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A friend of mine convinced me this was the FB strategy to get people to resign instead of needing to fire them (a costly, legal.minefield). As a founder, the a

A friend of mine convinced me this was the FB strategy to get people to resign instead of needing to fire them (a costly, legal.minefield). As a founder, the act of paralizying the company to effectively "bleed the fat off the bone" while cost effective, is insane. Because nothing gets done during those low morale months. I refused to believe this could be a valid strategy. Then I was countered with: this org is already not shipping features or anything customers want anyway, so its not like it has any productivity to lose. Then proceeded to name Twitter as exhibit A of the argument. I could not retort to that.

bryant 3y ago
I mean, I imagine the risks from insider threats (selling or dumping secrets etc) would be heightened in this environment. Especially if two layoffs already happened. They'd need to have a bulletproof insider threat program, one they're not laying anyone off from to mitigate the risk of their own team becoming a threat. --- Tldr: once you've had two layoffs back to back, the risk isn't low morale, it's animosity.
- adolph 3y ago
  Given the long term lack of success of the firm and the rapid incremental success of other tech lineages, what secrets would be worth dumping? Here’s not how do it?
  - dylan604 3y ago
    That could actually be valuable information. If the competitor can avoid the costs involved with wasting development time on something that's already known by someone else to not work, that's money that can be spent on a different direction.
- xnx 3y ago
  I imagine Waymo is very sensitive to this after having literal blueprints and other intellectual property stolen by Anthony Levandowski.
duxup 3y ago
You don’t get to pick who leaves too, I gotta think the proactive self starter types are more likely to leave. Folks resigned to whatever / want to be laid off stay. Heck I was the latter once, stayed for a while waiting for my payout.
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
> A friend of mine convinced me this was the FB strategy to get people to resign instead of needing to fire them (a costly, legal.minefield). It's a major pet peeve of mine when people's conspiracy theories don't even make sense even if you accept the theory at face value: 1. If you want to fire people for performance or other reasons, it's true that a great time to do it is during layoffs - there doesn't need to be any rationale given, and there is nothing to sue over when a hundred other people are also being let go for non-performance reasons. So if you're already having layoffs, why again are you hoping for some people to resign?? 2. Why on Earth does your friend think having multiple rounds of layoffs will convince poor performers to resign? That doesn't make any sense. If anything, it's usually the crappiest people who are OK stocking around when a company becomes paralyzed during layoffs season - it's top performers who see the writing on the wall and go elsewhere.
- serf 3y ago
  >2. Why on Earth does your friend think having multiple rounds of layoffs will convince poor performers to resign? for the sake of playing devil's advocate, i'd like to remind that poor performers may not see that same image when they look in the mirror. it's likely that they too will experience the same dread and despair as anyone else might when they are confronted by the very real future prospect of unemployment.
  - superfrank 3y ago
    You're absolutely right, but it's also likely that they will have a harder time finding new jobs. I know there are exceptions, but generally you'd expect the high performers to have the most options.
- gwbas1c 3y ago
  > If anything, it's usually the crappiest people who are OK stocking around when a company becomes paralyzed... Don't assume that. Not everyone can just hop into a new job. Some top performers, who are deep into their career, need to invest a lot of time in their job searches. If finding a new job takes someone 160+ hours, it's impractical to do that while doing honest work for their employer. People have families and other things to do outside of work. That's why negotiating a severance package is a thing.
keyle 3y ago
It's a dumb strategy because the talent that can get a job anywhere will be the first to jump ship, and they're the ones you want to retain. Meanwhile the talent that can't get a job elsewhere easily will be hanging on for a payout. You basically alienate your teams, throw timelines off anyway and frankly it's a dick move. I think if this is the case, it's because it's mismanaged to the point that no one knows who should go, so you put the feelers out as opposed to restructure solidly going forward.
rendaw 3y ago
This doesn't make sense to me. It's "bleed the bone off the fat", on top of the morale issues you mentioned, and if they have no interest in the goal and they're just losing money why keep on funding it at all? Just sell it.
namirez 3y ago
Sounds like an urban legend. Doesn’t make any sense.
jrockway 3y ago
Also if you just fire someone, you get to pick who you fire. If people leave because of low morale, you don't get to pick who leaves. It will probably be those most desirable to the outside market, though, which is exactly the opposite effect you want on your company. It does hurt to let people go, and I understand why people don't want to put themselves in that position. But to some extent, that's why you get paid the big bucks. If it was all sunshine and rainbows, you'd just do it for free! (I finally canceled my cable last week after 5 months of procrastinating. So don't put me in charge of your Fortune 500. But there's someone that can get the job done, probably. ;) I am also unsure that laying people off during a high interest rate period makes a lot of sense. The article smugly points out that "other bets" made 200 million while losing 800 million. If you only care that every venture makes money, then you probably won't ever hit the next big thing. Look at ChatGPT vs. Bard, for example, and remind me which company pioneered consumer AI products. Stop investing, and it's all gone in a flash. Staff that failed to make random idea #32 work might very well make random idea #33 work. If you take a failed project and wait to start assembling a brand new team after you think of random idea #33, you're already years behind. What if your competitor just kept the team and moved right on to random idea #33? You're done! Scary! (But at some point, money doesn't matter, and I think most of the founders / execs at these big companies are more than finished. If they go out with a whimper instead of a bang, it doesn't really change their life. So, sell that stock today I guess!)
lambdasquirrel 3y ago
From my past experience, when an org could not build what people wanted, there were usually (i.e. almost always) specific reasons why. The things I’ve seen have included: inability of product to capitalize on ideas that did not come from them, directors who blocked/stifled work at odds with their interests (i.e. empire building), culture that was good at one thing (and not the other things they needed to succeed), absolutely psycho top management resulting in fear throughout the org, engineers who cared more about technical thing X than shipping product, management that did not grasp the technical aspects enough to manage the engineering effort, management that is simply spiteful and shoots itself in the foot, toxic culture that spends more time on intra-company competition than actual work. Funny thing is, I think I can pin the problem on the rank-and-file at just one company. The reality is that most of the front-line just do whatever they’re told. When you have e.g. toxic culture, that comes from top down, or is at least given a free pass by the folks at the top. There will be rare exceptions here and there. I’ve seen a company that made something that people wanted, but they simply did not have the marketing, money, and focus to acquire enough users to break even, and lost to a competitor that had an inferior product but went gonzo on their marketing. But maybe you could say that that was a fault of marketing, product, and senior leadership, not the org making the product. So anyway, my retort is that if you do not know what exactly is broken in your org, then you have bleeped up royally. There is practically always a very specific reason, and you don’t address a specific problem with a blind sledgehammer.
baby 3y ago
Tbf I still don’t see any improvements to twitter. The messaging experience is still absolute horsesh

