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Comment by UncleMeat | Hacker News Reader

> Friendly, smiley, fake.

My father had to lay off a bunch of people in 2008. I am now a manager. He told me that if I am ever forced to do this to not ever do this crap to my team. Tell them that this is bullshit. Tell them that you are upset. Tell them that you haven't slept. Tell them that the are right to be mad, disappointed, and even to hate you for choosing their head to roll. Anything better than fake smiles and "I'm sure you'll land on your feet."

For me, I think I'd just quit if I was told to lay off people on my team. Maybe that's hard to do in the moment, since I'd also not want to lose my job in a major crisis, but it sounds awful.

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I've participated in a number of layoffs, and while I agree with the advice to be honest, not fake smiley, with you'll-land-on-your-feet platitudes, I would strongly recommend not talking about your own feelings. It's not about YOU (the person doing the layoff who gets to keep his job), it's about THEM (the people losing their jobs who probably earn less than you and have less financial security). Telling them how hard it is for you comes across as self absorbed and can provoke a strong negative reaction. Instead, be understanding, give them space to be angry and hurt, and help them any way you can.

This, so much.

I've had to fire people a few times. It's never fun, it's always been a hard decision that I took for the benefit of my team. It's never "bullshit". If it is bullshit then it would be MY job as manager to fix it and stop it being bullshit.

I've never had a negative reaction to the firing from the team members who remain. If anything, the reaction has always been "why did you wait so long?".

But luckily I've never had to do a team downsizing because of budget cuts. I imagine that would be a more difficult process and managing the emotions involved in that would be difficult. I see entirely why Coinbase chose not to take any of those risks and just cut everyone off first and then answer questions later.

I agree wholeheartedly, it's definitely not the right moment to make it about you. I have had to layoff people several times, and was laid off myself once, and the best thing to do in my opinion is to be direct succinct and stick to a script. You can still be authentic and kind, and offer them an opportunity to reach out (to you or HR) afterwards for follow up questions (about the process, not the reasons or anything sensitive). You will feel like shit doing it, and they'll be able to tell, there's no need to say it and pull the attention towards your gainfully-employed feelings at the same moment you're telling someone they're losing their financial security blanket.

I've reached out to some afterwards and offered help (serving as a reference, reviewing resumes, connecting to people, etc.) but in _that_ moment you should say as little as possible give them space to process emotions however they will.

I've never laid people off, but I've fired them.

It's hard to know what emotional tenor to put on it. On the one hand, of course you're right that upbeat positive optimistic is fake and maybe feels like it's more for you than them. On the other hand, being like, "this sucks and it's bad for you and I hated doing it" feels like kicking people when they're down, making them feel like it's even worse than it already is.

I have generally give with a pretty emotionless affect, but tried to convey respect for them as a person, even if they didn't work as an employee, but that's hard to convey. It's a generally fraught situation.

Firing someone is the result of poor performance or unacceptable behaviour.

In many jurisdictions (not in the US I suppose), before firing someone for poor performance they must be told that their performance is inadequate and be given a chance to improve.

Bottom line, in general being fired is fully on the person being fired so no need to sugar-coat or to feel bad.

>In many jurisdictions (not in the US I suppose), before firing someone for poor performance they must be told that their performance is inadequate and be given a chance to improve.

Performance Improvement Plans are a thing at larger companies. That said, once someone is on a PIP, the handwriting is almost certainly on the wall.

I've also worked with people who were incredibly oblivious about the quality of their work, however much feedback they received and however much rework others had to put in. I can think of at least one case where this went on far too long and they were incredibly shocked when they were let go.

The PIP thing varies. Some companies just use them as a risk reducing tool to fire people, but a few really believe in them and will keep employees who've gone through them. I take a dim view of that, personally, just because it ends up feeling like management-by-fear.

People can get their act together especially if external factors were a significant part of the problem. That said, assuming they can find employment elsewhere--which may be easier or harder depending on their skills and location--they're probably better starting fresh somewhere else.

My view is that if your employer is telling you to come to Jesus, the productive relationship is already gone. Work isn't a marriage or a family; if it's not working, you don't have to take extraordinary measures to preserve it.

It doesn't have to. At its best, PIP is a very open, transparent, communicative, supportive method - here is what we need; here's how we believe you can help us; let's work together to meet our mutual targets.

As others have said, in a good company and team, PIP is one amongst many coaching tools, rarely the first one, and can be useful in various situations - somebody not taking a hint or being oblivious, indicator of seriousness, but also to those with potential who need structure and benefit from explicit list. And yes of course, a paper trail and a documented process if things don't work out for various reasons.

