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SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

latimes.com

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Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#111

Post by ryanmercer »

mulmen wrote: post #98
ryanmercer wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What's less cruel? ANYTHING is better than telling the entire company "go home and compulsively refresh your email all weekend to see if you get to come to work Monday"

Do we know that is necessary? Why would it take all weekend for 700 emails to be delivered? Why not send an email to all the remaining employees to reassure them they are not being fired? That may have happened, we don't know.

From the reddit comment there's no indication they said when they will be sending the email.

It would have been far more practical to quietly go into each department "Jane, Jack come with us we're putting together a team" "Sally, Quan come with us we're putting together a team" take them all to an area "we're very sorry but we have to lay you off, we have counselors that we can refer to you if you need to talk to someone. We've also got some headhunters we can recommend. It's not personal, we just have to cut costs, you'll find that your company accounts were deactivated at the start of this meeting. We will be more than happy to ask your supervisors to write you letters of recommendation if you'd like, just put on this form where you'd like them sent for your records. Please think of anything that you are in the middle of and type it out in this word doc on the laptops over there".

Not "Hey everybody, go home and wait to see if you get to come in Monday".

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#112

Post by whatshisface »

genericone wrote: post #91
duaoebg wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can confirm

Were the sacrificial lambs at least told in secret that they were 'hired in order to be laid off' at the next round? I hope they were not just given rote tasks, but allowed to explore their skills while they are in limbo so that they can train-up or look for jobs... Nah that's just wishful thinking.

Telling someone they're going to be laid off and having them build skills both reduce their "goal performance," thereby serving the purpose of justifiably lowering their stack rank. I can imagine hiring some smart guy with a good resume, then telling him congratulations he just won a year's supply of O'Riley books.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#113

Post by hermitdev »

MisterOctober wrote: post #31
technotony wrote: post #10

Some think you should do this annually. "Back when he was running GE, Jack Welch famously argued that leaders should fire the bottom 10 percent of their workforce each year, as part of an orderly continuous improvement process." https://www.inc.com/paul-b-brown/should-you-fire-10-of-your-...

Yep, the warped logic of stack ranking still infects HR thought to this day, in some quarters anyway. It's one of those notions that sounds brilliant at first, but then when you think it all the way through, it reveals itself as patently bizarre and misguided. As noted, it creates a really unhealthy intra-team sabotage mindset as everybody competes to avoid being at the bottom of the stack. It puts managers in a horr…

I worked at a company that did this, then eventually phased it out. We were also required to do a self eval on a variety of categories, one a three point scale: exceeds expectations, meets or does not meet. My managing director point blank told me: no one exceeds expectations and if you dont meet, you're gone. So, the self eval was "meets" all the way down. After 2 years of that bullshit, I stopped filling it out. Figured, if theyre not going to take the opportunity for honest self reflection, why bother? I lasted there another 7 years before I left on my own volition. Never in the 7 years that I did not so the self eval did a manager mention it to me. Fuck that shit.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#114

Post by m0zg »

viraptor wrote: post #110
m0zg wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. What would be more cruel is to keep people guessing for weeks, or to do several smaller layoffs. That's how it's usually done, and it utterly decimates the morale, and causes the best people to leave. The best way to do a layoff is to cut once, cut deep, and do it quickly. And of course to not be an asshole and offer severance compensation to folks who were laid off.

You can still tell everyone immediately at the end of the day. Or just send the email on the weekend. You don't have to say you're going to do it first and keep everyone worried.

You can't when you're dealing with 6000+ people. Likely even the managers didn't know so as to avoid feeding the rumor mill. They'll now need to make up their minds about their reports whom they wouldn't mind losing.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#115

Post by Cyclone_ »

mulmen wrote: post #51
viraptor wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever the reasons for the workforce reduction, this way of doing it is just unnecessarily cruel.

What's less cruel? Face to face meetings? Layoffs suck, how is this particularly egregious?

Firing by email is just not a professional way to do things. Imagine if someone resigned by email.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#116

Post by sdinsn »

arthurcolle wrote: post #23
sabertoothed wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sure?

Literally from the article: > The company employed at least 7,000 people in late 2017 when COO Gwynne Shotwell last gave a number — which means around 700 will lose their jobs.

I don't know what article you are reading, but that line isn't in it. This one is though:

> SpaceX, citing a need to get “leaner,” said Friday it will lay off more than 10% of its roughly 6,000 employees.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#117

Post by cyberferret »

chomp wrote: post #101
cyberferret wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously, if you cannot see that "fire by email" is far more impersonal and disconnecting than compassionately meeting with the employee 1 on 1 and giving them a definitive exit path along with the financial support to do so, then please do not ever work in HR or be responsible for employing people in the future. To subject ALL your employees to the 50/50 prospect that they will have a job come next working day is t…

The logistics of laying off 6000 people makes it very difficult to hold one on ones. Assuming 30 minutes per person, 8 hours in a day to hold meetings and 5 day work week, that's 75 person-weeks (!) just to hold one on ones. On top of that, there are security concerns with hanging onto employees and letting them have access to company property during a time that they know they will be fired. Especially for a company…

Firing via SQL query or an email filter. Is this what we have come to?

SELECT * FROM employees ORDER BY last_performance_review_score LIMIT 600;

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#118

Post by fzeroracer »

cycrutchfield wrote: post #109
fzeroracer wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except keeping people around for two weeks longer allows people to say goodbye to their coworkers and people they might've worked with for years. It allows them to impart their knowledge to anyone else that might need it, document things that need documenting and more importantly: It means the company treats you like an actual human being. Acting like people are just gonna sit around and mope is not only highly disin…

It's also a good way to get a disgruntled worker who still has system privileges or physical access to cause all kinds of havoc. Not worth the risk, even if you think it's more humane.

Not worth the risk? Disgruntled workers only generally arise if you treat your employees like shit and do shit like say, telling employees 'hey you might not have a job on monday but we're not telling you! we're gonna give you a weekend to think about your possible jobloss'.

I honestly hope you never work in HR because your sort of attitude is genuinely disastrous to this industry. Acting like treating your employees with respect is a 'risk' is terrible.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#119

Post by PhasmaFelis »

mulmen wrote: post #51
viraptor wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever the reasons for the workforce reduction, this way of doing it is just unnecessarily cruel.

What's less cruel? Face to face meetings? Layoffs suck, how is this particularly egregious?

If you've got to do it by email, how about "go back to your desks and check your work email" instead of "go home and stew about it for a while"? Extending the delay is sadistic.

Re: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce

#120

Post by cyberferret »

SampleBourgeois wrote: post #103
zamadatix wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Fire by email" isn't a bad option for layoffs in the double digit percentage as long as the delay between notification and sending the emails is low. Meeting 1 on 1 only works in non targeted low scale layoffs, anywhere else and it just creates hysteria. Also fire by email doesn't mean there isn't a definitive exit path or no financial support. The article itself states the email claimed a minimum of 8 weeks of pay…

Elon Musk is sticking to the Roman definition of decimation

I didn't want to like this, but all respect to you for the etymological accuracy and black humour here.
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