Comment by andrewstuart | Hacker News Reader

Comment by andrewstuart | Hacker News Reader

Wow this seems really poorly worded.

On one hand, the CEO is upbeat about the future and yaks on about strategy and in the same breath says "you're fired".

Seems very insensitive.

Laying people off isn't the time for a pep talk and ra ra rally on the strategy.

IMO if you have to lay people off then the focus should be the people being laid off, nothing else.

"Deeply sorry, we did our best to avoid this and we don't see any choice at this stage. All benefits have been paid immediately plus a severance package in line with statutory requirements. We have engaged a search firm to assist the people impacted with their job search.

We believe this is the right move to ensure stability in the current challenging economic conditions and I do not anticipate further layoffs.

I want to thank the impacted people for their service in building the company to this point."

Something like that anyway.

The wording is to reassure investors. They don't care about the employees.

Then that's supposed to go onto a private email addressed directly to the investors.

If you want to announce layoffs, do so with humility and lots of goodwill to the people that helped build your company, especially when you're announcing on your website for public scrutiny.

How? Don’t the investors have the actual numbers?

Some investors will look at numbers. Others will look at the persona. (See Tesla's technically unreasonable valuation)

Not everyone reads everything, a bunch of people will just follow the market.

Or it's for the HFT bots that run the press releases through sentiment analysis and make trades accordingly.

<span color=“white” size=“1”>Revenue is up 800%!</span>

Respectfully disagree. It's important to explain why, and he does that in a standard 3-point structure without getting too carried away on the hype train. It could be worse.

Also, this part is worth emphasizing:

> For those amazing Netlifolk that are leaving us today, our team is... waving [sic] the first year stock option cliff for newer employees, and extending the exercise period to 7 years.

This is a classy move. They didn't have to do this, but they did. Layoffs suck, and no amount of wordsmithing on the email is really going to make a huge difference. It's worth noting and encouraging when companies at least take the time to do something for the people they're letting go.

I fully agree with you on one thing, though: the word "sorry" is conspicuously missing. A little more ownership would go a long way.

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