[Guide to Executives] The right way to do layoff

Background: Layoffs are unavoidable in situations like these where businesses are losing money for various reasons and unable to hit their financial plan. I am sure that it's difficult for any executive (specially CEO) to do this and during this time its difficult to focus on future as past is so overwhelming. Though as a leader this is an opportunity to do it right way! Guidelines: 1. Be ahead of social media Information travels with the speed of light. Its demotivating, destroys trust and impacts present and future work when you get knowledge about layoffs through news outlets. The only thing that employees can focus on is finding signs and asking anonymous people on Blind to help them figure out puzzle that whether they are impacted or not. "Get your ass out there, show bias for action and be present with your employees. Show the leader that you are and standby your leadership principles" 2. Be clear about why you're laying off Employees trusted you! They trusted that the company is good, they trusted their career and that working on some xyz project would be best for them. When you were hiring aggressively and drilling employees for 12 hours daily, they trusted you and spearheaded into the battlefield to win the war for you. Be clear in conveying the message "What went wrong and how company performance failed". I don't want to hear it from some random article that Alexa is losing 10B this year, I want to hear it from you. Be ready with the answer: "Why the company failed to meet goals and why in order to move forward you will have to lose some excellent people" 3. Be Present It was such a shame to see that CEOs publish as PR after laying off a bunch of people as a sorry note. Be present for your employees and let them know that you're there for them every day and in future. No wonder 90% of people in companies are focusing preparation rather than working as they have lost the trust! "Remember: The message is for the people, who're staying" 4. Advice VP, Directors, Managers to support the team Train the managers well on how to manage layoff. In my opinion this how it should've been done: 1. 1-1 between manager and employee 2. Manager explaining details of layoff and how company failed 3. Manager writing strong letter of recommendation for each laid off employee and reaching out to other companies on LinkedIn to help with the move (some good managers are doing this but other anti-leader just put an emoji saying "I support this". What a joke!!) Conclusion: As a leader you need to keep your learning and use your and other's past experience to raise the bar. Unfortunately, the CEO bar in tech is lowest than ever. If any CEO is reading this, happy to hear your views in case you want to add or contribute. Yoe: 8yr (Yes a lowly Senior SDE). As my leaders say everyone is replaceable TC: 300k #tech #layoff #amazon #meta #google #faang #twitter #guide