Not going to happen at Microsoft. That would need 20 PMs and 200 devs to implement.

Good in theory, but most people at these companies are accessing their work email through a work-controlled device, and that work device should be locked and inaccessible to employees when they're laid off. So they'd have to log into their work email on a personal device, which if you've set up MFA can be a nightmare, especially if people set up their MFA using a work 1Password/Lastpass/etc account, since they no longer have access to that, either.

Logistically it's a lot easier to just have a personal email on file where you can send the termination notification.

> In the longer term: announce layoffs ahead of time. Ask if anyone wishes to take voluntary redundancy. In general, make sure people aren’t going to be totally blindsided by losing their job.

This isn't a great idea from a management perspective. The people who are willing to take severance voluntarily are the people who are most confident that they can find something else, which means they're the people you want to keep. It also assumes that layoffs are overall headcount reductions and not targeted in specific areas. For example with the Amazon layoffs, they wouldn't want people in AWS to leave since they're primarily targeting the Alexa/Echo divisions.

And if you went into Alexa/Echo and said "so we need to reduce headcount in Alexa/Echo, any volunteers?" you'd cause massive panic and distraction in that division.