alt Hacker NewsThis is one of the best (if not the best) layoff letters I've seen online (no affiliation, don't know anyone working there, purely outsider perspective).
* Severance packages upfront because realistically that's what everyone worries about first.
* Reasoning second. I appreciate the one clean cut vs prolonged bleeding.
* Owning the decision and respecting the people that got you there. Opting for an awkward allhands vs breakup-via-text-message.
* Giving people a chance to say goodbye.
Not gonna go into strategic analysis of this, or Jack's leadership style in general.
But realistically, you can't pen a better (or, well, less bad) layoff announcement.
Replies
It should be good. It's the third time he's written this exact same announcement, including "taking the blame" and "making the difficult choice to cut a large group instead of smaller cuts over time" and "thanking the expendables that got the company where it is."
"owning" the decision doesn't mean anything. It's just words.
@grok remove the corporate jargon and explain it in a direct and candid way in a single sentence
@grok We're slashing the company from 10k to under 6k people because AI plus tiny teams now let us do the same work with way fewer bodies, and the CEO would rather gut half the staff in one brutal move than bleed out slowly over years.
I am curious why this got so popular, it really is the same thing, am I missing something? Is it because of elon/jack dynamics?
> I appreciate the one clean cut vs prolonged bleeding.
That's a false dichotomy, you could reduce headcount via attrition which is better in some ways.
There's also no reasoning on product impact. Is the strategy to cut products that aren't making money? Is the strategy to cut 40% across everyone because everyone can go faster?
> Owning the decision
Does it? It came across to me as an inevitability of AI, not "we over-hired". Layoffs are always a mis-management issue, because the opposite (hiring) is a management issue. If management failed to see where the market was going and now needs a different workforce, that's still a management issue.
> respecting the people that got you there
There's words, and there's money, and on these it's pretty good. But there's also an empathy with the experience they're about to go through and I'm not sure there's much of that here beyond the words. To do this well you'd need to think through what folks are about to go through and look for ways you can positively impact that beyond actions today. I've seen some companies do this better, helping teams get re-hired elsewhere, splitting off businesses to sell to other companies, incubating startups, there are lots of options. Hard, especially at this scale, but possible.
> But realistically, you can't pen a better (or, well, less bad) layoff announcement.
And this is the crux of my point, I really think you can. This was a good one, one of the better I've seen, but it's still within the realm of SV companies laying people off. In some companies, countries, industries, this would look very different, and better.