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Layoffs are a difficult thing for employees and their managers. I have seen people (one was a VP of Engineering) escorted out of the building, sent in a cab to

• phamilton 1y ago
  A nice addition to this I've seen twice now is a slack channel (via their personal emails) with continuing employees willing to help them practice interviewing and share their professional networks to help them find their next role.
  • neilv 1y ago
    * The Slack is under the company's control, and potential monitoring and retention? Over the life of someone no longer with the company? * Was there any sour grapes in the Slack channel? Or was it a bummer or distraction for remaining employees? * Did the Slack actually help the employees readjust and refocus on their new job search? * Why not encourage people to say goodbyes and exchange contact info, and pay for a job search coaching service (with no reporting back to the company)?
• biztos 1y ago
  That’s great, and the polar opposite of how I experienced layoffs (of others, then eventually of me). But one thing that could be better is transparency around severance, so you know in advance what it will be should you get laid off. (Six months may or may not be “generous” depending on tenure.) When I was laid off we got what was “customary” in that country, but before the offer was on the table nobody was sure we’d get it. It’s so much nicer when this is a matter of law — I’m all for a ~ free labor market but severance requirements help to balance the risk so the employees can relax and do their best work.
• apexalpha 1y ago
  Weird, as someone from Europe I've never experience anything else. Layoffs here are always done in conjunction with the unions. People are moved to different jobs, helped with training etc... Only in very critical jobs they'd walk you out immediately but then you still get the pay.
  • wiseowise 1y ago
    > Weird, as someone from Europe I've never experience anything else. As someone from Europe, I’ve never experienced US salaries. Go figure.
    • apwell23 1y ago
      weird
    • deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    • perching_aix 1y ago
      You probably never experienced their working hours either.
      • bigfatkitten 1y ago
        As someone who has worked for a string of US companies, 38 hours for me is a busy week.
      • int_19h 1y ago
        FWIW in my 15 years of experience working in big tech in US, I never had a job in which there was an expectation of doing more than 40 hours, working weekends etc. Such things definitely exist, but they are far less common than is often implied here on HN and elsewhere. I think this is largely because people who don't work long hours are much less likely to wax poetic about it, just because, well, it's not at all unusual or interesting.
    • WhrRTheBaboons 1y ago
• throwaway2037 1y ago
  Wow, the last paragraph is really touching. That comment from the CEO is brilliant: "I trusted them yesterday, I trust them today." That will stay with me for some time!
  • ignoramous 1y ago
    > I trusted them yesterday, I trust them today. The problem is, before the layoffs, the employee may have felt they had an obligation to do right by the company. Once they're fired, it may no longer be the case. Some may very well become spiteful, act on their vengeance, & seek immediate retribution. The risk posed by an employee going rouge is what most CEOs are playing for, especially as in GP's case, for a company as large as Google, where they need to plan for all possible failures and scenarios, some of which may or may not have happened before hand.
    • eloisant 1y ago
      In France you can't layoff people on the spot, there is a 3 months notice. And I've yet to hear about employees going rogue. Maybe in US laid off employees can go rogue because they're treated like shit in the process?
      • ahtihn 1y ago
        Notice doesn't mean they must be allowed to keep working. It just means they need to be paid.
      • pclmulqdq 1y ago
        US laid off employees also get 3-6 months of full pay and benefits. They just lose access to the building and their work devices immediately. I imagine it's no different in France.
        • Aeolun 1y ago
          > I imagine it's no different in France. He literally just told you it’s different in France?
• Ferret7446 1y ago
  What happens if your company supports billions of dollars in economic output, and a few employees decides to go rogue and sabotage some systems that then causes an international loss of billions of dollars, and possibly property damages and loss of life? If you were the CEO, would you take criminal/financial responsibility for that?
  • fzeroracer 1y ago
    Does this question also equally apply to the opposite side? If an employee got so angry with how you laid them off and treated them afterwards that they decide to do what they can to damage your company? Cutting access and having security walk them out is more or less security theater. If an employee really wanted to cause damage the odds are they either already have or will still find a way. In this scenario having generous severance and treating them with respect is likely to better defuse the situation than kicking them out the door.
    • Ferret7446 1y ago
      This hypothetical is about what the CEO/company decides to do, not what the employee decides to do. A lot of liability "theater" is not there to prevent issues, it's to cover your ass. So no, this question doesn't apply equally to the opposite side. An employee does not take responsibility for what the company does. A lot of people wonder why CEOs are paid so much; part of that is simply to take responsibility. Ironically, a lot of people complain about useless CEOs, but if you asked them to take that responsibility for the pay, they wouldn't take it (note that that responsibility includes things like sweet talking shareholders and giving public statements on short notice on things that could nuke millions of dollars in value and create very real legal liability).