I mean, it comes down to how much you trust your HR department to treat you as a human. If you work someplace where that kind of rapport is normal, then great! But that's not been my experience.

Right; in my current company, PIP is created and held by your Coach / Manager. It's orthogonal on whether HR treats you as human :D

> once someone is on a PIP, the handwriting is almost certainly on the wall.

My current manager is particularly transparent about this (with other managers, at least). When he puts someone on a PIP, it is a formality. He deliberately chooses a redemption project that is impossible to achieve.

Edit: Jeez, guys, don't downvote -me- ;-). It's not my policy.

In a better world, that would be illegal.

This is likely something that HR would flip out about seeing in writing because being given an impossible redemption task would probably be interpreted as constructive termination in a court.

Ouch. That is unfortunate on several levels. From legal to moral to practical.

Depending on the company, that could easily be appealed/disputed.

My assumption is that HR would be irritated to find out he was doing that. Legally, I assume 'at will' handily covers it as long as nobody being targeted is a member of a protect class.

Personally, I do sort of understand his view. He does not like to put anyone on a PIP, and by the time he gets there, he has already concluded that the relationship is not saveable. In his mind, everyone involved should know that the PIP is a formality, and ideally they'd use the time to find another job and have a smooth transition. HR probably would not agree to firing someone with a few months of severance.

That’s a bad thing to do, unless his goal is to create an easy employment law settlement, in which case it’s kind of cool. :)

What sort of impossible projects does he assign?

I think managers call HR and put a person on a PIP only after good will and patience have been exhausted, so it's a sign that the person does not improve despite feedback and that management has had enough... So, yeah, writing is on the wall.

I'd argue PIP is meant to give you a chance to find another job.

For legal reasons most employers will only verify dates of employment. 2 months of so of PIP is more than enough to find a new role.

This is another reason to not get too attached to any job. I come to work for money, not to feel apart of something.

You WILL get fired if your in this industry. Hell, I've quit several jobs since the manager sucked.

Demanding salary employees work nights regularly is good way to get em to quit.

Imagine if America had a NHS style system, vs the horrific employer provided system. Then more people would be free to quit bad jobs.

Let's say you have an abusive manager, but your husband has an expensive to treat illness. You just need to suffer since if you leave your husband won't have access to treatment

>2 months of so of PIP is more than enough to find a new role.

I think a lot of people here underestimate the difficulty of landing a new job depending on your background, overall skill level, experience, and location.

2 months is a much better deal than getting fired on the spot.

At best you find a new job, at worse you have time to cut back on your spending

I've seen both sides of this: a PIP for a person who was falling behind that wasn't possible for the person to achieve because they were in a role without the skills needed to succeed in that role, and a PIP that was based on one supervisor's bad opinion of a particular person that was easy to accomplish when put in place by a different supervisor.

I have had lots of employees who I think had poor performance but weren't bad people and I don't like the thought that they're in bad financial situation or just feeling emotional distress over being fired. Every manager I've known has felt terrible while firing people.

That doesn't mean the firing shouldn't happen, but it does mean that everyone feels bad.

>[Firing people is] a generally fraught situation.

It is, but it should not be. In the best world, it's impersonal. Sometimes it's not a good fit, period. The reason it's fraught is at least partly systemic. Having healthcare tied to the employer is particularly wrong. It makes severance (for any reason) akin to having life support turned off.

But also, ours is a culture that discourages employees from participating in the job market while employed - this is deeply hypocritical, especially as most employment is "at will", which means they can dump you whenever you want, and of course the employer is always active in the job market, happy to replace you with someone cheaper/better if they could. If you're already in the market, and have warm leads, this softens the blow considerably. The final thing worth mentioning is that a firing is a severance, and need not reflect poorly on you (except, perhaps, insofar as you didn't adequately anticipate it and quit in advance). On first principles I hate it when those in power tacitly accept the implication that if other, unrelated powerful people have punished you, you're bad. I'm not sure if this is actually believed, or just used as leverage to get a better deal, or both, but either way it's unfair. Hence the importance of privacy in such situations.

It's a thin line to walk; never make it sound like you are the victim as well, or that you're even worse off than they are.

Yeah, absolutely. Overly spending time on how difficult it is for yourself makes it sound like, "Well, I'm firing you, but have you considered how it makes me feel?" Which is gross.

Hence, usually going for a somewhat impersonal affect.

Company I worked at had a layoff in 2012, security manager escorted 200 people out of the building. At the end of the day, he was escorted out of the building. It was quite shitty for that fellow, I felt terrible for him.

One place I worked at briefly would call the cops and have them escourt you out if they thought there was any risk of "disruption or back talk" (their words). I decided not to work for assholes who lay off little old ladies and then to add insult to injury, call the cops on them.

