I know CEOs have to tow the party line to a certain extent, but I've always wondered if they just don't care about their own reputation. If I was an employee of his I'd have to assume he's either incompetent or dishonest.
That company sold our company off, piece by piece, in a classic raid to prop up their failing business, and then divested the last, biggest piece as private equity. Our CEO was promised the merged CEO position within 2 years. They pulled the ripcord on his golden parachute 1 year into it. He got $19M for the selling out the company, and $15M more for f*cking off, and THEN had the audacity to walk into the old HQ and cry about it.
His bio at IU's "notable alumni" says he "retired." Screw him. It was a great company to have worked for, which had lasted over 100 years, and it was gone in 3 years. It's been 20 years now, and I'm still mad about it. He says he regrets it (https://web.archive.org/web/20150726032123/https://www.ibj.c...), but when a board throws tens or hundreds of millions at someone, they usually take the deal, and act accordingly.
Board also has to act in favor of what's better financially for the company. If that CEO did not have agree for merger, they'd have fired him. At least, he'd have dignity if he choose that and your respect as well, but that does not have paid his bills. I'm not sidelining with anyone.
If they're in the middle of talks and someone blabs and an employee asks about it, they effectively either have to blow up the deal, lie, or say "I can't talk about it" (which would be seen as a yes anyways).
The rules are strict about how and when you can release information that can or will affect the value (or valuation) of the company. You being told "in advance" that a company will be letting people go gives you "inside information" and the opportunity to buy or sell your shares before everybody else knows about it.
So while it seems unethical to lie to your face telling the truth might be illegal.
So, they should just say, that, as always, it is a possibility. Which is both true and doesn’t provide info they shouldn’t.
Is there anyone on earth who would not interpret "it is a possibility" as "pack your bags" ?
Not trying to make up excuses for the lying here, but I'm genuinely curious what a VP should do in this position. Lie for the good of the many? Or be truthful to keep a clean conscience?
Are MBAs still taught the duties of leadership? Or are they just told to get out with enough cash for their next venture?
Same thing with honesty. If the employer isn't going to give you advanced notice that you may be fired, you have no obligation to tell them that you are thinking about quitting.
At almost every place I've worked there's this super pervasive "family" notion as-if they wouldn't eject you the moment it was in their best interests. I wish we could drop that pretense - it's just dishonest.
While you don’t have to be an aggrandizing ass in going about it, you don’t have to reciprocate the “family ties” either.
Be the distant uncle, if you have to (this probably works less the higher up the chain you go, however)
I often use the "office beers" analogy on here to discuss the prevalent requirement of socializing in the workplace these days. To me, I have no interest in knocking off at 2pm on a Friday to participate in office drinking culture and it's 100% screwed me in the past.
To me, I should be able to just work. I have no obligation to go go-karting, to drink with you, to talk at your toastmasters, to go bar crawl on a RAGBRI bus... whatever it may be. I add value by fulfilling my obligation of labor. Not by "team building." And, with that - I feel that if I achieve my deliverables then I should be able to go home and live my private life. Simple.
> Be the distant uncle, if you have to (this probably works less the higher up the chain you go, however)
You are 100% correct - the higher up you want to get the more you have to socialize and pander to the corporate "family." I've found this to be ubiquitous across employers to the point that I prefer more contract/smaller-shop work where it is not as prevalent.
Also, I want to note by being the distant uncle you are often hurting yourself for advancement. You have to go buddy-buddy with folks to get on their radar, and in a sizable team on the west coast there's a good chance one of your colleagues is doing just that with your management. Regardless of output - it's oft the person who has socialized/marketed more that will get the advancement.
Sorry - but in my _personal experience_ it is very much not as simple as "just drop it" in regards to that family pretense. If you even remotely want to "climb the ladder" you must participate at some level...
If you don't mind trafficking one personal anecdote for another, I've heard this since I entered the corporate workforce at 19 (got a wee bit lucky there), and in my mid-to-late 30's, I've been demonstrably more protective and distant of the boundaries between work and self
the result in the last six years has been making more money and adding the word "Principal" to my job title.
These are mere anecdotes, I think we've found common ground admitting that much, but I don't think I buy into many of the notions that continue getting harped on about what will and wont "hurt" my career advancement anymore; as most of them have just been means of corralling behavior and only brought me burnout and stress.
Actively taught or not, capitalism specifically optimizes for the latter.
Meanwhile, the people you're about to lay off are definitely getting laid off anyway, and the people you're keeping now have zero reason to trust you or your leadership. And your rationalization for this is you're doing it for the "good of the many."
This has nothing to do with "a clean conscience." This has to do with whether your employees feel that you're being honest with them. Even the career-focused snakes don't want to work for a boss who lie when asked a direct question.
(Probably not the last point, but a decent joke might actually work, or, better yet have a "layoff emergency warchest" so that everyone knows if they DO get laid off they'll get X months severances, or whatever.)
If there is one thing I've learned in life is that once you've betrayed someone's trust it can never be regained to the original state.
Just curious.
However, if the status of the company is more adequately described to the employees over time, you can "boil the frog" as it were, and never have to actually lie but still admit that layoffs may be coming if X or Y doesn't happen.
I bet it's much MORE common for the lie to happen in pre-public stages, where they're still trying to "sell" the company as perfectly sized and poised to grow to investors, VCs, etc.