      • chasontherobot 1y ago
        Ah yes, because CEOs often face consequences for their poor decisions. They definitely don't get golden parachutes and move on to a new company when they run a company into the ground.
• ErigmolCt 1y ago
  This is such a huge contrast to the usual cold, corporate layoff horror stories. Honestly, this is how it should be done if layoffs are truly unavoidable - with transparency, respect, and basic human decency.
• EdwardDiego 1y ago
  God I love living in a country with employment law that recognises the massive disparity between employers and employees.
• crossroadsguy 1y ago
  For anyone not from India — India does layoffs in every way. From “cut on zoom in 90 sec” to “please know that you have to resign and serve your two months notice and then go”; to also “if you want you can serve the notice period, or you can just leave today and still get the pay for two months”. I have experienced the first and last and in the case of last for some reason I had chosen to serve the notice.
  • shermantanktop 1y ago
    My immediate reaction is “I probably would too.” Working is often treated as transactional but it is about so much more. Self-worth, professional reputation, bonds with coworkers, ownership and stewardship of solutions. Even the simple everyday routine that a workplace drives is important.
  • dartharva 1y ago
    Another way how India does layoffs is by holding back multiple months' salaries "due to cash flow difficulties", suddenly sending them a mail of "you're fired" overnight and never paying them their dues, ever, leaving them destitute and crippling their employability. A lot of companies have done this, because they know they can, because practical legal recourses for salaried individuals are virtually non-existent in the country and its crippled judicial system.
• EE84M3i 1y ago
  Wow, I've never heard of terminated employees being able to keep their corporate laptops before. Did IT at least wipe them first?
  • _whiteCaps_ 1y ago
    Interesting. That's what's happened in the last two companies I've worked for when they did layoffs. I'm typing this message from my ex-corporate laptop right now... The process was that IT locked the laptop until the severance package was signed, then you got a code that let you reboot and reinstall MacOS.
  • int_19h 1y ago
    Quite often it's literally cheaper for them to let employees keep the laptop (sometimes for a token price) after wiping than it is to process it for reuse, just because bureaucracy is that expensive.
• DannyBee 1y ago
  Google is just really bad at this, but seems to think it's not bad at this. It's sad since there is no excuse for it - plenty of companies conduct regular layoffs and role eliminations in more compassionate ways, it would not take much to survey and learn from their practices. Hell, IBM was often more compassionate about layoffs than Google. Some of it they've tried to become more formal about in ways that actually make it worse - so for example, the timing of this (which the person complains about) is because (AFAIK) they now have one day a month where ~all role eliminations that are going to happen that month, happen. Or so i'm told this is the case. Ostensibly so you don't have random role eliminations every day, which makes some sense, but then you have no way for people on the ground to do anything more compassionate (like move the timing a bit) because they can't get through the bureaucracy. In the end - it's simple - if you disempower all the people from helping you make it compassionate, it will not be compassionate. The counter argument is usually that those folks don't know how to do it in legally safe/etc ways. But this to me is silly - if you don't trust them to know how to do it, either train them and trust them, or fire them if they simply can't be trusted overall.
  • PaulHoule 1y ago
    Google is bad at a lot of things but has a “we’re number one why try harder?” attitude. Or rather you can’t benchmark the performance of anyone there against industry peers because they are protected by a two-sided market. Bazel, Kubernetes and other startup killing tools are developed there because with monopoly services they can hire 3x the number of developers at 3x the rate of other firms and shackle them with tools and processes that make them 1/3x as productive and survive. It’s even worse when it comes to evaluating top management, somebody like Marissa Meyer might be average at best but has such a powerful flywheel behind them that they might seem to succeed brilliantly even if they were trying to fail with all their might.
    • _huayra_ 1y ago
      Funny how they're bad at this from start to end. Most of these comments talk about the "end" part, but don't forget: Google has a notoriously laggy hiring process with extreme delays and an unacceptably high level of silence on important issues from recruiters. I have been ghosted so heavily from recruiters TWICE at Google when I was literally telling them "Hey I have offers from $x and $y and I need to decide in 2 weeks. Is there any chance I can get an offer from Google beforehand?" only to receive complete silence and had to go with a different offer. 1-2 months later, the recruiter gets back to me with an offer, I have to decline. The most hilarious part about it: after I decline, I get interviewed by some team at G that tries to figure out why people declined. I guess they're expecting some teachable moment, some nuance and insight. My answer both times started with "lemme show you an email thread that is very one-sided..."
