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Comment by Waterluvian | Hacker News Reader

Early in my career I got a Monday morning meeting invite on a Friday afternoon just after I left the office. The meeting was called “The future of <business unit I was in>“

Entire weekend was a write off. I was so anxious. And yep. They shut down the unit (but I got to keep my job).

As a result this is forefront in my mind as a manager. One thing that works great is whenever I ask questions about something, anything, I also say “this is on my mind because…” and I find that both calms people and gets me more useful information. Context matters so much.

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You’ve just made me think about memories I’ve surpressed of a job I had, where the boss would hold Monday morning meetings every week to go around the table and get updates from the team.

He took the opportunity to pick on someone different each time and rip them to shreds. It was a horrible thing to be part of.

Needless to say my Sunday evenings were a write off during that period with the stress of having to go to that the following morning (and it potentially bring my turn to receive the wrath)

What could compel someone to want to start their Monday morning that way?

Prior to this job I’d hear people talk about terrible bosses and think they must be somehow exaggerating because I hadn’t experienced it, but no, these people exist.

I almost think he was sociopathic or something. No one else I’ve ever come across has been any where near as cruel.

In the end managing by force or coercion don’t work in my opinion, people don’t want to work for those managers. His entire leadership group turned over in the 9 months I was there. That was the longest 9 months of my career.

Can completely relate… I had a neurotic boss like that. My first job so I was woefully unprepared. He would hold unpaid meetings in the evening (but free pizza - yay?) and do a round. At least once a month there was a meeting where I saw a grown man or woman (in my eyes) cry/breakdown. Because I was junior I was kind of exempt from the worst of it, but after 12 months I was the heck out of there. Seeing someone go through an actual burn-out was crazy.

It probably pushed me to become self employed, chose the people I work with.

Many reasons.

But probably mostly venting out own frustrations, while believing this is a effective managing style to get people motivated in fear.

Possibly similar behavior from higher ups. Or cargo-cult toughness.

I "over communicate" pretty much everything. I always give context, I provide links to any docs I mention, my meeting invites always have a description, agenda and goals, and I write more documentation than most devs. This is because I hate surprises and mysteries at work. I need to know what's going on to do good work, so I make sure no one has any excuse not to understand what things are about. I really wish more people put the effort in to do it. It makes life so much less stressful.

No, this is perfect, as a manager you can hardly "over-communicate". I wish all managers would do that and also reflect about their communication to constantly improve it.

I tend to be like that, but on the other hand I'm easily pissed off when someone will ask a question I already answered, like coming to a meeting and asking what the topic is or where they can find the documentation I provided in the invitation... Basically I put a lot of efforts in sharing information and people say they didn't had it only because they didn't care about, I have a hard time accepting it. Moreover because it's always the same persons. So, while I'm working on not overreacting in those kind of situations, I'm also accepting the fact that I can't make people care if they don't want to. The one who cares are thankful for the information. Those who don't, well, they don't.

Isn't there an unwritten rule about layoff timing that it's always on a Friday? Always do layoffs on Fridays so people have time on the weekend to calm down instead of going postal?

What difference does a Friday have vs a Monday if the person isn’t comming back to the office?

Maybe your remembering giving as news on a Friday so it gets lost by the media over the weekend?

It's about not bringing a gun into work and "going postal" (named after a situation with a post office employee)

Why would that be a more likely situation if you’re escorted out of the building on a Friday than it would be on a Tuesday?

So I'm a little confused. This whole thread implies that in the States you get laid off and ushered out of the building on the same day? Is that common practice?

I understand that most(?) Of the US is an "at will" jurisdiction, but where I'm from all employment contracts have a notice period in them. So when employment is terminated, by either party, there is a 2-4 week period where the employee works out their notice.

Often in the case of lay offs there would be plenty of heads up before the official notice period as well.

Only in the most egregious cases of misconduct could an employer get away without a notice period.

I think this is indeed common in the US.

Getting laid off and shown the door immediately after (plus having your access to systems and buildings revoked) is very common.

