 11k are engineers/breakdown by department/org, etc.
- anonporridge 4y ago
  Yeah, 5% is a small, manageable number. Small enough that if you find you accidentally cut important people or roles, you can quickly get them back. The point in my second paragraph is that if the company actually needs a 15% layoff to maintain itself long term, it would be safest to do it in three smaller 5% waves rather than one fell swoop. After each layoff, you let the system settle and recover, making sure that the body is still generally healthy before continuing with the next operation.
  - estebank 4y ago
    > it would be safest to do it in three smaller 5% waves rather than one fell swoop This disregards the effect of repeated layoffs on the morale and mental health of human beings, which affects how "the system" settles and recovers.
    - anonporridge 4y ago
      Absolutely! I think it really depends on the overall health and strength of the corporate body and the external environmental conditions it's struggling to survive in. Sometimes ripping off the bandaid quickly is the best of many bad options. However, you also have to consider that seeing a larger percentage of your teammates cut loose might be more psychologically damaging than just that one guy who everyone kind of knew was a poor performer anyway.
    - gota 4y ago
      Part of the second and third wave can take the form of a hiring freeze or slowdown. People who quit are not replaced and soon you have a 5% reduction in headcount
      - Aperocky 4y ago
        Only the best (or the dauntless, but they are a minority) quit in the present climate, soon the corporation will have a 3-5% reduction in their best performers.
      - marcosdumay 4y ago
        So you further evaporate the Dead Sea? How many competent people do you expect to stay until the end?
  - jvanderbot 4y ago
    Generally speaking, they probably want about 5% loss / year, so they can continuously hire new starts and eliminate vacated positions as required.
gowld 4y ago
Why? What's wrong with firing people during other economic conditions? Why would the paperwork be any different, whether it's a small layoff or a big payoff? Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V is cheap, Microsoft implemented it many times in many products.
- t-writescode 4y ago
  Humans fire other humans. Layoffs allow for severance and unemployment, which can make the pain of firing someone and all the externalities that come with it far easier for a boss to swallow.
- munificent 4y ago
  > What's wrong with firing people during other economic conditions? Layoffs have a huge psychological impact on the people who didn't get cut. If you do layoffs at a time when the economy is booming and jobs are easy to find, you risk losing your best performers who don't want to be at a company that fires friends of theirs. It's easier to fire people when jobs are scarce and people are already spooked and disinclined to try to switch jobs.
- drchopchop 4y ago
  Firing IC's at large corporations usually involves some sort of a individual coaching/PIP plan. This takes time for managers and HR to write and implement, takes N weeks of observation, and creates nervousness in coworkers who think they might be next. Much easier to do a Thanos-style snap and get rid of X% all at once, with no pre-warning or reasons required besides "challenging economic conditions".
- therealdrag0 4y ago
  It can be tedious to fire people. I know a manager at MS that has been struggling with a terrible performer for over a year. They are just now getting to the point of going through the processes (first gotta do RCA and try to fix etc) and having a paper trail down with HR to be able to fire them.
- moonchrome 4y ago
  If you heard Microsoft just did 11k layoffs and then you got a job offer from them how does that sound to you ? To me it sounds like I could be in the next round if I get hired on the wrong team.
tikhonj 4y ago
> Mass layoffs give you the opportunity to quickly purge poor performers without as much paperwork. It's advantageous to have regular rolling layoffs because of this if you can justify them by economic conditions. I've heard people say this, but it seems contrary to how layoffs are run in practice: • entire teams or divisions are often laid off with no eye towards individual employees' tenure, experience or skills • decisions happen on a condensed time scale by higher-level executives—not exactly conducive to a nuanced view of individual employees' performance, which companies struggle to assess effectively at the best of times The "common knowledge" about what layoffs accomplish and why they're necessary really doesn't match what happens on the ground.
- kristopolous 4y ago
  I've never seen a cold and calculated layoff. It's always been exasperated irrational arm-waving risk mitigation. The "good" people aren't kept - instead it's the ones that can navigate the political waters. For every one competent executive there seems to be 3 deluded narcissistic idiots who will slash and burn people who are overqualified and under-utilized for the positions they've been incompetently assigned. Now before you think I'm a victim of layoffs, I'm actually the political navigator. I constantly survive layoffs as I see the most talented people get let go and the best teams get broken up and reassigned, it's nuts. One of the best techniques is to get yourself into what I call a "management island" - essentially you have either 0 or many bosses, just not 1. The next one is to be associated with a small bet - essentially a cheap investment that may yield a great long-term payoff, preferably related to the company cash cow. A third technique is to not attend too many events. Vagueness works in your favor. People should know generally but not specifically what you do. With details comes critiques so keep it ambiguous by staying quiet. If you survive a layoff then you must not let a good crisis go to waste. Use the fog of the firing and the power vacuum to resituate yourself into this political dynamic as the dust settles. Of course these techniques only work at large companies. I learned all of these techniques from years in management. There's more but that's a good start
  - adasdasdas 4y ago
    Yup, most mass layoffs are done without consulting the directly/skip managers who actually know who the strong performers are.
spacemadness 4y ago
Why are we spreading the “poor performers are the ones let go” trope that hurts anyone laid off? That’s a very dangerous assumption to be spreading around blindly.
- ZhadruOmjar 4y ago
  It's simply not true and very observable if you've ever been at a company that does layoffs. Plenty of good teams get let go or entire groups in the company from management down are let go, it just doesn't make sense that they would all be "low-performers". Some low-performers will be caught up in layoffs, sure, but plenty will remain at the company too.
  - andromeduck 4y ago
    Might be conflating groups with individuals. The teams/orgs that tend to be hit the hardest tend to be not the most productive/cutting edge except when they're research teams way out on the horizon.
testrun 4y ago
This is one of the worst things you can do in a company. GE did it starting with Jack Welch and since then the company is not the same.
datavirtue 4y ago
Logic doesn't hold up. The same hiring practices you used to acquire "poor performers" (or culture to create them) are still in place.
ElectricSpoon 4y ago
> Mass layoffs give you the opportunity to quickly purge poor performers That would be true for poor performing projects. Try a bunch of projects; many don't take off; cut the chaff all at once. What I've seen in various companies were cuts of all kinds of employees, regardless of their individual performance. Large cuts weren't about the employees but about the projects or teams. I've also lived through a cut which was basically reducing headcount across all teams. Cutting 11k employees isn't a micro-management thing; individual performers get hit all the same. The fallback of some such cuts was that it took years to later re-acquire competent employees, especially since they were offering work conditions average for the market. TLDR don't stay too long on projects or teams which aren't lucrative for the company, unless they are fun and you don't mind getting ejected from the company when cut comes.
raydev 4y ago
> Mass layoffs give you the opportunity to quickly purge poor performers without as much paperwork This is repeated a lot but having lived through 3 layoffs (and survived 2) in my career, that has never been the case. Every time it seemed random, one in particular where EMs were upset that they didn't have the chance to pick their faves.

