If I ever had to layoff a double digit number of employees, I would also layoff myself. I couldn’t in good conscience externalize the impact of my bad decisions on employees whilst leaving myself unaffected.
yes it's pretty bad, but this is not Google sitting on billions of cash and dedicated groups analyzing macroeconomic conditions, this is a small startup with a complicated product and a complicated unpredictable b2b sales process.
As a counterpart, if you have to layoff that many people, is it really the right time to also put the stress of a leadership shift into the company?
I can see the argument for this triggering an eventual change, but having _both_ the chock of a CEO change _and_ 28% of the company being layed off at the same time seems unwise.
Where did I say that I, in this hypothetical, would leave immediately? If the whole point is that I’ve realized I’m damaging the firm with my actions, why uncharitably assume I would choose an exit path that exacerbated the damage I already caused?
The point is to make some sort of communication that you’re taking on board the consequences of your action, consequences that go well beyond trite platitudes of how difficult the process has been and how next time will be different.
Not really. CEOs can make or break a business if they start enacting bad policies in the company. So the employees will notice too, not just other CEOs.