bryant 3y ago

I mean, I imagine the risks from insider threats (selling or dumping secrets etc) would be heightened in this environment. Especially if two layoffs already happened. They'd need to have a bulletproof insider threat program, one they're not laying anyone off from to mitigate the risk of their own team becoming a threat. --- Tldr: once you've had two layoffs back to back, the risk isn't low morale, it's animosity.

adolph 3y ago
Given the long term lack of success of the firm and the rapid incremental success of other tech lineages, what secrets would be worth dumping? Here’s not how do it?
- dylan604 3y ago
  That could actually be valuable information. If the competitor can avoid the costs involved with wasting development time on something that's already known by someone else to not work, that's money that can be spent on a different direction.
xnx 3y ago
I imagine Waymo is very sensitive to this after having literal blueprints and other intellectual property stolen by Anthony Levandowski.

duxup 3y ago

You don’t get to pick who leaves too, I gotta think the proactive self starter types are more likely to leave. Folks resigned to whatever / want to be laid off stay. Heck I was the latter once, stayed for a while waiting for my payout.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

> A friend of mine convinced me this was the FB strategy to get people to resign instead of needing to fire them (a costly, legal.minefield). It's a major pet peeve of mine when people's conspiracy theories don't even make sense even if you accept the theory at face value: 1. If you want to fire people for performance or other reasons, it's true that a great time to do it is during layoffs - there doesn't need to be any rationale given, and there is nothing to sue over when a hundred other people are also being let go for non-performance reasons. So if you're already having layoffs, why again are you hoping for some people to resign?? 2. Why on Earth does your friend think having multiple rounds of layoffs will convince poor performers to resign? That doesn't make any sense. If anything, it's usually the crappiest people who are OK stocking around when a company becomes paralyzed during layoffs season - it's top performers who see the writing on the wall and go elsewhere.

