9 ms·
This is one of the best (if not the best) layoff letters I've seen online (no affiliation, don't know anyone working there, purely outsider perspective). * Sev
by senko 8mo ago
This is one of the best (if not the best) layoff letters I've seen online (no affiliation, don't know anyone working there, purely outsider perspective).
* Severance packages upfront because realistically that's what everyone worries about first.
* Reasoning second. I appreciate the one clean cut vs prolonged bleeding.
* Owning the decision and respecting the people that got you there. Opting for an awkward allhands vs breakup-via-text-message.
* Giving people a chance to say goodbye.
Not gonna go into strategic analysis of this, or Jack's leadership style in general.
But realistically, you can't pen a better (or, well, less bad) layoff announcement.
- slantedview 8mo ago"owning" the decision doesn't mean anything. It's just words.
- rustystump 8mo agoIt is but those words could be long flowery corpo speak or short. “Yall gonna get money and most yall fired. My bad woops”
- teyopi 8mo agoAgree materially no consequences but still better than many deflection strategies we have seen from others during layoffs.
- jtokoph 8mo agoOne day there will be a CEO who actually pays the severances out of their own compensation.
- t-writescode 8mo agoSo, like Nintendo and other Japanese and Chinese companies where the CEO of a company treats the company like their child and takes the hit when they make errors? Or maybe like the US employer that gave everyone at the company a flat wage?
- trvthnvke-1 8mo ago[flagged]
- medi8r 8mo agoEven better they fire themself, the exec team can replace them with AI
- Trufa 8mo ago@grok remove the corporate jargon and explain it in a direct and candid way in a single sentence @grok We're slashing the company from 10k to under 6k people because AI plus tiny teams now let us do the same work with way fewer bodies, and the CEO would rather gut half the staff in one brutal move than bleed out slowly over years. I am curious why this got so popular, it really is the same thing, am I missing something? Is it because of elon/jack dynamics?
- danpalmer 8mo ago> I appreciate the one clean cut vs prolonged bleeding. That's a false dichotomy, you could reduce headcount via attrition which is better in some ways. There's also no reasoning on product impact. Is the strategy to cut products that aren't making money? Is the strategy to cut 40% across everyone because everyone can go faster? > Owning the decision Does it? It came across to me as an inevitability of AI, not "we over-hired". Layoffs are always a mis-management issue, because the opposite (hiring) is a management issue. If management failed to see where the market was going and now needs a different workforce, that's still a management issue. > respecting the people that got you there There's words, and there's money, and on these it's pretty good. But there's also an empathy with the experience they're about to go through and I'm not sure there's much of that here beyond the words. To do this well you'd need to think through what folks are about to go through and look for ways you can positively impact that beyond actions today. I've seen some companies do this better, helping teams get re-hired elsewhere, splitting off businesses to sell to other companies, incubating startups, there are lots of options. Hard, especially at this scale, but possible. > But realistically, you can't pen a better (or, well, less bad) layoff announcement. And this is the crux of my point, I really think you can. This was a good one, one of the better I've seen, but it's still within the realm of SV companies laying people off. In some companies, countries, industries, this would look very different, and better.
- belval 8mo ago> you could reduce headcount via attrition which is better in some ways I don't think reducing via attrition is better for the company, for the employees 100%, but attrition would be your people moving to other companies and retirement. It means that you are effectively bleeding your people with options (usually above average) and those with the most experience in favor of "the rest".
- danpalmer 8mo agoIt's a nuanced trade-off. It's worse for the company as you said, it may be worse for the employees because some will leave from burnout without severance, those remaining will have more work to do typically. But my point was that what was presented was a false dichotomy and that framing it as such is disingenuous to employees receiving those comms.
- shaftway 8mo agoIt should be good. It's the third time he's written this exact same announcement, including "taking the blame" and "making the difficult choice to cut a large group instead of smaller cuts over time" and "thanking the expendables that got the company where it is."
- Bayko 8mo ago[flagged]
- michaelcampbell 8mo ago"some of you may die, but it's a risk I'm willing to take"
- meerab 8mo agoSpot on. This tweet will go down in history — right next to Jack's first tweet. We all understand businesses require difficult decisions. This is one of the best layoff letters I've seen. Short, honest, and human.
- arzke 8mo agoI wonder if the lack of capital letters is a clever trick to make this whole annoucement look more humane and natural. Surely it's intentional: only "U.S" deserves capitals, not even his own name in the signature.
