Like the court system being adversarial, it’s that way because it’s the only thing that scales, for a number of reasons. The longer a company can avoid it/bigger they can be without it, the better everything is. At some point however, it’s inevitable.

To answer your second question, because the ones who leave are often the ones with the most options and lowest risk to themselves if they are unemployed, which highly correlates with those who are the ‘best’ (in most hiring managers minds).

So it’s pretty common for all the ‘high performers’ to bail (happens anyway, but to a lesser extent on it’s own the moment ‘growth’ isn’t the first thing on peoples minds), and the folks left behind to be those that don’t feel comfortable finding another position.

Either because they have a mortgage hanging over their heads, or don’t feel confident in their skills, or are preoccupied with other responsibilities (kids, older parents, etc) and have less free time/are less interested in doing extra hours, or just hate interviewing, etc.

It’s basically the equivalent of a hot/pretty boyfriend or girlfriend. They are able to find other options easier, so tend to be the first to bounce if they stop getting what they want.

If you’re a manager, that’s obviously not great. Especially if you’re shallow.

> To answer your second question, because the ones who leave are often the ones with the most options and lowest risk to themselves if they are unemployed, which highly correlates with those who are the ‘best’.

Maybe, but some of these "best" people might just leave after a round of layoffs anyway right? And now you're even more short-staffed than you wanted to be.

Yup!

Though the issue they are trying to solve appears to be having too many staff (overall).

Understaffing is almost always a local/team level concern.

As long as nothing important implodes after the cuts, it’s working as intended from their perspective.

The line and middle managers are the ones who always get really screwed in these situations, as they’re the ones responsible for figuring out how to keep who they need and keep things running (and growing!) while having the rug pulled out from under them staffing wise (and probably in other ways too).

This is when you figure out what (if any) power they have, how well they can prioritize, and what their personal character really is.

Will they level with people, cut things that don’t matter (as much), even if it’s a hard decision, give people flexibility where it matters, go up to bat for folks who it’s important that be done?

Or will they deflect, throw people under the bus to avoid making hard calls, and emotionally manipulate who’s left to keep things afloat while burning them out and underpaying them?

This is a crazy approach. It signals the company is on trouble so the first to go will be your best, who all have lots of options. Anyone half decent will immediately start risk diversification by looking for other opportunities. Meanwhile nothing will get done by anybody and in the end your left with the dregs.

Far better for everyone involved to do it quick rather than perfect. Those getting let go shouldn't see it coming and those staying shouldn't find out before it's all been done.

The tell in advance approach is common place in countries with strong unions. The company might need to announce layoffs half a year in advance of the actual layoffs.

In effect noone will lose their job quickly unless there is a bankruptcy.

There is probably way less confusion in that way since you know that security guards wont escort you out any minute ...

Some possible reasons:

You may not get the number of volunteers you need, so you still have to do layoffs. Except now, more people have been stressing about it for a longer period of time.

The "low performers" who will have a hard time finding a new job elsewhere are unlikely to voluntarily leave. So you offer a buyout package to derisk the decision for them. But then the "high performers" who you'd rather retain might decide that yeah, it's easy to get a new job, so they'll take a sack of cash and go do something new.

Yes, there's stress associated with possible layoffs, but buyout packages and knowing it's not going to happen for, say 6 months, means there's loads of time to make the necessary adjustments. I think a big part of the stress is the suddenness of it all. Something like 50% of people are living paycheque to paycheque, so of course a sudden round of layoffs would be crazy stressful because there's a chance that your life is about to implode. Knowing you have 6 months to figure something out would not be nearly so bad.

So what I'm suggesting is that you announce ahead of time and let people who were considering a change go ahead.

Then when that deadline is reached, you offer those buyout packages to the low performers or others you don't want, until you reach your target.

I'm open to the idea that there might be some employees who would find this more humane.

However, I think a lot of people really struggle with uncertainty. During these six months, especially in a large corporate environment, there would be a lot of horse-trading. Employees will seek assurances they won't be fired. They may avoid projects or people they think are likely to get cut.

At the same time, the business likely has an idea of where they want to go. The "in" managers will navigate their preferred people to safe projects. But there isn't room in the boat for all of their employees -- after all, the business has announced the target for layoffs.

This was my experience when I was at Microsoft during their horribly ill-conceived layoffs in 2009. They basically announced that there would be 3 rounds of layoffs tallying up to 5,000 people over the next several months. It was... incredibly demoralizing.

I still remember one fellow on my team who got fired in the 2nd or 3rd round. He took it poorly (understandably!) and then ripped into the people who didn't get fired (also understandable, but still really shitty).

I don't really know that the advance warning helped him. I think he knew he was likely to get fired when layoffs were announced. Being a dead man walking... not very good for anyone, really.

I struggle with uncertain, I struggle even more with not being able to pay the bills. I think I’m not alone.

Uncertainty is important in general but right here right now I’ll take it.

I think you're saying that if you were being fired, and you were given a choice of:

(1) you're fired immediately, with 3 months severance pay

(2) 6 months notice, at the end, you're fired with no severance pay

you'd prefer the second choice?

That's reasonable!

The uncertainty I was describing in my comment applied not only to the fired employees, but to the ones who were being kept. From the company's perspective, there's value in providing clarity to those employees. That's why they'd rather pay 3 months severance (and get no labour from the employee) vs paying 6 months notice (and, theoretically, getting 6 months of labour from the employee).

That makes sense, but I think there will be lots of uncertainty in the company after the first wave of layoffs. It’s quite likely there will be more.

that'd cause an org wide panic, and you might lose key personel in your actually profitable business units. cutting costs at this scale is not just reducing employees, it's getting rid of employees who are working in areas you need to cut. the secrecy lets management retain control.

> cutting costs at this scale is not just reducing employees, it's getting rid of employees who are working in areas you need to cut.

Sure, but if people are going to leave after cost cutting is announced, then you can often shuffle people from those areas into other areas without dealing with whole hiring rigamarole.

Presumably because you want to lay off 15%, not 50%.