> And we also realize a downturn is temporary. Wait, what? We're in a legitimate recession. Are they speaking about a recruiting downturn or an economic downturn here?
What about being a legitimate recession would prevent it from being temporary?
Secondments at Zapier
41–50 of 55 posts
Re: Secondments at Zapier
#42Yes Richard Branson does this and I learnt it from one of his videos. You never fire. You move them around. If they are a good person who is honest and hard working, you can find a job for them.
> You never fire. You move them around. If they are a good person who is honest and hard working, you can find a job for them. The last part is important. Some people can't recognize/accept that the person is not a great worker. And then each department wonders what idiot is going to show up this week.
Keep in mind, if you ask a fish to climb a tree, is it the fishes’ fault when they’re flopping around on the ground? Some people are legitimately not a fit for an org, but it’s also important to be realistic about expectations. Hiring and people management in general is hard, I don’t envy anyone who has to do it at scale.
Completely unrelated and shifting back closer to the thread topic, great to see this org codify this ideal explicitly. People are not fungible cogs between wildly disparate roles but they are usually somewhat adaptable under ideal conditions. This also positions the org to accelerate out of macro uncertainty properly staffed.
Re: Secondments at Zapier
#43> But the real question they were asking was: "How can I add value? How can I show that I still belong here? How can I make myself a critical part of the team at Zapier during this time when I can't do the things I was initially hired to do?" What? Maybe what they were asking was just "do I need to start looking for an another source of income". Why dress it up in weird corpo-speak?
Seems more like asking, "How can I make sure that if there are layoffs, I'm not included in them?"
Re: Secondments at Zapier
#44> But the real question they were asking was: "How can I add value? How can I show that I still belong here? How can I make myself a critical part of the team at Zapier during this time when I can't do the things I was initially hired to do?" What? Maybe what they were asking was just "do I need to start looking for an another source of income". Why dress it up in weird corpo-speak?
Seems more like asking, "How can I make sure that if there are layoffs, I'm not included in them?"
The best way (far from guaranteed, but the best across a wide range of employment contexts) to avoid layoffs is to create clear value that pushes the org towards its goals.
It’s also the best way to earn the trust of leadership and ensure you’re contributing to the company’s goals.
The language may be off-putting to some, but the core idea is almost a tautology.
Re: Secondments at Zapier
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well the contestant believed they were in charge of the drop. Common sense tells you that a 350’ drop will kill you, but they assumed it was safe because Branson was there. So, he wants people who will view a scenario objectively and not be biased by his presence or opinions. As a control it would have been interesting to have half the contestants in a capsule by themselves and see how many were willing to drop witho…
Common sense tells me that there’s no way a tv show and a billionaire would let me kill myself and others. So that would make me think that there’s some characteristic of the capsule or the falls that would make the drop survivable. This text seems stupid for weeding out a specific type of contestant. There’s lots of scenarios of people who would or would not press the button. They may as well flip a coin. My biggest…
> Common sense tells me that there’s no way a tv show and a billionaire would let me kill myself and others. So that would make me think that there’s some characteristic of the capsule or the falls that would make the drop survivable.
Right, so you have to weigh this faith in the system (game shows are safe & billionaires won’t do anything extremely risky) against the facts of nature and a suspicious story being told to you. Probably 99.99% of people would push the button.
In a business setting if Branson approved a deal, and the due diligence (safety team) approved a deal, you could be forgiven for assuming it’s a smart deal. But when it comes to decisions you absolutely have to get right he wants people who ignore the advice of others and make their own independent assessment based on facts.
When you assume another team has done their job and they assume you’ve done yours you can get into a circular logic where no one has done their job and most people march forward (see Madoff documentary). In retrospect the risks were obvious and the story unbelievable. He wants that rare person who calls bullshit (Harry Markopolos) when all the other signals are saying “it’s safe”.
Many of the Madoff victims said the same thing: “It’s Madoff”, “It’s registered with the SEC”. They didn’t think a successful billionaire would do something so dumb that it would cost him and those around him everything.
Yes, you can forgive the victims for thinking the system should have protected them and you can still applaud Markopolos for not buying the bullshit and refusing to push the button.
Yes, Branson’s stunt is an imperfect/theatrical version of this and the challenge is biased in favor of people who are indecisive or afraid of heights. Almost all TV is sensationalized to appeal to an audience that wouldn’t be riveted by contestants pouring over a series of hedge fund returns trying to determine if they’re safe or fraudulent investments. It’s more the symbolism that’s important.
Re: Secondments at Zapier
#46This is encouraging, as long as they can successfully implement it. Layoffs have always felt to me like a "cut off your arm to lose weight" solution. Yes the number on the scale went down and you hit your goal, but are you really better off in the long term? Worse because so many companies do indiscriminate layoffs and take on huge costs for doing so, and then just open all these positions back up in a few months.
