If you have to lay people off, don't do it this way | Hacker News Reader

If you have to lay people off, don't do it this way

weblog.infoworld.com

44 pointsccraigIW19 comments

Absolutely true store: I once knew a professional hatchet man (a person spineless companies hire to fire large numbers of employees -- usually to fire an entire building of people). He told me once that he was part of a team that had to fire everyone working at an office building that held two-to-three hundred people from the looks of it. They were doing a lot of secretive work, so it was important that both everyone find out at the same time and security guards must escort them to their desks -- both measures to prevent anyone stealing documents or information of any kind.

So here's what they did: They pulled one of the fire alarms. Everyone, thinking it was a fire or drill, exited the building. Then this man, from inside the building, put a bullhorn to his mouth and said "Attention! This is not a drill! You're all fired!" (thinking, of course, that it was a clever play on words). They then let people back in one by one to collect their personal items and that was that.

Similar to a bit on Arrested Development:

http://www.hulu.com/watch/12317/arrested-development-family-...

Michael: No, no, no, no, pop. You're not doing another one of those Black Fridays, are you? The mass firings?

Narrator: Before firing his employees, George Sr. would be sure to clear the office of its valuables.

[Employees loading a truck full of office equipment]

Ted: So when do we get to see our fancy new offices?

George Sr.: [closing the truck door] When you get your fancy new jobs. You're all fired.

Narrator: The employees never saw it coming, although their first task was to unload their equipment from a truck.

(starts at 4:05)

I doubt that's true. Pulling a fire alarm like that is illegal. Committing a crime in order to insult 100s of people, while those same people witness the crime, is not the best idea.

Not if he pulled it as a drill - just notify the fire department first, and say we are having a drill at so and so oclock.

maybe in another country? maybe a long time ago? altho if the person needed to fire people this way for security reasons, allowing all of them into the building at the same time sounds like a bad idea.

This is why workers need unions.

Why? To prevent the psychological damage from being fired in an unfriendly way? I don't know, how about "get over it"?

At the end of the day, fired is fired, no matter if it was friendly or unfriendly.

You're (slightly) more likely to get a decent severance package. Statutory minimum here in the UK is #330/year of service, regardless of your salary. Most people consider 1 month's salary per year of service + 1 month in lieu of notice to be reasonable, but it's entirely at the company's discretion.

Let's make something clear - if the thought of being laid off is frightening you have already lost.

You lost control of your destiny and the bosses can boss you around. The right way to live is to tighten the belt and have enough surplus to hold you over for a reasonable period of time. Of course hardly anyone does it, but following the crowd is not wise in this regard.

Many years ago, I was working as a consultant at a UK high street bank. My client told me a story about the last round of layoffs there. One by one, his colleagues were called into the boss's office, then they slunk out again, tail between their legs, packed their desks and left. He was determined to go out with some dignity, so he had stashed a bottle of champagne and a stack of paper cups in his drawer, when his time came he planned to walk back to his desk head held high and pop the cork. The poor bloke was the only one not to get the chop!

Holy ad attack Batman!

First when you load the page you get a pop up (which FF3 blocked) on top of an intrusive interstitial ad and then to top it off once you load the article there's a DHTML ad overlayed over the article that you 'have to' act on.

Can I make a motion to ban infoworld until they clean up this mess? I know times are tough and all but that's just excessive.

I don't see a thing: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865 and subscribe to "easy list"

A friend of mine worked for a company that thought it would be a good idea to have everyone share the pain. The way they did it however was quite horrible. Every single person was invited into a room and handed identical envelopes. Once you opened the envelope, you found out whether you were fired or not, kind of like a reverse lottery. Of course, no one explained it very well, so everyone thought they were fired and there were a lot of bad feelings among both groups.

The NY office of one company I worked for just told people to report to meeting room A or B. The A crowd were told they kept their jobs (this round at least). The B crowd were escorted by security guards out of the fire escape and down onto the street.

The same company laid me off in London, the lucky ones (i.e. those of us who got it) took the rest of the company out for a drink to celebrate!

A friend who worked at one of the large investment banks said you knew you were fired if you couldn't log into your computer. When you went to the IT office to ask why you couldn't log in, security guards would be waiting to escort you back to your office.

I worked very briefly as a consultant at a company that let you know you were axed when your key card no longer worked. You had to buzz the admin, who carried your box of belongings to the door and handed you your paperwork.

> We even had some employees who volunteered to be "rif'ed." Two I know had already received offers from outside the company that were still open, but they were declined, so the company could axe those that H.R. chose instead.

Why should the company "take volunteers" for RIFs? Now I don't argue for a purely chance-based system for doing layoffs, preferring instead that a viable company make thoughtful choices about whom should be let go, I will observe that a random lottery will likely produce better results for the on-going company operations than allowing for a voluntary round of layoffs (presumably, with severance). In a voluntary round, your most employable are disproportionately likely to volunteer, meaning you're worse off than if you left it to chance.

(From the less-than-median employable employee's point of view, naturally allowing for a voluntary round is preferable, but it's the company's choice of how to do it, not the worst employee's choice.)

Sounds like the company handled this just about as badly as I can imagine, with the proviso that it handled it in a way unlikely to land it in court.

Yet, it's the legal system and employment laws that have encouraged companies to be less than friendly when it comes to layoffs..

Reply on news.ycombinator.com