MuffinFlavored 4y ago

What % of their work force is 11k employees? Article says 5%. Would also be curious to know what % of the 11k are engineers/breakdown by department/org, etc.

anonporridge 4y ago
Yeah, 5% is a small, manageable number. Small enough that if you find you accidentally cut important people or roles, you can quickly get them back. The point in my second paragraph is that if the company actually needs a 15% layoff to maintain itself long term, it would be safest to do it in three smaller 5% waves rather than one fell swoop. After each layoff, you let the system settle and recover, making sure that the body is still generally healthy before continuing with the next operation.
- estebank 4y ago
  > it would be safest to do it in three smaller 5% waves rather than one fell swoop This disregards the effect of repeated layoffs on the morale and mental health of human beings, which affects how "the system" settles and recovers.
  - anonporridge 4y ago
    Absolutely! I think it really depends on the overall health and strength of the corporate body and the external environmental conditions it's struggling to survive in. Sometimes ripping off the bandaid quickly is the best of many bad options. However, you also have to consider that seeing a larger percentage of your teammates cut loose might be more psychologically damaging than just that one guy who everyone kind of knew was a poor performer anyway.
  - gota 4y ago
    Part of the second and third wave can take the form of a hiring freeze or slowdown. People who quit are not replaced and soon you have a 5% reduction in headcount
    - Aperocky 4y ago
      Only the best (or the dauntless, but they are a minority) quit in the present climate, soon the corporation will have a 3-5% reduction in their best performers.
    - marcosdumay 4y ago
      So you further evaporate the Dead Sea? How many competent people do you expect to stay until the end?
- jvanderbot 4y ago
  Generally speaking, they probably want about 5% loss / year, so they can continuously hire new starts and eliminate vacated positions as required.

gowld 4y ago

Why? What's wrong with firing people during other economic conditions? Why would the paperwork be any different, whether it's a small layoff or a big payoff? Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V is cheap, Microsoft implemented it many times in many products.

