Instead of using the last of the money to keep the 10% around on a hail-mary, spread that money around to 100% of the company so their crash landing is a little softer.
- You're trying to retain 5, not the 50.. the other 45 are objectively not-critical to the enterprise (in the sense we could eliminate or replace those roles).
- A large fraction of the 45 are basically screwed in the job market; most of them were older, had decades of very specific experience, or had worked their way up in an organization that valued effort/loyalty over credentials. Milking another decade of work in their current role has life changing consequences for these workers and their families. Many of them were primary breadwinners in a bad area, so their job was the last line of defense between a respectable lower-middle class existence and the trailer park for them and their kids.
- Current reality was not reflective of long run potential. If we could stabilize the business, not only would the 50 jobs in question be preserved but there was an opportunity to rebuild and hire back. (feel good moment: this actually occurred. The team was able to restart key areas of the facility and we rehired some manufacturing people)
Young, highly educated people have no concept of the degree of privilege they enjoy in the labor markets. That degree opens doors and you don't get tossed out the instant some hiring manager sees a little grey hair. You don't have 30 years of experience which immediately becomes the leading reason NOT to hire you for a job because someone thinks you're incapable of learning anything new.
Life basically sucks past 50...
I'm not suggesting you can, I'm suggesting it's bad to give some people the boot and others a pony in the hope of saving an abstraction. The company doesn't exist outside of the people whose livelihoods it sustains.
And in a financially constrained endgame, you have to make choices about who to keep and cut.
Cutting that senior sales executive will cost 20 other jobs due to lost business and downstream implications.
Cutting the factory worker costs zero other jobs.
The harsh reality is not everyone matters equally.
[and to be clear, I'm not talking about bullshit deals just because someone was "loyal" to the CEO. This is real talk, people who actually can deliver a path to group survival]
If you're lucky, they merely poach the stuff you cannot defend anymore. In most situations, they come after the crown jewels of the business, accounts which create the lions share of the revenue and profits which funds the business.
And then you're screwed. Shut it down, pink slips for everyone...
So when it was "your turn", you're going to get tossed in the street with NOTHING to tide you over to your next gig.
Still feel like letting your family starve for the sake of "loyalty"?
I don’t have or want a family. And it’s not about loyalty to the company it’s about the other people working under me.
I have savings so I can afford to be unemployed, but still don’t understand your hypothetical.
Sometimes you can't give everyone a pony.
There simply wasn't any money. That's the essence of running in financial distress. No banks, no loans, insurance support payments got swiped by other people we owed money to... You're running on the cash in the till.
We started with 500 jobs, most of which were union gigs with benefits. About 50 were still with us a week later, when this brutal end game went into full effect.
The cost of failure for this nasty little endgame for the 50 survivors, the quest for a sustainable business? We were an older union workforce, operating in an area with young non-union shops with sketchy labor policies. Our local employees were getting offers for $12 / hour with no benefits. Or a 40%+ drop in compensation for office staff due to age discrimination.
That's the difference between retiring for a nice middle class lifestyle and eating cat food for your golden years. Fifty lives fucked up, for loyal company soldiers.
So yeah, I wanted to keep the company alive to save jobs.
I'm a high end mercenary; I had an offer within a week of formally rolling off the program and plenty of consulting work to tide me over. My only prize here was moral satisfaction.