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Comment by purpleblue | Hacker News Reader

I can understand a single layoff to "right size" the company, but a second layoff always points to an underlying problem that they didn't either believe or recognize only a few months previous. Which kind of makes me nervous. This as the Meta layoffs means that they didn't have a handle on the problem only a few months back.

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Agreed; the first can be blamed on following the crowd and over-hiring. The second shows weakness in leadership, especially considering economic conditions are similar to ~6 months ago. Part of the leadership team need to be "affected," "impacted," or whatever euphemism you want to use, and the stock should go down.

First layoff shakes the tree, those who would run will run, then the second layoff retains the intersection between those they want to keep and those who did not run. The outcome of trying to do it all in one go is far more unpredictable.

Or maybe they thought two ~small~ big numbers in layoff headlines (or remaining employee morale) would be better than one ~big~ massive one.

>Or maybe they thought two ~small~ big numbers in layoff headlines (or remaining employee morale) would be better than one ~big~ massive one.

No one in their right mind would think that. One layoff can be understood as necessary. Two says to employees "you will never feel safe here again", and is a huge signal for top performers to run for the exit.

Two layoffs is worse than one big layoff, in terms of morale.

Over a quarter of the company (ignoring any hiring they may have done since September) though? idk, I'm not sure it's that clear-cut.

Not that I'm certain in my own opinion and disagreeing with you though - I only said 'maybe they thought'.

This is a well-known thing, people aren't guessing here and there's nothing to dispute. Having multiple layoffs destroys morale and the best practice is to cut deeply once to avoid a second layoff. Anyone who doesn't believe this is simply and foolishly repeating the mistakes of the past. Which suggests to me that it was a surprise to even themselves that they had to do this because of a revenue shortfall.

Lol. I don't think anyone gives a damn about morale nowadays. :(

or maybe the seniors think headline layoff is an opportunity for free advertisements

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