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by Retric 1184 days ago
That’s hardly the only option, you can rapidly shrink your workforce through attrition.

Large scale layoffs require companies to be caught completely by surprise which is a huge management failure. The point of upper management is to steer the boat not run into an iceberg.
2 comments
lbotos 1184 days ago
6% is not large scale.

Many would say that if the company only had to lay off 6% they were taking "reasonable" risk.

Compare to say Luno who had to cut 35% of staff: https://techcabal.com/2023/01/26/luno-layoffs/

Counter: What's better for morale, your project to get stopped now and cut and you re-prioritized or let go, or a slow bleed through the year where no new headcount get put on the project as people leave for you to eventually find out in a year that management knew and kept you on that project aimlessly to "avoid a layoff"?

Personally, I'd prefer the former, as the latter would give me a lot more doubt for future projects

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Retric 1184 days ago
You can cut 20% of a workforce through attrition, but it requires long term planning and shifting people to new roles. You don’t bleed projects over time but move people around after milestones.

Not every job is fungible so you may end doing some small scale hiring and let a few people go. But that’s normal and occurs outside of large scale layoffs.

Layoffs aren’t companies tossing risks, they’re companies offloading risk to their workforce.

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somedude895 1184 days ago
> you can rapidly shrink your workforce through attrition.

That would be a terrible move. The people who change jobs are generally the ones with better options. If you just do attrition you'll end up losing only the good people and you have no control over which projects / departments you starve of resources.

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Retric 1184 days ago
If your most senior employees are your worst employees then you have much deeper problems than the need to downsize.

The best people leave when conditions deteriorate not simply because you have a smaller workforce. Shuffle people between projects and scale back workloads as you scale back the workforce and nothing seems wrong.

It’s true not all jobs are findable so you’re going to need some onboarding and to let a some people go but that’s just a normal part of business.

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