Even if you elect to "rip off the band aid" there are about thousand ways you could go about this in a more mature and professional way. A couple of things come to mind:

- Deliver your message with empathy and context as to why the decision has to be made for the survival of the company.

- Deliver the message in a way that scales. There's almost no point in having a webinar if there's not going to be a discussion anyway.

- Offer assistance to those being laid off to lessen the blow: paid leave, coaching, extended health benefits etc.

- Preface your message with the good stuff (point above) and explain why the company has taken any type of measure to lessen the impact of this sad but unavoidable news.

- Set up a way for ex-employees to keep in touch instead of locking them out completely. Protecting corporate assets is understandable, treating people like disposable trash is not.

All this. At a minimum the head of the company or some C-level should have delivered this message themselves, with video on.

Let employees have a way to contact each other for a while, so they can network for their next job, or at least say goodbye.

>- Deliver your message with empathy and context as to why the decision has to be made for the survival of the company. //

Clearly the people in charge don't care about the employees. When they're just using the employees to make them money, IMO, it is worse to lie and pretend otherwise.

Are you saying that it's literally impossible for the CEO of a company to care about the well-being of people that are being fired to keep the company from going bankrupt?

I'm not saying that they should lie about caring, having empathy for someone costs nothing and doesn't require you to solve their problems.

Maybe they cared about the employees but were criminally inept, it's possible. But, if they're that incapable how'd they get to be a CEO?

Occam's ghost is whispering "sociopath" to me.

But they're not their employees anymore. There's no point to doing any of this. The purpose of having a webinar was, presumably, that it should be atomic.

The rest of the things you're describing all cost money. Why spend money when you don't have to?

Look, if you are completely devoid of empathy that's fine but don't act like this is how most people think.

While I would agree that most people don't think this way, the relatively few people that occupy executive level positions certainly do. Haven't you ever wondered why sociopaths are over-represented in positions of power and authority?

Stop saying "atomic" for Christ's sake. Unless the company is literally going under companies usually take the time to have a 1:1 chat with the person being laid off.

Yes it is bad, and yes it looks bad.

Your post is getting downvoted because it displays a tremendous lack of empathy, and because the company in question displayed a tremendous lack of professionalism.

> It's sort of ripping off a band-aid: it's better to have it done all at once, than dragging it out over the course of a few weeks.

It could have been done in a week, and in a way that 1) maintained security/access in a reasonable way, and 2) that allowed people to get their shit in order.

But taking a week to do it costs money. People won't work productively if they might get laid off any second. By laying them off atomically without any advance warning, they can get back to work quicker.

Back-of-the-envelope calculation: It takes a week to lay them off. During this week, productivity will be down 50%. You have 654 employees (ex-post). Say they each cost $200k/year (taxes, office space, etc), that gives (1/52) * 0.5 * 200k = $1.92k/employee in lost productivity, or almost $1.3 million in total.

You think the remaining workers are going to “get back to work faster” just because their colleagues were canned fast?

That’s not how people work.

Even if I remained, I would start looking for a new job very fast.

Amen, brother. A demoralized workforce is not a more productive workforce.

If they'd be unsure for a week as to whether they would be fired or not, yes. If they are never uncertain, there is less time in flight.

That's a good calculation. Now compare that with the PR fall-out from their chosen approach.

What are the future losses from not being able to hire top candidates (and maybe even loss of business if customers start boycotting it), since obviously Bird is a shitshow of an employer?

Customers never care about that. Case in point, my computer presumably contains all sorts of rare minerals mined by slave labour in the third world. Is it regrettable? Yes. Does it mean I stop using computers? No, it's a price I'm willing to pay.

Customers don't stop using Facebook over the clear and present erosion of their freedom it presents, so thinking they would be concerned with how a company treats its employees is absurd.

As for prospective employees, it's going to be a buyer's market from here on out. Universities have been pumping out CS grads en masse, and the startups have been hiring them. With the startups going bankrupt, there will be a glut of unemployed programmers.

I agree with your points but name calling has no place on HN.

You are unfortunately getting downvoted, but you are entirely correct.

Yes, but why would they bother? They're not their employees anymore. Better for it to be a single, atomic operation.

I was laid off from Akamai about 17 years ago. It was traumatic, but it was handled reasonably well and in a manner which made it clear that it was not what the company wanted to do, but what it had to do to survive.

The company did survive.

Four or five times since then, a friend or acquaintance has asked me if Akamai would be a good place for them to work. In all cases, I have told them to go ahead.

Can you see anyone from Bird having that opinion about the company in the future?

Stop saying "single, atomic operation" like the humans being laid off are some database transaction, for God's sake.

These people being laid off spent a portion of their lives working for the company. They might have some personal contacts they'd like to get from their former colleagues, additional information since our healthcare is absurdly tied to our employment, as well as some level of understanding as to why they're being let go.

To appeal to your purely non-empathetical side, it also is negative PR for the company and might be a deterrent for future prospective employees to know that this company likes to handle mass layoffs in a "single, atomic operation."

But none of that is needed. They don't work for the company, and the company has no reason to waste thousands of dollars per employee on this.

We're now entering a recession with mass unemployment, so any company, no matter how shitty, will be able to pick up the cream of the crop for pennies on the dollar.

Blocking someone’s laptop right now saves you 0 money.

As a matter of fact it puts you in a position where everyone you just fucked over is willing to take extra steps to make every little bit of communication harder and less efficient.

I would not be surprised that half of these people are going to start replying to their messages at literally the end of the time specified by the contract.

Good luck getting those laptops back

Recruiting and retaining employees is quite expensive. Creating a reputation as a place that doesn't treat it's workers well only increases that cost. Not to mention the reputation risk with your customer base.

That’s a very disheartening attitude to have. These are still people with lives and feelings. We should expect humans to use the compassion and empathy that so very few other animals are capable of.

That must do wonders for the morale of any employees who stay.

"You're all still here for a reason. Eighty percent of this floor was just sent home. For ever. We have spent the last hour saying our goodbyes. They were good people, and they were good at their jobs, but you were better. Now they are gone. They are not to be thought of again. [...] I've been at this place for 34 years and I can tell you this is not be the last time you're going to go through this. But you all are survivors. And that is how this firm over 107 years has continued to grow stronger. So keep your heads high, get back to work."

Sam Rogers, Margin Call

I think if I was told something like this verbally or in email, my internal alarm bells would be going off. Or, being lionized for not being laid off after my coworkers were doesn't give me a sense of pride being at the company.

As context, I work in the video game industry, where developers have a bit of a history of doing unrealistic working schedules for "passion". When someone starts telling me how great I am with all this hardship in their company, I immediately get skeptical.

Very similar to a speech I heard by Dick Fuld