The reason for this is because the HR person drafting this policy probably had someone take advantage of the window between when someone is told they are laid off and when they are actually terminated, and so the policy gets made to reduce that liability. It sucks for the 90% of people who wouldn't do anything, but that's how it works. Imagine getting told you're your laid off, then your laptop handed in before you even leave the meeting room, then a security guard or HR person escorts you to your desk to pack your things in a box before they walk you out the building.

Mind you, you'd probably still get some severance bonus or keep getting paid for weeks or months, but you just wouldn't be expected (or able) to work.

I dunno, as a European that sounds absolutely mental to me. How about transfer of knowledge and ownership of projects?

In the USA a layoff is usually a euphemism for termination with cause that can’t be supported in court. Because of the general litigiousness and at-will nature of most employment contracts here it usually means the employer offers a token severance payment in exchange for signing a general release.

Every layoff I've been subject to (four of them) involved a large number of people, and were related to declining business or transfer of business activity to another division. And my last layoff resulted in a significant severance package. Not sure the claim of "usually" can be substantiated.

Where I’ve worked what you’ve describing is called a reorganization.

Layoffs usually mean something is wrong with the company or division. Zillow is laying off tons of employees after making bad decisions. Knowledge transfer is less important than survival (apparently).

In the U.S. sometimes your first hint of an impending layoff is when you're asked to train your replacement. And sometimes the layoff means the project you were working on is being cancelled. My own most recent experience is that the project wasn't cancelled, but it was pared back to life support.

Many years ago I worked at a company that had many rounds of RIF (reductions in force). We always did them on Friday - people would be called in for their exit interview and IT removed their access while it happened. We were based in the US but had offices in the UK.

Because of labor laws in the UK, HR did everything they could to avoid laying off the UK office staff because the process and cost was prohibitive. We kept people in the UK office for years just because it would have been a pain in the butt to remove them even if they were redundant or basically had no tasking.

Completely true about the UK part. We have colleague that is slacking off for last 6 months (after furlough) and management is not doing anything as process is quite complicated. We are all waiting as he has some plans to leave in mid Jan to do MBA.

Quite a few US tech firms will also immediately walk the employee out of the building when the employee expresses their intention to resign, and a few will even preemptively fire you as you give your notice to avoid paying you for a 2 week notice period. I know folks who won't give notice when they resign anymore, because this has happened to them several times.

Name and shame them, please, this practice needs to be called out to prospective employees.

Many people have weekend off. This includes friends, lived ones, family, thus, a layoff on Friday, can mean time spend with these people instead of sitting home alone on a weekday, mad?

Postal, or just depressed with the news, in may help to have higher odds for the comfort of others.

Because in a traditional 9-5 M-F office, no one will be there Saturday and Sunday.

No one's in the office Saturday and Sunday.

A Friday shit-can means you have to keep the rage up and avoid letting rationale thought take hold for a few _days_ before the opportunity for a shooting spree at work is available. And chances are you've got a support network that'll be available Fri/Sat night to go have a drink and bitch with.

A Tuesday shit-can means less support network (it's a work night for everyone else) and everyone you want to murder back in the office less than 24 hours later.

I'm not taking a position here, but I can see a definite difference between a Tuesday and a Friday lay-off.

I'd consider it more of a respectful gesture to the person being laid off so that they have the weekend to take it all in so they're able to start their job search on Monday and make the most of the next week, should they be in a situation where they need to.

Everywhere I’ve worked, unless someone was walked out the door, it happened early in the week and they were paid to the end of the week before their severance package even began. If you’re going to lose your job, having most of a fully paid week to take it in helps soften the landing.

Layoffs on Friday are awful. People have lives. They have appointments and kids’ soccer practice and grocery shopping and such. Now they have to reconcile that they’re unemployed during those tasks?

I’d call that respectful. Well, as respectful as you can be when you lay someone off.

I mean, you're laid off the weekend vs midweek are now identical from your perspective.

Infact its better to get laid off early in the week, now you can do other tasks that are easier to do mid week as opposed to the weekend.

The person laid off can "take things in" just as easily mid week as they can on the weekend.