Or
Don't have all-hands meetings with open, unknown questions where you are forced to decide between lying to your staff or terrifying your staff.
After a couple of those meeting, questions where to but submitted by email in advance.... I left not long after.
[No, I don't have that kind of fiber myself, sadly.]
"I don't recall having been told that any layoffs are imminent, but even if I had been told that they were, that would be confidential information and I wouldn't be at liberty to say."
It puts a smile on my face when upper management squats in a conference room I need for a scheduled interview, and I can tell the candidate they just booted the CEO and director of engineering.
It really seems like wherever I get hired, the situation always changes dramatically after 1-2 years and the workplace goes downhill. My work life is like a continuous series of bait-and-switches. It is really, really tiresome.
Here is to hoping that self-employment is not so dramatic.
I don't really blame corporations, the moment that they admit weakness is when the hyenas show up.
Theoretically. My experience was that getting unemployment benefits as a skilled worker is practically impossible. You have to interview constantly, and there are lots of companies interviewing recently laid off tech workers, and they offer crap salaries knowing that only so many offers can be turned down before your claims are rejected.
Company #1 had a meeting and just plain out said it.. "we need to cut 20% of the payroll budget. So we need to decide between 20% layoffs and 20% pay cuts." We took the latter option as we liked our team and the company recovered in a couple years.
Company #2 did the traditional "everything is fine" even though everyone knew it was bullshit and no one was surprised when they announced the layoffs. Most of the people already had started looking along with a lot of other people. They laid off around 25% but due the the way they handled it they suffered around 50% attrition.
The days we did layoffs at my previous company it came as a shock for everyone, including middle managers. The VP got into a long and sudden meeting and then they announced it.
Over the course of the next 6 months all of the top performers left. Some stayed within the company and went outside of that VP's org. Most left for other companies. Most of these people had been with the company 5+ years.
As an employee, your opinion of the CEO bears little. We've read on HN the few stories of only the most-qualified people being able to cause a stir in high-profile companies when they don't want to work for someone. That's not most of us.
On the flipside for the CEO, the board is happy with how they kept employees happy until the layoffs and then cut costs. Shareholders are happy that costs were cut. Other execs are happy that the CEO took the heat. In that CEO's circle, they did a good job and will be hired again to do the same.
I have yet to figure out my takeaway from this experience, but it makes me wonder if I prefer incompetence or dishonesty.
And above is literally the plot of Office Space.
To put it another way, the CEO or founder is often the most optimistic person. Imagine a single founder, they want to believe they'll pull through, get that funding, find the customers, whatever it is that keeps things going up. People will claim a CEO has to be different but I personally think it's human nature for most people to hope/wish/desire/see the best outcome.
Unless there is some smoking gun email that says "I'm going to tell them we'll be fine but actually I'm going to layoff a bunch in 2 weeks", my gut says the CEO beleived what he said when he said it.
Two weeks between "no layoffs, we're doing great!" to "yup, we're laying people off" means that the CEO had to be optimistic to the point of delusion (or incompetent, as I said).
To be fair, there are times when they layoffs are imminent but the CEO keeps optimism up and sometimes the customer/funding does show up and the money doesn't run out. You typically don't hear about these ones (or only years later).
Recently, the CEO of a giant and old tech company, got into a meeting with all of his manager and above employees and very, very carefully said "no layoff is planned." Of course not: planned means they have finished.
You can drop the word "necessary" from that statement. We're just saying that CEOs, by the nature of their job, are not to be trusted with anything that might come between the shareholders and the money they think they are due.
Let's not say that the poor CEOs are in an untenable position, rather, the sort of person who is comfortable with choosing an investor's bank account over an employee's family is also the sort of person who is likely to be chosen to be CEO.
A hard part about being a leader is doing what's best for the highest number of people. If you're short on runway and the investors tell you that you either lay people off or you're not getting funded, it's not about choosing investors over employees, it's about saving as many employees as you can.
In the current climate this is exactly what investors are saying.
Ben Horowitz has some good stories about this in The Hard Thing About Hard Things
Of course, there are better ways than outright saying no, but complete honesty is not the solution always.
Unity, along with most of the tech industry, loses incredible amounts of money, and salaries are typically their biggest expense. Those losses (salaries) are paid out of investor bank accounts, which the company cannot control. Thus those employees are highly exposed to liquidity pullbacks like now, since employing them was never profitable.
Unity plans to cut 100 million in expenses this year, and hopes to stop losing money next year.
Really? Where unions are strong layoffs can be negotiated for months. There is no panic.
Just completely senseless.
Nearly every place I've been ends up either having layoffs or collapsing entirely 6 - 12 months after moving into a bigger office.
No one ever fired a CEO for lying. They get fired when the stock price goes down.
It sucks but I wouldnt hold my breath on this ever changing. If things don't look good at your company interview elsewhere. Dont trust leadership because they will say what they have to to keep the business going, not to keep you employed.
Now that reality is coming back into vogue, a lot more companies than Unity are going to be realizing that revenue, unit economics and profitability actually matter, and most of the high flyers of the last ten years are poorly structured for it.
There's an old play book floating somewhere, I think it was aimed at union workers. The reason is plant the seed and soften the shock.
I'm not sure how the CEO is conforming to a "party" in this particular case though.