[hn_throwaway_99]

> A friend of mine convinced me this was the FB strategy to get people to resign instead of needing to fire them (a costly, legal.minefield).

It's a major pet peeve of mine when people's conspiracy theories don't even make sense even if you accept the theory at face value:

1. If you want to fire people for performance or other reasons, it's true that a great time to do it is during layoffs - there doesn't need to be any rationale given, and there is nothing to sue over when a hundred other people are also being let go for non-performance reasons. So if you're already having layoffs, why again are you hoping for some people to resign??

2. Why on Earth does your friend think having multiple rounds of layoffs will convince poor performers to resign? That doesn't make any sense. If anything, it's usually the crappiest people who are OK stocking around when a company becomes paralyzed during layoffs season - it's top performers who see the writing on the wall and go elsewhere.

[serf]

>2. Why on Earth does your friend think having multiple rounds of layoffs will convince poor performers to resign?

for the sake of playing devil's advocate, i'd like to remind that poor performers may not see that same image when they look in the mirror.

it's likely that they too will experience the same dread and despair as anyone else might when they are confronted by the very real future prospect of unemployment.

[superfrank]

You're absolutely right, but it's also likely that they will have a harder time finding new jobs. I know there are exceptions, but generally you'd expect the high performers to have the most options.

[gwbas1c]

> If anything, it's usually the crappiest people who are OK stocking around when a company becomes paralyzed...

Don't assume that.

Not everyone can just hop into a new job. Some top performers, who are deep into their career, need to invest a lot of time in their job searches.

If finding a new job takes someone 160+ hours, it's impractical to do that while doing honest work for their employer. People have families and other things to do outside of work.

That's why negotiating a severance package is a thing.

[IG_Semmelweiss]

User serf already covered, but I'll go into detail.

1 - because even during a mass layoff, theres always a threat of a lawsuit. Sure, it may not go anywhere, but as already mentioned, defending is costly. An employee that decides to leave on their own volition is no risk. Plus, laying off people has in some states some remuneration and compliance requisites. Unemployment hearings that tie up senior staff and can be a time drain. Then theres fringe benefits. And of course, there's morale, reputation, and other intangible costs like IP loss and making an unwanted enemy or even encouraging a scrappy conpetitor. Its infinitely cheaper and desirable to get someone to leave vs termination.

2 - Please see serf's post. In addition - High performers can also be those that actively prevent product from actually shipping, ensnaring the org in turf wars, and similar (typical) large org roadblocks.

To be clear, my worldview was that this premise was insane. I still think it is strange -based own personal experience- but im far less certain of its invalidity, and I am forced to acknowledge that the CEO has better information than I have. Perhaps I need to reconsider my position.

[hn_throwaway_99]

But your number 1 still makes absolutely 0 sense with this particular conspiracy theory, which premises that the goal is to get people to resign by having multiple rounds of layoffs.

That is, the conspiracy theory presupposes that the company is already going to have lots of layoffs. So you're saying it's arguing that companies want to avoid the negative consequences of layoffs - by having a lot of layoffs???

The whole idea is nonsense.

[IG_Semmelweiss]

I may not be expressing myself well. Sorry. I'll try again.

If the layoff announcement is t0, and every layoff round is t1, t2 ...t(n), the company is banking on:

-employees do not know n

-employees only have standing to sue (AND benefits) at T(n+1)

-employee anxiety level will not tolerate waiting to T(n)

- notice that even if n = 1, it still has the same effect as n=5 since (n) is unknown to employee.

Therefore, Opco announces layoffs, but to lower the t0 cost of terminations, it moves terminations to (n). Note t0 is most expensive scenario for the employer. This is the hard thing to accept because its counterintuitive, and does not generalize (I.e. cutting the cord now,and moving on).

[hn_throwaway_99]

Folks that believe in the insane complexity of this have never been in management in my opinion. People really just don't put that much devious thought into that kind of plan.

Besides, it still doesn't make any sense. Having been at a company previously that had many layoffs over a series of years, a very common opinion was that it would be crazy to quit, and get no severance. Better to just hope you'd get laid off with a fat severance package, especially since most of the packages at the big tech companies over the past year and a half have been extremely generous.

[vinay_ys]

The personal traits required to find a job are different from that to perform well at a particular company & role. That's the sad truth. So, people voluntarily leaving won't be correlated with performance low or high. Also, people who were selected for layoff by management will also not be correlated to low performance well. In fact, in most layoffs, they are planned in closed rooms with only VP+ people who have little context of who does what work well or not, and with flawed performance calibration data. So, you will always be shocked to find that the people /you/ thought were high-performers were let go.

[lelanthran]

> If anything, it's usually the crappiest people who are OK stocking around when a company becomes paralyzed during layoffs season - it's top performers who see the writing on the wall and go elsewhere.

I'd like to amend that - it's not the lowest performers who stick around and the top performers who leave.

It's more, the poor-at-interviewing people who stick around and the good-at-interviewing people who leave.

I've worked with a shmuck who took two years to deliver a basic CRUD system that fell over at 10 req/sec [1], and then got hired at a another place as an architect (or team lead - I forget which).

[1] I did a similar one in about 3 months, and it handled more than 4 req/sec, without weird crashes.

[flukus]

> If you want to fire people for performance or other reasons, it's true that a great time to do it is during layoffs

That really depends on the jurisdiction, in Australia and mich of Europe you can't replace someone laid off for a certain amount of time.