Taking full responsibility mean taking a pay cut or stepping down or basically taking consequences for yourself first before others have to.
https://blog.patreon.com/a-note-from-jack
3 months' of pay + longer depending on tenure at the company. Healthcare until the end of the year. Mental care up to 6 months. They contracted a placement company to place the laid off staff to other companies in the sector. A lot of those people will already get hooked up by a company within a week or so, even without the placement company being able to take action.
This looks as decent as layoffs go.
We don’t know everyone’s unique situation, even if they did go beyond what most companies do.
What we also don't know is the companies financial situation. Keeping people on when they can't be afforded can be a way to make a company completely collapse. I was in two startups that would have collapsed completely, without layoffs, around the time of the last recession. This is why the "keep x months of salary" are rules you strictly follow.
This is besides Patreon giving their former employees a license to goof off on their dime for 3 months. I can’t imagine anyone at Patreon being so hard up that 3 months pay and insurance to look for new work is enough to break the camels back.
Recognizing the impact of an action does not mean you're entirely responsible for it.
Those who are hired to Patreon and similar companies arent people who would end up unemployed if they are laid off. Those people already have to turn down recruiters who try to poach them every week.
The slowdown comes from all the moving parts who need to be in place in order to facilitate the transition of an employee to an org.
Think of your average tech hire who needs to (a) go through orientation just like everyone else, and (b) is going to take a week or two just to get his work environment and credentialing set up so he can work with the servers. I'll put my experience on that side of the desk working with dozens of clients against any anecdotal one-offs who got hired late in the year.
A polite reminder that some companies are growing really fast and are even struggling with hiring.
Most people in tech also don't live paycheck to paycheck. As an adult, your responsibility is to have an emergency fund. No career is safe.
They're making more than $15/hr: https://www.levels.fyi/companies/walmart-global-tech/salarie...
I didn't even say it was impossible. I just think it's unrealistic to expect to find something after Nov 15th and until the New Year. Sorry for knowing what I'm talking about, I guess.
Also, I think it's quaint that people assume that when labor reductions happen at tech companies, that only tech employees are affected. Somewhere there's an admin assistant who has been working at that glorified CMS, and I doubt they have the same job prospects as a software architect.
Maybe this is just a language thing, but in my world "taking responsibility" involves some action to personally shoulder the pain of the layoffs beyond saying "my bad". I'd expect it'd at least begin with resignation in this case. Just like you can't just announce "I declare bankruptcy" to shrug off debts.
I'm astounded that so many supposed seasoned leaders were out there making crazy projections around maintaining covid levels of growth and I also don't think 'my bad' is enough in that context, but benefits above what's required are rarely handed over without someone committing to fighting for it.
Responsibility
Being responsible means being dependable, keeping promises and honoring our commitments. It is accepting the consequences for what we say and do. It also means developing our potential.
People who are responsible don't make excuses for their actions or blame others when things go wrong. They think things through and use good judgment before they take action. They behave in ways that encourage others to trust them.
People who are responsible take charge of their lives. They make plans and set goals for nurturing their talents and skills. They are resilient in finding ways to overcome adversity. They make decisions, taking into account obligations to family and community.
This guy literally made excuses for his actions: "broader economic slowdown"
"To ensure that we make progress on that roadmap, we are increasing our investment in product, engineering, and design, which means decreasing our spend on other ares[sic] of the company."
So it's not even a money issue. They have the money, they just want to spend it on servers and other people.
And finally, just so we're clear, I don't take umbrage with his decision and his plan for his employees. Hell, it's admirable, frankly. I take umbrage with his words. He's not taking responsibility. Responsibility means he'd cut his pay as much as necessary to keep these people because he misjudged the market and where it's headed post-COVID-19 lockdowns (since there is no such thing as 'post-COVID-19' - it's here forever now).
This is pretty classic example of wanting to have the best of all possible worlds.
"I want to be lauded for my graciousness. I want to be lauded for taking responsibility. I want to be lauded by my investors for a plan that grows the company."
That's why this is a load of horseshit. He's trying to please everyone. I have no doubt he probably agonized over this decision - I really do not; but he made it, and that means there are certain consequences with which he must live, one of those is that it should be clear to his employees that they will always take a backseat when the economic times get tough.
I was under the impression we were addressing "Jack"'s claim to responsibility. I wasn't trying to comment on the actions of the company (which I fully admit is more compassionate in its layoffs than other companies would be).
Not that this was said in this particular case so directly. This is just a general thought.
How is funding so tight that cutting the 1% of money going to these people is going to make all the difference? It's not even a total 1% gain, there will be some lost productivity making it somewhat difficult to measure.
If you truly tried everything, couldn't the CEO or other executives take a tiny cut? Not that I expect them to, I'm just saying if they truly did everything within their power to prevent it, like is often said.