t-writescode 4y ago
Humans fire other humans. Layoffs allow for severance and unemployment, which can make the pain of firing someone and all the externalities that come with it far easier for a boss to swallow.
munificent 4y ago
> What's wrong with firing people during other economic conditions? Layoffs have a huge psychological impact on the people who didn't get cut. If you do layoffs at a time when the economy is booming and jobs are easy to find, you risk losing your best performers who don't want to be at a company that fires friends of theirs. It's easier to fire people when jobs are scarce and people are already spooked and disinclined to try to switch jobs.
drchopchop 4y ago
Firing IC's at large corporations usually involves some sort of a individual coaching/PIP plan. This takes time for managers and HR to write and implement, takes N weeks of observation, and creates nervousness in coworkers who think they might be next. Much easier to do a Thanos-style snap and get rid of X% all at once, with no pre-warning or reasons required besides "challenging economic conditions".
therealdrag0 4y ago
It can be tedious to fire people. I know a manager at MS that has been struggling with a terrible performer for over a year. They are just now getting to the point of going through the processes (first gotta do RCA and try to fix etc) and having a paper trail down with HR to be able to fire them.
moonchrome 4y ago
If you heard Microsoft just did 11k layoffs and then you got a job offer from them how does that sound to you ? To me it sounds like I could be in the next round if I get hired on the wrong team.

tikhonj 4y ago

> Mass layoffs give you the opportunity to quickly purge poor performers without as much paperwork. It's advantageous to have regular rolling layoffs because of this if you can justify them by economic conditions. I've heard people say this, but it seems contrary to how layoffs are run in practice: • entire teams or divisions are often laid off with no eye towards individual employees' tenure, experience or skills • decisions happen on a condensed time scale by higher-level executives—not exactly conducive to a nuanced view of individual employees' performance, which companies struggle to assess effectively at the best of times The "common knowledge" about what layoffs accomplish and why they're necessary really doesn't match what happens on the ground.

kristopolous 4y ago
I've never seen a cold and calculated layoff. It's always been exasperated irrational arm-waving risk mitigation. The "good" people aren't kept - instead it's the ones that can navigate the political waters. For every one competent executive there seems to be 3 deluded narcissistic idiots who will slash and burn people who are overqualified and under-utilized for the positions they've been incompetently assigned. Now before you think I'm a victim of layoffs, I'm actually the political navigator. I constantly survive layoffs as I see the most talented people get let go and the best teams get broken up and reassigned, it's nuts. One of the best techniques is to get yourself into what I call a "management island" - essentially you have either 0 or many bosses, just not 1. The next one is to be associated with a small bet - essentially a cheap investment that may yield a great long-term payoff, preferably related to the company cash cow. A third technique is to not attend too many events. Vagueness works in your favor. People should know generally but not specifically what you do. With details comes critiques so keep it ambiguous by staying quiet. If you survive a layoff then you must not let a good crisis go to waste. Use the fog of the firing and the power vacuum to resituate yourself into this political dynamic as the dust settles. Of course these techniques only work at large companies. I learned all of these techniques from years in management. There's more but that's a good start
- adasdasdas 4y ago
  Yup, most mass layoffs are done without consulting the directly/skip managers who actually know who the strong performers are.

spacemadness 4y ago

Why are we spreading the “poor performers are the ones let go” trope that hurts anyone laid off? That’s a very dangerous assumption to be spreading around blindly.

ZhadruOmjar 4y ago
It's simply not true and very observable if you've ever been at a company that does layoffs. Plenty of good teams get let go or entire groups in the company from management down are let go, it just doesn't make sense that they would all be "low-performers". Some low-performers will be caught up in layoffs, sure, but plenty will remain at the company too.
- andromeduck 4y ago
  Might be conflating groups with individuals. The teams/orgs that tend to be hit the hardest tend to be not the most productive/cutting edge except when they're research teams way out on the horizon.

testrun 4y ago

This is one of the worst things you can do in a company. GE did it starting with Jack Welch and since then the company is not the same.

datavirtue 4y ago

Logic doesn't hold up. The same hiring practices you used to acquire "poor performers" (or culture to create them) are still in place.

ElectricSpoon 4y ago

> Mass layoffs give you the opportunity to quickly purge poor performers That would be true for poor performing projects. Try a bunch of projects; many don't take off; cut the chaff all at once. What I've seen in various companies were cuts of all kinds of employees, regardless of their individual performance. Large cuts weren't about the employees but about the projects or teams. I've also lived through a cut which was basically reducing headcount across all teams. Cutting 11k employees isn't a micro-management thing; individual performers get hit all the same. The fallback of some such cuts was that it took years to later re-acquire competent employees, especially since they were offering work conditions average for the market. TLDR don't stay too long on projects or teams which aren't lucrative for the company, unless they are fun and you don't mind getting ejected from the company when cut comes.

raydev 4y ago

> Mass layoffs give you the opportunity to quickly purge poor performers without as much paperwork This is repeated a lot but having lived through 3 layoffs (and survived 2) in my career, that has never been the case. Every time it seemed random, one in particular where EMs were upset that they didn't have the chance to pick their faves.