Letting people go

How to do it, or how to have it done to you. Also, 7 other things worth knowing today.

In 1997, when Steve Jobs returned to Apple, one of the first things he did was to lay off of about 4,100 workers—roughly 31 percent of the company. A contemporary account called it part of "a last-ditch effort to save the troubled computer maker."

(Ironic isn’t it, that his last name was “Jobs;” he created a lot of jobs, but he also fired a heck of a lot of people.)

Jobs had sat for a lengthy video interview a little less than two years before this, in which (almost unprompted) he described in detail why he thought that letting employees go was a key part of his role:

I've always considered part of my job was to keep the "quality level" of people in the organizations I work with very high. ...

That's ... one of the few things I actually can contribute individually myself, versus the team that I work [with], is to really try to instill in the organization the goal of having only A-players.

...

It's painful. It's very painful, when you have some people that are not the best people in the world and you have to get rid of them, but I've found that my job has sometimes been exactly that.

Ouch. I guess this struck me because so many tech companies have been laying off workers lately.

But, it’s also worth noting that when Jobs gave this interview in 1995, he had just emerged from the personal turbulence that resulted from his having been fired from Apple himself. That was such an important milestone for him that he dedicated one-third of his famous speech at Stanford in 2005 to the experience.

(I know I’ve mentioned this speech a few times lately, so I’m not going to quote from it at length), but:

[G]etting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me.

The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

(Key, important asterisk on this point: Jobs was worth about $100 million when he was fired from Apple. So it wasn’t like most of us, where losing a job might have a really significant impact on your lifestyle.)

Anyway, personal experiences. They’re limited, thankfully:

• I’ve never been let go from a job that I can think of. I’m not sure that the Park Terrace Swim Club in Plainville, Mass. would have hired me back for a second summer in the 1980s if I’d tried, but since then at least, I don’t think I’ve left a job that I couldn’t have gone back if I’d wanted to.

• I’ve only had to let other people go a few times, Usually, it was about economic conditions as opposed to personal performance. I hated doing it, and I don’t think I was especially good or bad at it.

Since we’ve had more than a few examples recently, with my expertise coming from the role of an observer rather than a practitioner (or practiconee), I suppose if you have to let people go, there are at least three key parts to doing it in a fair and ethical way:

• First, make it quick and clean. (The same thing goes for breakups, come to think of it, although my experience there was even longer ago). I like the recent trend among good CEOs which is to announce layoffs to the company, and then promise to let employees whose roles are affected know via email within minutes. (Stripe did this; so did Meta.)

• Second, be as generous as you can on the way out. Good severance packages and help to find new positions are key. Kudos again to Stripe, which created @alumni.stripe.com email addresses for departing employees so they’d always have a way to feel connected.

• Finally, do it with respect and optimism. Nobody wants to hear a Pollyannish spech when they're losing their job. But, to the extent you can help people who are leaving to feel hopeful and valued, do it. This is also a smart self-serving practice, as it’s the kind of treatment that people hear about, and that can ultimately help you recruit down the road.

OK. Heady subject. I’m curious to know: Have you been let go from a job? Have you had to let other people go, either once in a while or en masse? What made it better or worse? Or is there simply no good way to do it? Let us know in the comments.

---

7 other things worth knowing today

• How a suburb near Scottsdale, Ariz. is coping after the bigger nearby city decided it could no longer afford to sell it water. ("Skipped showers, paper plates.") (WashPost)

• The richest 1 percent of people amassed almost 2/3 of new wealth created in the last two years, according to the global poverty charity, Oxfam: $26 trillion out of $42 trillion total. (CNBC)

• Wyoming legislators introduced a bill to "phase out" (meaning, get rid of) electric vehicles by 2035. I have no idea if this will pass, but it's pretty wild. (WyoLeg.com)

• A Chicago bookstore owner says a customer returned $800 worth of books after using them to stage a home for the holidays: 'That one sale was a third of our rent.' (Insider)

• OK, all writing is autobiographical, which is why I'm sharing this 18-month old article today: "Amazon Echo: How to turn off Alexa's unwanted 'By the way' suggestions." (CNET)

• Also: Families are smaller and people are waiting longer to have children than in years past, according to an NBC News analysis of data released this week by the National Center for Health Statistics. (NBC News)

• The company that owns Madison Square Garden in New York has been using facial recognition tech to ban lawyers who represented clients who sued it from attending shows there. Now, some of the lawyers have found a legal way at least partway out, relying on disguises and a 90-year-old law intended to stop venues from banning newspaper critics. (NY Post)

---

Thanks for reading. Photo by James Yarema on Unsplash. I wrote about some of this before on Inc.com. See you in the comments!