> The planning is happening openly, including a voluntary separation window. That creates real uncertainty for our team over the next few weeks, but we believe the outcome will be better for it.
No good way to execute lay-offs, my preference would be to do it like a band-aid. What use is it to do it in open unless they plan on having gladiatorial matches to keep your job. Otherwise it's just like a painful game of Duck Duck Goose.
The problem is that such voluntary separation programs tends to disproportionate attract high performers. You're losing the "10x engineer" who has stuck around because they like being here - despite getting attractive offers from the competition.
The mediocre people who dread looking for a new job during a hidden recession aren't going to leave. They can't afford the risk of not being able to find a new place of employment before the severance pay runs out.
These high performers will leave anyway if they see their environment drastically changing or feel the tide turning, except they'll do so months after you ripped the band-aid.
It's not that different from making it part of the process in the first place.
If they were thinking far ahead, they wouldn't need to do any firing at all - they would've gradually adjusted their hiring policy in time to avoid it.
It's defensible to have a voluntary separation program with clear terms. Microsoft, for example, announced on April 23 that a voluntary separation program would launch on May 7. On that day they announced the precise terms of separation, with affected employees given until June 8 to participate. Perfectly reasonable.
What Gitlab is announcing here is that employees need to apply for a separation, at a yet-to-be-determined time under still-unknown terms, without a guarantee of acceptance, in the next 7 calendar days. Much different and just so much worse.
the order here is backwards. publish the package first and let people apply without committing. right now GitLab gets the signal before employees even get the terms.
if you don't like the new direction you can leave now and get the known now severance package. All in all, I think it is right to offer people voluntary severence with package when you pull the rug out from under them as far as where they thought they were working.
Unless they're going to offer offer an insane buyout, like 1+ years of pay + benefits + some accelerated vesting, nobody who doesn't already have something lined up is going to take this offer. It's much better to stay with one foot out the door and just keep cashing that paycheck and collecting your monthly vest. Especially when you know layoffs are coming, nobody expects you to do anything until they actually pull the trigger, then there's a month or two afterwards where you can slack off because morale is in the toilet, people are still trying to figure out who's left, how the company is organized, which priorities are dead, stuff like that. Ask me how I know.
It’s not - but voluntary separation with severance often leads to those with the best prospects moving on; which are often the best employees-but not always.
They aren't telling us anything because of "privacy" concerns. Here is what the official response from Sid was:
"There was an article published in The Register today regarding the recent departures of female leaders from our company. There were multiple inaccuracies in the article. Because we value the privacy of our current and former employees, we do not discuss personnel issues publicly."
EDIT: the official response does go on to point to recent blog posts and other diversity "efforts" as well as ways to anonymously send in complaints or concerns.
People only file complaints if they feel safe to do so and the complaints are handled appropriately.
A way to lead on transparency might be to share number of investigations, internal and external, and what the findings were. There are ways to share findings without revealing names. Additionally, a company can benefit from transparent remediation discussions, which are very important.
Transparency is easy when it comes to being transparent about things you want to get out into the world. The old humble brag approach to transparency, if you will. But, values are only values if they are upheld when it's hard.
I'm not aware of any laws that require investigation findings to be private. However, ignoring material risks has huge penalties. This isn't legal advice, but willfully violating laws, in the US, is oftentimes the basis for treble damages,
I've anonymously reported an incident as a GitLab employee. It was ignored. I encouraged someone else to report an incident and it was handled dreadfully by the interim Chief People Officer at the time. The person ended up leaving due to the terrible experience and real fear of retaliation.
They're now supposed to be handled by the Chief Legal Officer which I find odd.
Because the CPO is gone. GitLabbers - don't trust the CLO. She told us not to talk to the CPO the week she left, which is very odd too and makes us think something went wrong.
i personally know the CPO who just left would have handled your concern seriously. she really helped me and another person whom I know confided in her too.
Yeah, this sounds about right. We're discussing it a lot internally and it doesn't look like much will happen. They are working to discredit the register, saying it is inaccurate. Although they won't explain what exactly is inaccurate about it. Jamie even commented on here that they aren't being honest even about why she was fired (https://qht.co/item?id=22231548).
At this point the legitimacy of my account has even been called into question internally. It certainly seems like they are interested in discrediting everyone they possibly can. We wouldn't want anyone to actually be moved to action or anything.
> At this point the legitimacy of my account has even been called into question
> internally. It certainly seems like they are interested in discrediting
> everyone they possibly can. We wouldn't want anyone to actually be moved to
> action or anything.
I am the one who questioned the account, so I think I can comment on the matter. Specifically I said the following in
Slack (in reply to some discussion about the things going on on Hacker News):
> The "culture of fear" thing was something mentioned a few months back on
> HN as well, though it remains to be seen if the account in question is
> genuine
I'm not sure how you can interpret that as "they are interested in discrediting
everyone they possibly can". In fact, I think it's disrespectful to throw
somebody who simply questioned an account's legitimacy on the same pile as
those who "are interested in discrediting everyone they possibly can".
That's fair. You definitely are NOT part of the problem at all and I should have been more clear and separated the two frustrations. I apologize for letting my emotions mislead and lumping you in as part of the problem.
Thanks. I realise all of this can be very difficult. If it's of any use, feel free to chat me up on Slack about this. I'm not sure to what extend I can help, or if you'd even be comfortable with it (since Slack has no anonymous communication mode), but just know the offer is there :)
Yeah understood that it's intentional, but something being intentional doesn't make it a good idea. Once you outgrow a small number of people this is ultimately going to end up being relationship-destructive and a nuisance -- which is what I see all over these threads. But I get that there's certain personality types and people who experienced the good of that system mourn its loss, which sucks too.
Honestly, I so very much appreciate you saying this. We have so little recourse to discuss these things. I've talked to everyone I feel safe talking to internally at this point and it seems the execs are just running wild. Clearly they aren't even listening to their legal team. It is nice for someone to offer a sympathetic ear, truly.
