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> Apologize to the employees leaving as a company. Explain why. Tell them what happens next. Apologize again.

100% bang on. I've been through a layoff, it sucked but the company were straight-forward, didn't mince their words and didn't fuck around. If I had to sit through some spiel about how the manager or CEO felt, I would've been upset.

It reminded me of the scene when Jonah Hill's character in Moneyball learned how to tell a player they were cut/traded from their baseball team, and then had to actually do it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTjhHrcyiQI)

I've always thought the phrase "I take [full] responsibility" should be viewed as being completely and utterly meaningless, unless it's immediately followed by the words "so I am resigning with immediate effect".

Yes, this. Once someone realizes that responsibility & accountability come with little to no consequences they become pretty free with the former.

I don’t know if it’s a trend but I’ve noticed it a lot more over the last several years

This is how I felt when I read Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong's self-centered layoff letter opening:

"Today I am making the difficult decision to reduce the size of our team by about 18%, to ensure we stay healthy during this economic downturn. I want to walk you through why I am making this decision below, but first I want to start by taking accountability for how we got here. I am the CEO, and the buck stops with me."

https://blog.coinbase.com/a-message-from-coinbase-ceo-and-co...

> It's the company's responsibility. Hiring and firing is not a one-man show.

The buck stops with the CEO.

Every hire/fire decision may not be made by them. (It should be at a smaller shop.) But the decision to lay off must be.

> Apologize to the employees leaving as a company. Explain why. Tell them what happens next. Apologize again.

Apologising to people you’re letting go is condescending. Doing so publicly is asinine. Telling them what happens next is…awkward? There is no next, at least not in a mutual context. You laid them off.

Messaging should focus on the people remaining. The CEO should speak to them and honestly acknowledge the mistakes they made that lead to a lay-off. Explain how they are over-correcting in response to those mistakes to safeguard the jobs of those who remain. Then get back to work.

Caveat: every culture is different. What’s expected in one is cringe worthy in another. This is what makes anything said publicly likely to backfire for all but the most anodyne firms.

> set your compensation to $0 or much lower and keep as many employees as possible

If you’re independently wealthy, sure. If not, you’re liable to freak everyone out. It says quite plainly your shop is at the red line.

> Apologising to people you’re letting go is condescending. Doing so publicly is asinine. Telling them what happens next is…awkward? There is no next, at least not in a mutual context. You laid them off.

This reads to me like: “Sorry we hired you in the first place, and now have to let you go. But (what happens next) we’ll give you 3 months of severance, which will hopefully soften the blow a bit.”

Got it. Yes, that’s fair.

I pictured a regaled tale of overcome personal hardship, the modern “stiff upper lip, kid.”

If “what’s next” is within a mutual context, it’s fine.

>The buck stops with the CEO.

The people getting laid off work for the company, not for the CEO. The CEO is also an employee of the company.

>Apologising to people you’re letting go is condescending.

"I want to apologize to the people leaving today. We failed our commitment to you as a company."

How is that condescending?

>Messaging should focus on the people remaining. The CEO should speak to them and honestly acknowledge the mistakes they made that lead to a lay-off. Explain how they are over-correcting in response to those mistakes to safeguard the jobs of those who remain. Then get back to work.

Part of softening the blow to the people remaining is treating the people leaving with respect and dignity. How does it look to the remaining employees if you treat the people leaving like shit?

> We failed our commitment to you as a company

This isn’t true! You didn’t commit to hiring them for life. If you wanted to, you could have contractually granted that. You didn’t. You hired them at will and are terminating them similarly. Lying to people is condescending.

The company has no place apologising. The CEO may, personally, though I think that should be limited to expressions of sympathy for what the laid off are going through.

Wrapping executive decisions in the veneer of the firm feels like deflection. Their peers didn’t make this call. You did, as CEO.

