6 ms·

"We won't share a list of the affected employees because some of them might not want the information to be public" was the biggest bullshit I've heard recently

• vdqtp3 3y ago
  > one of 2024s gifts to humanity You think that started in 2024? You sweet summer child
  • robinduckett 3y ago
    “Hey is Dave working today? We were supposed to groom the backlog today.” “Dave is no longer with us” “Oh no! What do we do? Send a condolences card to his partner? Do we have contact information? I worked with Dave for three years” “Oh.. no he just has been let go.” “Okay.. uh. So who will be the scrum master now?” “You will have to take on some extra responsibilities while we transition to the new team structure” “:sadparrot:”
    • forgotusername6 3y ago
      That's at least better than I've experienced: Manager at a standup "got some news. Unfortunately Bob has passed out" Confused looks. "What do you mean passed out?" "Oh I mean he's died" Horror from everyone there. No further information was ever given.
      • sokoloff 3y ago
        Personally, I think it’s not the company’s place to give out further information in this case, absent a request from Bob’s family.
        • vaylian 3y ago
          I think the issue is rather that the manager tries to sugarcoat the fact that someone has died by using very abstract language.
          • midasuni 3y ago
            Might have being going for “passed away” Managers are people too and will have their own emotions they are dealing with.
            • tudorw 3y ago
              At least they weren't announced as 'useless', so there is that.
            • loloquwowndueo 3y ago
              As a manager you have a responsibility to communicate this to your team and give them resources to deal with the emotions (you, the manager, being one of the resources). So sure, you have your own stuff to deal with - use the resources you have for that (eg your manager) but when it comes time to face your team, be a professional and don’t shut down in front of them. They need you too. Source: I’ve been in management positions and had to deal with a bunch of layoffs and yes, the occasional outright actual death.
        • weatherlite 3y ago
          So why even say he died? Maybe just say he is not working for the company anymore and let the team figure it out for themselves if they are that curious.
          • samatman 3y ago
            If a colleague of mine died, and management described this as "they are no longer with the company", this would create some huge trust issues if I found out. Which in any place I've ever worked, I would find out. "Passed out" is just a verbal typo for "passed on", an accepted euphemism in English for someone dying. I think that slip is forgivable, clearly not ideal, but human beings make mistakes. I also agree with the parent comment that it isn't management's place to provide details about the death, but IMHO they have a responsibility to say that's what happened.
  • The_Colonel 3y ago
    There aren't many ways to get more condescending than this. Congrats.
    • toomanyrichies 3y ago
      >> You sweet summer child Agreed that the condescension is the worst part of this, but a close 2nd-place has to be how cliché this is by now.
    • vdqtp3 3y ago
      It was just an offhand comment. The first time I remember it happening to me was 2012, and I know it wasn't new then.
• franciscop 3y ago
  This has been one of my most surprising/weird experiences working for US startups. In the other two countries I've been, at the very least my manager sat with each of us, or in group, or some sort of announcement when someone I was working with would stop (either voluntarily or involuntarily). Seeing names and 1-1 conversations just disappear from Slack without anyone saying anything is very bizarre. But I had to learn that as a lesson as well, since I might've learned something from them and left e.g. some commands that I use once every few months in the chat, now gone forever. This is also literally the only reason I have Linkedin, so I don't suddenly lose contact with those people (I don't have FB).
  • maccard 3y ago
    I've pushed for 30 day retention in slack for this very reason.
  • kagakuninja 3y ago
    It used to be that way. Work in the office generally requires a face-to-face meeting, and a box to put your stuff in before you are escorted out of the office. Most recently, during COVID, I was laid off with no contact with my manager and no explanation. My recruiter called right before my access was terminated at 5pm.
  • dudul 3y ago
    I don't know if it became the norm in the US because of remote work, but as a manager I make a point of announcing to my team when one of them just got let go. Like in the next 30min or so. I guess I don't tell all teams and all our 200 engineers that this random guy is no longer with us.
  • adastra22 3y ago
    I haven't had a US-based office job since 2018. I'm as thrown by it as you. It always used to be the norm that at the next standup or meeting it would be acknowledged. I don't know what changed in the intervening years.
  • paulddraper 3y ago
    I wonder how common this is, % wise. I've never seen this happen personally (15yrs US tech) but maybe that is unusual
• jlengrand 3y ago
  I mean, I've seen a lay off once where all the names of the people affected where listed and taped on the door of the department. People came to work checking the list, just like I did 20 years ago to know if I passed my degree. Not sure it's much better :D
• kgdiem 3y ago
  My previous job never told us who was laid off —- once I had a meeting with a woman later that day and I only realized after she didn’t show up. I too found slack to be the layoff lookup tool.
  • netsharc 3y ago
    Hah, is Slack doing anything with this data, it sounds like Salesforce has a good intel on a lotttt of companies. Things like re-orgs (bunch of new Slack channels, archival of old ones) who's working with whom...
    • htrp 3y ago
      I'm sure it makes its way into the Einstein sales intelligence platform (TM)
• Arbortheus 3y ago
  Someone at my work created a secret bot that scrapes the outlook contacts list and diffs it from the previous day, each day. This way we get daily updates whenever a new person is onboarded or offboarded. As employees we now have more clarity about the state of layoffs and hiring decisions that most of the management team does. I suggest doing the same within your org if you can.
  • vasco 3y ago
    We did the same informally with Slack, but it's a great tip :) There's even some automations around leadership calendar meeting titles+invitees that I might or not have heard about. If leadership wants to play games people can play games back.
