Meta plans to lay off about 10 percent of its nearly 80,000 employees on Wednesday, with notices going out to affected workers’ personal and corporate email addresses at 4 am in their local time zone, according to a company-wide memo sent on Monday.
What an insane way to do things. How is ensuring that the majority of your employees either stay up way too late or wake up really early (after a likely restless night’s sleep) smack in the middle of the week going to improve efficiency in any way?
Bain or whoever greased the layoff meat grinder for Meta probably recommended it, mainly to avoid anyone coming into work that was laid off and causing a scene.
The industry servicing huge companies basically have one job: help the billionaire owners avoid having to confront any human-to-human responsibility for the damage they do.
Not coming into work I totally get, but that’s why most companies do this on a Friday during the afternoon, cut off access during the conversation, and walk the person out, if they’re on site. Doing in the middle of the week and compensating by giving the employees a WFH day is an abnormal choice, but whatever, maybe their pay periods start on Thursdays or something.
Announcing layoffs during the middle of the night and thereby ensuring that your retained employees are less productive on Wednesday (if not the rest of the week, we’re generally affected by sleep disruption a lot more and longer than we realize and having everyone a little bit affected will magnify the effects across the entire company) and the newly laid off former employees receive that news when they’re not as emotionally stable as if they had an uninterrupted night of sleep is bizarre.
I didn’t mention it initially but I also heard was that by doing it on Wednesday, they may be avoiding letting a significant proportion of the employees get their stock vests.
But yeah, it’s not smart, and I assume they just don’t care about productivity hits and hidden costs, if the superficial cost metrics are better.
Yeah, there are a lot of potential business purposes for it falling on a Wednesday, it’s really just that I can’t imagine 4 am working as well or better than basically any other time of day for this.
Although laying a tenth of your staff off immediately before some of their benefits vest is also bound to disgruntle employees, so maybe it’s just hubris.
What an insane way to do things. How is ensuring that the majority of your employees either stay up way too late or wake up really early (after a likely restless night’s sleep) smack in the middle of the week going to improve efficiency in any way?
Bain or whoever greased the layoff meat grinder for Meta probably recommended it, mainly to avoid anyone coming into work that was laid off and causing a scene.
The industry servicing huge companies basically have one job: help the billionaire owners avoid having to confront any human-to-human responsibility for the damage they do.
Not coming into work I totally get, but that’s why most companies do this on a Friday during the afternoon, cut off access during the conversation, and walk the person out, if they’re on site. Doing in the middle of the week and compensating by giving the employees a WFH day is an abnormal choice, but whatever, maybe their pay periods start on Thursdays or something.
Announcing layoffs during the middle of the night and thereby ensuring that your retained employees are less productive on Wednesday (if not the rest of the week, we’re generally affected by sleep disruption a lot more and longer than we realize and having everyone a little bit affected will magnify the effects across the entire company) and the newly laid off former employees receive that news when they’re not as emotionally stable as if they had an uninterrupted night of sleep is bizarre.
I didn’t mention it initially but I also heard was that by doing it on Wednesday, they may be avoiding letting a significant proportion of the employees get their stock vests.
But yeah, it’s not smart, and I assume they just don’t care about productivity hits and hidden costs, if the superficial cost metrics are better.
Yeah, there are a lot of potential business purposes for it falling on a Wednesday, it’s really just that I can’t imagine 4 am working as well or better than basically any other time of day for this.
Although laying a tenth of your staff off immediately before some of their benefits vest is also bound to disgruntle employees, so maybe it’s just hubris.