"Pardon, Officer, but we're firing several employees today and would you like you to assist. We're concerned they might say bad things to us."

"ON OUR WAY!"

This is a disgusting scenario. I hope they weren't misusing on-duty police resources for this.

You could tell the cops weren't happy about it. These were women in their mid 50's and up who worked front desk jobs, not really a risk of violence.

All they wanted to do was go get their personal items and say goodbye to their peers. Some of them were forced to leave phones and purses behind and wait a week for them to be mailed to them.

It's one of those times in life where you see the mask slip off and realize who the people you've been dealing with actually are.

> All they wanted to do was go get their personal items and say goodbye to their peers. Some of them were forced to leave phones and purses behind and wait a week for them to be mailed to them.

How is that even legal? I wouldn’t leave without my personal belongings or I would file charges for theft with those cops.

One company I worked for (a bank) had an office outside of the security gates, mainly used for exit interviews; they would disable people's access cards and accounts while that was going on.

When RSA Data Security was acquired in the mid `90's they laid off a bunch of people, presumably to sweeten the deal, and security was waiting outside in the morning to block people from coming into the building.

One of my former colleagues, who showed up to work early, inadvertently freaked out one of the executives when they saw them in the hall. Naturally they (not the executive) were soon escorted out of the building and told they had been laid off.

This has strong IT Crowd vibes - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGFGD5pj03M

>>I think I'd just quit if I was told to lay off people on my team.

I did that in the dotcom bust. As a manager I was highest paid and had least billable hours, so when asked to reduce costs in my team I was the logical choice to go. The company went through a series of layoffs but at least for that cut I managed to leave my team in place for a bit longer. I went travelling for a year, so also benefitted from not having to deal with any more rounds of layoffs.

There's a lot of advice on how to handle these situations and a lot of it is good, even when conflicting. It's all situational.

One thought though, for whatever little it may be worth:

>>For me, I think I'd just quit if I was told to lay off people on my team.

That has been my personal emotional reaction many a time. As I spend more time as a manager though, I try to force myself to look harder and harder at what will this course of action actually accomplish? And the self-righteous emotional me hates that the rational conclusion is: it'll only accomplish negative things, i.e now the team that remains has lost your support. Bluntly, it will not "send a message", it will not "change things", it will not "make them realize what they're doing / what they're losing". Literally the only thing it'll do majority of time is make things even crappier for those who remain :-/.

So I would put it in inverse: the hard thing in the moment is to NOT go with your emotional reaction, and consider truly how can you be of best benefit / support / help to the team. Basically, I would say most of the time one quits for personal reasons (whether positive "I can get more money there" or negative "I hate this place and everybody in it"), not for the benefit of others.

Oh it wouldn't accomplish anything. It'd be 100% hiding from the emotional pain of laying off employees that I believe are productive and good team members. But I've only got one life to live and emotions are real, so I don't have any problem optimizing for my emotions when making life choices.

> Tell them that the are right to be mad, disappointed, and even to hate you for choosing their head to roll.

This is OK.

> Tell them that you are upset. Tell them that you haven't slept.

No, no, no. Never talk about your own difficulties when you lay someone off, this is one particular time when it's not about you but 100% about the person that you are laying off.

Right. I'm mystified this is anyone's reaction... dishing empathy while garnering sympathy is a weird double bind to put on people on the receiving end.

A friend of mine's manager had to lay him off but the manager was the nicest guy and was basically in tears through the exit process. My friend essentially had to do the break up. We felt for the manager but also, keep your isht together. If you can't then you are putting that on the individual that you are letting go.

That's exactly the thing. Don't make it about you! How much of telling employee "this is bullshit, I could't sleep over this" is actually doing for them? Vs absolving yourself of guilt, having them like you, and making you look like the victim you definitely aren't?

Respect and support and empathy and sincerity are the key, always. Deflecting blame and ranting are not long term helpful.

Absolutely this. It was my misfortune to lay off teams of 20+ 3 times. You are the instrument. In that moment, they will want to hate you and you shouldn't try to deflect it. Do everything you can constructively behind the scenes to improve the situation before and after the announcement but, in that moment, it's not about you.

The proper responsibility of a concerned manager in this case is to make sure the person knows you have their back in terms of future references, petty resources (one guy I knew was on the hook for >$300 in reimbursements when laid off, as far as I know he never got them - another guy was forbidden to take his personal mouse/keyboard home with him), and similar things.

If a mid-level manager actually cares, and was any good at their job, the best thing they can do is to keep doing it for that person.

