Paradox

We seriously need a way to sandbox apps, where they cant see shit outside their sandbox

Most want to make it as amicable as possible

Like having an office manager tell you to gtfo, instead of the CEO who was “deeply sorry” for all this, or calling everyone to the floor, reading off a list of names, and then saying “If you heard your name, this is your last day with the company”, or the people who find out by not being able to access their work accounts (google, outlook, slack, whatever). Sure is amicable.

I guess I’m just projecting, after all, not all of us are temporarily embarrassed CEOs, who understand just how hard it is to tell someone that they’ve gotta do a lot of bullshit for the next n weeks, and we’re deeply sorry (but not sorry enough not to do it).

Smacks of the same energy Spez gave off when he’s “listening to people’s concerns” while demodding people right and left and being unwilling to budge on the amazingly arbitrary API cut off.

And I don’t need to be a master chef to tell you that refried dumpster chicken is bad food.

Layoffs indicate one thing and one thing only: the leadership made some wrong choices along the way, and so they’re going to step on the people that had no input into the process that got them there, so they, the people who made those bad choices, can stick around and continue to make more bad bets. No amount of “mercy” or “empathy” can ameliorate the fact that they’re screwing other people over in their own interests.

A key example of this is that in virtually every single layoff severance package, they never move the vesting cliff forwards. Been there less than a year and not at your 25% cliff? Guess what, those n months you spent are worth fuck all. If they were as sorry and merciful as they claim they were, they’d move the cliff up and give you the appropriate percentage of your options. Laid off 2 months before your cliff? Cool, here you go, you get 20.75% of your total (assuming 4 years with 1 year being 25%) vesting package. But no, they just take those shares from you as if they had fired you, because thats all a layoff really is: mass firings

You aren’t entitled to a job in perpetuity

And the people that mass fire people to save their own asses aren’t entitled to sympathy. They are the bad guy in this situation.

Since you asked for some things that make laying off people less shitty for the people who actually suffer and not the “poor” CEOs, here’s some low cost things you can do that don’t fuck people over quite as much. IIRC Shopify did some of these when they had to cut workforce:

• Give them enough severance to cover the time till they actually find another job. No need to support a freeloader, but no need to be a miser either.
• Help them start their job search. Your recruiters know other recruiters, they can put the names out and give them some options
• Actually do the terminations in person, not just an email you send out about how hard it is, or worse, having an underling do it.
• Do more for insurance and other benefits than the bare minimum COBRA requires
• Give them the option to keep or purchase (at significantly reduced cost) their work equipment. For many people their work computer becomes their only computer. If you need it back for legal reasons, buy them an equivalent computer, if they want it
• Give them their stock vesting, regardless of cliff date.
• Keep their slack and other accounts open, so they have a chance to say goodbye to the “survivors”
• Don’t lay people off before a holiday weekend. That shortens the time they have for job search by at least one day, if not longer.

None of that sounds too egregious, yet its never done by the “deeply sympathetic” leadership.

How are layoffs respectful? “Yeah we overspent or aren’t quite as profitable as we’d like, so we’ve determined that you’re redundant or unneeded or some other adjective that shouldn’t ever be used on a human, and so we’re going to have security perp walk you out of the office like you were caught stealing something, and we’ll have someone box up your shit and break some of it and mail it to you in 4-8 weeks. Please sign this paper that says you wont talk about what we did to you and we’ll toss a few bucks your way.”

I’ve even seen companies where people got informed they were laid off when they couldn’t log into their Slack account or whatever else. No other notice. Just dripping with respect.

I didn’t get laid off from Plex. I’ve been laid off from other companies, large and small, and had friends laid off while I was a “survivor”. My favorite time I was laid off was a few months after my wife had a baby, and a week after I told my boss she was pregnant again. That one extra paycheck sure helped me pay off the 2 month NICU stay for baby #1! I really felt respected by that company. Really liked it when the CEO sent out a form letter talking about how hard it was on him and how he lost a whole nights sleep figuring out who to screw over, instead of cutting costs in other areas.

Empathy doesn’t pay the bills. I can’t call up the bank and say “hey I can’t pay the bill this month, but my ex-boss is really sorry about all this.”

Google and Friends gave people 6 months of severance. Thats enough time to get your life back on track. But two weeks is basically just “here have another single payslip to go away forever.”

Oh boo hoo. They still get to go to work tomorrow. They still get a paycheck. They don’t have to go through the hassle of job seeking, interviewing, and the rejection letters. They don’t have to go home and wonder if they’ll make it through this time. They don’t have to see the worry in their spouse’s eyes, wondering if they will be able to pay the bills in the future.

And no, two weeks severance isn’t enough. It’s almost an insult really, as it can take that long to get interviews scheduled.