I mean, sometimes I give a significant amount of my salary, like 10% as donations / tips / handouts and expect nothing back. These aren't even people I did something bad to, like forgot to pick up when I said I would, or felt guilty for spilling food on their carpet.
Surely in situation where I messed up and caused a problem for someone, I would do whatever it takes to make it right. I wouldn't just say "Well, that's what you get in this system of inviting friends over. I'm not technically required to do anything. I guess there's nothing I can do (including picking up the mess I caused or paying to have it cleaned)"
I've seen similar large donations from people who truly struggle to pay for rent and food even be similarly generous. Sometimes people will live on limited food or delay getting an apartment if it means helping out an acquaintance.
If you make millions of dollars, you don't need to worry about these basics. You'd think it'd be easier to take a personal hit which probably will have actually 0 impact on your life (literally no change-- keep on golfing, vacations, etc), rather than supposedly living with the guilt, as is frequently said, of people struggling to survive because you wanted to save 1% of your company's money for a few months (before realizing you need to hire and retrain people from scratch.)
> it'd be easier to take a personal hit
Jack Conte, the CEO, was not previously wealthy (that we know of). At this stage he might be getting paid very well, maybe even in the mid six figures, but definitely not spending $8M/year on golfing to make that a viable alternative to layoffs.
It doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things but it’s just that he is claiming culpability for all of the ills patreon is experiencing.
Is it possible to be "laid off" for performance reasons?
For example "The bottom 10% of salesmen by sales volume"
A company finds itself in a situation where it needs to reduce headcount for reasons. Do you a) just role the dice and randomly pick who goes? or b) Have managers rank their performers and use it to get rid of the lower performers or protect their most valuable people? In a case like this is means some variation of "you're too expensive for what you do for us."
It means "I'm not blaming anyone else for this". Which might not mean much but it's probably better than the alternatives.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MV-3GgU6rlo
It seems to be what most CEO are saying lately.
This is why I will never be a CEO. I'd just come right out and say, "17% of you are expendable and I had your jobs replaced by scripts and a few machines. I'm going to use that money to buy more machines, hire more brilliant engineers, and see what percentage of the company I can replace by next year."
If you're able to automate a large portion of your workforce, why wouldn't you? You'll be rewarded for it in every aspect. You'll be praised by the Board of Directors for cutting costs and improving productivity (since algorithms and robots don't have to sleep, never get tired, never call in sick, never get drunk and shit in their husband's bed, etc.). You'll be praised by Wall Street as a "visionary, technologically-minded thinker / leader".
There's zero downside for you.
There's enormous downside for parts of society.
The difference is, I'm willing to admit that when I do this, it's directly to my benefit.
Have you considered that part of the fabric of civilized society is...being civil with the people that you interact with, and require cooperation from?
You can hold any opinion of them that you like, but the difference between a competent manager and an incompetent one is how they can translate their personal disdain for their direct reports, in a way that doesn't treat them like cogs, and improves their performance on the things they're responsible for.
What makes someone a competent manager is whether or not they complete their assigned tasks and projects that come down from above.
You don't like people who are direct and brutal in their feedback. Got it.
Hell, you can turn back the clock to 2004-2008 World of Warcraft and see this for yourself. The best guilds in the world had leadership that was brutally forthright - bordering on downright cruel - to their membership, but they still managed to execute, because when everyone's goals are aligned, you'll be surprised the shit people are willing to entertain. And not only were these people not being paid, they had to pay to play the damn game!
And yes, I know the analogy doesn't map perfectly onto work for several reasons, but the crux of the idea is there: a harsh taskmaster can move mountains with a little bit of fear (I'll replace you with a shell script if your performance doesn't improve) and a lot of honesty.
In the future, you could save us both a lot of time and effort by just saying, "I don't like this management style."
But I've seen it in video games, I've seen it in startups, I've seen it in Fortune 500 companies, and I've seen it in the military. Properly implemented, it works wonders.
It was fine when I was an external developer, but when I switched over to an in-house role it sucked seeing the fear in departments that I turned my gaze to :(
The non-corporate speak translation would be “I tried my best to make this company bigger and more valuable, but it didn’t work. Some of you will now need to be sacrificed, but not me!”
Full responsibility is a samurai killing himself painfully while his best friend cuts off his head to end his suffering. That's full responsibility.
This is, "I fucked up guys, here's 3-6 months pay and some benes... my bad. And yeah I know I fucked up last year too, but I took full responsibility then as well, so it's all good..."
And... I suspect whatever he's doing is also affecting him emotionally/mentally, and... to some extent career-wise. Taking these sorts of public steps may make it harder to be entrusted to CEO someplace else in future. Given patreon specifically, I doubt he's planning to leave and go CEO someplace else, but overall, there's no easy outs in scenarios like this. He'll be getting second-guessed and pilloried regardless of what steps he takes.
Better yet, refuse to take a bonus, not that the board should award one. If the board awards one anyway, contribute 100% of it to helping laid off employees.