33. Congratulations, you're fired
Is it better to be unfirable or unhirable?
After I was laid off last year, I gained a new topic of personal fascination: corporate hiring/firing culture.
For me, getting laid off was fine. The company's culture and operations were by no means as glowing as they might have appeared from the outside, and I was looking to make a pivot anyway.
Serendipitously, I had already anchored myself in a new pursuit--pottery--that had stoked something really deep within me. Being job-free, I took the opportunity to consciously shed a layer of assumed professional identity, and I returned to my roots as a writer, artist, and writing coach. I love it.
Granted, being laid off is still fundamentally disorienting and emotionally jarring. In my periphery, I try to make sense of the world’s job market. Why does it seem that not only is it more common for swaths of people to get laid off for no real reason, but that such layoffs are also done in tandem with hiring sprees and record profits? Also, to what extent is AI playing a role in this?
As a project for this week, I looked through some publicly available letters from CEOs announcing mass layoffs. The first pattern I noticed was that a mass layoff letter never includes the CEO as one of those getting canned. It's always about culling amidst the sea of employees, never from among the leadership itself.
Many letters follow a more or less predictable pattern:
Hello old chums
I've got to bring some hard news to you
It's not what you think
It is what you think
We're a great company
We're a better company without these 1700 people
No one made this mistake
"The strength of our mission"
These are important moments that sharpen our focus
I’m looking forward to my bonus this year
The ostensible purpose of such a letter is to provide a satisfying answer to the question "why." Why on earth are you firing hundreds or thousands of employees? But such letters are usually neither truthful nor even substantive. Writing them is optional. They are an expressive component—a stand-in bit of content, little more than a formulated offgassing in the form of a memorandum—of an unspoken objective. What feels so unsatisfying about these letters is that they have the potential to establish a human connection and create the possibility for something bigger to happen, but they don’t take advantage of this opportunity because doing so is scary and vulnerable. Such personal communications, in an era under constant threat of litigation, is a liability.
The reasons given for such layoffs are usually terrible. The one that gets beneath my skin most is "uncertainty."
I understand the need to be conservative amidst some uncertainties. As in, “I'm uncertain whether there will be mass rioting today, so let's not have a picnic.” But that's not what they mean by uncertainty. I think they're just using it as a hand-wavy term. Something-something about inflation and interest rates and a lot of investment in the US coming from other currencies, and so trimming headcount will ensure we're remaining cashflow-positive for this quarter.
Don't look behind the curtain
One thing a love of inner alchemy has taught me over the years is that what drives our decisions is seldom what it appears to be. I believe myself to be rational—perhaps even more rational than most. When life brings me difficult circumstances that challenge this viewpoint, with effort, I come to the realization that, in fact, most of my decisions are motivated by strong emotional pulls. I rushed to buy that car due to the fear that someone else might get it.
But there are still more mysterious layers beneath the ever-important layer of emotional awareness. These layers serve as even stronger pulls than the general flow of emotions. In this deep psychic substrate lives my deep wounding and recurring triggers, which I am most likely entirely unconscious of. At best, I see how they manifest in different emotional patterns or the effects they have on my life.
Everyone has fears of abandonment and rejection. We have all experienced some sort of childhood trauma. Often, those who most assert that their childhood was "great" and "normal" if you peel back a few layers are the most deeply wounded.
I'm curious how much this level of trauma and wounding drives world events. I believe it’s basically running the show.
Unless we make the effort to become more conscious, we run the risk of dehumanizing each other, seeing other humans as numbers.
Let's get into the numbers
Microsoft recently laid off "somewhere between 1000 and 1500 workers." This comes from one of the few companies profiting most from AI endeavors. In this layoff letter, the CEO clearly stated that it was because of AI that they were being laid off.
In another recent letter, Google laid off “approximately 12,000 workers.” Again, for some reason, the approximation says everything. Is it too much work to track such a number accurately? To me, it conveys that in the bigness comprising this company, individuals will rightly get crushed in the gears of growth. In our calculations, we shall round to the nearest whole thousand of immortal souls.
In the Google letter, the CEO expressed that he was "deeply sorry" and mentioned that "I take full responsibility for the decisions that led us here."
If that were true, wouldn't he be the one making the exit?
I think of driving a double-decker open-top tour bus. It's joyful, everything is great. Tourists are basking in the vista.
Alas, the driver decides to take a road that goes beneath a bridge. He sees a sign that warns of low clearance: 14 feet. No problem, he says to himself. The bus is 14 feet tall.
The clearance to pass safely beneath the bridge is high enough for the bus!
Alas, not for the people sitting up top.
The driver realizes this and then affirms to himself that such things are not his responsibility. His task is to drive the bus.
Perhaps the top-deck tourists will duck. If they are “agile,” they may see what's ahead and scramble into the lower deck.
Individual people can, at times, accomplish miracles. Everyone on the bus has some responsibility. But the final responsibility rests with the driver.
To wipe away one’s tears with $100 bills
As I read through the CEO layoff letters, I noticed another interesting phenomenon: the use of warm language.
Granted, warmth is very much needed. A silent termination is the coldest thing of all. But warmth conveyed merely in turns of phrase feels perverse when most of the letter’s real substance is in expounding the need to “reorganize our cost base,” which is something that apparently must be done, after all.
By finding fault with warm language, I mean adding a personal tone to what is, in fact, a coldly impersonal execution. By referring to employees using pet names, like “fellow Googlers.”
