Layoffs by Email Show What Employers Think of Their Workers

I believe Google looked at alternatives and chose this approach to avoid worse problems. In particular, there's no way they could have communicated this to managers and had them keep it secret for several days (managers at Google leak internally like a sieve). If they had, the managers also would have insisted on choosing who got laid off which would have led to a long negotiation practice. Managers at Google are great at slowing down process through meetings/negotiation. Also, it would have been an ugly scene with lines of people waiting to go to their manager for "a final talk" which itself would lead to pleading and negotiation. Finally, entire chains were eliminated- an IC, their manager, and their director- so then some VP would have to deal with all the meetings, and VPs are good at pushing back against SVPs asking them to do that.

Maybe... Hear me out... It shouldn't be trivial for someone to snap their fingers and axe somebody without at the same time making preparations and getting work said person was doing handled by domeone else.

Maybe, by virtue of being a large organization, there is a certain amount of signalling overhead that you end up paying for in return for the ability to operate at that scale.

Mayhaps, slogging through the chain, top down is actually a feature, not a bug; ensuring that senior management know exactly what they are laying off.

But nahhhhhhh... Can't be. That'd make too much sense.

http://archive.today/Hc2TN

Lightly discussed at the time (in January):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34567331 (6 comments)

You are essentially a box of staples to a company.