I’m speculating. Perhaps this practice is common because it keeps the books clean on final payouts. Plus it allows the employee to finish any projects they’re working on during the week. Not 100% sure though.

> Plus it allows the employee to finish any projects they’re working on during the week. Not 100% sure though.

I'm not sure I'd count on an employee that's being laid off to really put in the effort to finish up his projects ;)

That’s the point, you don’t tell them until Friday.

I've heard the opposite. You lay off on a Monday so you have 5 business days to call recruiters. You give a promotion or bonus on a Friday so the employee can celebrate on the weekend and won't slack off the rest of the week.

This feels like the area of advice where you can probably concoct a narrative that supports any particular day of the week. :D

You fire on Wednesday because that lets them have a long weekend to relax.

Promote on Saturday so that they're not distracted on a workday.

I believe this was a joke in 1999's Office Space.

Specifically: incompetent bosses mis-citing a study supposedly saying it's a good idea to fire at the end of the week.

I know anecdata is worthless, but we're coming up on the anniversary of my latest layoff so it's still fresh in my mind. It was Nov. 9, a Monday. And of course I wasn't alone.

Going postal wasn't an option, everybody was working remote. I had to bring my work computer back to the office, and I had less hassle than I expected getting access to my desk to pack my personal belongings.

The place I used to work for introduced a general rule: whenever upper management would ask a question, they had to add the context why they would ask the question.

There were three options

1. Just out of curiosity

2. To challenge the team

3. Because they didn’t understand something

This helped a lot to lower anxieties of teams in discussions.

Some weird behavior at my employer perhaps. We had several rounds of layoffs during my tenure and they were always announced at an all-hands meeting at 9 AM, announced the same morning.

I still get nervous any time there’s a meeting called for 9. At least they had the good sense to not announce them for the next day.

Thursday, 10am: Company All-Hands. Scheduled at short notice.

First 10 or 15 minutes is beating around the bush about how well things have been going, buuuuut....

Another 10 minutes of different leaders explaining how difficult the decision was, crocodile tears and all.

Everyone, meanwhile, is waiting for leadership to stop wasting time and get to the point. If it wasn't obvious at the start, it would be crystal clear now.

Another 5 minutes or so of hand-wringing about how amazing everyone is and how hard this was, to complete the bullshit sandwich.

I never got to attend that all-hands meeting. The company scheduled two meetings at the same time - one all-hands, except for about 10 of us who were scheduled for the other one. It didn't take too much imagination to figure out what the second meeting was about. This was about 3 months after our company had been acquired.

One piece of advice I read in some charisma book and repeat constantly at work is to always make the point of any email you send the very first sentence.

It is so tempting to waste a bunch of time "softening" the blow of whatever you're trying to say, but you're never doing the audience any favours, you're just trying to control how they're going to react. You need only think about the last time you got an important email (job interview follow up, redundancy announcement, pay review etc). You immediately scan through the document for the one line that says what you need to know, usually starting with "unfortunately, we..." Or "we're pleased to...". The rest of the document is just fluff getting in the way of what really matters. Anyway, I'm waffling, but it never ceases to amaze me the variant ways management screw up that one simple rule.

I had a similar experience where the entire marketing and BI teams (BI was part of marketing) were called into a meeting at short notice.

Everyone expecting layoffs or some such bad news. Turned out the guy heading up marketing was leaving, and ego being a thing, needed a platform to announce this.

This fricking act put unnecessary fear into folks with mortgages and kids, for absolutely no reason!

Same day, all hands meetings are always a bad sign in my experience. Good news can wait.

Almost any time there's a same-day all hands I write off the entire day after getting the invite

Too bad that "future" is now a business jargon for crisis.

It's so much fun when you get a jackhole who does this kind of thing, and then the big meeting is about something completely asinine and inconsequential.

From: CEO Subject: An update on Waterluvian

I feel your pain ... I got a late afternoon invite to a meeting with HR and my bosses-boss for the next morning and the 12 hours of not knowing what was going on was way worse than being downsized.

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