My father had to lay off a bunch of people in 2008. I am now a manager. He told me that if I am ever forced to do this to not ever do this crap to my team. Tell them that this is bullshit. Tell them that you are upset. Tell them that you haven't slept. Tell them that the are right to be mad, disappointed, and even to hate you for choosing their head to roll. Anything better than fake smiles and "I'm sure you'll land on your feet."

For me, I think I'd just quit if I was told to lay off people on my team. Maybe that's hard to do in the moment, since I'd also not want to lose my job in a major crisis, but it sounds awful.

I've reached out to some afterwards and offered help (serving as a reference, reviewing resumes, connecting to people, etc.) but in _that_ moment you should say as little as possible give them space to process emotions however they will.

I've had to fire people a few times. It's never fun, it's always been a hard decision that I took for the benefit of my team. It's never "bullshit". If it is bullshit then it would be MY job as manager to fix it and stop it being bullshit.

I've never had a negative reaction to the firing from the team members who remain. If anything, the reaction has always been "why did you wait so long?".

But luckily I've never had to do a team downsizing because of budget cuts. I imagine that would be a more difficult process and managing the emotions involved in that would be difficult. I see entirely why Coinbase chose not to take any of those risks and just cut everyone off first and then answer questions later.

It's hard to know what emotional tenor to put on it. On the one hand, of course you're right that upbeat positive optimistic is fake and maybe feels like it's more for you than them. On the other hand, being like, "this sucks and it's bad for you and I hated doing it" feels like kicking people when they're down, making them feel like it's even worse than it already is.

I have generally give with a pretty emotionless affect, but tried to convey respect for them as a person, even if they didn't work as an employee, but that's hard to convey. It's a generally fraught situation.

It is, but it should not be. In the best world, it's impersonal. Sometimes it's not a good fit, period. The reason it's fraught is at least partly systemic. Having healthcare tied to the employer is particularly wrong. It makes severance (for any reason) akin to having life support turned off.

But also, ours is a culture that discourages employees from participating in the job market while employed - this is deeply hypocritical, especially as most employment is "at will", which means they can dump you whenever you want, and of course the employer is always active in the job market, happy to replace you with someone cheaper/better if they could. If you're already in the market, and have warm leads, this softens the blow considerably. The final thing worth mentioning is that a firing is a severance, and need not reflect poorly on you (except, perhaps, insofar as you didn't adequately anticipate it and quit in advance). On first principles I hate it when those in power tacitly accept the implication that if other, unrelated powerful people have punished you, you're bad. I'm not sure if this is actually believed, or just used as leverage to get a better deal, or both, but either way it's unfair. Hence the importance of privacy in such situations.

Hence, usually going for a somewhat impersonal affect.

In many jurisdictions (not in the US I suppose), before firing someone for poor performance they must be told that their performance is inadequate and be given a chance to improve.

Bottom line, in general being fired is fully on the person being fired so no need to sugar-coat or to feel bad.

Performance Improvement Plans are a thing at larger companies. That said, once someone is on a PIP, the handwriting is almost certainly on the wall.

I've also worked with people who were incredibly oblivious about the quality of their work, however much feedback they received and however much rework others had to put in. I can think of at least one case where this went on far too long and they were incredibly shocked when they were let go.

For legal reasons most employers will only verify dates of employment. 2 months of so of PIP is more than enough to find a new role.

This is another reason to not get too attached to any job. I come to work for money, not to feel apart of something.

You WILL get fired if your in this industry. Hell, I've quit several jobs since the manager sucked.

Demanding salary employees work nights regularly is good way to get em to quit.

Imagine if America had a NHS style system, vs the horrific employer provided system. Then more people would be free to quit bad jobs.

Let's say you have an abusive manager, but your husband has an expensive to treat illness. You just need to suffer since if you leave your husband won't have access to treatment

I think a lot of people here underestimate the difficulty of landing a new job depending on your background, overall skill level, experience, and location.

At best you find a new job, at worse you have time to cut back on your spending

As others have said, in a good company and team, PIP is one amongst many coaching tools, rarely the first one, and can be useful in various situations - somebody not taking a hint or being oblivious, indicator of seriousness, but also to those with potential who need structure and benefit from explicit list. And yes of course, a paper trail and a documented process if things don't work out for various reasons.

My current manager is particularly transparent about this (with other managers, at least). When he puts someone on a PIP, it is a formality. He deliberately chooses a redemption project that is impossible to achieve.

Edit: Jeez, guys, don't downvote -me- ;-). It's not my policy.

Depending on the company, that could easily be appealed/disputed.

Personally, I do sort of understand his view. He does not like to put anyone on a PIP, and by the time he gets there, he has already concluded that the relationship is not saveable. In his mind, everyone involved should know that the PIP is a formality, and ideally they'd use the time to find another job and have a smooth transition. HR probably would not agree to firing someone with a few months of severance.

That doesn't mean the firing shouldn't happen, but it does mean that everyone feels bad.

"ON OUR WAY!"

This is a disgusting scenario. I hope they weren't misusing on-duty police resources for this.

All they wanted to do was go get their personal items and say goodbye to their peers. Some of them were forced to leave phones and purses behind and wait a week for them to be mailed to them.

