It's a pretty impersonal way to announce layoffs but I think they all tend to be impersonal. I do think the 6 months of pay says a lot more than the fact that they used a video.
honestly this is the least cruel layoff I've seen in recent years. At least someone went through the trouble of recording a video (instead of dismissing people with a chatgpt-generated email) and it includes a 6-month payout...
6 months severance is very good compared to my last company who gave people a week per year of service when they had layoffs. They did have the direct manager personally deliver the news, but I'd take a slap across the face from the CEO for that 6 months if I was looking at a couple weeks.
Well, at least it is a video. Meta had its layoffs with emails when they did all those rounds in 22-23 and 24.
You got an email if you were safe, and another if you were terminated plus some links to some portal etc. Plus, there was some video/zoom call for some I think.
Anyways... modern corp culture, don't expect too much from larger companies. Once a company grows beyond a certain limit, it becomes impersonal as it has to.
In case anyone was wondering, the "CSS Team" described in the video's title is Customer Service & Support, rather than Cascading Style Sheets.
My personal hope based on their products' performance would be that they hire some people who know how to make performant code, but that's clearly never going to happen.
Sadly the time when an org wanted people to excel and really grow at is over, the new normal is peak capitalism of maximizing value.
People develop relationships with coworkers, you care if someone has issues, you're happy if a solution makes customers/coworkers happy but none of that matters to the lawnmower, it just mows lawns.
So let me get this straight, they emailed what? 12,000 employees, and told them they would be fired or not in about 15 minutes? Please tell me they didn't email 12,000 employees this ticking time bomb of a revelation. If I were at Atlassian and survived the lay offs I would be sprucing up my resume. There's no good way to lay off people, but this is even worse.
I think the layoff sucks, but there are proper ways to communicate it, and this was not the right way.
The proper process is for the manager to carry out this sensitive procedure—quickly, but with empathy. (I'm not a manager, but I'm sure it's easy to be a "Happiness Manager"; the coin has two sides.)
Even if individual meetings weren't possible, they could have just held a 150-to-1 live session. Saying the exact same thing as the video would have been different. Why? Because it wouldn't be a pre-recorded video.
For those who are willing to accept an employer sending a goodbye SMS, I have to wonder how much commitment you really had to that workplace. If you had none, fine, who cares. But if your commitment was more than just a transactional job, like someone selling groceries from 8:00 to 17:00, I don't think you'd want to work for a company that follows such processes.
There’s something oddly fitting about the company that forced the Jira monopoly on so many companies also being cruel and cold with prerecorded firing videos.
The people being laid off didn't get told by a video. The video was sent to the general staff and informed everyone that those who were being let go would get an email direct to them shortly after.
So, they announced the layoffs with a pre-recorded video versus a company-wide meeting - or - as is more common in my experience: No warning or explanation beforehand.
"Why Nintendo's Satoru Iwata refuses to lay off staff"
> "If we reduce the number of employees for better short-term financial results, employee morale will decrease," he said. "I sincerely doubt employees who fear that they may be laid off will be able to develop software titles that could impress people around the world."
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[ 5.6 ms ] story [ 48.6 ms ] threadSo you get an email explaining you were made redundant and halfway through reading that your laptop locks itself out?
Note: you typically want it to all happen on the same day, which makes it impractical for someone in HR to call 150 separate people.
Note2: I’m not saying I agree with how this was handled. Just curious.
Anyways... modern corp culture, don't expect too much from larger companies. Once a company grows beyond a certain limit, it becomes impersonal as it has to.
A simple chatbot could pass along that information.
and not Atlassian products , but that part didn't make it to the final cut.
My personal hope based on their products' performance would be that they hire some people who know how to make performant code, but that's clearly never going to happen.
People develop relationships with coworkers, you care if someone has issues, you're happy if a solution makes customers/coworkers happy but none of that matters to the lawnmower, it just mows lawns.
So, they announced the layoffs with a pre-recorded video versus a company-wide meeting - or - as is more common in my experience: No warning or explanation beforehand.
> "If we reduce the number of employees for better short-term financial results, employee morale will decrease," he said. "I sincerely doubt employees who fear that they may be laid off will be able to develop software titles that could impress people around the world."
https://www.polygon.com/2013/7/5/4496512/why-nintendos-sator...
Just something to think about. I get that every company is different.