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Comment by qwertyuiop_ | Hacker News Reader

These CEO letters are meaningless. They are written by obscenely paid PR hacks and follow the same template.

* This is the most difficult change to COMPANY NAME HERE that I’ve had to announce in our almost n-year history. Today, we are reducing our corporate headcount by approximately n people and saying goodbye to many talented teammates.*

* While there is no great way to manage this process, we strive to treat each of you with respect and integrity. Each of you who is impacted will have the opportunity to speak to a leader this week.*

* While I want to focus today’s attention on our talented teammates who are departing, I did want to say a few words to the team that is staying and carrying the baton. While today’s news is painful, I continue to be very optimistic about our future and convinced of the importance of the role we can play in the world.*

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> obscenely paid PR hacks

I genuinely don't understand comments like this. Do you know who wrote the letter? Do you know how much they get paid?

Communications is a real skill with actual, real people that devote their careers to doing it well. And they get paid fairly, unless you know something I don't.

Nobody wants to write this letter, least of all the PR person who wrote it.

What would you have the CEO say, if not what they all say when this happens? "Our business isn't growing like we hoped now get fucked"?

Brevity and directness are appreciated. People's livelihoods are disappearing from underneath them -- give tangible reasons why, in plain language.

Seriously, what do you think that looks like if not exactly what was written?

> We sped up our hiring to catch up with our growth and started many new businesses in response to feedback from our audiences.

> Most of our investments are paying off, and while we’ve always been disciplined in how we have managed our business and operational metrics, we were not as rigorous as we should have been in managing our team growth

> While our business continues to grow fast, given how quickly we hired, our operating expenses – if left unabated – would continue to outgrow our revenue.

We grew too fast and revenue wasn't catching up. What other tangibles do you want? Would they somehow help the situation?

Do you have a horse in this race? Are you the PR guy writing these emails? : ^ )

> What other tangibles do you want?

In short-form: you're gone, here's why, here's some money. The diction doesn't need to be apologetic. It's condescending.

I don't at all. I'm just trying to figure out what people are supposed to be doing. And I was mostly responding to the comment of "obscenely paid PR hacks" in the first place...just unnecessarily cynical.

It was a long letter b/c it provided a lot of information. The information you're asking for was wrapped up in 3 sentences. But I guess that was still too long?

If it's not apologetic, they get reamed for being too cold/unsympethetic.

The CEO letter is meaningless, but the severance and departing benefits look pretty generous at least. A nice little cushion while they look for new jobs. I've certainly seen much worse.

You forgot to include CEO taking responsibility.

Without any actual implications of them "taking responsibility" too

What would that look like?

I'm no supporter of PR speak. The CEO ranks seem to have no problem in finding their next gig. Some some receive ludicrous compensation even when the company does poorly.

I'm just not sure what is the desired outcome here? And how do we get there?

One possibile way to take personal responsibility could be to add "and therefore I will reduce my compensation by the same percentage we are reducing headcount". (Based on other comments, that would be 6%.)

DoorDash CEO's compensation in 2021 was 413 million https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/Doordash-highest-paid-CE...

While it's true stock has dropped like a rock since then, it's impacted corporate employee comp as well so I don't agree that stock tanking exclusively impacted the CEO and hence he has paid for the bad decisions.

Don't you think this is pretty childish? When market conditions change companies need to adapt, sometimes that means laying people off. Isn't that the job of the CEO? They are responsible for the health of the company overall. I don't see why they should be punished for making adjustments to make the company competitive.

In general I agree with you, yes, market conditions change, and CEOs need to make sometimes tough choices in response.

However, the specific context here is this quote from the CEO:

> we were not as rigorous as we should have been in managing our team growth. That’s on me.

If the CEO admits they made a mistake that led to the current layoffs then I think it would be admirable to take personal responsibility and accept some personal consequences as a result.

> When market conditions chance, companies need to adapt

I agree with that part ^

Let me frame this more broadly. _How_ and _when_ should companies adapt? There are many ways, across many timescales.

I'll give a made up example, hopefully in a reasonable ballpark. A company needs to save $250M / year. Let's say there are three options under consideration, not mutually exclusive / can be blended:

Option A: Lay off 1% of 10,000 employees, saving $250M/year.

Option B: 15% across the board salary cuts, saving $250M/year.

Option C: Lower executive and VP-level compensation packages (salary, options, stock, deferred pay, etc), saving $250M.

Fairness in service of the company goals means that all viable options are given due consideration.

It is relatively easy for a CEO to do lay offs, even if other options (lowering their own comp) has better effects.

When the company does well they receive exorbitant bonuses. The CEO of Doordash is privy to a $400m bonus hitting some milestones, that more than pays of the jobs laid off today.

To be clear, the $400m "bonus" isn't a bonus at all. It's an incentive package that's based on the price of the stock sustaining over 180 days, and the first milestone of this incentive package starts at $187.50, which is >3x the current price. $DASH was above $187.50 last year but didn't meet the 180 day duration requirement.

In other words, Tony hasn't gotten paid anything from this package, and may never will.

The package is described in the revised s1, and DoorDash is required to report it because they have to account for this package (probabilistically via Monte Carlo simulations) on their books.

https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001792789/8e0717f...

Their CEO compensation is mostly equity, which has dropped like a stone in the past year.

That's true for most corporate employees as well, no?

At the minimum, the desired outcome is that they shouldn't talk about "taking personal responsibility" when there's none to be seen.