The commitment is to running the company well. If you overhire and fail to lower costs / positions over time to match the revenue, that's a problem. If you haven't significantly slowed down hiring in the previous year to make the natural attrition help with the issue, that's a problem. If you suddenly need to let lots of people go, that feels very much like a last resort thing and problems with planning.

I don't see how setting your compensation to $0 freaks everyone out. Steve Jobs set his pay to $0. A top level executive who has pay is communicating that they would like to argue that they're technically an employee and thus should be paid for services rendered regardless of company performance. Setting your pay to $0 says that you wish to yolk your fortunes to the company. That is an act of confidence.

More importantly, this is a public corporation and finances are disclosed to some extent that outside parties may consider the profile of the company.

> Steve Jobs set his pay to $0

Jobs was independently wealthy. That’s fine. (And tax efficient.)

If the CEO isn’t, paying themselves zero puts them in a financially precarious position. That isn’t great for decision making. If done so with the aim of reducing layoffs, it could suggest operations close to a red line. (One person shouldn’t have a material effect on the cash cushion unless the CEO was making off like a bandit, in which case they’re not the type to do this anyway.)

What the CEO could do is cut their pay to the median, to what they need to survive or to the lowest employee’s pay. This could be part of the overcorrection if the mistake made was high pay. But it’s unlikely to save anyone’s job, and shouldn’t be positioned that way.

> this is a public corporation

The LinkedIn consultancy the crying CEO leads isn’t public.

> Steve Jobs set his pay to $0.

No, he earned $1 a year. Guess how much he paid in income taxes.

A lot, mostly in form of capital gain taxes incurred through stock sales from exercised options. But hey, he technically paid zero taxes on his wage of $1.00.

Not exercised options. Exercised options and resale, likely with a 2 year hold period. Otherwise, you are essentially paying income tax via short-term capital gains.

20% on LTCG above $500,000 is still a hell of a lot cheaper than 39%+ (tiered) on income above $500,000 or whatever.

I said income tax.

> Apologising to people you’re letting go is condescending.

For me personally that depends on what the apology is for. If I recently joined a company and was laid off I’d be pretty pissed for having put time and energy into getting up to speed. In that situation I’d appreciate an apology for wasting my time.

If it was more of a “I’m so sorry you will now die in the gutters because obviously you were just on our payroll as a charity”-apology, then yes, that would be condescending. :)

You pretty much only "take responsibility" if you step down.

An even then you will probably get paid a stepping down fee.

//Hiring and firing is not a one-man show. If it is, then you're micromanaging.

Have you heard of small businesses?

I agree with your point about it being insulting and making it about himself, but there's plenty of businesses out there where one person's decision making leads to lay offs, and that doesn't equate to micromanaging...

>Have you heard of small businesses?

I'm not referring to small businesses. The layoff letters we see and read about on the internet are all from companies.

I've yet to read a layoff letter from a small business during this layoff cycle.

> yet to read a layoff letter from a small business during this layoff cycle

The crying CEO leads a twenty-something person firm, according to LinkedIn.

Was it something like this guy’s performance?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOjm9g767xs

https://ksltv.com/499014/man-in-custody-after-leaving-hot-sa...

> He turned layoffs into a marketing post for his company or at least it appeared so since his company does LinkedIn content consulting.

Good. This is what a CEO should be doing. Maybe if it is successful the company will generate more revenue and prevent further layoffs.

Or it could backfire and cause businesses to blacklist his firm, existing customers to end contract, and leave a negative impression of him and the company on the remaining employees.

I don't have a problem with him or his company profiting from this. But at the same time, I believe the backlash is well deserved.

I dont think it's bad that he took personal responsibility. And normally people would applaud it. But it was too obvious.

Too be honest almost all linkedin posts are ingenuine. It fathoms me how many people use their or their family diseases, suicides and misfortune to gain a bit of attention on LinkedIn (and ofc other social media). But he was just too much. At the same time I do think a female would have maybe gotten away with it.

> At the same time I do think a female would have maybe gotten away with it.

What the heck is this? "A female"?