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CEO Feels Terrible About Laying Off 900 Employees over Video Chat

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Re: CEO Feels Terrible About Laying Off 900 Employees over Video Chat

#11

Post by animalgonzales »

ianhawes wrote: post #2

This article is reaching. While layoffs do suck, and the CEO could have more eloquently empathized with the terminated employees, there is no easy way to do this. With remote work, you live by the sword and die by the sword. They’ll hire you over video chat and fire you over video chat. Perhaps the author could read up on how his own employer does layoffs[0]. On a related note, Better.com had a very slick interface a…

there's a special place in hell for billionaires laying people off with one week severance before Christmas.

Re: CEO Feels Terrible About Laying Off 900 Employees over Video Chat

#12

Post by wcfields »

LinuxBender wrote: post #8
lelandfe wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t think laying off nearly 1000 people en masse with a video is cruel and unusual? I do. This is a terrible look for the company in my opinion and I’m glad this article exposed it.

For what its worth, I've seen something even more tacky than this. A company rented a ballroom of a hotel and had 2 meetings. 9am: Lay off several hundred people. 10am: Celebration for those still employed. Some people designated for 9am showed up late. It was very awkward.

I’ve been there on the IT side. Company had two meetings simultaneously on either side of the building and I was in the server room disabling GSuite accounts and remotely locking laptops.

Absolutely brutal 40% headcount slash after we lost a major client. And, someone went to the “stay” meeting that was escorted to the correct meeting by a manager too.

Re: CEO Feels Terrible About Laying Off 900 Employees over Video Chat

#15

Post by tibbydudeza »

LinuxBender wrote: post #8
lelandfe wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t think laying off nearly 1000 people en masse with a video is cruel and unusual? I do. This is a terrible look for the company in my opinion and I’m glad this article exposed it.

For what its worth, I've seen something even more tacky than this. A company rented a ballroom of a hotel and had 2 meetings. 9am: Lay off several hundred people. 10am: Celebration for those still employed. Some people designated for 9am showed up late. It was very awkward.

Reminds me of The Joker breaking a cuestick in half and throwing it to the two surviving henchman and saying "Good News - there is a new position opening up in my organization".

Re: CEO Feels Terrible About Laying Off 900 Employees over Video Chat

#16

Post by yesbut »

greatgib wrote: post #4

I hate this trend of some people in power pretending to have remorse and be considered as victims or powerless when in fact all of this results of their decisions. Nothing would have prevented to do that in a better way, with individual or little group meetings. Maybe not firing them "effective immediately" but respecting them not as throwable useless resources... But probably it is easier for the CEO and it's managi…

"I almost cried", and then I remembered all this sweet cash infusion that I get to play with. F that dude.

Re: CEO Feels Terrible About Laying Off 900 Employees over Video Chat

#17

Post by robbedpeter »

animalgonzales wrote: post #11
ianhawes wrote: post #2

This article is reaching. While layoffs do suck, and the CEO could have more eloquently empathized with the terminated employees, there is no easy way to do this. With remote work, you live by the sword and die by the sword. They’ll hire you over video chat and fire you over video chat. Perhaps the author could read up on how his own employer does layoffs[0]. On a related note, Better.com had a very slick interface a…

there's a special place in hell for billionaires laying people off with one week severance before Christmas.

This is the type of stuff that breaks people. Awful company, I hope the bad press eradicates them, and the ceo loses everything.

Re: CEO Feels Terrible About Laying Off 900 Employees over Video Chat

#18

Post by erulabs »

animalgonzales wrote: post #11
ianhawes wrote: post #2

This article is reaching. While layoffs do suck, and the CEO could have more eloquently empathized with the terminated employees, there is no easy way to do this. With remote work, you live by the sword and die by the sword. They’ll hire you over video chat and fire you over video chat. Perhaps the author could read up on how his own employer does layoffs[0]. On a related note, Better.com had a very slick interface a…

there's a special place in hell for billionaires laying people off with one week severance before Christmas.

I'm not disagreeing at all, and I don't know the details in this case, but it's entirely possible to be a billionaire on paper and be _wildly_ incapable of paying salaries to 900 people. 900 x ~150,000 = 135,000,000. If the company was losing 100M a year during the next valuation moment, it's very possible this CEO would no longer be even close to being a billionaire. Cash in hand and valuation are very different things.

Again, not excusing any of this, the video was extremely cringe and I can't believe he went with "for those of you in the US, we'll be doing the legal minimum, for everyone else, sorry!", but as someone who is "worth" almost a million dollars, and who cannot afford to hire even a single person, it's not always so simple.

All that said, 900 * (150000 / 12) == 11250000, so I have a hard time imagining it wouldn't have been worth 1M for a fairly well known tech company with loads of funding to avoid this horrific press and karma.

Re: CEO Feels Terrible About Laying Off 900 Employees over Video Chat

#19

Post by ergocoder »

greatgib wrote: post #4

I hate this trend of some people in power pretending to have remorse and be considered as victims or powerless when in fact all of this results of their decisions. Nothing would have prevented to do that in a better way, with individual or little group meetings. Maybe not firing them "effective immediately" but respecting them not as throwable useless resources... But probably it is easier for the CEO and it's managi…

> these 900 persons were not hired in a mass zoom call!

By hundreds of people, not directly by CEO.

I don't know if pushing the layoff responsibility to the manager is better.

> Nothing would have prevented to do that in a better way, with individual or little group meetings

Disagree. Your friend is laid off and you have a meeting with CEO next? The rumour and anticipation will wreck everybody. This could be dangerous for company itself in terms of security.

Not saying what CEO did is the best. I don't have a better solution to firing people, but yours is definitely worse.

Re: CEO Feels Terrible About Laying Off 900 Employees over Video Chat

#20

Post by ergocoder »

addingnumbers wrote: post #7
ianhawes wrote: post #2

This article is reaching. While layoffs do suck, and the CEO could have more eloquently empathized with the terminated employees, there is no easy way to do this. With remote work, you live by the sword and die by the sword. They’ll hire you over video chat and fire you over video chat. Perhaps the author could read up on how his own employer does layoffs[0]. On a related note, Better.com had a very slick interface a…

> Perhaps the author could read up on how his own employer does layoffs They did it the normal way, individual private notification. It would be remiss not to mention it afterward at the next all-hands meeting. > They’ll hire you over video chat and fire you over video chat. They didn't hire anyone on a one-way broadcast-only video conference with 900 attendees.

> They did it the normal way, individual private notification.

Over a messaging app? How is that normal or better?

> They didn't hire anyone on a one-way broadcast-only video conference with 900 attendees.

CEO doesn't hire anyone individually either. So, is it better to push this layoff responsibility to the hiring manager?

I have no idea why hiring and firing need to be symmetrical.

When I was hired, I was congrat'ed by multiple people through personal email. Should we keep that symmetry as well? Or should we be arbitrarily selective?

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