> Are you slashing your own future stock grants, cutting your own salaries, diluting your positions with stock grants to everyone else?
This sounds a bit emotional to me. Layoffs can be an emotional topic, but let's reflect for a moment.
I guess the thrust of the remark is to put some sort of public "shame" on companies that perform layoffs (especially such fast ones) for the major inconvenience they cause for thousands of people. I suppose the fear is that without any "Shame" these companies will hire and fire spuriously without repercussion?
Relatively speaking I think Stripe handled this well. Yes it was a mistake to hire these people, but now that you're here it would be a bigger mistake to keep people you don't need.
I wonder if every company would be so forthright about this or whether many would just "cut" "low performers" at an accelerated rate over a year with no severance.
This is being obtuse and trying to deflect the concern.
The concern is that if a company's leadership is allowed to make mistakes without suffering any personal consequences then they will continue making bad decisions.
The op question is not emotional in the slightest. The executive leadership made a series of mistake. People are left in the lurch and the business has suffered because of these mistakes. Asking if the incentives are aligned here is a strict matter of rational business calculus.
> the thrust of the remark is to put some sort of public "shame" on companies that perform layoffs
I don't think that's what he meant. He is asking whether the CEO is just blowing hot air when they say "we take full responsibility..." or whether there are consequences to their bad decisions, i.e., responsibility for those decisions.
I'm not a native speaker, but I think taking responsibility does not necessarily imply consequences. The opposite of taking responsibility is assigning blame (eg "our underlings hired too many people it was their mistake").
That's probably true, and likely why the commenter finds that a CEO "taking responsibility" is so obnoxious.
Either the CEO is implying that they aren't always responsible, which is bogus, or they are stating an obvious fact as an empty platitude, which is most likely the case, or perhaps they're implying that to them "responsibility" means more than just "taking the blame" which is probably not the case here.
not even necessarily CEOs... just the phrase "taking responsibility" seems to have been diluted to usually mean nothing in most corporate settings.
software dev here - was working with a client, and a pm was pushing some not-great idea. I pushed back - "this is not core, not important, shouldn't be a focus, other things are more important, and already decided".
Pushback from them: "no no no, this is vital. Look... if there's a problem, I'll take responsbility".
6 months later, there's a lot of complications that I'd foreseen (and documented) earlier which were summarily ignored at the time. The "I'll take responsibility" person isn't on the project any more - they left. I'm fielding a bunch of "why was this done? this wasn't agreed on - what were you thinking?"
Well... when I don't do what they ask for, I'm stubborn/obstinate/roadblocking/etc. When I do it... it's wrong. Even if that original person was still around, I would be the one fixing all the bad data, having to reverse out the changes, revert to earlier state while keeping newer code in place. The "I'll take responsibility" is essentially meaningless in many situations. And I called that out too at the time and was told I'm too negative/cynical. It's just experience.
Lest this be seem like doom and gloom, I've experienced the opposite situation from above, where 'ownership' and 'responsibility' and whatnot were more enforced and honored across an organization, but it's been very rare in my experience over the last 20 years, and seems to be getting even less common. Having seen both situations, it's easier to tell the difference.
More and more folks having shorter tenures makes it harder for any org/team ethos to 'stick' for any meaningful impact, and absent that, it takes a lot more organizational effort to keep a commitment to stated corporate values. Not impossible, just hard to do, and often slips...
>taking responsibility does not necessarily imply consequences
I guess that's the problem? These days leaders have no problem "taking responsibility" to make themselves look good when there's no consequence("hey I did what all good leaders do").
This sounds a bit emotional to me. Layoffs can be an emotional topic, but let's reflect for a moment.
I guess the thrust of the remark is to put some sort of public "shame" on companies that perform layoffs (especially such fast ones) for the major inconvenience they cause for thousands of people. I suppose the fear is that without any "Shame" these companies will hire and fire spuriously without repercussion?
Relatively speaking I think Stripe handled this well. Yes it was a mistake to hire these people, but now that you're here it would be a bigger mistake to keep people you don't need.
I wonder if every company would be so forthright about this or whether many would just "cut" "low performers" at an accelerated rate over a year with no severance.