Why so Sanguine about this Layoff?
Sep. 14th, 2025 03:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerI've been pretty sanguine about the layoffs at my company this past week. I'm surprised how sanguine I've been about it. That makes me wonder, why am I so sanguine, this time? And yes, it's "this time" because this isn't the first layoff we've had this year. We had one in January that also impacted my team heavily. And while there were none in 2024, there were two in 2023 and one in 2022.
I think an obvious dimension of the answer for why I'm so sanguine is that, after all of these rounds of layoffs, I've become numb to it. Each one of them has hit my department, along with others. Each one has resulted in the dismissal of decent workers who were getting the job done, along with some who weren't. It's always when good people get whacked that I take it harder. This time there were more good people whacked, as a proportion of those dismissed, than last time. That tells me I should be taking it harder. And that's where the numbing effect comes in.
It's possible I'll be less sanguine about this layoff as take more time to think about it. The effects of January's layoff got worse and worse for weeks as flawed planning and execution became clearer and smart, capable people chose to quit because they lost faith in Management. (In the tech industry we call the latter brightsizing, a play on words against the euphemism "right-sizing" that Corporate America created to put a positive spin on the term "downsizing".) Within two weeks every seasoned manager in my department quit.
Indeed I already see reason for growing alarm over this layoff. This layoff hit the sales team hard. Cutting sales people is a pretty extreme thing in business. Sales people generate the revenue! I mean, cutting development staff has consequences, too, but those consequences often take 12-18 months to materialize. Cutting sales staff means a hit to the company's numbers next quarter.
And it's not like Management was just "trimming the fat". We were already running lean. When you make significant cuts to a team that's lean, you're not just trimming fat— or excess capacity. You're trimming muscle. You're dismissing good people who were doing work that counted. And the people left can't just "pick up the slack". They weren't slacking.
Management even acknowledges that they cut people doing real work. They've told us to think in the coming days and weeks about what we won't do because it's just not high priority enough. And while they've phrased that with empathetic words and intonation, and framed it to imply that we individual contributors have agency, it's starting to stink like 5 day old fish.... Why are they asking us to figure out what work gets cut? That should have been part of their strategy in planning the layoff!
I think an obvious dimension of the answer for why I'm so sanguine is that, after all of these rounds of layoffs, I've become numb to it. Each one of them has hit my department, along with others. Each one has resulted in the dismissal of decent workers who were getting the job done, along with some who weren't. It's always when good people get whacked that I take it harder. This time there were more good people whacked, as a proportion of those dismissed, than last time. That tells me I should be taking it harder. And that's where the numbing effect comes in.
It's possible I'll be less sanguine about this layoff as take more time to think about it. The effects of January's layoff got worse and worse for weeks as flawed planning and execution became clearer and smart, capable people chose to quit because they lost faith in Management. (In the tech industry we call the latter brightsizing, a play on words against the euphemism "right-sizing" that Corporate America created to put a positive spin on the term "downsizing".) Within two weeks every seasoned manager in my department quit.
Indeed I already see reason for growing alarm over this layoff. This layoff hit the sales team hard. Cutting sales people is a pretty extreme thing in business. Sales people generate the revenue! I mean, cutting development staff has consequences, too, but those consequences often take 12-18 months to materialize. Cutting sales staff means a hit to the company's numbers next quarter.
And it's not like Management was just "trimming the fat". We were already running lean. When you make significant cuts to a team that's lean, you're not just trimming fat— or excess capacity. You're trimming muscle. You're dismissing good people who were doing work that counted. And the people left can't just "pick up the slack". They weren't slacking.
Management even acknowledges that they cut people doing real work. They've told us to think in the coming days and weeks about what we won't do because it's just not high priority enough. And while they've phrased that with empathetic words and intonation, and framed it to imply that we individual contributors have agency, it's starting to stink like 5 day old fish.... Why are they asking us to figure out what work gets cut? That should have been part of their strategy in planning the layoff!
