Comment by senko
11 hours ago
This is one of the best (if not the best) layoff letters I've seen online (no affiliation, don't know anyone working there, purely outsider perspective).
* Severance packages upfront because realistically that's what everyone worries about first.
* Reasoning second. I appreciate the one clean cut vs prolonged bleeding.
* Owning the decision and respecting the people that got you there. Opting for an awkward allhands vs breakup-via-text-message.
* Giving people a chance to say goodbye.
Not gonna go into strategic analysis of this, or Jack's leadership style in general.
But realistically, you can't pen a better (or, well, less bad) layoff announcement.
It should be good. It's the third time he's written this exact same announcement, including "taking the blame" and "making the difficult choice to cut a large group instead of smaller cuts over time" and "thanking the expendables that got the company where it is."
Ye at this point the dude is just copy pasting. Gotta go do the cocaine parties with JayZ
> I appreciate the one clean cut vs prolonged bleeding.
That's a false dichotomy, you could reduce headcount via attrition which is better in some ways.
There's also no reasoning on product impact. Is the strategy to cut products that aren't making money? Is the strategy to cut 40% across everyone because everyone can go faster?
> Owning the decision
Does it? It came across to me as an inevitability of AI, not "we over-hired". Layoffs are always a mis-management issue, because the opposite (hiring) is a management issue. If management failed to see where the market was going and now needs a different workforce, that's still a management issue.
> respecting the people that got you there
There's words, and there's money, and on these it's pretty good. But there's also an empathy with the experience they're about to go through and I'm not sure there's much of that here beyond the words. To do this well you'd need to think through what folks are about to go through and look for ways you can positively impact that beyond actions today. I've seen some companies do this better, helping teams get re-hired elsewhere, splitting off businesses to sell to other companies, incubating startups, there are lots of options. Hard, especially at this scale, but possible.
> But realistically, you can't pen a better (or, well, less bad) layoff announcement.
And this is the crux of my point, I really think you can. This was a good one, one of the better I've seen, but it's still within the realm of SV companies laying people off. In some companies, countries, industries, this would look very different, and better.
> prolonged bleeding.
> That's a false dichotomy, you could reduce headcount via attrition which is better in some ways.
That's the same thing. And they can't control which roles are lost. It's the worst thing for the company itself and those remaining.
You cannot attrite 40% of the company in 5 months, without creating an incredibly toxic environment. Dorsey knows this; ultimately he lost Twitter over his inability to right size it. I would bet dollars to donuts he promised himself he wouldn't do it again - under no circumstances is 40% cut over six months preferable to a clean fast cut.
Sure but 5 months isn't the comparison. They state that they're cutting early. We don't know the exact position, but perhaps over 2-3 years would be ok, and 40% in 3 years isn't unheard of, particularly in the valley, and particularly with incentives.
Voluntary severance/ERO is possible without a bad culture. I’ve seen it done, people love it.
a donut costs way more than a dollar so losing your bet makes you win?
> you could reduce headcount via attrition which is better in some ways
I don't think reducing via attrition is better for the company, for the employees 100%, but attrition would be your people moving to other companies and retirement. It means that you are effectively bleeding your people with options (usually above average) and those with the most experience in favor of "the rest".
It's a nuanced trade-off. It's worse for the company as you said, it may be worse for the employees because some will leave from burnout without severance, those remaining will have more work to do typically.
But my point was that what was presented was a false dichotomy and that framing it as such is disingenuous to employees receiving those comms.
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Apart from the bit where he lays 4000 people off, but himself is untouched.
Oh and the bit where he claims AI efficiencies are the reason.
If I had to do this to a company I’d built I’d fire myself too. It’s an admission of a massive failure of leadership.
Companies grow and shrink. That’s not “a massive failure”.
Cutting staff by half is an admission of massive management failure.
Their planning was terrible.
Their hiring was terrible.
They can’t think of any new projects to put these staff on.
"owning" the decision doesn't mean anything. It's just words.
One day there will be a CEO who actually pays the severances out of their own compensation.
So, like Nintendo and other Japanese and Chinese companies where the CEO of a company treats the company like their child and takes the hit when they make errors?
Or maybe like the US employer that gave everyone at the company a flat wage?
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Even better they fire themself, the exec team can replace them with AI
Agree materially no consequences but still better than many deflection strategies we have seen from others during layoffs.
It is but those words could be long flowery corpo speak or short.
“Yall gonna get money and most yall fired. My bad woops”
I am not sure the exists a good way to say "the business is doing great, but we still fire you".
Its getting a bit repetitive to see this type of comment on every tech layoff letter
I wonder if the lack of capital letters is a clever trick to make this whole annoucement look more humane and natural. Surely it's intentional: only "U.S" deserves capitals, not even his own name in the signature.
It's just a Shibboleth used by SV types to signal their disdain for convention. Altman is also a fan.
Yeah somehow this make me instantly dislike him.
That’s how Jack writes to everyone (and comms drafts his announcements true to his style)
its the Black Turtleneck of 2025/2026
Why does he write i’m at some sentences but i'm at others (different ')?
Owning it doesn’t make it less of a shit move.
Canning people when you do well is just a way to milk the cow that others raised for you. Plus it shows a blatant lack of imagination and foresight.
I just hope the remaining employees realize they’re in an ejectable seat and stop working for people like that. It’s only a matter of time the founders sell to Bending Spoons for a final paycheck and everyone else is out.
Yeah but the purpose of a company is not to employ people, it is to make money. The employment is a means to an end. If the money continues to flow without the people, that is better.
I can imagine creating a system designed to allocate profits to a broader set of stakeholders, but that's not the system we have.
And also not doing it on a Friday.
Spot on. This tweet will go down in history — right next to Jack's first tweet. We all understand businesses require difficult decisions. This is one of the best layoff letters I've seen. Short, honest, and human.
@grok remove the corporate jargon and explain it in a direct and candid way in a single sentence
@grok We're slashing the company from 10k to under 6k people because AI plus tiny teams now let us do the same work with way fewer bodies, and the CEO would rather gut half the staff in one brutal move than bleed out slowly over years.
I am curious why this got so popular, it really is the same thing, am I missing something? Is it because of elon/jack dynamics?