It's Thanksgiving dinner. A few weeks prior, an unusual cold spell hit the area. The family gathers around a meal. From nowhere, the guy whose job it is to carve the turkey arrives with some important news: “We're going to have to let go of Josh and Sara. The family's revenue model no longer supports their involvement.”
That’s how it felt when I read Spotify's letter laying off about 1500 employees. "To be blunt, many smart, talented, and hard-working people will be departing us," Ek said.
It would all seem to be a hard personal decision for the poor lad. It sure is nice of him to muster up the courage to be blunt. It’s almost as if he really cared about us.
Except, he says, the company just wasn’t “right-sized.”
Translation: it's not you, it's me.
Except, it’s you who is getting fired.
All this is just to say that if you ever find yourself on the other end of a layoff letter such as this, accept it as a grace. Such a culture is not worth devoting oneself to.
This is particularly true for Spotify, as the company is devoting so much effort to using AI to generate content so it doesn’t have to pay royalties to artists.
A smooth and clean cut
I have to admit that I did come across a layoff letter that I can commend as being well done. It’s the letter from Airbnb’s CEO Brian Chesky.
The letter clearly frames a total business realignment. It expresses uncertainty and a change of strategy. The reshaping of the business comes from a place of relative clarity and humility.
Although we formerly did things this way, we need to change as a company, and that company change necessitates some role changes.
Such a letter can’t be replicated. It has to come from a place where you’re sincerely trying to do the best you can given the circumstances.
It’s not a mere headcount culling. It’s not vague and awash in keyword-based sentiment.
Leadership is hard. I want my leaders to lead from a place where they feel who they are and what they’re doing.
And now for the really good ones
One of the most astounding facets of many of these layoff letters is their subdued optimism.
Not just the assurance that the company is doing great, but a barely-constrained jubilance, perhaps subconsciously at the cashflow savings of no longer needing to bankroll 1000-some paychecks.
This letter from Hasbro is pretty high up on the shit list. To me, it reads like:
you're out
we're excited
Really, I could point to any section and poke fun at it. But just look at that final sentence:
In the coming weeks, let's support each other, and lean in to drive through these necessary changes, so we can return our business to growth and carry out Hasbro’s mission.
Translation: “Let’s get these people out of here as soon as possible. To those of you who will survive this, don’t get pulled into feeling anything for anyone. Toe the line, keep your eye on the ball, get back to work. I truly could not care less for any of you.”
Many of the layoff letters I discovered were typically underwhelming:
We decided we needed to make cuts to align our spending with financial goals that would allow us to continue to grow at a high rate in future years.
Such language could inspire confidence in no one:
You are all shareholders in the company and deserve, equally as any other investor, to understand our future and why, despite the actions we must take today, our investors and board members remain optimistic and excited about the future of Dragos. So long as we stay focused on that plan and achieve it there will be no further layoffs.
It’s basically the same as the conclusion to this one written by AI as a joke:
Please know that this decision has been taken in the best interest of the company’s longevity and its ability to continue to contribute to the economy at large. We remain dedicated to our mission and will strive to do what is necessary to ensure we weather these challenges and continue to provide value to our clients, employees, and stakeholders.
Thank you for your understanding and resilience during these challenging times.
Make the hard part easy
For those difficult times when you need to inconvenience yourself with mass layoffs and want to make sure you don't embarrass yourself, here's a handy template for writing a layoff letter—it even includes mergers!
The existence of a layoff template is depressing, but its structure is also insightful. To me, these letters tend to read something like an apology after a fight, as if to say, "Hey pal, I realize I hired too aggressively, and I'm sorry."
Although, instead of "I'm sorry," it's “You're fired.”
As if last quarter had been a wild party. We had all had far too much to drink. But I'm sober now, and I have seen the error of your ways.
"We" were all a part of it, and yet "you" are the one getting outed. It’s victim-blaming. “You're great, but the company needs to be more efficient.”
These memos and the ways they intend to impact workers have ripple effects, not just on company revenue but also on the world economy and the emotional currents of the time.
The more we accept them as sane and reasonable, the more we internalize the neurosis. Everyone knows it's nonsense — we call it "corporate speak."
It’s understandable workers feel disillusioned. As well as the broader public.
Leadership involves a responsibility not only to ourselves, the board, the investors, and our employees but also to the public.
Such layoffs stir up deep unresolved feelings in anyone who feels disempowered or out of touch with their ability to live a life of contribution.
It’s hard to remember that “the powers that be” are human as well. They’re not just numbers either. They have their personal challenges, whether they're conscious of them, interested in working through them, or not.
What would I do in their place?
I've never had to lay anyone off. I've never been the CEO of a large corporation.
You won't be surprised to read that I don't have any ambitions to be the CEO of a large corporation. But supposing I were in that position, I can grant you that I would either:
make a different decision
communicate it to the best of my ability
From my armchair perspective, the AirBnB letter is the best example of how this could be done well.
Businessin’ is hard. That's something I do know from personal experience. You can't grow a business and expect it to ever get to a point where it's all easy.
Vulnerability is creative
One point that keeps getting affirmed to me through my experience is that although what you do matters, the person you are matters more.
If you’re an artist, it matters that what you create is beautiful and inspiring. But it matters more that you show up for the experience, that it affects you, and that the process was a transformative one. If, as artists, we make perfectly beautiful things, but haven’t ourselves been affected by the process, we have failed to do the one thing most worth doing.
I've been fired by email before. I did not appreciate this subject line appearing in my inbox.