[hn_throwaway_99]

> 1. Tells everyone that they’ll get an email in the next few days about whether or not they’re to be fired — days of anxiety ahead for everyone, and even those who aren’t being let go will be looking for new roles

I love how half of the people will bitch that layoffs happened too suddenly without adequate warning, and the other half will bitch that they were given too much heads up.

[phphphphp]

Layoffs are hard. People will be upset no matter what. The responsibility of leadership is to make hard decisions that have the best outcome. Telling 7,000 people they might be laid off this week and so they must stay home so that the company can say “we did a personal call with each person being laid off” is an order of magnitude worse than just sending everyone an email today. People will be upset regardless, a good leader optimises for the well-being of their people, and this approach does not do that.