This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Bobby Powers, 39, a leadership coach in Seattle. While working in HR at a media startup, he helped oversee layoffs and was later laid off himself. Business Insider has verified his prior employment and subsequent layoff. The following has been edited for brevity and clarity.
One day, my boss called and said, “We’re going to have to do a big layoff, and you and I are the ones running it.” It was a matter of us coordinating with the exec team to try to get the list of who was going to be in the layoff.
It was a really jarring experience because it involved people you knew pretty closely, and it was a constant, day-to-day question of who was on the list and who wasn’t.
We knew we had to do pretty deep cuts. It was all these people who were doing great at their jobs. The goal generally was to cut enough that we wouldn’t have to do another layoff. It was kind of a moving target because we were getting updated budget projections. As soon as the revenue projections went down, we realized we had to cut even more.
Part of the back-and-forth was figuring out where we needed people most. It was soul-crushing.
That’s the tough thing about the corporate world: Whenever you’re dealing with a big layoff or any other big, companywide decision, at the end of the day, you’re putting humans in a spreadsheet, which doesn’t feel great.
We tried to preserve humanity
For my boss and me, our job was to try to preserve humanity through this whole thing. The majority of our conversations were: “How would we want it done to us? How have we seen and heard about it being done poorly in other companies?”
Discussions included the chronology of when to make a call to the person. Who’s on that call? We scripted it out almost down to the minute: Everyone’s getting calls at the same time. When are we sending a companywide email? When are we deactivating their Slack and email? Do we let them say goodbye? Do they have each other’s cellphone numbers? Are they connected on LinkedIn? Do they have personal emails? How are they going to say goodbye to their friends?
You can’t give too long, but if you give zero time and shut off access immediately, that feels really inhumane. There were just 100 or 1,000 questions I had never thought about.
If we didn’t have a big security concern, we wanted to try to give at least a little bit of time so that they could message their people and say, “Hey, I’m one of the ones impacted. Thank you for the time we’ve had together.”
The vast majority of these layoffs were video calls because it was a remote company and because we wanted the human touch of having a video, because it feels a little bit better.
We weren’t sure what to name the call. I had never thought of that before. What do you do if you can’t get ahold of someone, or if they decline the meeting invite because they have a conflict? The logistics ended up being so nuanced.
The layoff calls were some of the hardest conversations I’ve ever had to have. For some of these people, you know that they’ve had financial struggles, or just bought a house. Whatever the thing is, you know what is on the other side of the table.
On the chopping block this time
Soon after the layoff, it was business as usual again. I even got a promotion, and I was making more money than I’d ever made. About a month and a half later, I was at a learning and development conference in Las Vegas.
I was taking notes and soaking up all this information when I got a call from my boss. She said, “We’re doing another layoff, and rather than us having these conversations with other people, I think we’re on the chopping block this time.” I was partially floored, and partially it felt normal.
On the morning of the layoffs, I went to see if there had been a blast sent out yet, and I couldn’t get into my email. The cord had been pulled. It is weird thinking, “I can’t reach out to say goodbye.” All of that you feel in that moment.
When I had read about layoffs before, I had always judged the situation, thinking it was probably low performers who were let go. Then, going through the process of laying people off, you realize that’s not at all what it is.
Seeing the process now from both sides has given me greater empathy for what people go through — and the judgment that can come with it. Now, when I see layoffs get posted online, I don’t jump to the same conclusions I used to.
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