This might be a very weird thing to say (unless you've actually done layoffs before, and done them badly) but Brian Armstrong's layoff email is close to best practice as I've ever seen.
I'll likely be rereading it for years to come.
Conversation
Notice:
- He takes responsibility, and makes it clear that this is through no fault of the employees being cut today.
- He lays out context for the cut
- He explains why employee access to systems might be suddenly revoked, and apologises for how it might feel
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- He lays out how exactly employees will find out if they're cut or not
- He clearly lays out next steps and support if they are cut (and the support is generous).
Equally important is what he doesn't do:
- He doesn't say "oh we hired badly and didn't want these folk anyway"
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- He doesn't cut access to internal communications and systems first, causing confusion and consternation.
- He doesn't call people en-masse into a Zoom call to make the announcement.
- The email is sent to *personal* emails, which means that it's readily on file.
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Yes, I know, all of this is common sense, and actually laid out clearly in a chapter in 's The Hard Thing About Hard Things.
But apparently this isn't commonly practiced.
As Horowitz puts it: you do layoffs right for the *people who stay*, not just those who leave.
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Back in 2017, I wasn't directly in charge of executing layoffs, but I felt horrible — we did so many of the mistakes that I just described above.
Morale was trash for the good part of the next year.
I never want to be part of something that bad again.
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The communications and severance package seems reasonable, but how is he "taking responsibility"?
As a CEO, he literally gives up nothing by saying "accountability rests fully with me". Is there an actual action he took that I'm missing? What did he give up?