Layoff lessons: Four things I wish I knew
Hi! I’m Molly. I write about what it actually takes to lead inside growing, changing companies: the frameworks that help, the honest truth about what it feels like, and the messy work of shaping a career that actually fits.
Lessons is where those ideas live — both the writing and the conversations around it. (If you want to learn more about how Lessons and the community work, you can read more here.)
A few years ago, during the first string of layoffs in tech, I started writing a post on how to plan a layoff. They weren’t as common as they are now. I stopped halfway through because I naively thought, “oh, all the layoffs are over.” And then they just kept coming. Soon, I found myself sending the draft to more and more founders and Glue Club members, so I finally decided to revisit it.
In the interim, a lot has been written about layoffs and how to do them. One great example is Beth Steinberg’s piece in the First Round Review. I strongly agree with her advice on alternatives to layoffs, what to offer "leavers," and not forgetting about your customers and partners.
Because I agree with so much of what others have written about the process of doing a layoff, I am only going to share a few additional things I wish someone had told me before my first layoff.
I know a lot of people would say that no company should ever have to do a layoff. And while I think that would be lovely, it’s not realistic. Circumstances change even under the best management. Nobody could have predicted what happened in 2020 — companies went from healthy revenue streams to zero overnight.
That said, there are definitely many, many layoffs happening now due to mismanagement. One of the things that has forever infuriated me in tech is persistent over-hiring and growth that isn’t grounded in actual business strategy. I think many of the layoffs that have happened over the last couple of years were the result of avoidable over-hiring. It takes a lot of disciplined management and disciplined growth to not end up in this situation in the first place.
Regardless of how the company got into the situation, layoffs are a terrible experience for everyone on all sides – the planners, the leavers, and the stayers. This is written for the planners because you have some control over trying to make your layoff the best version of a bad situation, which is what I want to help with.
Without further ado, here are my layoff lessons.
1. Prevent multiple layoffs by asking hard questions about your strategy NOW
The golden rule of layoffs is that you NEVER want to have to do 2. Among other reasons, you erode all trust with the employees who stayed after the first one.
To prevent double layoffs, you need to:
Cut to what you think is bone, because after the layoff you usually find out it’s still not bone.
To do this, you need to ask hard questions about your business strategy. Because you probably need to reassemble the skeleton.
