Patch's new owner lays off staff in 1:39 conference call
soundcloud.com
soundcloud.com
One thing that I'm slightly proud of is that when I had to lay people off at least I did it myself to their face - quite a few thanked me for the time they'd had and some even wished it had turned out better for me - which was rather humbling.
On the day when we got the call from the CEO to tell us whether our proposal was good or not rather than it being myself and our Director of Engineering on our side of the call we had all twelve in the room (although the guys on the other side of the call had no idea).
We were told it wasn't going to happen, so everyone knew at that point what was going to happen next. I seem to remember something like laying most of the remaining people off, going to see the HR manager - finding out that my severance package wasn't going to be what I thought it was and I could take a cheque there and then or fight it in court.
By that point I was so tired of the whole thing I took the cheque without a fight and moved on....
[NB I was involved in actually doing a substantial portion of the lay offs in each phase - after a while people really did not want to have 1 on 1 meetings with me].
What was more fun, starting around 11am one day, all managers in the office (about 6 of them) disappeared. Around 2pm none of them returned and were not responding to calls/txt/email. One of them ended up breaking the silence and told someone the office was closing. Everyone left around 2:30pm that day, and when we showed up in the morning, we knew we would be laid off. It made the meeting a bit easier.
It is not about firing people by conference, phone or whatever. It is about the thanklessness and the attitude that sucks. Does it really hurt to genuinely feel and say "sorry we cannot keep you any longer. Hope you understand". No one is going to sit and whine about being laid-off but the manner of layoffs (in america at least) is getting shameful, appalling and disgusting.
However, not shocking at all. Companies have too become risk/lawsuit averse when it comes to firing/lay-offs that they all have scripted things to say because they don't want to risk a potential lawsuit. My friend was laid-off by my ex-boss (I referred him and left). I know that my ex-boss was a really nice guy who would at least apologize. During the lay-off, all my friend got was "Your position has been eliminated. Please do not use any company device and leave immediately. We will ship your stuff to you". He was even told not to talk to any co-worker while leaving. Poor guy was so heartbroken that he could not even say bye to people he worked with. You know what he was not sad about ? Finding another job.
May be I am overreacting but this is when Capitalism starts to bite. I am all in for profits, competitions, fierce business but if I ever have to layoff someone specially for no fault of theirs, you bet I will say sorry in person.It may not mean much but it is called "being human".
Absolutely. Every time I've had to let someone go, the first person I call is my HR person. They walk me through the dos and don'ts which always include, "Don't say this and don't say that otherwise they could use that either in a wrongful termination lawsuit or in filing for workman's comp."
what on earth does harsh layoffs have to do with capitalism?
I live in an "at will" state and it hasn't been a problem. I believe in freedom of association.
I don't know if anyone is really that stupid especially someone who is in charge of firing. That is like rubbing salt in your wounds. A better way would be "Sorry you have to go through this but we have no choice because <fill with HR/Legal script>". May be I am rating those firing-in-charge people way too high intellectually. But I find this argument that "companies are too stupid hence they would rather not say anything human" seems far fetched. I am probably too naive though.
> Say an HR drone lays off a woman with kids (or a pregnant lady), and says "sorry! Well at least you'll get to spend a little more time with little Jimmy!"
I would say that was a stupid comment, but not worth the millions it will cost the company in litigation. If the firing reason was not pregnancy / kids then it is still legitimate.
The very real problems that are encountered at the workplace are shadowed by the unreal "problems". I do not like giving up our humanity to follow a damage control doctrine that causes more damage.
First time I've ever had to respond to a recruiter to tell them they were full of shit.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2013/08/09/layoffs...
IMO it's a complete waste of time.
That said, I don't think there would be any issue with the woman in the recording saying something kind and generic, like "I feel for you, and I am sorry to have to do this."
Edit: Wouldn't that be something though? It would enable someone to argue innocence due to lying wholesale to someone's face saying you were sorry.
Sure you'd have to admit to being a liar in court but whatever. After winning slam dunk since this venue is apparently void of evidence, say sorry to the court for the problems (leave the judge wondering) and call it a day.
I'd rather have it straight quick like shots at the doctors office.
The fact that those cold hard facts were disseminated via conference call, however, is not something that I find professional unless we are talking about the layoff of remote workers etc. - and even then I'd prefer a personal phone call.
The relationship is a business one. Don't get confused. You are gone. You care about when, your shit on their computers, and money. Why spend a week laying people off when you can do it in two minutes? I have faith in the new management yet.
nice = I want to help you
professional + nice = I want to eat you and help you?
Now that doesn't work at all.
professional = I have to eat you (not want)
nice = I am sorry (being nice is not only about helping)
professional + nice = I have to eat you and I am sorry.
?
I find straight, clear professionalism to be "nice", especially when dealing with shitty situations. Usually they're made more shitty by people getting personally emotional over what are, frankly, simply business decisions. A lot of that can be avoided by sticking to the facts and the script, making the inevitable a lot simpler for everybody. It's a matter of showing them adult respect and giving it to them straight.
