Comment by mtm7 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mtm7 | Hacker News Reader

This was exceptionally immaturely handled on multiple fronts:

> Thinking there were technical difficulties, some employees logged-off and were never able to return to the meeting. [...] Others tried in vain to join the webinar and got a message saying it was full, likely because Bird's webinar license didn't accommodate enough attendees.

> For the next five minutes, employees stared at a sparse slide with a dark grey background that said only "COVID-19." [...] A robotic-sounding, disembodied voice came on the line. The woman began by acknowledging "this is a suboptimal way to deliver this message."

> As the voice on the line was speaking, employees stared at their computer and began to take in the news that they were losing their jobs. Then their screens suddenly went dark and their company issued MacBooks restarted. By 10:40 a.m, everyone was locked out, just as employees were frantically trying to exchange personal numbers and emails on Slack and take screenshots of their contacts.

> It did not help that many managers were included in the layoffs and had no idea who on their team had been cut. Some resorted to messaging their reports on LinkedIn to see if they still worked at the company.

> [The person who gave the announcement] was not VanderZanden or a top executive. "It was a cowardly move," said a Bird manager. "Travis did not want to deliver the news."

> Workers were told they would be receiving three months of healthcare benefits but when they looked into it, they discovered the company is actually only providing coverage until April 30th.

Simple email would be better and more clear than this disorganized mess.

An email is a paper trail.

I don't get your point. If you're going to lay off someone, what's wrong with leaving a paper trail about it? It's not like you have to include everything you never liked about each employee.

I tell you: whenever they offer you a Mac laptop to work with, refuse it and choose a Linux one, where you and only you have the control.

This the worst fuck up ever

Sorry, are you saying it's impossible to have a Linux laptop configured such that a corporation retains control & not the user?

I.e., such that They have root & You don't?

And if both Macs & Linux can be configured such that the You are subject to Them, and both can configured such that only You have control, what is the difference you're getting at?

but until now, unless you have remote ssh enabled and you know your worker's laptop's IP, there's no service for Linux to remote wipe the laptop, like in Mac.

Remember when Solyndra stole $700 million dollars from the taxpayers by accepting a loan/grant from the Obama administration, then paid out a shit ton of bonuses to execs, then killed everyones accounts one night and people just showed up to work the next day to find the doors lock and all their accounts disabled?

The CIO took multiple ~$75,000 bonus days and weeks before the closure.

The IT manager got a ~$25,000 bonus days before locking all accounts and killing exchange.

Is there a relationship between this and the situation at Bird?

They both mishandled lay-offs?

Curious why this post was flagged? Not sure what rule is violated.

Anyway, I do remember the Solyndra scandal, but I’d wager most don’t. I mostly recall the sparse media attention given at the time.

Agreed, that was one of the sloppiest and mishandled lay-offs I can think of. That should be a case study of exactly how not to fold a company.

> Curious why this post was flagged? Not sure what rule is violated.

I suppose because it's a political tangent.

I see several reasons why this was flagged. From the HN guidelines[0]:

> Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.

> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That destroys the curiosity this site exists for.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It's a stretch to call this political. The mentioning of the Obama grant, which is barely relevant to GP's point, is a far cry from flamebait. What are the other reasons for the flagging?

The point of calling out the grant, is that the US just created a two trillion dollar stimuls package - ostensibly to help small businesses and others from laying people off - yet we have the highest unemployment ever, millions laud off in a week and tons of businesses closing.

Whre is that 2 trillion follars going?

Funny you should ask - they pushed for no oversight.

This is the biggest theft of wealth in history.

Is it that bad? I mean, it looks bad, but no matter how they put it they're still getting fired. And if they don't like it, too bad. They don't work there anymore.

It's sort of ripping off a band-aid: it's better to have it done all at once, than dragging it out over the course of a few weeks.