    • Spooky23 3y ago
      If the politics internally are nutty enough you can do alot with this sort of skullduggery… It only works if it’s secret or the folks are oblivious. I worked at a place where this sort of thing was done. It became practice to setup fake meetings or conduct real meetings with vague titles as a misdirection. The other scenario is if you let consultants inside the firewall. Big 5 guys always gather intel on org charts and goings on for more business. These guys aren’t very clever and are easy to manipulate with this sort of thing.
      • oblio 3y ago
        > I worked at a place where this sort of thing was done. It became practice to setup fake meetings or conduct real meetings with vague titles as a misdirection. I don't get it.
        • Spooky23 3y ago
          You’re negotiating with Cisco. “Terms discussion / Arista” with key players. You’re fighting with Big Consultant A. “Team Sync / Big Consultant B Principal” When competing for resources, we’d sometimes imply that fake skunk works projects exist. It depends on an environment toxic enough that people are spying on your calendar. Many big companies are.
• matwood 3y ago
  We're people really told before, or did everyone simply find out because they were all in the office together? I know when I worked in a big company 20 years ago I would have no idea who was let go in another office.
  • DebtDeflation 3y ago
    I can't remember lists ever being revealed to employees. I would usually find out when an email bounced back.
  • jcadam 3y ago
    Last big layoff I was a part of in the before times, I was working for a huge aerospace company who just lost out on a major gov contract. We were told layoffs were coming, and they would happen on a certain day. You would get a phone call to come to your manager's office for a private meeting, or you wouldn't and that meant you were not laid off. So everyone is sitting at their desk, too keyed up to do any work, just waiting to hear who's desk phone is going to go off next. My call came late in the afternoon (about the time I was starting to think I was safe). Everyone in the cube farm knew you just got hit as you walked toward the boss's office where the boss and the HR lady were waiting.
• alemanek 3y ago
  I really don’t get why companies won’t allow limited access to email at least to send a goodbye message and contact details to their colleagues. You could spin up new email boxes if you are worried about them downloading emails even. It just seems really cold to not let people say goodbye and point their colleagues to their LinkedIn so they can get some recommendations and such. For the companies that allow this I salute you.
  • MaxBarraclough 3y ago
    Could be they want to avoid the remaining employees getting emails saying Turns out the competition pay much better anyway.
    • kagakuninja 3y ago
      You can find most of your coworkers on LinkedIn, if that is your goal.
    • alemanek 3y ago
      Could be but the few that will send out nasty grams on broadcast just hurt themselves. Professionals will inform their colleagues privately so as to not burn bridges. I guess I just wish the US borrowed some parts of European work culture when it comes to stuff like this.
  • zdragnar 3y ago
    Security training, usually mandated by some insurance policy, regulation or something else, typically lists "disgruntled employee" as the number one internal security threat. Cutting off access prior to or immediately following notification of termination is more or less the only remedy to prevent data exfiltration from such a person. Even if there were some programmatic way to ensure they could only email internal addresses, there are still some risks. I think it'd be worth implementing myself, though I can see it being rather difficult or impossible to set up depending on how the company's email is run.
• akudha 3y ago
  2024? It happened to me in 2020, right after Covid. I was unable to reach a colleague, thought he was sick (not unusual, he had health issues often). Until the “standup” rolled around and we were told he was laid off. Apparently he himself found out after most of his logins were shut off. Corporate world is as gutless as it is soulless
  • xena 3y ago
    I've heard from a friend that the way they found someone was laid off was by Google Calendar suddenly removing the person that was laid off from invites while in a 1:1 with their manager. The manager had no context. That kind of inhuman feeling is what exemplifies the state of layoffs in the modern day.
    • jcadam 3y ago
      Last time I was laid off (2022) it worked this way. It was a remote job - I was pulled into a random 1:1 meeting with my manager and immediately afterward I found all my permissions/access was gone.
      • yellowapple 3y ago
        Last time I was laid off (exactly 1 month ago) even my manager (allegedly) didn't know I was laid off until after my offboarding meeting with HR. Neither did the manager of the consulting engagement to which I was assigned (thankfully my now-former employer didn't terminate my accounts until noon, which gave me time to reach out to her on Slack and coordinate returning the client-issued laptop I had just received days prior).
  • tracerbulletx 3y ago
    My biggest complaint is that lying is just completely endemic. The best liars, who lie so well you question if they're lying when it's right in front of you, are at the top, and you just progress down from there with everyone playing along to known lies. Finding and working in areas with people who care about the truth is like a priceless haven.
• niceice 3y ago
  Step 1. A company lays off employees and shares the list. Step 2. The list is shared on social media. Step 3. A former employee that's on that list sues the company.
  • ejb999 3y ago
    exactly -if I ran a big company, no way I would send out a notice to people still working there every time someone was let go to say who got fired or laid off. People who need to know find out who is gone, it just takes a little longer.
  • pyrophane 3y ago
    Has this ever happened? I know that in the US at least we say that "you can sue anyone for anything," but it seems a stretch to think that a company could face legal liability for disclosing internally that someone was let go.
• xeromal 3y ago
  One of the companies in my early career always sent out an email blast with someone's parting words. In the case of a negative termination, the leadership usually wrote something about them. The words were always read by HR before, but I really appreciated it. It felt more humane.
• pyrophane 3y ago
  Right. I think they just want to avoid being on the front-page of startup news sites with a headline like "<company> lays off <n>% of workforce," so they don't call it a layoff and try to keep a lid on how many people were let go. Of course, because they can't say that they have to come up with other narratives which wind up sounding disingenuous at best.
• sitzkrieg 3y ago
  my employer did this last year. randomly laid off 100s of top contributors and project champions then spent the following year wondering why everything is slipping. that company and this entire market is so incredibly stupid.