How Layoffs Really Get Decided – It’s Not Performance
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Most employees believe layoffs are a reflection of performance. But inside corporate rooms, the conversation often revolves around cost, legal exposure, optics, and restructuring goals. High salaries, age brackets, department reshuffles—these factors quietly shape who stays and who goes. Performance is considered, but it’s rarely the deciding factor on its own.
For professionals, the lesson is clear: job security isn’t just about doing great work. It’s about understanding how you’re positioned within the system—your cost, your replaceability, and how you fit into bigger decisions you’re not part of.
For companies, there’s a deeper responsibility. Legal compliance isn’t the same as ethical leadership. The strongest organizations are the ones that remember layoffs aren’t just numbers on a spreadsheet—they’re lives, families, and futures.
Source: The Company Men (2010)
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50 Comments
‘Performance’ is an easy scepegoat reason, even when it’s obviously age related.
Younger workers get paid less and are less likely to point out potential issues with something that higher management came up with, especially things meant to just ‘check a box’.
I’m being laid off at the end of the week…..applied for a promotion, got it, huge promotion….then it was rescinded and that whole process between the offer and the rescinding took so much time that there’s no time to interview for a position in another account and so I’m just flat boned…..woohoo! Probably gonna do something drastic and permanent in 2-3 weeks when the bank account runs dry. Woooooo
This type of downsizing is seen all over Silicon Valley, especially Hewlett-Packard who fires long term employees over 50 bc of their age.
All layoffs are for exec bonuses or stockholder bonuses. They’re the evil of our time
In capitalism, growth is everything, so ethics only come into play if a company is forced to through regulation/litigation or if their ownership buys into being ethical, which hurts the bottom line.
Corporate morals no longer exist since the banks caused the housing/financial recession, then got bailed out. GONE!!!
This is why you don’t discuss your family business at your job, they will always use it against you.
Real reason, someone wanted a bigger bonus and won't take no for an answer.
Gene and Paul…..HILARIOUS!!!
If I were Gene, Dick and Paul would be the first out the door.
dam bruh coming home to yo girl telling her you got axed hella tough. i would just lie till i got another job bruh
There is no company that cannot be helped with 4 funerals 😡😱
Been there… We're all suckers.
Exactly the crap they pull. I got caught up in a big layoff, meanwhile they were hiring new people. I got a call two weeks later asking me to come back in to help.woth some problems they were having. So I negotiated a $200 an hour consulting deal. Joke was on me, we had one meeting, I fixed three problems that were shutting down production, then they sent me packing. I got one hour in. Eventually they hired five guys to do.my job, every one was laid off for lack of performance. Me,I got laid off because i.made too much money. Which was a joke. I made on the very low end of the salary range for Engineers with my experience. They acted like we couldn't look that data up on Google. Oh well their loss.
Give us pensions or you won't make it to retirement.
Taking into account workers personal lives in layoffs is illegal. It would be discrimination.
Never give loyalty to any company. They do not care one bit about you and they will offer zero loyalty to you if it benefits them to kick you out that door.
Yep, I have a family member who got cut by the DOGE at the same time diagnosed with cancer. That was a scramble for the entire extended family, but they didn't die because someone looked at easy numbers instead of actually doing any analysis. It's the same way with corporate, no analysis about the work.
Suppose the payroll must be cut, to save the company, or to save more jobs down the line. What would be a "higher standard?" The cuts which minimize the number of fired employees? Or which leave the company most competitive in the future? Or which try to fire the people best able to bear unemployment, regardless of their particular contribution to the company? Is there a "rational" ethos we can appeal to here? And can we just forgo economic considerations, treat all jobs as fungible? On that last question, the answer is "no."
Most corpos don't care at all today. They'll break laws and just pay their fines. You cannot trust any of them.
Mfs when they respond to my reasonable question about ethics with laws 😐
Larger salary means closer to the chopping block
America! The land of bs.
This isn't realistic at all because the people doing layoffs don't gather any information at all and layoff via vibes and feelings. They like to play God, but they don't have the humility to respect the workers. And if you do, you won't fit in with management.
I guess you assumed was an Ethics have anything to do with each other
My last job didnt pay much, but it was secure, decent benefits and it was challenging.
It was also run by goddamned STUPID OLD PEOPLE who still thought it was the 1950s…. they mismanaged their books so damn hard and let go all the top earners in every department (i was only 1 of 2 in the assembly department) except the electrical engineers. Now they are facing a crisis because they have all these old ass people they won't train anybody because they saw what happened. They flat out refuse because they know they will be next on the chopping block, and the engineers won't help anyone else because they are also afraid of getting axed.