It isn't doing anything for them. But it is sincere (I didn't say this in my post, but the idea is that my father actually did lose weeks of sleep over this). It, of course, should not be about you in this moment (this is hard to convey in a short post). But it seems far more supportive and honest than pretending that everything is okay and normal or acting like a robot.

Maybe it is also bad. I don't know. But the fake smile seems much worse.

> I think I'd just quit if I was told to lay off people on my team.

I was at a startup that had massive layoffs during the pandemic. I was able to protect my team (though I had to rescind a few offers).

The problem was that after the layoffs, while everyone was still grieving, management decided to come down really hard on my team and others. I realized at one point I could either keep my job, or protect my teams sanity for the next few months.

I chose the latter. Upper management didn't like it, but my team got time to heal and after I was let go and my team survived for another two years.

I had never been fired before, but when I was I honestly felt a bit a pride that this "leadership" team felt I wasn't a good match.

I don't know if there's a point to this story other than that, when the shit hits the fan, you can standup for what you believe in and fight to make the tiny bit of this world you have some say in a bit better. I've known plenty of people who just shrug their shoulders in such times and say "what can you do?", but you can do something and in my experience it is worth it to take a stand at these crucial points.

I was a fairly junior manager at the beginning of COVID when my company decided to make a deep cut (20% of the company) in order to make sure we would survive. I didn't even know about the layoffs until after they happened which annoyed me quite a bit. The director of engineering for my team and 3-4 others was the one to do the calls to each laid off engineer. The 2 engineers that got laid off on my team were pretty recent hires. One was only around for a couple of weeks. They were both already contributing a good amount to the team though which annoyed me even more that my input wasn't taking into account because I would've pushed for different people to be let go instead.

I offered to try and give up some salary to keep one of them because he was on a visa and would have to find a new job within 90 days or something like that. Everything worked out in the end with both engineers that were let go but the "bias for action" by executives and middle management in these kinds of scenarios pisses me off quite a bit since they usually don't ask for any input from the people actually working with the employees that are getting laid off.

I don't mean any offense by this but it's very clear by this sentiment that you're a junior, (maybe) mid-level still.

For myriad reasons, it's not always practical to discuss potential layoffs. It's certainly not ethical to discuss "who should stay?" with more junior folks on the same team who are themselves staying. It's extraordinarily likely that your managers had much better insight into what the other folks were contributing that you did.

Cutting salaries to maintain team size has been tried time and time again, and every time the same thing happens: everyone takes a pay cut, the highest performers leave for more money, and both velocity and morale tank.

I've been here more than 99% of the company and we're now at 2000+ (was ~50 when I started and was ~1000 when COVID hit). I've pivoted back to a lateral IC role but considering the size of the org at the time (not really that large, maybe 30 engineers total under the director) it was totally practical. The salary cut proposition would've been a one time thing to either give the laid off engineer enough time to find another role (because he had a temporary visa) or until we were comfortable enough to pay both of our full-time salaries (this actually would've happened fairly quickly).

To me, saying that "you don't want to be doing it" (paraphrased as "you are upset" or "you haven't slept"), is much more of a fake bullshit than the other thing. Be an adult take responsibility for your actions, don't blame "the guy" (your boss, your company, the economy, whatever).

If you really hated doing it, you wouldn't be doing it. Quitting yourself is always an option.

As I stated very explicitly in my post, I believe that I'd quit in this situation.

> Tell them that you are upset. Tell them that you haven't slept.

Dunno. I find it pretty bad when managers talk about their difficulties when e.g. firing people. It's about them, not about you. I agree about the part about fake smiles.

> For me, I think I'd just quit if I was told to lay off people on my team. Maybe that's hard to do in the moment, since I'd also not want to lose my job in a major crisis, but it sounds awful.

Typically layoffs happen for a reason - if its the company failing and trying to survive, it's not a bad idea to jump ship. If its economic (like all of the layoffs right now) - it's a bad idea to jump to a new job if you can avoid it -- you may very well get hired, and laid off as a new hire.

However bad you think you feel, at least you still have a paycheck and don't have to scramble for employment in a market of hiring freezes across the board.

Those you're directly telling this message to don't have that comfort. Now is not the time to talk about how bad you think you have it. You might have a couple sleepless nights, they're going to have sleepless weeks.

I agree with your father's sentiments except for 'I haven't slept.' If you have to layoff people, don't make it about yourself. If I'm the person getting laid off, I don't give a damn how much sleep you've had. You still have job.

Talking about how the layoffs affect you, the still-employed manager, makes any thing else you say sound hollow.

> Tell them that you haven't slept.

This is the odd one out here. Showing your grief about an undesirable decision is one thing. But implying that you're making significant decisions about your employees' welfare in a deteriorated mental state is wildly unprofessional (even if truthful).

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