serf 3y ago
>2. Why on Earth does your friend think having multiple rounds of layoffs will convince poor performers to resign? for the sake of playing devil's advocate, i'd like to remind that poor performers may not see that same image when they look in the mirror. it's likely that they too will experience the same dread and despair as anyone else might when they are confronted by the very real future prospect of unemployment.
- superfrank 3y ago
  You're absolutely right, but it's also likely that they will have a harder time finding new jobs. I know there are exceptions, but generally you'd expect the high performers to have the most options.
gwbas1c 3y ago
> If anything, it's usually the crappiest people who are OK stocking around when a company becomes paralyzed... Don't assume that. Not everyone can just hop into a new job. Some top performers, who are deep into their career, need to invest a lot of time in their job searches. If finding a new job takes someone 160+ hours, it's impractical to do that while doing honest work for their employer. People have families and other things to do outside of work. That's why negotiating a severance package is a thing.

keyle 3y ago

It's a dumb strategy because the talent that can get a job anywhere will be the first to jump ship, and they're the ones you want to retain. Meanwhile the talent that can't get a job elsewhere easily will be hanging on for a payout. You basically alienate your teams, throw timelines off anyway and frankly it's a dick move. I think if this is the case, it's because it's mismanaged to the point that no one knows who should go, so you put the feelers out as opposed to restructure solidly going forward.

rendaw 3y ago

This doesn't make sense to me. It's "bleed the bone off the fat", on top of the morale issues you mentioned, and if they have no interest in the goal and they're just losing money why keep on funding it at all? Just sell it.

namirez 3y ago

Sounds like an urban legend. Doesn’t make any sense.

jrockway 3y ago

Also if you just fire someone, you get to pick who you fire. If people leave because of low morale, you don't get to pick who leaves. It will probably be those most desirable to the outside market, though, which is exactly the opposite effect you want on your company. It does hurt to let people go, and I understand why people don't want to put themselves in that position. But to some extent, that's why you get paid the big bucks. If it was all sunshine and rainbows, you'd just do it for free! (I finally canceled my cable last week after 5 months of procrastinating. So don't put me in charge of your Fortune 500. But there's someone that can get the job done, probably. ;) I am also unsure that laying people off during a high interest rate period makes a lot of sense. The article smugly points out that "other bets" made 200 million while losing 800 million. If you only care that every venture makes money, then you probably won't ever hit the next big thing. Look at ChatGPT vs. Bard, for example, and remind me which company pioneered consumer AI products. Stop investing, and it's all gone in a flash. Staff that failed to make random idea #32 work might very well make random idea #33 work. If you take a failed project and wait to start assembling a brand new team after you think of random idea #33, you're already years behind. What if your competitor just kept the team and moved right on to random idea #33? You're done! Scary! (But at some point, money doesn't matter, and I think most of the founders / execs at these big companies are more than finished. If they go out with a whimper instead of a bang, it doesn't really change their life. So, sell that stock today I guess!)

lambdasquirrel 3y ago

From my past experience, when an org could not build what people wanted, there were usually (i.e. almost always) specific reasons why. The things I’ve seen have included: inability of product to capitalize on ideas that did not come from them, directors who blocked/stifled work at odds with their interests (i.e. empire building), culture that was good at one thing (and not the other things they needed to succeed), absolutely psycho top management resulting in fear throughout the org, engineers who cared more about technical thing X than shipping product, management that did not grasp the technical aspects enough to manage the engineering effort, management that is simply spiteful and shoots itself in the foot, toxic culture that spends more time on intra-company competition than actual work. Funny thing is, I think I can pin the problem on the rank-and-file at just one company. The reality is that most of the front-line just do whatever they’re told. When you have e.g. toxic culture, that comes from top down, or is at least given a free pass by the folks at the top. There will be rare exceptions here and there. I’ve seen a company that made something that people wanted, but they simply did not have the marketing, money, and focus to acquire enough users to break even, and lost to a competitor that had an inferior product but went gonzo on their marketing. But maybe you could say that that was a fault of marketing, product, and senior leadership, not the org making the product. So anyway, my retort is that if you do not know what exactly is broken in your org, then you have bleeped up royally. There is practically always a very specific reason, and you don’t address a specific problem with a blind sledgehammer.

baby 3y ago

Tbf I still don’t see any improvements to twitter. The messaging experience is still absolute horsesh