Companies will cut you in a random layoff at the drop of a hat. I've seen this enough times in my career. It doesn't matter if they promise its the only/last/whatever cutoff, or it was for performance only, or whatever..
People in your network will pick you up and refer you / hire you on at the next gig.
My prior employer just did a wave of deep cuts and the stories I heard out of management were pretty crazy. Directory level people were basically given an hour to cut $X Million off their people budget from their directs and all their skip level staff. They then begin laying them off the same day. This was not a well planned or thought out process. So obviously the people I saw getting laid off were a mix of underperformerss, great-but-expensive, random personal grudges from the director, and unfortunately biased towards a lot of "lifers" who'd been there a long time.
Very good point. This goes hand-in-hand with "cut deep so you cut once." You can't leave that sword hanging over the heads of individual contributors or they'll activate their network and start entertaining offers.
Since the process of layoffs generally involves a rank-and-yank, the people who remain are precisely the ones who have the option of working elsewhere. They can generally (depending on the location) get an offer within a day.
Company "families" can be cut at any moment in a state with at will employment also (and they absolutely will lay you off too). They just gaslight you into thinking it won't happen so that you'll stay loyal as long as they do want you to stay.
There's a much longer answer to this that factors in your savings, what your resume looks like and minimizing the chances of this happening to you in the future.
Two immediate pieces of advice:
1. Shore up relationships with your colleagues and get their non-work contact info if you don't have it. Make this network stronger. Former colleagues can recommend you and pull you in at new companies they get hired at. They can also refer you to job openings they know about but aren't pursuing. It's one step of many, but people can get caught up in worrying and applying elsewhere, they forget about this network of colleagues right in front who can help each other. Keep in touch, check in, ask for leads and referrals if you are still looking, offer them if you have them.
2. Don't freak out. But if you are really worried, since 20% of staff are staying for now so: A laid off employee can ask management if they can stay and help for a few more weeks at reduced pay and while he/she looks for something else. I don't recommend doing that, looking for a job can be a full-time job. Never hurts to offer and ask.
One thing I learned the hard way a couple of years ago - when the company starts cutting back, you're better off being in the first couple of rounds of layoffs than being a "nonexpendable" who they hang on to until the bitter end. I was at a struggling startup that went through round after round of layoffs, offering generous severance packages in each round, until there were only like 10 of us left. Then one day they completely ran out of money and I showed up and the doors were locked and there was a note informing us that we were unemployed effective immediately and we would be paid out the remainder of the week.
Ive been at a company with multiple rounds of small layoffs. Each time they didn’t want to cut too deep or thought ‘maybe this will be enough’. It wasn’t.
It was a total moral DISASTER.
If you need to cut, cut. But multiple layoffs will kill you.
I've been through the dotcom bust, where my company went through 6 layoffs in a single year. We went from 1400 to about 600. I survived them, but it was a terrible experience, and after a while, people stopped working and just gossiped about the next layoff.
First off, if you're going to do layoffs, make sure it's one and done. This means, probably cutting more than you have to so that you don't have to keep making layoffs in 6 months, etc. The quicker you can get back to hiring, the better it will be for morale.
Layoff your lowest performers first. If you don't, then your top performers will leave you, and you will get crippled within less than a year. Don't do something like ask everyone to take a paycut, because it means that your top performers suffer just as much as your low performers. You should get rid of your low performers quickly.
Try to give as generous a severance package that you can. And meet with each of them face-to-face if possible, but with several dozen it's probably impossible.
Make it quick and let them leave with dignity. That means let them say bye to their friends, and making sure that every single question they may have answered. COBRA, unvested options, Unemployment benefits, etc. Personally I wouldn't escort them out or lock their accounts unless you think that they are going to cause problems. Hopefully they won't.
Do all the layoffs before lunch. Have a meeting with the rest of the company after the layoffs, after lunch and explain why you had to do it, and explain your plan to ensure that it doesn't happen again.
Never tell the employees how YOU feel. No one cares.
It is mentioned that employees have not been helped to find new jobs. But there may be reason for that.
It is sometimes the case that for a particularly high-performing, excellent employee, a manager or senior exec might call around to a few friends and see if they have openings. And of course, provide a reference for others. But that is not true of laying off a whole division. No team is comprised of 100%, or even 25%, top performers (usually). A manager shouldn't be expected to put his professional reputation on the line for every person in his division, even if they aren't the best (but good enough to keep on), just because of a lay-off.
Eh, good advice but I have seen "essential" people or teams get laid off, even at the detriment of the company. Management and C-suite don't care - they face no consequences.
I echo the other comment saying just save up as much money.
Imagine the look on this guys face when he's the one who gets the layoff slip while the one's he thought would get it, get to keep their job.
