4 ms·

> There's a big difference between "things change" and "mass top-down layoffs are an effective way to adapt to change"! I worked at a company that tried to avo

> There's a big difference between "things change" and "mass top-down layoffs are an effective way to adapt to change"! I worked at a company that tried to avoid mass layoffs at all costs. Whenever it became obvious that change was necessary, they'd do little cuts here and there, or they'd force people into roles they weren't familiar with (think front-end devs moved to cloud backend dev) to try to salvage people at all costs. They only cut people in small numbers here and there, and always spread out over long periods of time. It was terrible. People were angry because they were hired for one job, but forced to do completely different work because the original needs had disappeared. People were constantly living in fear because there were micro-layoffs multiple times a month. They weren't called layoffs, though, so they weren't announced. You'd just open Slack to message someone and they'd be deactivated. You always wondered if you were next. It's not pleasant to do mass layoffs, but if a company has to change it's much better to just rip the band-aid off and restructure all at once.

jdmichal 4y ago
Exactly this. Bleeding small numbers of people is absolutely terrible for morale. Everyone will be wondering whether it's their turn this week, and that will 100% have knock-on effects. If you have to do a layoff, your goal should be to make it deep enough to only do it once and allow the healing process to start. If your goal is to avoid layoffs, the solution is to build a war chest with months or even years of runway. If you hit hard times, freeze hiring and attrition will help some as you burn through that runway. (But also be careful of piling on the same workload to fewer and fewer people!)
- bink 4y ago
  I'd argue that bleeding small numbers of people randomly and/or arbitrarily is terrible for morale. Firing those who aren't performing or whose teams aren't contributing is actually good for morale. People know who is and isn't contributing and are far more understanding when the layoffs are the result of failed projects or unnecessary cost centers.
  - jdmichal 4y ago
    This discussion is already in the context of layoffs, not firing for non-performance.

jdmichal 4y ago

Exactly this. Bleeding small numbers of people is absolutely terrible for morale. Everyone will be wondering whether it's their turn this week, and that will 100% have knock-on effects. If you have to do a layoff, your goal should be to make it deep enough to only do it once and allow the healing process to start. If your goal is to avoid layoffs, the solution is to build a war chest with months or even years of runway. If you hit hard times, freeze hiring and attrition will help some as you burn through that runway. (But also be careful of piling on the same workload to fewer and fewer people!)

bink 4y ago
I'd argue that bleeding small numbers of people randomly and/or arbitrarily is terrible for morale. Firing those who aren't performing or whose teams aren't contributing is actually good for morale. People know who is and isn't contributing and are far more understanding when the layoffs are the result of failed projects or unnecessary cost centers.
- jdmichal 4y ago
  This discussion is already in the context of layoffs, not firing for non-performance.