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Comment by m0zg | Hacker News Reader

I disagree. What would be more cruel is to keep people guessing for weeks, or to do several smaller layoffs. That's how it's usually done, and it utterly decimates the morale, and causes the best people to leave.

The best way to do a layoff is to cut once, cut deep, and do it quickly. And of course to not be an asshole and offer severance compensation to folks who were laid off.

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> I disagree. What would be more cruel is to keep people guessing for weeks, or to do several smaller layoffs. That's how it's usually done

No it's not and you're presenting a false dichotomy. They made the decision who to fire (to "cut once"). The question is email vs. having managers meet with their impacted direct reports which can definitely and is regularly done inside of one day.

I've been at a company where the 1-1 firings occurred over a morning. I was fortunate to keep my job, but I can tell you it was a pretty awful day for those staying (obviously not as bad as for those leaving :(). There's no good way to do this, layoffs of this sort are awful. I actually am not sure this is better or worse. You have a horrible Friday night, with untold stress, but at least you're not sweating at your desk with people being walked in to the back to be canned, afraid of the mere mention of your name or a tap on the shoulder.

There is a right way to do this. You announce it to the staff and at the same time you let those affected know. It's best to do this at the end of the day.

Telling people "you may or may not still have a job, you'll get an email within the next 72 hours" is ridiculous. So what happens if it's Monday morning and I didn't get an email? Am I still employed? What if there was a glitch? What if I show up and I'm escorted out?

This screams of mismanagement.

Can't you email those not listed for termination, at the same time, and tell them they still have their job.

> You announce it to the staff and at the same time you let those affected know.

To do this you would have to already have finalized this list of people to let go. Specifying that list beyond rough department targets to actual individuals probably requires involvement of many managers and might be what happened in those 72 hours, but I'd love to hear from someone with actual experience. Could larger organizations actually prepare that without leaking the layoff anyway?

>So what happens if it's Monday morning and I didn't get an email?

You still have a job.

>Am I still employed?

Yes.

>What if there was a glitch?

This seems rare, and it seems like people would double check to ensure this doesn't happen (and if it did, to re-send an email).

>What if I show up and I'm escorted out?

Sounds awkward at worst, but now you know.

As if the slow trod all day long to go through one-by-one doesn’t have its own consequences.

You are correct about the false dichotomy, but the correct way of doing it would have been to let everyone know who was being let go before they made the announcement. No reason to leave people wondering for any period of time.

> No reason to leave people wondering for any period of time.

Play that out a bit. Is the notification a scheduled slack message or email for those terminated? Or do you want each employee being let go to be notified in a face-to-face conversation with their manager and where the details of financial arrangements, healthcare continuity, and other aspects are prepared and with a chance for the employee to ask questions, and for HR and leadership to assess if they appear in a condition to commute home and offer other transport or acute support arrangements if needed?

I think the latter is more appropriate, but a series of those things takes time to execute [longer if managers or layers of managers are being eliminated], and the time between when the first such meeting ends and the last such meeting begins, people are left wondering.

You can still tell everyone immediately at the end of the day. Or just send the email on the weekend. You don't have to say you're going to do it first and keep everyone worried.

There is no great way to do it. If they told people in person, people would frame it as being humiliated and then forced to walk through the office with everyone knowing. If they did not warn people, they would complain about being blind sided. Layoffs are a terrible thing to go through and all things considered I don't think this was a bad way at all. No one had to do the walk of shame, everyone had a day or so to prepare themselves for it.

But that is just my preference, others would prefer something else. Everyone though would prefer not to get laid off. Unfortunate for all involved.

You can't when you're dealing with 6000+ people. Likely even the managers didn't know so as to avoid feeding the rumor mill. They'll now need to make up their minds about their reports whom they wouldn't mind losing.

Are you saying top executives selected 10% out of all 6000 employees without consulting their direct managers who to fire? That would be a random 10% sample at best. Obviously managers would be involved in deciding who is worth to keep or not.

No, I'm suggesting that managers might have been made to select them on the spot. I worked as a manager. This is usually a very easy question to answer unless your team consists entirely of rockstars, which I haven't experienced in practice. As a manager you are acutely aware of who's producing and who's dragging their feet.

No way are the managers going to all stay late on Friday and figure out who to fire on Saturday. Those discussions have already happened, and they know who is being let go.

This is Musk we're talking about here. He might have decided this over lunch a few hours before the announcement.

I agree with you. Uncertainty and fear brings a horrible toll on the employees.

I was a teenager in the 90s and my mother worked for IBM. My parents were divorced and I lived with mom. She came home every day exhausted and scared, not knowing when the axe would drop. It went on for years. No one knew the logic of which departments were next; solid performance reviews didn't protect you, seniority, skillet, being management: nothing made you safe. Everyone we knew went to work not knowing if they would make it to lunch.

It was horrible. I'm sure everyone would have much rather the SpaceX method than months or years of agonizing waiting.

I worked at a company that did layoffs. They basically sequestered everyone in there work areas, killed Internet access so people couldn't go online (pre smartphones), and walked people out one at a time. It was pretry lame.

You want to minimize the time where employees who are not being laid off are wondering “am I being laid off?”. Ideally you want that time to be 0, because it can wreck havoc on morale and those 24 or 48 hours of doubt can be enough to push people who are not getting laid off to reach out to their network, recruiters, etc. Now you’re losing high performers.

If indeed everyone was told “check your email over the weekend to find out if you’re laid off or not”, that’s terrible. Tell people who are being laid off that they are being laid off, tell people who are not being laid off why there are layoffs and that they’re not a part of it, but don’t keep everyone in the dark - even if it’s “just” for a day or two.

Totally agree, if I was laid off I'd like to know right away so I could start job hunting right away.

And if it turns our I wasn't I'd like to know that, too, so I don't lose focus of whatever it is I'm doing.

Agreed. There is no way to do layoffs that doesn't suck and doesn't harm morale. This avoids some of the worst of it and also keeps it somewhat private.

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