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How to Lose Friends and Influence People


I learned a few days ago that the Company That Formerly Employed Me has now laid off some 10 – 20% of its workforce. I guess I was the “canary in the mine”. I still feel bad… but less paranoid.


I also learned that I wasn’t the only one to be less-than-politely shown out the back door (“You can’t go anywhere alone, you can’t go out the front, and you can’t come back”). Apparently everyone was “escorted” out the door by their manager (who was, in some cases, also shown the door) and either the VP of HR or one of the company lawyers. As a friend who was tossed put it:


It was very rude. They didn’t give anyone a chance to delete personal stuff off computers or time to gather belongings. They just said that they would “ship everything in your cube to you.”


Ouch.



This is a small, still privately-held Company in the email security / anti-spam business. The Company has large customers. They court the Fortune 500 and the Global 2000. They have voiced hopes and plans of going public.


If I were a potential customer, evaluating one of the Company’s products, I’d think twice right about now. If I were a potential investor, I’d ask some probing questions.


First the Company hired as if money grew on trees — doubling their workforce in less than a year, moving into a new building (and performing substantial physical remodeling of that building), hiring half a dozen new vice presidents. Then they turned around and cast a large number of employees — across all departments — overboard without so much as a warning or a “thank you for your services”.


My friend says he had just received his best performance review to date. He went from appreciated software engineer with a future to unemployed persona non grata in 30 seconds… wondering if he’ll get back all of the personal belongings he left in his cubicle.


I have to ask: Why do things this way? Why make enemies? This is a company that claimed to value its employees — to value “speaking up” and doing the right things. This is a company that claimed to hire “the best and the brightest” and to value the opinions of the employees.


And now we discover that They Lied to Us.


OK. I know that companies have no morality. But companies are comprised of people — and the people who run this Company have treated their former co-workers shabbily. They have said “We don’t trust you. We gave you a good review last quarter but, that was when you worked for us. Now you don’t work for us and we don’t trust you.”


What makes companies think they can ask for, let alone demand, loyalty and hard work from their employees if this is the sort of treatment we (the employees) can expect?


Every one of these now-former employees has friends, neighbors, former co-workers and professional associates. We’re all networked. We subscribe to the same mailing lists, read the same weblogs. We talk to each other.


I have had friends and former co-workers inquire about this Company. In the past, I have recommended it.


What do you think I’ll tell anyone who inquires now?

Responses

  1. KH Avatar
    KH

    What happened to you is not only common practice but recommended procedure. It is the lawyers that direct the management on how to act. I have lived through a number of purges and they all are pretty much as you describe. I have been on the other side too and it is not fun either. Two things I would add:
    1. If it has come to this common “purge” step be glad you are out. As someone who was “left behind” I can tell you it gets ugly for those that have to pick up the pieces. Usually the purge (RIF) is mandated by the finance guys so the bottom line looks attractive before a new round of financing or going public or going into negotiations for a sale to another company. Most if not all of the removed staff may be welcomed back with open arms as consultants within 6 months so their work gets done but the books now look attractive. It is nothing but a shell game.
    2. The marching out is something I hated until I spent two months cleaning up a Trojan Horse that almost got into the wild left by a layoff victim who didn’t get escorted out promptly. I would have never thought it would be so but while it never went public we had a close call from just such a guy. It finally involved all the virus protection vendors and the feds. The guy that did it had a week to clean out before the RIF and contacted some buddies from the international hacking networks to help him out. I would have never have believed it if I hadn’t been in the eye of the storm of that one. There are some reasons they do RIF’s swiftly and brutally. Believe me from behind the scenes virtually everybody involved hates it. Some of the more creative management can find ways to get personal stuff out to you but they usually only can do it at risk to their own career from the legal departments.
    Yes RIF’s are unbelievably ugly and traumatic but what they really are is a sign a company is trying to “grow up” too fast. Take your check & know you have had one more rite of passage in your life.

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  2. Vicki Avatar
    Vicki

    Ah yes… another reason to blame the lawyers.
    I sympathize with your tale of the Trojan but I don’t believe the problem was “caused” by not escorting this person out of the building immediately. I have to ask: how was he treated prior to the RIF? Do you know for a fact that it was the layoff, and only the layoff, that made him angre? Was this employee treated with respect?
    There’s a wide range of ways to treat people. Giving angry employees full access to the system vs. treating good employees as criminals are only two, widely separated, parts of that spectrum.
    I find it much more likely to believe that the glaring disrespect shown during a layoff will have deliterious effects. It’s not necessary any more to have physical access. Your former victim could do the same thing today from a distance… and after being marched out the door without his books, photos, and personally “stuff”, he would be even more likely to harbor a grudge.
    Disrespect is never warranted, in my opinion.
    FUD-engendered disrespect for employees is Wrong. From my own point of view, I sincerely hope it bites this particular company badly in the future.

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