[steve-atx-7600]

I don't understand why it's necessary to treat employees with such sudden distrust. It is necessary to immediately cut off all access? These employees aren't being fired because they are suspected of perpetrating a crime, right? I I understand the need for layoffs, but I can't respect an organization/leadership that treats people so coldly. This behavior also affects non-fired employees that may have a need to ask knowledge transfer questions.

Since I'm fortunate enough to be an experienced SWE living in the US, I can afford to add D.O. to my list of "will never work for" employers and discourage peers from ever joining.

[apocalyptic0n3]

From the administrative/IT point of view, I understand it entirely. It's a simple risk/value proposition. If an employee gets mad they were laid off (and that does happen) and decides in a fit of rage to start deleting Slack channels, damaging or even just accessing production environments, deleting shared logins in the team password manager, downloading company/employee/customer/client data, stealing company IP, etc., they could seriously hurt the company. Even if what they do is illegal or you can sue them afterward, it's a very significant short term loss and in some cases, they may be able to do damage that cannot be reversed like deleting Slack channels.

Obviously, every company should have good access controls in place that would prevent this from a regular employee. But that's not always possible and at the end of the day, some employees have to have those privileges. It's easier to just immediately lock them out of anything and avoid any potential damage. It seems cold to you (and it probably is), but even one ex-employee going rogue before lock-out could be disastrous. And that's without going into the "ex-employee drags down team morale by ranting about company/job" aspect and in many cases insurance companies will require it. It's just not worth it, even at a much smaller company than DO like where I work.

[nickjj]

On paper I agree with all of that but in practice folks who are getting laid off already had access to all of those things every day.

Why do you trust them every day but not on the day of being laid off? Unless you're extremely close friends with them at a personal level you don't know what their state of mind is while employed without being laid off. They could do all sorts of destructive things at any point in time (both subtle and obvious).

I guess where I'm going with this one is you're always at risk for short term loss by hiring anyone. If you trust the people you hired then the short term loss outcome won't happen if you fire them. If you don't trust the people you hired then why did you hire them and give them access to do those things? All this does is optimize for bad actors and make the experience horrible for someone being fired who doesn't have intent to take the company down with them, they just want to say goodbye to their co-workers.

Plus, like you said, there could be legal actions taken against them. Who's going to risk getting sued by a corporation in the US by destroying as much as they could before they lose access? This action could potentially ruin the rest of their life from debt.

[apocalyptic0n3]

You don't. But you're also not purposefully doing something that is going induce undue stress and potentially upset or anger the employee. You don't know how anyone is going to react to being told they've been let go. That's not an easy thing to be told and I have seen people get violent afterward.

As an example, about a decade ago, we let go an underperforming employee. His reaction was to walk out of the room before the conversation had finished, take a trash can and dump it onto his desk and computer, then go outside and into his car, pull a gun out of his trunk and start walking around the building rambling like a mad man. We had to go on lockdown and wait for a police response. Prior to that moment, he had never shown a single indication he would react like that and was trustworthy, he just wasn't performing well. If he had been someone with elevated privileges anywhere, he could have instead reacted by going back home or even into his car, accessed systems, and done damage that way.

I get what you're saying, but you're discounting how big a deal it is to lose your job and the things it can do to you mentally. Some people come out the other side of that a completely different person for a while.

[jaywalk]

> Why do you trust them every day but not on the day of being laid off?

Because they had a job to care about before being laid off. It's entirely possible that being laid off triggers them to take malicious actions that they never would have when they were employed.

[edude03]

> Even if what they do is illegal or you can sue them afterward, it's a very significant short term loss and in some cases, they may be able to do damage that cannot be reversed like deleting Slack channels.

I was recently tasked with revoking access to systems during my companies recent round of layoffs. We had it timed so that when the departing employee found out they were leaving they'd already have no access.

Unfortunately for us, they were a brand ambassador and took to their personal social media to tell their followers that we were embezzling client funds (not true).

I don't know what happened from a legal stand point (if they were sued or there was any other consequences) but sometimes new customers find out they said that and are distrustful of us.

[apocalyptic0n3]

Exactly. We've had some similar issues. We also time it so they get locked out as they are being told (we do it in-person/over-call rather than via email as DO did). We've never had an issue preventing them damaging systems, but we have received a few laptops from remote employees that were clearly damaged in rage and in a few cases, had employees start calling up their clients and trying to persuade them to leave us for literally anyone else. It can be rough as a smaller company trying to convince clients they're jilted ex-employees that aren't telling the truth about anything.

[throwawaycopter]

> I don't understand why it's necessary to treat employees with such sudden distrust

To be honest, every employee should treat their employers with the same level of distrust.

It's important to have mutual mistrust as baseline for a healthy professional relationship.

[kmshultz]

Thank you for this, I had a good laugh. XD

[chasd00]

i think policies like this are related to insurance. Like the business insurance agreement dictates all access will be removed asap once a person is no longer an employee of the company. Something like that. It's not a "i don't trust this person so immediately lock their account" kind of situation.

[megous]

I guess this happens when you're treated as a replaceable cog in a machine. I had so far a very different experience with small companies I worked for/with.

I guess something to plan for, if I ever apply for a 'cog' like position. Things like saving non-company contact information for people I might be interested in communicating with in the future, keeping copies of important information/documents on personal computer, etc.

[thexumaker]

Cmon man literally every well known late stage startup, faang, and even small startups are doing layoffs like this. Your only employment options at this point if you stood to your morales are Apple, Verkada, and Levis’ Jeans

Not to mention when the money was flowing in half the talk and advice around the industry was take more money over the relationships you’ve built with your current org. Can’t have your cake and eat it too

[sokoloff]

People under intense stress are prone to act in unpredictable ways. A sudden job loss produces intense stress, therefore increases unpredictable behavior, some of which the company needs to protect itself from, others it tries to help the employee protect themself from.

[johannes1234321]

If you fire 1000 people and just 0.5% go crazy over the firing you got 5 people abusing their remaining permissions. Being strict makes it easy for the company. Especially those where employees are just a number for the executives.

[robswc]

It sucks but I'm sure its the most "logical" move.

Just curious, how would you handle it? I would love to say I would trust everyone to be adults about it.. but you never know, sad to say.

[__turbobrew__]

A disgruntled SRE with prod access can bring down an entire company. Drop the prod databases, delete the backups, done.