Perhaps the author could read up on how his own employer does layoffs[0].
On a related note, Better.com had a very slick interface and was responsive in the beginning but suffered from generally incompetent loan advisors.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/26/business/media/vice-media...
So you are the CEO and can't visit anyone physically for obvious reasons. How do you propose you do it?
Again, not excusing any of this, the video was extremely cringe and I can't believe he went with "for those of you in the US, we'll be doing the legal minimum, for everyone else, sorry!", but as someone who is "worth" almost a million dollars, and who cannot afford to hire even a single person, it's not always so simple.
All that said, 900 * (150000 / 12) == 11250000, so I have a hard time imagining it wouldn't have been worth 1M for a fairly well known tech company with loads of funding to avoid this horrific press and karma.
They did it the normal way, individual private notification. It would be remiss not to mention it afterward at the next all-hands meeting.
> They’ll hire you over video chat and fire you over video chat.
They didn't hire anyone on a one-way broadcast-only video conference with 900 attendees.
Over a messaging app? How is that normal or better?
> They didn't hire anyone on a one-way broadcast-only video conference with 900 attendees.
CEO doesn't hire anyone individually either. So, is it better to push this layoff responsibility to the hiring manager?
I have no idea why hiring and firing need to be symmetrical.
When I was hired, I was congrat'ed by multiple people through personal email. Should we keep that symmetry as well? Or should we be arbitrarily selective?
Nothing would have prevented to do that in a better way, with individual or little group meetings. Maybe not firing them "effective immediately" but respecting them not as throwable useless resources...
But probably it is easier for the CEO and it's managing team to do it like that than spending days and hours in individual meetings... But just remember that these 900 persons were not hired in a mass zoom call!
So, I wish that everyone be smart enough to refuse being hired to work in one company that this guy is leading.
By hundreds of people, not directly by CEO.
I don't know if pushing the layoff responsibility to the manager is better.
> Nothing would have prevented to do that in a better way, with individual or little group meetings
Disagree. Your friend is laid off and you have a meeting with CEO next? The rumour and anticipation will wreck everybody. This could be dangerous for company itself in terms of security.
Not saying what CEO did is the best. I don't have a better solution to firing people, but yours is definitely worse.
