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Comment by phphphphp | Hacker News Reader

I very much disagree. For people with anxious tendencies, this type of email is absolutely awful to receive, and consider that most of those let go will be at lower rungs of the company, so job security in the current market is going to be a big source of anxiety.

“You are at risk of losing your job, but you’ll have to wait all week to find out”

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As commented above, you have to do it this way in Sweden, you have to announce in public that you are going to lay off people and then from there on you negotiate with the union if you plan to not do stack-based firing (last-in-first-out).

That’s not what they’re doing though, they’ve announced it and plan to tell people over the next few days, certainly not enough time to negotiate with a union. They’ve already chosen who is being let go, they’re simply delaying the process of informing people because (presumably) managers only have a certain capacity for meetings: they think a delayed face-to-face meeting is better than an immediate email.

For Swedish employees it's not as easy as calling someone into an office and lay them off. You can of course tell someone that you want to lay them off but from there to actually doing it you have to negotiate with the union and/or the employee.

Right, and I’m arguing that informing 700 people today that they’re being laid off is more humane by an order of magnitude than telling 7,000 people they might be laid off this week and to stay away from their peers. There’s nothing in Swedish employment law that dictates this approach by Klarna. The letter clearly states why they made this decision, it wasn’t a legal one, it was a misguided attempt devoid of empathy focused exclusively on external optics because of what happened with better.com etc.

There's no collective agreement in place at Klarna.

> “You are at risk of losing your job, but you’ll have to wait all week to find out”

I think this is actually pretty nice because it gives you a bit of time to start polishing your resume. Even if you don't get laid off, that's always a good idea.

> For people with anxious tendencies ... the current market is going to be a big source of anxiety

I sympathize, but unfortunately I don't see much of what an employer could do to mitigate. This is just the harsh reality that everyone must live through...

tell them immediately?

Not possible to do it personally for dozens or hundreds of people.

If they did it by email, a lot of people would criticize as well. Perhaps, just perhaps, even yourself in the past has criticized or at least found (in your thoughts) an awful way of communicating a lay off?

You can’t discredit me based on your own hypothetical about what I might believe.

I did not discredit your argument. It's indeed awful. I'm just inviting to reflect that any way will be awful.

How awful each option is perceived is subjective. If they did it by email, many people (perhaps you and I included?) would be here criticizing the lack of humanity and basic consideration to impacted employees...

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