• dzogchen 1y ago
  > the laid off employees were given a few days in the company to allow them to say goodbyes This is just so wild for me as an European, because at least in Germany if you get fired (or if you quit) you need to stay 1 - 3 MONTHS at the company still.
  • 123pie123 1y ago
    this happens in the UK (called garden leave) but in my experience you're typically sent home with full pay
  • denvrede 1y ago
    Not true. They can remove you from the company grounds and block access to all systems the moment you get fired or you hand in your resignation. But they have to pay you (if there is no "good reason" for firing you) for a varying amount of time (depending on your contract and some minimums by law). Of course, most of the time, you can / need to stay at the company for that above mentioned varying amount of time.
• LPisGood 1y ago
  Is that company in data storage?
  • abdj8 1y ago
    No. It's a small company ~400 employees in total, including contractors. The CEO is a very technical guy. The average tenure of the employees let go was ~8 years.
• rqtwteye 1y ago
  "I have seen people (one was a VP of Engineering) escorted out of the building, sent in a cab to home along with a security guard (this was in India), not allowed access to computer or talk with other employees. " Some companies are just paranoid. My company has now had several rounds of layoffs, people were kept on for a few months, got severance and everything went as harmonious as layoffs can be. The cruelty the way some companies and now Musk with DOGE are doing it is simply not necessary and reflects a lot on the character of leadership. To me it looks like they are deeply insecure and hate their people.
• therealpygon 1y ago
  As it should be, but emotional people make emotional choices. The trusted and valued employee yesterday can turn on a dime and become malicious when they feel they have been wronged regardless of whether that is independently true. Their resulting actions can include anything from theft of IP to hand over to a competitor, to destruction of records or property. Worse, it is impossible to tell when someone will choose to feel they have been wronged, even when the employee could have had chronic absenteeism or underperformance that they justify with personal excuses. (I’m not suggesting there shouldn’t be compassion, rather that most people will almost always make mental excuses to justify their behavior regardless of whether that reasoning is sound.) Companies generally don’t become militant about a subject unless they have experienced the other side of the equation. It’s not just with layoffs, it can happen with protecting source code, licensing, network security, etc. I concede that a company could replace destroyed property and should be able to recover deleted data, then prosecute/sue to recover damages which could cost tens or hundreds of thousands(or millions depending on the level of access), but the disruption to business can be significant in some cases. Moreover, it is impossible to put an IP cat back in the bag. For me, it seems easy to understand both sides on this one; compassion vs risk.
  • acdha 1y ago
    > The trusted and valued employee yesterday can turn on a dime and become malicious when they feel they have been wronged regardless of whether that is independently true. On the flip side, treating them like a crook seems more likely to inspire that kind of revenge instinct. Most people would understand removing privileged access immediately but giving them a dignified exit seems more likely to prevent problems.
    • crazygringo 1y ago
      It does, but if you've removed the damage they can do, then to the company it's preferable to have more people angry who can't do damage, than less people angry but some of them will do damage. It's a sad reality. For some people a "dignified exit" won't do a single thing to lessen the rage they feel that they were wronged. It's a sad situation all around.
• magicstefanos 1y ago
  Good for you but how sad that being treated like a human is remarkable.
• ghoshbishakh 1y ago
  VDX.tv?
• Aurornis 1y ago
  > After the announcement, the laid off employees were given a few days in the company to allow them to say good byes. I was at a company that did this. I thought it was very nice at first. It didn’t take long to see why most companies don’t do this. It became common to have a couple people who turned their last days into a mission to poison the well and go on angry tirades. Those days became tense and messy as people trying to do work felt necessary to move it to private messages to avoid triggering anyone. It gets really ugly when IT starts checking logs and sees outgoing employees doing things like accessing code they weren’t even working on or downloading files in volume. This was at a company with generous severance, too, so that wasn’t the cause. A small number of people get irrationally vengeful upon being laid off. At Big Tech scale it’s virtually guaranteed that at least one of the people you lay off is going to make some bad decisions.
  • stronglikedan 1y ago
    My company does this, but they are a very large company that is known to aggressively sue people that try to poison the well, so no one tries.
• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• mik09 1y ago
  its nice to know even people like google are treated like this. even people with management roles.
• underlines 1y ago
  That's the normal way at least where I live (Switzerland) and I am shocked people are being disposed off like that in the states. Is this even legal there? We usually get 1-3 months notice period, then continue to work for these 3 months to teach the new hire or finish our open tasks. If we won't find another job in time, we would get 70-80% of the previous salary until we find another job.