Layoffs and Mistakes
By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
There was a lovely article in Inc. Magazine contrasting the layoffs at Twitter with the layoff announcements at Microsoft. Elon Musk, “The Barbarian,” took the innocents out back and metaphorically shot them. In contrast, Satya Nadella of Microsoft wrote of acting with other senior leaders in a “thoughtful and transparent way” about the layoffs that would come.
As announced, 10000 people, approximately 5% of the corporate population, would lose their jobs at Microsoft. In contrast, 3700 people, or 50% of the corporate population of Twitter lost theirs.
I am curious about the interpretation of Nadella’s announcement of layoffs as being thoughtful and transparent. After all, leaving 200000 people waiting to be told between now and the summer whether Caesar will give them a thumbs down in the Coliseum doesn’t seem either thoughtful or transparent. It seems like a miserable form of torture designed to encourage people to leave before being laid off.
I can imagine a young couple discussing having a baby wondering whether the job one of them holds at Microsoft (or both) would be there in a few months. I know from experience how, as a parent wanting to adopt, the agency that screened my wife and I for an international adoption wanted to make sure we were financially and emotionally stable. How do you make plans with this hanging over your head?
Later we learned that Microsoft paid Sting to perform at a private performance for their executives (and guests?) at the World Economic Forum in Davos. I am sure Sting was booked quite some time in advance, yet how does this look to the firm and its corporate population?
In addition, I am still not aware of senior leadership at Microsoft publicly acknowledging the mistakes they made that resulted in the firm experiencing this slump that resulted in so many losing jobs. That would be a display of transparency and thoughtfulness that might expose them to being fired by the Board of Directors. We don’t believe in THAT type or amount of transparency and thoughtfulness.
Google did layoffs, too. Stories emerged that employees who have been with the firm for as long as 20 years were released. Emails were sent to employees, some of whom didn’t see them in time and then discovered their computers were “cleaned” and were unable to log in at 3 AM as being the way they received notice that they were unemployed. One described it as a slap in the face to be fired in this way.
An internal document was released saying they were continuing to hire for particular positions while laying off 12000 people.
Politics seems to be a difference between how Twitter and Google are being treated in the press. The Twitter layoffs and how people were hurt were the subject of a popular insurrection. No one seems to be switching from Google to DuckDuckGo in response to layoffs.
One difference between what Twitter and Google did was that Twitter’s Chairman announced plans in advance that he intended to do this. Google? Nope. One of the complaints was that managers were not notified of layoffs at Google. They were just rolled out abruptly.
One significant difference seems to be that with Twitter’s acquisition, there was a pre-acquisition announcement of cuts. At Google, no one was alerted in advance and a guillotine was dropped with no warning. At Microsoft, there is a warning but what to me seems like too much time between announcement and staff cuts.
Part of the reason people reach the top of American businesses transcends competence. They are astute politicians used to having teams deliver messages for them that enhance their image and cover their faux pas or mistakes.
Yet once you reach the top, it’s important to display the courage to expose your mistakes to your corporate population and not sanitize it in a CYA (cover your rear) exercise or avoid admitting them altogether.
What do you think?
Ⓒ The Big Game Hunter, Inc., Asheville, NC 2023, 2024
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