brettbivens

Great thread idea. To echo the thoughts of others in this thread, it is nice to see conversation and transparency around this difficult topic.

Personally have been on both sides of the layoff table and have seen it handled different ways. In some cases, have seen transparency throughout the company failure process with founders and investors working tirelessly to help people land on their feet. In others, have seen deception, founders locking themselves in their office or staying away entirely. Then, little more than a "Dear John" letter telling people it is over.

As you can expect, the general outcomes - from perception of the founders and investors to future collaboration and working relationships between laid off employees - have been significantly better in the former scenario.

Quick plug - I'm on the team at a VC firm out of Chicago and am always looking at new ways to help companies we work with find and retain great people. Have been looking into ways we can work with founders of sputtering companies (both in our portfolio and outside) and the employees that are impacted by the failure of those companies.

Overall goal being to...

1. help hiring companies find great, available people 2. help laid off employees get back on their feet and find great roles 3. help CEOs of failed companies do right by the folks who

If you are a CEO that is contemplating layoffs or have had to do them in the past... or if you're someone that has been laid off, I'd love to connect - brett.bivens [at] gmail.com.

Or, feel free to just reply here!

Author here, thanks for sharing this. Know that there is a bit of a tendency in the startup world to scoff at the idea of management which would probably lead many to dismiss someone like Peter Drucker...interestingly, many of the management principles he championed 50+ years ago (flatter organizations, autonomy, etc.) would probably resonate quite well with both managers and individual contributors at a lot of early stage companies. Definitely recommend reading Drucker.

His ideas, along with our own personal experiences, sparked the idea for this post. Would love to hear what you think.