- daegloe 8mo agoThat’s how Jack writes to everyone (and comms drafts his announcements true to his style)
- matsemann 8mo agoWhy does he write i’m at some sentences but i'm at others (different ')?
- Kwpolska 8mo agoThe 2021 answer would be that he wrote part of this in a basic text editor, and part in a word processor that does “smart quotes”. The 2026 answer is that an AI wrote some parts.
- grey-area 8mo agoIt's just a Shibboleth used by SV types to signal their disdain for convention. Altman is also a fan.
- OrangeMusic 8mo agoYeah somehow this make me instantly dislike him.
- blitzar 8mo agoits the Black Turtleneck of 2025/2026
- donatj 8mo agoI don't know, I personally find it kind of disrespectful. My initial gut reaction was "he can't even be bothered to use his shift-key while dramatically altering 4,000 people's lives?" It's just too casual for what is happening.
- grey-area 8mo agoApart from the bit where he lays 4000 people off, but himself is untouched. Oh and the bit where he claims AI efficiencies are the reason. If I had to do this to a company I’d built I’d fire myself too. It’s an admission of a massive failure of leadership.
- kortilla 8mo agoCompanies grow and shrink. That’s not “a massive failure”.
- grey-area 8mo agoCutting staff by half is an admission of massive management failure. Their planning was terrible. Their hiring was terrible. They can’t think of any new projects to put these staff on.
- kortilla 8mo agoNot really. Sometimes markets fail. It was not a management failure when construction companies had to lay people off during the GFC.
- shimman 8mo agoYou're right, it's worse. It's hurting people's lives, maybe it should be considered a crime in America due to how intertwined having a job is with also having access to healthcare, social services, government services, the ability to eat, the ability to have a place to sleep; it all seems extremely dramatic in this context. All the more reason to tax tech companies more to provide better welfare for the nation because we all know these business magnates are too greedy to care about other humans that aren't them.
- kortilla 8mo agoThis is extremely naive. A huge portion of industries are cyclical by the nature of the markets they target. Mining, farming, oil, solar, construction, child care, elder care, etc all have waxing and waning demand. It’s completely detached from reality to think that once someone is hired for a job that the job will be around for 10+ years.
- yellow_lead 8mo agoIts getting a bit repetitive to see this type of comment on every tech layoff letter
- turtlesdown11 8mo agofawning over the CEO is certainly a type of tech poster
- d--b 8mo agoOwning it doesn’t make it less of a shit move. Canning people when you do well is just a way to milk the cow that others raised for you. Plus it shows a blatant lack of imagination and foresight. I just hope the remaining employees realize they’re in an ejectable seat and stop working for people like that. It’s only a matter of time the founders sell to Bending Spoons for a final paycheck and everyone else is out.
- acjohnson55 8mo agoYeah but the purpose of a company is not to employ people, it is to make money. The employment is a means to an end. If the money continues to flow without the people, that is better. I can imagine creating a system designed to allocate profits to a broader set of stakeholders, but that's not the system we have.
- rswail 8mo agoIt's called a co-op.
- 1123581321 8mo agoYou haven’t seen toxic work culture until you’ve seen a co-op reduce its size (or rather, tighten the circle of distributions.)
- malfist 8mo agoSo we shouldn't call it a shit move? I'm not sure what your point is.
- acjohnson55 8mo agoI think it's fine to call it a shit move. It's this part: > Canning people when you do well is just a way to milk the cow that others raised for you. I don't think people should reasonably expect to be employed if a company doesn't need them for its future plans. > Plus it shows a blatant lack of imagination and foresight. It seems to me Block has tried a whole bunch of different things. Imagination isn't their problem. I'm not deeply familiar with their business, but my hunch is that it's more that they're giving up on some of their pie in the sky ideas and consolidating on what's working.
- oytis 8mo agoI am not sure the exists a good way to say "the business is doing great, but we still fire you".
- AtNightWeCode 8mo agoAnd also not doing it on a Friday.
- skywhopper 8mo agoSorry, but it would only be “ownership” of the decision if he himself resigned for making the terrible decisions that led to than”necessity” in the first place.
- malfist 8mo agoNo you see, he learned a lesson. Its a very expensive lesson so we shouldn't fire him. Now, why he keeps having to relearn the lesson I couldn't tell you. It's a mystery