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Comment by jfoutz | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how much they thought about a 10% company wide paycut. The "we're all in this together" can (imho) protect a lot of that culture. I can imagine people leaving anyway. But they would leave because they're shutting down specific platform development, not that there's no room for them to contribute.

Layoffs are crushing regardless. I hope for the best for everyone involved.

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It doesn't sound like these layoffs were prompted by money problems, so asking people to take paycuts for 'the good of the company' wouldn't solve the problem of there people who no longer fit into the company vision of what they want to be doing.

I wondered about that, too. That's what HP used to do: pay cuts offset by time off (with top brass taking the cut but working a full week). It seems like it would be better.

I think that's only viable when the reason for the pay cuts can be blamed on forces outside the company (slowing economy, competition from other segments, etc.).

When it's internal, the people who aren't the problem are, rightly, pissed. With the kind of employees Valve has, I'd be surprised if they didn't lose 10% anyway, except they'd be losing their best, not the ones they actually want to go on without.

Fair points.

I find this whole thing confusing and shocking. It's really unclear that their strategic goal is.

Don't the "less qualified" people also drag down the rest?

If everyone agrees the person was less qualified, probably yes. But layoffs often hit people who at least one other person you want to keep thought was good, which hits morale, which in turn also drags down people. Partly it's because the web of connections is complex, and there are lots of reasons one of the remaining employees might have respected the laid-off employee, any one of them enough to instill a bit of a grudge against your decision-making (or even incredulity that you fired the now-fired person before them).

In a way it's the worst with well-run teams that gel. The ideal situation is that everyone works out what they're good at and develop a bit of a rapport. But then if you fire one of the team members, everyone else on the team has a quite first-hand reason to believe the now-fired person was valuable.

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