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Comment by amykhar | Hacker News Reader

So cold, announcing layoffs to employees this way. A blog post saying "yeah, if you work for us, you're about to get an email telling you if you still do or not"

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If you have a lot of experience with seeing how layoffs go down in companies, you'll see that no one is ever satisfied with the way they are done. The reception of it is highly subjective.

I personally would want to get an email telling me directly and with no bullshit involved. I don't want to listen to a CEO come up with some fake apology, and I also want to absorb the news in the confort of my own time, in my own personal space, instead of feeling like cattle being rushed from one point to the next.

IMO there's barely any point trying to appease anyone, just do it, it's ugly, move on.

Exactly. There are bad and worse and less bad ways but someone is always going to be pissed. You can’t soon layoffs to those affected as good news. Except for some who already got an offer somewhere else and just hit the jackpot.

I've never been a part of something like this where the effected had not already heard about it from their direct manager prior to the official public conversations. Granted it might have only been a couple hours, but they've had some time and privacy to digest the reality ahead of the townhall style discussions & the email blast from the CEO. I'm sure it happens and there are plenty of reasons for it, but I've always seen it go down in a more humane/private way for the individuals. From outside, it's never easy to tell how it went down on the inside.

I'm not saying that isn't the best for the employee being laid off, but the news spreads SUPER fast. Someone has an unscheduled 1:1 with a manager and then a private meeting immediately after (with HR usually), a few other people see they have similar things that day, and news starts to spread. That causes panic and confusion across the company ANYWAY.

I think as the parent said, there is no way that keeps all parties happy ... the employees, the leadership, the remaining folks, and now the public.

> the news spreads SUPER fast

By that point, rumors likely are already circling. Potentially for days/weeks/months. The layoffs require coordination and a lot of input from the org chart. A lot of atypical behavior ensues, unplanned meetings, finance guys sniffing around, etc.

But agree overall. It's chaos and my point was only that it's usually more humane than reading a blog post on the internet and left to wonder when you'll know if it will impact you. It's seldom anyone is completely blindsided.

I've always been privy to the info (usually helping formulate the list and benefit package) and if I can I just stay home the day it's planned to go down. Nothing good happens on that day.

This applies generally to all sorts of bad news that is likely to spread. It's unfortunate but if news is bad enough almost any way that you deliver it will have significant negative sentiment. As a result IMO the emphasis should generally be on telling people the bad news extremely clearly and efficiently, rather than on the surrounding showmanship.

The converse is also true, if you're telling someone that they're getting a raise you could do it over Slack and they'll generally be happy.

Unfortunately, in a highly regulated environment like finance or healthcare this is the norm for opsec reasons. Can't have disgruntled laid-off employees taking revenge actions against the company or customers.

Exactly, and as a regulated company you get audited on your affected leavers process with proof of time stamps for access removal.

Why not just send the email first, so that people don't have to wait in suspense to see if they still have a job?

The suspense lasted 1 minute. The "team update" and cut/no-cut emails went out pretty much simultaneously.

We're talking about Plaid here. The company that willfully violated every norm around credential handling, implemented fraudulent front-end lookalikes to harvest user credentials, and then used those to reap customer financial records in blatant violation of BSA, and again, 90% of the ethial mores of a responsible finance company.

https://angeion-public.s3.amazonaws.com/www.PlaidSettlement....

Reached via:

https://www.plaidsettlement.com/important-documents.php

I will not, nor would I recommend anyone extend benefit of a doubt when it comes to this org in particular.

While you are factially correct in the general case, I'd hate for people to leave with the idea that Plaid has ever concerned itself with compliance when there was a buck to be made or an inconvenient norm to be worked around unethically.

The impression I got is that they offer a pretty generous severance package and I appreciate their transparency. If I were to apply for a job here during better times I would see this post to judge the company's character.

I'm pretty sure the employees received noticed before it went public.

I'm assuming this blog post is a public copy of an internal email

Curious what others think the primary reasons are for this? I'm thinking that it's possible that a majority of their workforce is still working remote, and if you don't turn off system access prior to termination then people might be more likely to do nefarious things (compared to if they were terminated in office?)

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