It's one of those times in life where you see the mask slip off and realize who the people you've been dealing with actually are.

How is that even legal? I wouldn’t leave without my personal belongings or I would file charges for theft with those cops.

One of my former colleagues, who showed up to work early, inadvertently freaked out one of the executives when they saw them in the hall. Naturally they (not the executive) were soon escorted out of the building and told they had been laid off.

I did that in the dotcom bust. As a manager I was highest paid and had least billable hours, so when asked to reduce costs in my team I was the logical choice to go. The company went through a series of layoffs but at least for that cut I managed to leave my team in place for a bit longer. I went travelling for a year, so also benefitted from not having to deal with any more rounds of layoffs.

One thought though, for whatever little it may be worth:

>>For me, I think I'd just quit if I was told to lay off people on my team.

That has been my personal emotional reaction many a time. As I spend more time as a manager though, I try to force myself to look harder and harder at what will this course of action actually accomplish? And the self-righteous emotional me hates that the rational conclusion is: it'll only accomplish negative things, i.e now the team that remains has lost your support. Bluntly, it will not "send a message", it will not "change things", it will not "make them realize what they're doing / what they're losing". Literally the only thing it'll do majority of time is make things even crappier for those who remain :-/.

So I would put it in inverse: the hard thing in the moment is to NOT go with your emotional reaction, and consider truly how can you be of best benefit / support / help to the team. Basically, I would say most of the time one quits for personal reasons (whether positive "I can get more money there" or negative "I hate this place and everybody in it"), not for the benefit of others.

This is OK.

> Tell them that you are upset. Tell them that you haven't slept.

No, no, no. Never talk about your own difficulties when you lay someone off, this is one particular time when it's not about you but 100% about the person that you are laying off.

Respect and support and empathy and sincerity are the key, always. Deflecting blame and ranting are not long term helpful.

If a mid-level manager actually cares, and was any good at their job, the best thing they can do is to keep doing it for that person.

Maybe it is also bad. I don't know. But the fake smile seems much worse.

I was at a startup that had massive layoffs during the pandemic. I was able to protect my team (though I had to rescind a few offers).

The problem was that after the layoffs, while everyone was still grieving, management decided to come down really hard on my team and others. I realized at one point I could either keep my job, or protect my teams sanity for the next few months.

I chose the latter. Upper management didn't like it, but my team got time to heal and after I was let go and my team survived for another two years.

I had never been fired before, but when I was I honestly felt a bit a pride that this "leadership" team felt I wasn't a good match.

I don't know if there's a point to this story other than that, when the shit hits the fan, you can standup for what you believe in and fight to make the tiny bit of this world you have some say in a bit better. I've known plenty of people who just shrug their shoulders in such times and say "what can you do?", but you can do something and in my experience it is worth it to take a stand at these crucial points.

I offered to try and give up some salary to keep one of them because he was on a visa and would have to find a new job within 90 days or something like that. Everything worked out in the end with both engineers that were let go but the "bias for action" by executives and middle management in these kinds of scenarios pisses me off quite a bit since they usually don't ask for any input from the people actually working with the employees that are getting laid off.

For myriad reasons, it's not always practical to discuss potential layoffs. It's certainly not ethical to discuss "who should stay?" with more junior folks on the same team who are themselves staying. It's extraordinarily likely that your managers had much better insight into what the other folks were contributing that you did.

Cutting salaries to maintain team size has been tried time and time again, and every time the same thing happens: everyone takes a pay cut, the highest performers leave for more money, and both velocity and morale tank.

If you really hated doing it, you wouldn't be doing it. Quitting yourself is always an option.

Dunno. I find it pretty bad when managers talk about their difficulties when e.g. firing people. It's about them, not about you. I agree about the part about fake smiles.

Typically layoffs happen for a reason - if its the company failing and trying to survive, it's not a bad idea to jump ship. If its economic (like all of the layoffs right now) - it's a bad idea to jump to a new job if you can avoid it -- you may very well get hired, and laid off as a new hire.

Those you're directly telling this message to don't have that comfort. Now is not the time to talk about how bad you think you have it. You might have a couple sleepless nights, they're going to have sleepless weeks.

Talking about how the layoffs affect you, the still-employed manager, makes any thing else you say sound hollow.

This is the odd one out here. Showing your grief about an undesirable decision is one thing. But implying that you're making significant decisions about your employees' welfare in a deteriorated mental state is wildly unprofessional (even if truthful).

No one seems to care about the huge effects this has on private citizens.

All the concern is with the ephemeral belief these businesses are the future.

Anyone remember Nortel? 80% of last generations Fortune 500 is gone.

The future has no obligation to drag along, and will probably mock how primitive it is, our bleeding.

These guys are traditional confidence men promising prosperity for the ages while routinely pumping and dumping all over the public, that despite what memes media and politics try to peddle, does not owe deference to history and self aggrandizing story.

I'd far rather just come back after hours and remove my things supervised than have somebody else hastily throwing my stuff into a box.

Luckily it's never happened to me, but I've seen it happen a couple times.

I don't need to cry in front of my boss.