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Comment by rtlfe | Hacker News Reader

> Twitter said in the email that its offices will be temporarily closed and all badge access will be suspended in order "to help ensure the safety of each employee as well as Twitter systems and customer data."

Is this normal during mass layoffs?

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I have seen investment banks disable all logins for a whole division or trading floor, invite the people they aren’t firing to an all hands / town hall meeting to tell them as much, then announce to everyone else on the floor that they no longer have a job and will be escorted out of the building with any belongings they choose to collect within 30 minutes.

I’m not sure how normal it is, but it doesn’t objectively seem like there’s anything wrong with it.

There's an episode of "Succession" that captures this vibe pretty well.

There's an outdoor area on the top (11th) floor of our building - the door is always locked during restructures.

Ooooh that is dark. Must have been fun for the smokers who have been around for a while. Having worked at a company that went through a few years of trouble, there were all sorts of little signals like that you'd learn to pick up on.

There's a scene in the movie "Margin Call" (about the 2007-2008 financial crisis) in which most of a floor of employees in an investment bank is laid off: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zn2Xf9hAFcE

Seems very unusual to suspend all employees badge access, given "Some employees have been ordered to work in the office every day of the week to meet the deadline" per this article: https://www.reuters.com/technology/musk-orders-twitter-cut-i...

You only need the badge to get in. Makes perfect sense.

> Is this normal during mass layoffs?

Yes, and for good reason.

A company I was familiar with in the 80's had a subsidiary in another state with a couple hundred employees. They decided to close that office, and lay everyone off.

Being nice guys, they gave the branch 3 months notice of the closure and layoffs, and expected them to keep working as usual.

After 3 months, the parent company officials arrived to find the office building empty and looted clean.

It’s unusual for a new owner to lay off 50% of a company at once

Nothing that is going on at Twitter is "normal"

Imagine being on the team that's clearing out everybody's desks. Once that's done, you're no longer needed. But hurry up, now.

That work is probably contracted.

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