Even if you elect to "rip off the band aid" there are about thousand ways you could go about this in a more mature and professional way. A couple of things come to mind:

- Deliver your message with empathy and context as to why the decision has to be made for the survival of the company.

- Deliver the message in a way that scales. There's almost no point in having a webinar if there's not going to be a discussion anyway.

- Offer assistance to those being laid off to lessen the blow: paid leave, coaching, extended health benefits etc.

- Preface your message with the good stuff (point above) and explain why the company has taken any type of measure to lessen the impact of this sad but unavoidable news.

- Set up a way for ex-employees to keep in touch instead of locking them out completely. Protecting corporate assets is understandable, treating people like disposable trash is not.

>- Deliver your message with empathy and context as to why the decision has to be made for the survival of the company. //

Clearly the people in charge don't care about the employees. When they're just using the employees to make them money, IMO, it is worse to lie and pretend otherwise.

Are you saying that it's literally impossible for the CEO of a company to care about the well-being of people that are being fired to keep the company from going bankrupt?

I'm not saying that they should lie about caring, having empathy for someone costs nothing and doesn't require you to solve their problems.

Maybe they cared about the employees but were criminally inept, it's possible. But, if they're that incapable how'd they get to be a CEO?

Occam's ghost is whispering "sociopath" to me.

All this. At a minimum the head of the company or some C-level should have delivered this message themselves, with video on.

Let employees have a way to contact each other for a while, so they can network for their next job, or at least say goodbye.

But they're not their employees anymore. There's no point to doing any of this. The purpose of having a webinar was, presumably, that it should be atomic.

The rest of the things you're describing all cost money. Why spend money when you don't have to?

Look, if you are completely devoid of empathy that's fine but don't act like this is how most people think.

While I would agree that most people don't think this way, the relatively few people that occupy executive level positions certainly do. Haven't you ever wondered why sociopaths are over-represented in positions of power and authority?

Stop saying "atomic" for Christ's sake. Unless the company is literally going under companies usually take the time to have a 1:1 chat with the person being laid off.

Yes it is bad, and yes it looks bad.

Your post is getting downvoted because it displays a tremendous lack of empathy, and because the company in question displayed a tremendous lack of professionalism.

> It's sort of ripping off a band-aid: it's better to have it done all at once, than dragging it out over the course of a few weeks.

It could have been done in a week, and in a way that 1) maintained security/access in a reasonable way, and 2) that allowed people to get their shit in order.

But taking a week to do it costs money. People won't work productively if they might get laid off any second. By laying them off atomically without any advance warning, they can get back to work quicker.

Back-of-the-envelope calculation: It takes a week to lay them off. During this week, productivity will be down 50%. You have 654 employees (ex-post). Say they each cost $200k/year (taxes, office space, etc), that gives (1/52) * 0.5 * 200k = $1.92k/employee in lost productivity, or almost $1.3 million in total.

You think the remaining workers are going to “get back to work faster” just because their colleagues were canned fast?

That’s not how people work.

Even if I remained, I would start looking for a new job very fast.

Amen, brother. A demoralized workforce is not a more productive workforce.

If they'd be unsure for a week as to whether they would be fired or not, yes. If they are never uncertain, there is less time in flight.

That's a good calculation. Now compare that with the PR fall-out from their chosen approach.

What are the future losses from not being able to hire top candidates (and maybe even loss of business if customers start boycotting it), since obviously Bird is a shitshow of an employer?

Customers never care about that. Case in point, my computer presumably contains all sorts of rare minerals mined by slave labour in the third world. Is it regrettable? Yes. Does it mean I stop using computers? No, it's a price I'm willing to pay.

Customers don't stop using Facebook over the clear and present erosion of their freedom it presents, so thinking they would be concerned with how a company treats its employees is absurd.

As for prospective employees, it's going to be a buyer's market from here on out. Universities have been pumping out CS grads en masse, and the startups have been hiring them. With the startups going bankrupt, there will be a glut of unemployed programmers.

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