[michaelochurch]

Not from the Bay Area.

I would much rather a startup do an announced layoff than the more common thing, which is to write phony PIPs and make it look like performance-based firings. A layoff, even when it's the right thing, is an admission of a business problem and a signal that the company won't be hiring for a while. But evil startups use "silent layoffs" to save their image ("we've never had a layoff") at the expense of those let go.

I do wonder what kind of backstory there was if they were afraid of people trashing the office. Usually people are pretty civilized when they are laid off-- especially if there's a severance, which would be jeopardized by bad behavior (if you vandalize the office, you get zero because the "severance" is charges not being pressed). Being laid off sucks, but it's not worth retaliating.

Constant re-orgs in small companies, for what it's worth, don't seem to be a new thing either.

[danso]

In terms of having HR supervise the office firings...perhaps it had something to do with the fact that SF was a satellite office and may have had younger/less-tenured employees, and that the engineers being fired were pretty much the whole team. It's a different mentality if you get fired and there's no one else at the office to pick up your slack, and, if you're like the stereotypical engineer in SF with plenty of other job opportunities.

Get a pack of such people with "little to lose" and otherwise reasonable people may be unreasonable in these circumstances.

[w0rd-driven]

There's a few scenarios I can think of when a company thinks employees will trash an office: The firing is particularly brutal The company was particularly brutal to employees. Shitty conditions or pay The company can't trust that they hired professionals Someone at HR is just a douche and can't trust any of the above

There's likely more but that's all that counts. I hate the mentality. Unless you're hiring 16 yr olds at McDonald's, do you really expect riots from your professional workforce? They're better off being nowhere around such a shitty place. Hopefully none of this comes as an added ding to a recommendation "Oh you were one of those employees that they were afraid of? Maybe you'll shiv me in my sleep! Noez!!" yawn. I sense nothing but assholes from this place because none of this feels positive in any way. How not to fire someone right here.

[follower]

> I do wonder what kind of backstory there was if they were afraid of people trashing the office.

It doesn't say nice things about the company if they thought laying off a whole office via a conference call was a good idea to start with.