Implication is that you get a strike against you which is publicly documented. This also serves a purpose of sending a message to middle-management that we should not repeat this strategic mistake of over-hiring when things are hot and then when things slowdown going through this painful process of separation. I am hopeful that this public admission will inculcate a culture of holding everyone accountable rather than "emperor has no clothes" culture where people live in denial.

What would you rather the CEO say? It’s easy to complain about everything but orders of magnitude more difficult to think critically and offer ways to improve it.

It’s more difficult but that desire to think critically and put in the effort is what makes the community here so much better than most sites.

People complain about how these announcements say nothing, but what would you expect a company to say about their layoffs?

For some reason every layoff press release on HN gets the "The CEO takes responsability but doesn't actually" comments.

I'm not sure what people expect, "I will whip myself once for every employee I had to layoff to atone for overhiring during one of the biggest market bull run"?

It's especially weird considering that DoorDash is probably the company that had the best reason to overhire during a pandemic where delivery apps where being used a lot more than usual.

- have their pay adjusted to reflect the poor decision making lead to the company shrinkage

- have a portion of their stock allowance taken back and have to be re-earned based on performance

- have their other benefits and expense account cut and have to be re-earned based on performance

Basically have literally anything they benefit from have to be justified in any way as a reflection of the holistic performance of the company.

Stock allowance? Taken back where? Doordash's CEO is the founder.

None of these things are in the best interest of the company. Demotivating and losing leadership isn't going to help right the ship.

... and instead demotivating the entire workforce is somehow better?

> I will whip myself once for every employee I had to layoff

I like the sound of that! Joking aside, while physical harm may not fly I can imagine a scenario where it hits the CEOs' wallets either by losing stock options/grants or actual salary based on the number of employees they had to layoff. Because seriously, what does it even mean for the CEO to take responsibility when there are no actual consequences for them? If they're doing it to save the business (which they are) then just say that instead of saying they take responsibility as the latter is just virtue signaling.

From the investor's perspective the CEO's job is to do what's good for the company, which doesn't always involve doing what's good for some or all the employees, laying a lot of developers off is not a bad thing from the perspective of the business unless their work is needed and there is enough money to pay them.

Right, so the CEO should just say that. Effectively the layoff was out of their control. It was the best decision for the business (shareholders). The act of saying "I take full responsibility" is pure virtue signaling unless it actually has consequences for them. Instead they should say, "I made the best decision for the shareholders."

I think the bitterness comes from the big payoffs that CEOs get when the company does well. There's something upsetting about leadership taking the upside reward for the big wins but leaving the downside risk for everyone else.

A somewhat common way for CEOs to take responsibility used to be to forgo their bonuses or to take a pay cut, which while still not too meaningful, does at least involve some more responsibility than just plain PR speak.

How about the CEO saying "I'll be resigning from the company"?

What do you think people mean when they say they should take responsibility? Screaming "I declare responsibility!"?

If the CEO says they'll resign, people will say they're taking the easy way out, and anyway, it's no skin off their back because golden parachute (if they were a good negotiator when they were hired) or anyway their salary was probably high, etc.

It's an unwinnable game in the court of public opinion, so why do it? Because it signals to the underlings that the CEO is not expecting resignations from them.

"If the CEO says they'll resign, people will say they're taking the easy way out, and anyway, it's no skin off their back because golden parachute"

Nothing prevents the CEO from resigning and gifting the golden parachute back to the company. You know, if they want to "take responsibility."

Sure, but then there's the "but they already got paid a bazillion dollars"

Being CEO means making difficult decisions, and it isn't realistic to expect a CEO to only serve during good times. That said, I think it would go a long way towards appeasement if the messaging was more along the lines of "I will be withholding payment to myself until such time as we're in the black again" or something similar showing personal consequences beyond "mea culpa!" nonsense PR messaging.

Maybe it's reasonable to expect a CEO to resign when layoffs happen during a market upswing but... during a market downturn like this it's kind of inevitable to see layoffs in a services-based company when services are the some of the easiest things for consumers to scale back on when belt-tightening occurs. A change in leadership would only further hurt the people staying in the company, IMO.

Maybe start by having a sustainable growth (or you know, no growth!) so you don't have to write a completely emotionless letter explaining why you have to lay off a whole village?

Remember the CEO is also accountable to the board and investors who have certain expectations.

The morality here is hard because the end results are largely driven by the system. Sure, there are some leaders who are particularly ill-suited for their jobs from the employee POV. Unfortunately some of those leaders serve their investors quite well.

If you point one finger, you'll quickly realize you might need many more to follow the interconnected trail of power.

Also let's not forget that so much of Silicon Valley's advantageous job market is linked to investor behavior, good and bad. My point? Sure, criticize these feaux-emotional layoff letters, just don't forget to look back to see the reality distortion field already in place when you joined that job.

So what we need here is mechanisms to hold the board accountable for their failures.

Well, perception/observation bias. We never notice the companies that do grow sustainably and don't do layoffs.

You really think so? I've picked many places to work based on my perception of their business model stability and how they treat people. I'm far from perfect of course.

I think many employees and investors care about employee retention. I don't know how much it factors in, but it is something.

I meant "we" as on a news site like this, "Company Not Laying Off" will never make a headline. Yes, employees and good investors/owners do care.

In terms of budget, wonder how many staff would equal CEO compensation. A lot of orgs out there carry on just fine through absence and transitions at the top.

eh, they gotta say something the exit packages seem good layoffs during this time of year are very stressful

Musk did it better

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