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Comment by bko | Hacker News Reader

Why do you need an excuse to perform layoffs? Sometimes companies over-hire or hire the wrong people. Other times they scale back certain efforts and are left with people that don't fit into the organization anymore. I feel sorry for the people, but layoffs are part of a normal process and with economic downturn we're facing, that will almost certainly impact their lines of credit and fundraising. So the prudent action would be to lay people off.

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You don't need an excuse, but if you have one then management can save face. The theory would be it's a lot harder to hire people in the future if everyone thinks you're bad at management, and much easier if everyone just thinks you got unlucky with market timing.

Came here to say this, it's one of the first things I investigate about a company. If the company does habitual layoffs or has done rather large ones in the past five years, I'll move on 90% of the time.

I disagree. I think it's healthy and more humane than firing people for cause. Hiring is hard and you mess up, or people grow out of their role. Everyone knows people at work that are incompetent. It's tough to get rid of them because they may not be grossly incompetent or malicious, but just not up to standard. The layoffs I've seen usually let people go that are not effective and frankly not very happy. They get a severance, can collect unemployment and usually land on their feet. It's healthier than an organization that essentially hires for life

You can't fire someone for cause just because your money losing business ran out of money.

Firing for cause is when the employee screwed up, not when the CEO did.

This is true. “For cause” is “employee fucked up real bad [theft, harassment, etc]”, but many people think it means the plain English reading of “was individually underperforming” which would be a performance-related termination but not a “for cause” termination.

IMO, it’s dumb HR/Legal lingo.

It isn't just about the employee abuse.

A nonseasonal (or similar) company that has a large swing in employee-counts has a problem. If swings happen repeatedly, the problem isn't getting fixed.

Ah. The trim the deadwood argument.

This makes lots of sense. But I never see it play out this way.

Because in a given company, if you ask people to identify “the deadwood” there will be a couple standouts, but otherwise quite a bit of variability. If nothing else because everyone has ego centric biases that over compensate their own contributions (or that of their function/department). And then it’s really just a mosh pit of politics that decides who stays and goes.

Or put more succinctly “one man’s deadwood is another’s diamond in the rough.”

It also lets the people being let go save face.

Excuses aren't needed, exit packages are appreciated and build good will with the community of people you are hiring from. And many companies will also use their networks to help you find a new job by referring you to multiple companies. At least, that was my experience when I was laid off at a relatively well funded startup in the Bay Area at that time.

> Sometimes companies over-hire or hire the wrong people.

I think in this case it's a significant volume number of people.

And so it's not normal even with a downturn. It's indicative of poor management.

Regardless of whether or not that’s true, the right thing for the company (and all its stakeholders) is to take the medicine (do the layoff).

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