[tj0]

You know, it's hard to say. I've never been in the position where I have both investors, and several thousand employees to answer to; let alone having to dictate who's going to get let go. As such, I'm by no means an authority on this nor can I fathom what the C-Suite must be going through. Obviously, there is an emotional tax associated with these kind of decisions.

Based on various articles I've read here on HN, it would have been nice to have more transparency into the financials of the company versus all messaging completely devastating morale, and leaving an air of uncertainty. We know we're hemorrhaging cash right now; who isn't, though?

That being said, I would've furloughed everyone that isn't absolutely vital to maintaining bare minimum operations. Made one painfully large cut -- kinda like peeling a bandaid quickly instead of ripping out fifty individual hairs multiple times. I think this alone would've offered a much better sense of security for those that remained, as well as allowing them to stay at their normal salaries.

Next, I would proceed with identifying the clients that are most likely be unable to continue operations themselves, and proactively suspend services. After that, renegotiate quicker payments, and potentially rate increases on services with the remaining active clients.

That would enable the company to turn down anything that's deemed as nice-to-have in our service offerings (no room for luxuries right now), and evaluate all infrastructure costs. We would then have full insight into knowing how much we could scale down our IT infrastructure. We could then proceed to contact vendors, and renegotiate service agreements, further maximizing savings, and decreasing our burn rate.

I would've done everything possible to keep the remaining employees secure, and confident. By performing more drastic cuts initially, scaling back operations, and retaining core teams, everyone could have kept their pay at normal levels, and I think the burn rate would've been significantly less.

Like I said, though, I've never been in the captain's seat and right now may not be a great time to try to say what I'd do. Each day brings less inspiring news and being kept in the dark hasn't helped anyone be more productive.

[mikekij]

These are all great points, and read like the syllabus from a business school ethics class. I remember having a class on "what to do if you need to lay people off", and it's exactly what you describe.

Best of luck