Don't be so sure, you're a high performer. High performance isn't just about your own performance. All it takes is for the project you're working on to end up on the dead end list and all the sudden, you'll be on the dead end list too. There's too many factors that influence a person's performance besides just the work they put in.
In the past, HNers have mentioned that if you admit you're going to lay people off, then your best performers will leave. Is that true?
Any kind of layoffs will cause your best performers to leave regardless of whether you tell people ahead of time. It's a strong signal that the company is in survival mode instead of growth mode, which at least means raises and bonuses are in doubt and at worst means the company is going under soon. It's better to accept that you're going to lose more people than you plan for and deal with the fallout as best you can.
I would Leetcode, clean up my resume, and start practicing interviews. Never hurts to look around and being ready to interview will reduce the amount of time to find another job in the event you end up in the next round of cuts. Some of my coworkers are leaving for higher paying jobs without there having been any risk of layoffs at my company. Otherwise if you weren’t part of the initial cuts, you are probably fine and remember layoffs come with a few months severance so you’re already getting a few months of runway in the worst case.
Having been laid off due to downsizing, I think everyone should go through it at least once. Sure, the first time will leave you panic stricken, but you'll come out the other side with a lot more clarity about the employee-employer relationship.
You are disposable. Even the CEO is disposable (as I've seen many times). Once you realize that, you'll stop the BS about loyalty to your company. It's a business arrangement, nothing more. Your job is to get the most you can (money, experience - whatever floats your boat). If it no longer works for you, leave. They'd do the same to you.
Great points, this is very much also true on my experience. Once the decision is made to lay off, often work is done to make sure that they don't use company resources to get their next job. It's quite accepted in business circles, but from the outside it really sounds heartless.
I've been at multiple companies where people get zero minutes notice of a layoff -- "Hey, come meet with me -- btw IT just took your machine." Despite that, the team I worked with were people I was close to, whose skill and wisdom I respect. It was as a courtesy to my _manager_ (and my team) that I gave N>=2 weeks notice. After all, every single one of these people are people I would love to work with again, and I'd like to preserve those good work relationships.
I've been very lucky to never have a boss or team that I didn't feel that way about.
- keep your resume up to date and maintain a list of contacts (for referrals) just in case. It's important to realize that you can do everything right at your company for decades and some invisible hand can still put you on a layoffs list. The only thing you can really do is be prepared for that eventuality.
In my personal experience some random senior employee isn't even pennies on the dollar when it comes to the total amount factored into the layoffs that are in the hundreds of millions.
The bigger factor is are you in a position that requires the company longer to replace you? If so you may just be in that shit position of being kept on another 6 months until the next round of layoffs and get a package half as good.
As the first poster said always get out first if you can as the packages never get better the worse a company does.
Never fool yourself into thinking you're too amazing to be let go and that is why you 'survived' this round of layoffs. The worst case is as I said, you are too good to be let go of yet.
As a top performer, you are more likely to leave after layoffs, especially if layoffs feel indiscriminate. From LinkedIn, some people were let go as their projects failed, not necessarily because of their own performance.
While I haven't done layoffs, I have had to end our relationship with employees, in both cases the situation is very unfortunate.
From my point of view, there is no simple way to handle these situations but it is crucial to handle them in a respectful way, people are humans, and, while it can be hard for you to handle a layoff, the ones getting the harder time are the people affected by it.
I'd try my best to help these people in any way I can, for example:
1. Motivate people that were planning to leave to take one of those spots.
2. Try finding ways to refer them to other companies.
3. Help affected people to be polish their resume, practice mock interviews, write recommendation letters, etc. I have saw many people that don't know how to sell themselves, if they worked with you for a while, there is a chance you have some highlights they don't actually see.
4. If possible, keep paying their salary for a few weeks/months.
5. This could sound weird but give people time, I haven't announced end of relationships until the affected person feels comfortable, which means that these are still on the chat/repos/etc, this also helps because it is usually simpler to find work when you still are employed than when you don't.
I really hope I never get to deal with this.
P.S. I forget mentioning that I prefer being as transparent as possible.
Companies will cut you in a random layoff at the drop of a hat. I've seen this enough times in my career. It doesn't matter if they promise its the only/last/whatever cutoff, or it was for performance only, or whatever..
People in your network will pick you up and refer you / hire you on at the next gig.
My prior employer just did a wave of deep cuts and the stories I heard out of management were pretty crazy. Directory level people were basically given an hour to cut $X Million off their people budget from their directs and all their skip level staff. They then begin laying them off the same day. This was not a well planned or thought out process. So obviously the people I saw getting laid off were a mix of underperformerss, great-but-expensive, random personal grudges from the director, and unfortunately biased towards a lot of "lifers" who'd been there a long time.
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