Hacker News Reader

Comment by anon291 | Hacker News Reader

If it's truly a lay off, I would simply tell everyone. We're going to lay off X% of the workforce. If you want to voluntarily quit, we will provide you with X severance. Otherwise, we will pick and choose. Those that can find new work will do so fast. To be least cruel, you want most of your employees to find new work ASAP. That is the least cruel outcome. Thus simply telling everyone and letting people seek out employment before hand is the best way IMO. If it comes down to too many people leaving, then you can start counteroffering, or better yet, take the savings.

View on HN

This will lead to most of the best to voluntarily resign, since they'll be the very first be employed elsewhere and don't like financial uncertainty. Worse, you may have too many reduntant roles (which are less required) while lacking in another role.

Announcement is good, honesty is good, punishment for higher ups is absolutely required (and announced), future plans need to be announced on how to save the company financially and ensure those who stay won't have a problem in a near future.

Yeah, so... when I see layoffs, and I've been retained (presumably because they think I'm somewhat better than whomever was laid off), my first step is to look for a new job. Which means the company ends up with even less staff.

In my situation you end up with the 'worst' half, but they're also the ones least likely to leave since they have fewer prospects.

They are laying off more than 50% of the company, they are still going to lose their best employees even if they are not laid off. I do agree though that distribution between the roles needs to be taken into account.

Often managers want to hold onto the very staff who are most likely to voluntarily quit. Simple reason being that the more competent, and sometimes underpaid for their level of skill, staff only need a nudge to job-hop. Whilst the laggards are more likely to want to stick around.

Of course, in the current climate with so much bad news, the optimism about finding a new job might be curtailed.

Yes, to be honest I assume that this will start a death-spiral. In that the people we want to stay (having the most hopeful combo of critical knowledge, skills, etc.) can just take a little longer to find a new job than those laid off but _will_ eventually. So then we need to replace them to even carry out the post-layoffs plan, and so then over time we drain knowledge and skills, and then it all falls apart.

That's sort of my assumption right now, but while enough are still here I plan to see if I can make it work for them.

Sounds like a good way to get stuck with the worst performers.

I realize that we want layoffs to be humane, but putting the company in a worse spot than it is at present doesn't help anyone.

The best performers will quit regardlesd what you do... there is a german saying about rats on a sinking ship

There is also an english saying about rats on a sinking ship.

Thanks for responding.

We have our own ideas about who we would like to stay (I mean, aside from "everyone" :( ), but we plan to tell everyone the severance package so that anyone we want to stay can still make their own decision with all the info.

This means then we need an idea of "if X doesn't stay, who Y should we ask to stay instead?", which comes uncomfortably close to stack-ranking.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com