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Comment by larrys | Hacker News Reader

"Or waited a while after?"

Perhaps they think that there is a money tree that you just shake to pay employee salaries.

I think a comment like the parent (or perhaps that attitude) comes from a failure to realize that in the traditional business world business needs to operate at a profit. There is no runway like the startup runway.

Business and life isn't fair and it's not about hurt feelings. And you can't let personal emotions and feelings get in the way of sound business decisions. (This comes from someone who has and has seen what happens as a result...)

It's entirely possible that the laid off employees were fully aware of the pending demise and failed to take their own action first to their benefit (which for sure they would have done with "2 weeks notice" if they could).

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While I see your point, I cannot agree with you. Business is not separated from the people that form it. Yes, good businesses are profitable. Yes, if it weren't for the profits, there should be no businesses.

But from my point of view, when you hire someone to work for you, you have some moral (if not legal) obligations with that person. You could say that laying them off was "good, financially". Maybe it was even the only thing to do. As I don't know the specifics, I don't blame Macworld for that.

Although, it is part of your businesses COSTS dealing correctly with your employees. Making theses costs disappear is not "maximizing profit". That is turning your head on a cost you have to pay in order for your business to work.

If you do not do that, you will pay the consequences. Dealing incorrectly with people will hurt you not in a way you can represent in your books, but will definitely hurt you.

Good businessmen are wise if they treat their employees well. It need not be for a higher sense of morality (although it should be), as there are at least a couple of good self-interested reasons to do so.

So you think that the company should sacrifice in a way that hurts them but doesn't benefit their employees. Sounds like a highly rational thing to do.

If they can't afford to keep their employees the thing for them to do would have been to lay them off between events, which would have meant before this last event. Not a few weeks after this event. If they could have afforded to lay them off a few weeks after this event it would have perhaps been better for both parties for them to wait until the next big event and then lay them off, which would have looked exactly the same as this.

Consider that the past few weeks may have been the extra time MacWorld was gracious enough to give them, while at the same time helping themselves so that they may be doing well enough to provide some of their former employees with freelance work.

What moral obligation do you feel was neglected here? Surely hiring someone doesn't create a moral obligation to never lay them off if you can't afford to pay them anymore.

As I said, I don't have the specifics so I can't judge the Macworld case.

Assuming it was an unexpected layoff right after a very demanding day of work, I can see some wrong things there.

First, you should inform people as soon as you made up your mind that you were going to fire them. Letting them work (a lot) and just after that letting them go is wrong. Is using them. Explaining the reasons for the layoff is the moral thing to do. Hiding it with an obvious intention of exploiting people's work without hindering their motivation is wrong (for me, but moral is usually a pretty subjective field).

A simple way to assess that you're up to no good is to see how the employees treat and refer to you after you let them go. And in this case, the twitter action does not feel very amicable to me.

Again, I don't know what really happened there at Macworld. But if someone is laid off and ends up feeling mistreated, maybe, just maybe, we should give him some credit and not directly assume that the business is right and they are just chronic complainers.

> First, you should inform people as soon as you made up your mind that you were going to fire them. Letting them work (a lot) and just after that letting them go is wrong. Is using them.

You're on very shaky moral ground, and I don't find it persuasive. I don't understand the moral obligation to inform as soon as the decision is made. Employment is a 2 way street. By this logic, employees are "using" their employers if they continue working while hunting for a new job. I don't buy that moral logic.

Moreover, morale is important for both employer and employee. You don't want to keep a disgruntled employee around to sap morale. A significant blow to morale can sink the entire enterprise, multiplying the number of layoffs.

> A simple way to assess that you're up to no good is to see how the employees treat and refer to you after you let them go.

Entirely too simple. An entirely legitimate difference of opinion can result in a disgruntled employee. Employees can have wildly inaccurate estimates of their own value and productivity. Losing your job almost always feels unfair. Even the most amicable of splits can still result in latent bitterness.

So if a former employee does go on a rampage, it's unreasonable to conclude that his employer was "up to no good".

People talk of "runway" in the context of a startup exactly because startups are usually at most a year away from running out and making significant capital investments while having no income at all.

I mean, I thought this is clear if you remember that the runway is what airplanes launch from.

We don't mention runway with developed businesses because they are run at timescales of multiple years. If you have to close your business and lay of all people tomorrow but knew nothing about the situation today, we rightly call those running such a business incompetent, and frankly unfit to be in charge of one. We can't tell people to not burn bridges and then excuse employers of the societal and moral obligations they enter into with hiring people.

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