I don't think they're mutually exclusive at all.
~1:55 in: "Abel, put that camera down right now. Abel, you're fired, out."
https://soundcloud.com/jim-romenesko/aol-ceo-tim-armstrong-8...
Edit: I guess he was actually fired.
Edit: Found one: http://jimromenesko.com/2013/08/13/aols-tim-armstrong-apolog...
Edit again: "Tim Armstrong has publicly apologized for the firing of [Abel] since then, but did not offer to reverse the firing or any compensation"
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Armstrong_(executive)
I guess it must be the latter, or the clip wouldn't be so interesting.
If I was a CEO trying to get the house in order and at that very second Instagram is more important to you... you're gonna have a bad time.
It's wrong to unnecessarily fire someone in front of their colleagues. It destroys morale and it's essentially a form of public humiliation. A better response would have been to ask to put the camera away and remind people it's a serious meeting.
edit2 - fixed title. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_Film:_An_Odyssey It's available on Netflix
There's a thing where it plunges right down in pitch and timbre at the end too, for a different kind of emphasis. I love welsh voices.
Reporters. Local. Might not be so easy for them to find jobs. But hopefully new media skills will help.
For example, when someone says, "So, we're going there" with the high-rising terminal, uptalkers have polluted that resource which is spoken language to the point that it makes it harder to tell if the sentence was a question or an imperative.
Yeah, so, like, we're firing you? But you can check your email until 5:30? Today? And we'll let you use your computer until the end of this week? Starting today? Best of luck?
I personally find both vocal styles (along with very strong accents: http://paulgraham.com/accents.html) off-putting, but I don't really like the reasons why I do.
Actions speak louder than words, and we don't know what the "separation packages" are. They could actually be good, for all you know.
We don't have the context on what it was like working there. Some places/professions are more "mercenary" than others. In Silicon Valley people are used to "company culture" and "team building", but not all companies need that.
From my experience the worst thing you can do is empathize and apologize. Just break the news, and move forward.
It's a business.
The fact that it was 100 seconds long is a mercy.
But people have a spectrum of reactions to being fired, and I think being able to address their immediate concerns one-on-one is important. They may have done it this way in the name of efficiency, but some times it is better to just take the hit and do things the old fashioned way. Nobody is happy about being laid off, but six months from now both employer and ex-employee will feel better about it than the impersonal conference call.
One company I worked for was acquired by a much larger tech company. We were already had about a 1000 employees. After the big announcement that we were being acquired, we all got an invite from the new company to meet the new executive team at their big corporate HQ.
Got bused over, we were all shepherded into a huge auditorium only to have the CEO of the larger company tell us we were all being let go and turn in our ID's to the security folks now standing at the exits.
It was the quietest bus ride I've ever been on during the return trip.
It's not like they do it out of good will. They get paid for it. That said, I agree that it should be done face-to-face.
"...you no longer have a role in the company. And by role I meant job. You no longer have a job. Unless you had another job, in which case you still have at least one. Point is, you're fired. From this company. It's Patch calling by the way."
The rest is just general termination junk like turning in laptops and turning off email.
http://jimromenesko.com/2014/01/29/hale-global-lays-off-patc...
That would have made it seam a bit more personalized.
$ say -v "Bad News" "Unfortunately your role has been eliminated and you will no longer have a role at patch. Today will be your last day of employment with the company"
Even better would be if they hired Ellen McLain to GladOS it because at least that would have been funny.
"Patch reports on everything you need to know about your town, from local government to school news to what to do with your family this weekend.
And your local Patch makes it easy for you and your neighbors to connect and post your news and events too.
All of this, plus comprehensive listings of local restaurants and shops, home improvement services and businesses, events, and more – all in one place – in over 1,000 communities and counting."
He seemed to become less effective at Google as his responsibilities expanded and moved on to AOL.
Patch was his big play to make AOL relevant again and has proved to be a complete economic failure.
Highlights an unfortunate reality of the Silicon Valley that past success can sometimes just mean a longer rope to hang yourself with.
The reality is that running AOL is thankless job.
They shuttered a lot of the sites a few months ago.
But what else should we expect from the owners of a news portal that was, from the outset, itself nothing other than soulless and robotic, to its very core -- and whose passing almost no one is likely to mourn?
("No one", that is, except of course those who've recently found out they "no longer have a role with Patch", along with their unlucky dependents).
"Hey you're fired tomorrow, thanks for your work!"
A lot of the bad news out of Patch seems to have started around the same time.
I don't think they were going to fly them all into a central location to fire them.
If you're already planning to spend $5-20k per employee for X weeks severance, an extra $1-2k per employee for the offsite firing might only increase your wind-down costs by 10%.
Then AOL got them and suddenly I saw no posts from The Patch on my feeds - for like all of 2013.
What happened?