150 people is huge. The logistics of doing this in person just don’t make sense.
Are you going to send out hundreds of calendar invites spread across weeks for the sole purpose of being nice to people? Are affected employees expected to queue up to get their personal “you’re fired” before their access is cut?
I worked at Yahoo in 2008 when they laid off thousands and yes every single person got a calendar invite and met in a meeting room 1:1 with a manager. It was difficult but they did it. Times definitely have changed.
Wow, just the logistics of that is impressive. I feel like I would watch a 60-minute documentary on pulling that together because it no doubt took dozens or hundreds of people weeks of logistics to do that, and unlike almost any other major project, literally no one involved was happy about any part of it.
Not explicitly, but there were rumors a few days before. Also the signs were there: every single meeting room was booked, meeting rooms all had water & tissues, etc.
I was once laid off in a group of about 50, and we were all invited to a conference room meeting to be laid off in-person by some higher up director, and a group of our managers. This was long before remote work was popular, and we were all on site, though.
Second time was smaller (maybe 10 people) and fully remote, and I had a surprise meeting with my direct manager over video chat.
I personally don't care so much about how the message is delivered, and more about severance, but it's interesting to see how different people handle the situation differently. Makes you wonder what alternatives they considered that they decided a pre-recorded message was best.
I will say 1:1 layoffs are very tricky logistically, and can be less humane in some ways.
If a manager has several layoffs to do, you have people waiting on pins and needles for the dreaded calendar invite over a few hours or even days.
In a layoff, it’s important to do it humanely, quickly, and let people settle down as soon as you can. It’s bad for both the laid off and the remaining employees you have a trickle layoffs happening over a longer period of time… it’s less bad if you rip the bandaid off quickly.
You want to be able to say to your team, “Hey guys, we had a layoff this morning, and everyone affected has already been notified. It’s all done at this point - everyone in this room is not affected.”
If I hear through the grapevine there’s a layoff happening this morning, and my manager schedules a surprise 1:1 with me in a few hours because he has a few of them to do, I’m going to be a wreck between now and then.
Needing to cut 150 people suggests catastrophic mismanagement. I get that workloads change, orgs pivot, business has to do business shit, but if you've missed your headcount requirement for whatever work you needed to do by a HUNDRED AND FIFTY PEOPLE!? What even.
Management and leadership is practically a lost art these days, so many organizations are just filled with managers who haven't the first fucking idea how to actually manage people.
All that said to be like: "Well how SHOULD we correctly fire 150 people?" I dunno, to me that's like saying how do I hit a tree with my car in such a way as to make sure I'm not paralyzed? Like so much has already gone wrong to bring you to where this is a pertinent question that I don't think there's really a right answer at this point, there's just gradations of bad.
“catastrophic mismanagement”, “a HUNDRED AND FIFTY PEOPLE?”. What is it with all the hyperbole on HN?
Atlassian grew from 3,600 people in 2019 to 12.100 in 2024. Triple in 5 years. Some adjustments are expected. Sucks to lose your job, but you might not have it in the first place.
The total headcount is irrelevant. What specific department overshot their required headcount by a hundred and fifty? Reviewing TFA, it's customer service and the context of it leans to being mass layoffs as Altlassan anticipates replacing those reps with LLM, which I'm sure Altlassan customers are simply thrilled about, and related, means the CEO's heartfelt message is even more hollow.
So, I will fully grant that my original statement doesn't really matter here; this wasn't a department that over-scaled to meet a project that didn't exist, this is in fact, the far shittier kind of layoffs: the ones that are a direct result of a company taking by all accounts a fully functioning department and taking an axe to it to improve their bottom line in 6 months, trading experienced workers who likely have relationships with their clients for soulless chatbots for their customers to now argue with.
So yes, I fully acknowledge I was wrong, and also, this is shittier than I assumed without reading. Take that how you will.
Are you going to send out hundreds of calendar invites spread across weeks for the sole purpose of being nice to people? Are affected employees expected to queue up to get their personal “you’re fired” before their access is cut?