Some of the old folks chose to retire and took their benefits, which cost the company in the long run. Others actually passed away. Management fucked around so hard until they decided running the place on nonstop interns was a good idea. The old folks still wouldn't train them because as soon as they did, the company would've suddenly brought them in full time and axed the trainers.
Most of the old fucks in management quit or retired, left a huge vacuum in leadership. Suddenly a lot of "self promotion" happened and the company almost went under.
They are finally getting back on their feet because the dumbasses that ran it into the ground were gone, and the ones in their late 30s-early 40s took over and balanced the books enough they recovered…
Moral of the story:
NEVER trust leadership when it is a bunch of old people above 60. Its RARE you get an old person that actually can think with a clear h3wd and not think its the early 1900s…
Yeah they let the knowledge walk then the younger ones repeat all the errors agaon
Ethical scrutiny = doing what is in your interest as a matter of priority.
There should be NO legal ramifications for firing a person, even for the wrong hair colour.
Stop obeying the edicts of a fictional son of a fictional god.
These people died next week.
I got fired because they thought I had a child with cancer
Went from being one of the smartest electricians of the company. Training that are higher electricians, too, we don't think you're qualified to be electrician, mind you.I was literally running large commercial jobs by my second year of apprenticeship some people graduate after 4 or 5 years. And still aren't running job. But what told me they really fired me because of the health insurance issue was after my 90 days I was qualified to get health insurance. And I wanted to sign the papers, and he told me he needed me to sign the papers. But then he kept making me hold off. What let me sign Em, and then about in four weeks later, he said I wasn't qualified to be electrician, and I said, well, that was the stupidest excuse you picked, because, I guess the guy didn't realize not to toot my horn, that I was a great electrician. I'm a lot of things in life that I'm not very good at. But being electrician is not one of them, but his answer was, well, we would like you to come work in Baltimore for us. So they wanted me to relocate also without firing me. But then the long story short, they took my Van dropped me off the same day. Well, let me stop my health. Insurance and then 30 days later, I quit because I wasn't willing to give them an answer to relocate that day. Hindsight, a price should sued the s*** out. Em, just for principle, and their whole sphere was family run operated business.
Office Space is waaaaay funnier. 😂
Epic games last week
SHIT MOVIE. FUCK CAPITALISM
After 29 years of hard work, my position is being moved to Dallas. They expect loyalty but fail to give it in return.
I know. If they would just let one of the top brass go around that table, it would solve most of the problems.
I only ask God that the company who fires good people , please make their ceo go bankrupt the next day
This is where capitalism is really bad.
A senior leader at a Company firing workers is a lot like throwing your kids out of the car because you had an accident.
This is why I respect the Japanese bosses of which there are many stories of them taking personal salary cuts instead of laying off employees
What in the hell is the point in working for a company if you are a number to them? They stop being people themselves the minute they stop seeing people under them as people.
Sorry, but this isn’t how cuts are decided. This is a Hollywood depiction, a psyop designed to make people hate free markets.
Ethical scrutiny means you haven't just cleared the expensive senior employees so they can't sue you for age discrimination. That's also why you hire some slackers right before the purge.
Do not doubt it, everyone of us is sitting on a hotseat.
This is why there is no loyalty in the corporations today. Your a number that can be cut at will.
Is that where Hughies mom went??
You would think a CEO would cut 20% of their multi-million dollar salary just to keep the people that helped built the company. Instead of punishing their employees by laying them off due to the Higher-Ups Mistakes
Lip service is the only kind of service offered to employees
I once worked for a contractor employed by a UK county council. My job was safe but when they were 'downsizing' you knew your time was up when you came in and found an empty cardboard box on your desk. I recall the disbelief, denial, distress and, finally, defeat, of those who were 'boxed'.
Ethics only exist within the companies that you see thriving from nothing; its the ethics that builds a foundation not just for workers but for partners and customers, if you have no ethics than your returns per year are likely going to be a fraction of what they would be otherwise
In pharmaceuticals, they call it downsizing. It's done often. Why do they do it? To m9ve the stock market: "Lean & mean". Then, when they hire, it's for the stock market, so it appears they have a great new drug and are getting ready to launch. Nothing to do with the people, ALL to do with the stock market & share holders.