Taking layoffs too lightly | This Week in Business
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This Week in Business is our weekly recap column, a collection of stats and quotes from recent stories presented with a dash of opinion (sometimes more than a dash) and intended to shed light on various trends. Check every Friday for a new entry.
This industry takes layoffs too lightly.
Oh sure, we talk a big game about avoiding them whenever possible. And when it isn't possible, we talk about what an incredibly difficult decision it somehow still manages to be.
But for as long as I've covered this industry, layoffs have been seen as a fact of life, both by the people making the cuts and the ones being cut.
Developers know they are never guaranteed tomorrow. Executives are pretty sure they can trim headcount by 5% or so at any given time and still expect things to get things done. And any kind of serious industry-watcher understands layoffs to be just another part of the game. Perhaps a distasteful or sad task, but one that people understand well-run organizations will engage in from time to time.
Former EA and Unity CEO John Riccitiello told us so a couple years ago after the company laid off about 200 people (three-quarters of whom were able to successfully reapply to other roles at Unity). He bristled at the idea that such layoffs were anything notable, and proceeded to give an explanation that provided such a clear view into the executive mentality around layoffs that I have been bringing it up semi-regularly in this column ever since.
QUOTE | "We laid off a net of 1% through reallocation. To imagine that as being abnormal in the scheme of anything, especially when you're headlong into a recession, would be anything but real. Real is thousands and thousands of well-run companies make adjustments like this in order to serve the better purpose of its customers and frankly, the better purpose of the people who work at the company…
"We didn't cut 1% of jobs because we were trying to
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