I think it boils down to leadership is really about managing relationships. This method is just too impersonal for most people, just like breaking off a romantic relationship via text is generally considered weak and frowned upon.

I suspect it is rare, though I suppose not impossible, that anyone needs to break off 900 romantic relationships at once.

I understand your point, but if there aren’t subordinate leaders below the CEO who can perform this function, I suspect they have organizational structure problems.

I believe a good approach would be to have those first line leaders (who actually have that relationship built with their subordinates) break the bad news and then the CEO speak to everybody and own the decision.

Why would you need to text?

Surely after seeing your relationship status change on Facebook, they would understand?

Wait, you're not supposed to break up over text? Since when?!?!?!

I'm almost certain this is a joke. Right?

Yes. My apologies, I thought it seemed obvious.

Each manager would have to make that call to their laid-off reports, or the next manager in line if the manager is being laid off too. Maybe after that it would be ok for HR to have larger meetings with those affected to sort out the details.

“or the next manager in line if the manager is being laid off too“

What if the whole chains are axed? Recursive "or the next manager" could easily lead to exactly what happened: a CEO lucky to have a pandemic voiding all expectations to do something like that in person.

> Why make the HR team go through 900 individual calls?

The entire reason companies have hierarchical power structures (in theory) at least, is so that information can be passed along with the log of the company size.

Having every manager have 10 min call with each direct report, or in the worse case a team meeting, would be much more human and could accomplish the task of notification in roughly the same time window as an all hands firing.

You got it right up until the point where you think it’s to pass information from top to down. It’s not. It’s to pass information from the bottom up.

Presumably the 900 people already had leaders that could talk to them.