Re: Secondments at Zapier
#47Yes Richard Branson does this and I learnt it from one of his videos. You never fire. You move them around. If they are a good person who is honest and hard working, you can find a job for them.
I read long ago: Firing someone is admitting to your second mistake. (Not being able to exploit the talents of someone you hired. The first mistake is hiring someone who you later have to fire.)
That's kind of a shitty saying. We all make mistakes but the way that's phrased makes it sound unforgivable. The ramifications of hiring are bigger than your everyday mistake but it still happens.
Re: Secondments at Zapier
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
I read long ago: Firing someone is admitting to your second mistake. (Not being able to exploit the talents of someone you hired. The first mistake is hiring someone who you later have to fire.)
That's kind of a shitty saying. We all make mistakes but the way that's phrased makes it sound unforgivable. The ramifications of hiring are bigger than your everyday mistake but it still happens.
I read it more as understanding the onus of the firing situation. Often the individual (or team) tie parts of their worth with being fired. But when it comes to planning and layoffs, that decision was made at the same level that made the decision to hire.
The ramifications of hiring are bigger. Sometimes a firing is because of the individuals lack of performance, but I think this quote is asking the hirer to be mindful of what outcomes (layoffs) come from mistakes of their decision making.
Re: Secondments at Zapier
#49This is one of the more insightful and wise things I've read in a while. I wish all companies understood this concept:
And we also realize a downturn is temporary. We worked hard to build our talent acquisition team, growing from 15 to nearly 40 between October 2021 and June 2022. And that team did amazing work, growing Zapier from 550 to over 800 team members in 2022. Did we really want to lose all of that recruiting talent only to spend all of those resources again hiring new people down the road?
Laying people off en-masse in response to what is 100% going to be a temporary downturn is just so... wasteful. You lose so much accumulated knowledge and experience, and then - as pointed out - have to turn around and spend even more money to recruit new people later. But with those new people you might get back the skills and head-count you had, but you don't get back the experience, tacit knowledge, domain knowledge, acute knowledge of internal processes and tools, etc. So really it's lose-lose-lose in many ways.
Laying people off should really be an absolute last resort, IMO. And by "last resort" I mean, "we do this or the company folds" level stuff. Not "do layoffs or the stock price drops by 0.03% and the investors start squawking."
Re: Secondments at Zapier
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
I must have seen it ~20 years ago on FOX I think. It was certainly a “made for TV” / theatrical way of making a point. But the point stuck with me as it was pretty diametrically opposed to the other Apprentice show which rewarded people for following instructions. Looks like it was Victoria Falls: https://youtu.be/BrA__e6s1kg Clip starts at 4:38 > you know you're on a TV show where the utmost care is taken by a whole…
Thanks for the clip, it really is pretty dumb. They just had a challenge where they jumped/fell off the cliff with a bungee cord as a team-building exercise. It looks like they were expected to say "yes" to that but say "no" to falling off in what was described as a "high-tech barrel." Maybe there were cues or other information not shown in the clip, but I have no idea how any contestant was supposed to assess the ri…
I don’t think it’s that dumb.
Exhibit A:
“These steady, guaranteed, market beating returns that have no risk are safe because Madoff wouldn’t risk life in prison running a fraud. Plus, it’s registered with the SEC”
is roughly equivalent to:
“This 350’ drop and metal capsule with no parachute are safe because Branson is here. Plus, I’m on a TV show so I’m sure they have a safety crew.”
These examples show just how much we trust others and how easily we can be persuaded into taking huge, unnecessary risk when a prize is dangled in front of us.
There are people who refused to invest in Madoff while their friends or competitors were getting rich. And there are people who would refuse to press that button. They’re incredibly rare, but that’s what you’re looking for when you want someone making billion dollar decisions that affect tons of jobs/livelihoods.
If you bet alongside Branson 100% of the time, you’d do really well in life. But he wouldn’t gain any value.
But to him, you are a tool that helps him get better. You playing the odds and agreeing with him doesn’t help him. You calling bullshit the 0.01% of the time when he’s dead wrong is what he needs. You’re not his next billion dollar idea. You’re his bankruptcy / financial death safety net. He doesn’t want someone making a prisoner’s dilemma (we’ll sink or swim together) / “no one got fired for choosing IBM” (no one got fired for agreeing with Branson) kind of decision. He wants you to say “Knowing what I know, I can’t go along with this.”
So it’s a very theatrical way of seeing if you have the courage to save him from himself, in a way that makes for a good 10 second TV teaser for non-business folks.