Zooming into lay-offs

Having had a long career in high tech, I've been through my share of layoffs. Sometimes I was the layoffer. A couple of times I was the layoffee. Most often, I was just an innocent bystander, the one who comforted friends, helped carry boxes to cars, met now-former colleagues for a drink after work where we all cursed "them." (You know, the a-holes responsible for the whole thing.)

I've come to the concluion that, unless someone is getting laid off voluntarily - and I've been that person: begging for the pink slip  - there is no really good way to get laid off. And there are plenty of bad ways.

Sometimes, it's just plain silly. I know I've written about this before, but years ago my colleagues (and, after all these years, friends) Sean and John, along with me, were laid off via phone call. To say we were expecting it is an understatement. 

There'd been a pitched battle in our company between The Tall Guys and The Short Guys, and the Short Guys had won. Our boss was one of The Tall Guys, and Sean, John and I were visibly aligned with him and the other Tall Guys. We were way too senior to duck and cover, and we knew when The Short Guys started winning we were doomed. Among the others signs that we were doomed: we had a peer (acquired during a merger) that our Tall Guy manager couldn't stand. Among other things, this fellow had thrown in with The Short Guys. Anyway, this particular company had sporadic, onesy-twosie layoffs, and our manager had laid our peer off. But he refused to leave. Instead, he kept walking around, smirking at us and our Tall Guy manager. 

Well, that handwriting was on the wall in perfect penmanship.

Lay-off day was Friday. My work from home day. My colleagues Sean and John both worked in other locations.

I got the call from my Tall Guy manager at about 9 a.m. While he was laying me off, I got an IM off to Sean and John. "Be prepared for incoming." Sure enough, just after I was fired, Sean IM'd me that our Tall Guy manager was on the phone. And he kept going west. Next up was John in Houston. 

The three of us had long entertained ourselves during company all-hands meetings by IM-ing each other. And we kept it up while we were being pink slipped.

(It almost goes without saying that, a couple of weeks later, our Tall Guy manager - and the other Tall Guys - were pretty much all out on their rears.)

Anyway, Sean, John and I all stayed friends, and, separately, each of them sent me a note last week about layoffs conducted via Zoom.

On Tuesday morning, around 100 TripActions customer support and customer success team members dialed into a Zoom call. Many joined the call happily smiling, expecting another team meeting or bonding activity amid the new work from home culture. Instead, according to people on the call Protocol spoke with, their boss launched into a spiel about the economy and coronavirus.

Then she announced that everyone on the call was being laid off.

"People were crying and people were panicking," said one employee who was abruptly let go on the videoconference. "It was like 100 different videos of just chaos." (Source: Protocol)

These 100 were just one cohort getting the axe. Overall, Trip Actions canned 300 workers, roughly 1/4 of their headcount. All fired, en masse, on Zoom.

It's not surprising that a company focusing on travel would want to respond pretty quickly to the travel industry's nosedive. And it's not the company's fault that COVID-19 had turned their workforce into work-at-homers. Still, there's something really disturbing about a mass action done via conferencing software where everyone's face is up there on display. 

Yes, they did follow up with each employee individually.  And the package, while not great, was something: pay through March, then 3 weeks severance, and healthcare/COBRA coverage through June. But how very painful and awful:

Employees who joined the calls late were confused about what was happening and whether they'd just lost their jobs. In the customer support chat, administrators had muted all employee videos, silencing any cries or expressions of anger at the layoffs. Workers surreally watched as everyone realized what was happening and began processing in their separate Zoom squares, some soundlessly crying.

(A former colleague was part of a group layoff in the pre-online conferencing days. Everyone in the (small software) company was asked to come into a meeting room and at the door, each employee was handed a colored card.  White cards got to keep their jobs, blue cards were goners. )

Really, it would have been more humane for TripAction to have sent everyone an email and let them know they were being let go, and that their manager (or whoever) would be calling them shortly with the details. 

I can't imagine the horror of looking at the anguished or totally pissed faces of all those folks, with the system on mute to stifle their voices. 

Other companies are doing layoffs in a similar way. A fellow St. Francis House volunteer - whose former company was mentioned in the Protocol article - was also informed via Zoom, but not as a live event. It was a pre-recorded pink slip announcement. 

There is really no good way to conduct a layoff. However much everyone is anticipating a layoff, people will feel blindsided, pissed off, scared. The experience is just plain terrible. Make that Terrible with a Capital T. Especially now. Other than in the most dire of economies, the feeling in tech has pretty much always been "you'll land somewhere". Mostly, in my experience, somewhere better. But in this economy? Who's hiring - other than Amazon looking for warehouse workers and deliverers, and grocery stores and CVS looking to replace workers who'll be dropping like flies. There aren't going to be a lot of fun, "knowledge worker" tech jobs out there for a while. 

Thanks to Sean and John for both shooting this story my way. There's not much I miss about working full time in corporate - except for working with folks like them.

And good luck to those losing their jobs at this time. I feel badly for all of them: restaurant workers, retail clerks, et al. whose jobs are vanishing overnight. But I have a special place in my heart for those who work in technology companies. They may get better packages and have a bit more of a cushion than the bartenders and cleaning people who have lost their work, and they're not gig workers or tip-dependent, so they'll be able to collect decent unemployment. But I know what if feels like. And it's just awful. And getting laid off via Zoom doesn't make it any better.