Hacker News Reader

Comment by skeeter2020 | Hacker News Reader

skeeter2020

I'm wondering how many of the commenters here have experienced something similar? The trust is destroyed by the lay-offs, not the communication of them; there's no good or right way to do it, just bad and worse. You're still going to get complaints about how it went down, but after 3 different experiences I think the best one is fast, without warning, and no communication to those remaining until after it's done. Make sure you can answer their #1 question which will be "What did you do for my (now former) coworkers to help them move forward?". You only get one chance at cuts, so make sure you go deep enough. Example: 30% would hurt, but 10% x3 rounds finishes a company for a generation.

View on HN

I experienced just the opposite: in 2008 at Google we were extremely grateful that there were no layoffs. The only change was that we had to drink cleaned tap water instead of bottled water (and of course there were still people complaining about it :) ), and we got a chance to reset our options at a lower base price in return for resetting the 4 year timer as well (it was a great deal of course).

Ohh I want that. I was wondering if I could just get rehired at my company to get lower priced RSUs

This LinkedIn post [0] had good suggestions, notably:

1. Don't over-hire in the first place

2. Don't do lay-offs, explore other options like universal paycuts or (IMO) particularly pay cuts for execs

The post has a lot more suggestions if you've committed to layoffs.

[0]: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6942572...

> explore other options like universal paycuts

I suspect that would just get all the best employees to leave pretty damn quickly, especially if other companies aren't doing paycuts. All for doing it for execs, though. Don't think you'll lose much by letting them jump ship.

Universal pay-cuts basically angers everyone IMHO. Also cutting pays for Execs may not be enough (let's say one exec pay-cut = 5 layoffs).

Hard pass on universal paycuts. That's a similarly bad idea to universal raises & promos - hiring & comp decisions should be made based on performance.

As an EM, I would much rather get the opportunity to prune under-performing engineers than to have to tell every member of my team I'm cutting their comp, knowing that the best couple will leave quickly afterwards.

As an EM, why do you have under-performing engineers on your team in the first place? Either your hiring bar is low, you are not giving enough feedback to improve or you are afraid to cut your losses. None of this needs you to wait for an opportunity to prune under-performers.

Simple: Politics, optics, and pragmatism. Up to a point it's better to focus on growth and things you can actually fix rather than trying to trim the bushes.

Exactly.

That's a naive perspective.

An EM is not a king. The process for shedding an engineer is typically long and arduous - a quarter for coaching, then another for a "soft performance plan," and then another quarter for a PIP are not uncommon standard HR practices. God help you if your under-performer is based in, say, Germany.

Regarding a hiring bar, typically an EM may have gotten some say in some of their people, but for the most part not. The suggestion that an EM "giving feedback" is sufficient to improve all employees to a high technical bar is hilarious.

An EM needs to understand the organizational, political, and HR climate of their org. Use what leverage you have to deliver the most impact. Often, that means not going out of your way to expel mediocre engineers, but rather using your resources to propel the rest of your team members to success.

As a PO, how do I tell my boss he hired the wrong person and needs to up his budget by 25% and delay development by 2 months while we hire and onboard someone better? The answer is I don't, because I like my job. Upping all the estimates takes much less energy and is much safer than fighting someone's inflated ego.

The universal cut benefits those who would have been laid off as they're likely the ones who would be most concerned. I've seen this once and the ones who liked it were those who feared losing their jobs knowing it would be hard to find another.

#2 is the worst idea ever. Instead of making 20% of (soon to be ex-)employees unhappy, let's make 100% of employees unhappy.

Those 100% of employees will be affected by the decision to shrink costs regardless of staying or being let go.

I'd personally like what happened with one employer. They said there was budget issues and that anyone who wanted to go were offered to be let go with severance. The company is in a slightly worse position that they can't control who took them up on the offer, but it meant that everyone who stayed still wanted to be there and were dedicated to the company post cuts.

The people who stayed didn’t “want to be there because they believed in the mission” of a for profit company. They probably didn’t have any better alternatives.

Why not implement it with an improvement plan that restores the cut pegged to profit/revenue? You could even throw in a cash/stock bonus at some threshold and even a raise?

Universal pay cuts are the worse thing that a company can do. The best employees can get a job quickly and your lowest performers will tend to stay - the exact opposite of what you want.

I would immediately quit any company that does universal paycuts. I assume the execs would also leave if you cut their pay more than they can get elsewhere.

Best solution is to hire better next time, and fire underperformers or entire product organizations.

I worked at a smaller software consulting firm that had to lay off a bunch of people in 2020 (guess why). I was part of the first wave in Q1, a mere month after they promised that they wouldn't lay people off and would explore other options. I even got the same severance package as the Unity people, a month's pay and COBRA coverage, and "best wishes". I understand why they did it, financially speaking, but it still felt like a betrayal for a lot of reasons.

I still have a lot of contacts there and apparently the company culture fundamentally changed after the great 2020 layoffs and many of those contacts left by choice, saying they had no idea if they'd be next if it looked like "tough times ahead" again. Only one friend still works there as a senior dev and he's starting to feel like even his job is on the chopping block now because he has no trust in management anymore.

I mainly just find it sad because that company was a great place to work for the years I spent there, and I believed in their mission statement.

My company did just what you say, and cut a few hundred engineers and managers across the board without warning. 8AM on a Monday morning a bunch of us just got pulled into a MS Teams meeting with a Sr. Director and immediately told "We're sorry to inform you that your job position has been eliminated." Thought I'd done something wrong as there was no warning whatsoever but reached out to a security engineer in the company working in a different state and immediately found out he'd been cut, too. After a couple days started getting texts from folks that a few hundred got cut. Then they do the cutesy offer of "But you can always apply for another of our open and available positions." Sorry, no thanks.

A company I worked for between 2008-2011 had rounds of layoffs. Every person who was laid off had another - better paying job within a month. They reached out to former coworkers who referred them to where they landed.

Once the entire company was acquired for scraps, everyone was let go. We all had lunch, hung around the office and joked around and called recruiters. We all had jobs lined up because we knew the end was near. I had actually unofficially talked to one of our clients to get a contract if the company folded.

How hard should it be for software engineers working for one of the leading game engine developers to find a job?

I felt this at GE. There was a huge group of layoffs around 2016, and while I wasn't working there, the echoes of that were still reverberating across the now decently empty office. Fast forward to 2020, and when the COVID cuts came and they announced another huge layoff, it was a huge impact on the teams, especially since most of the people had seen everyone get laid off. It was a huge blow to moral.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com