It's happening early next week, we're not wanting to wait around. Currently we're researching legal obligations (in our jurisdiction there's a law around "consulting" first that's a bit complicated) and that's all it's waiting on. ASAP is the timeline.

I do not plan to say anything about "my feelings", nor to try and be presumptive and give speeches about "their feelings". Our staff will see deeper than platitudes now, just as they have always been above thinking that free beer and pizza compensates for work-life balance.

This is a really good idea that I'm going to suggest. If nothing else, it gives more people more time to look for another real job...

Be cautious doing this. Many people can’t easily take a 20% pay cut. Your best people might instead choose to leave. Others may be bitter about it. Since they’re sticking around it can drag down morale. This is only possibly viable if there’s a clear plan back to 100%. There’s a reason it’s not commonly done.

Some good recommendations & thoughts here.

It is a layoff by your terminology, because we're in that insane VC-money world ("poison pill" as I've seen it called on here!) where it's "go big or go home". So the plan is we win it all back, and we re-hire everyone (although who would ever re-join after a layoff I don't know, but that would be the plan), the alternative is complete shutting down.

Re: exec staff pay cut. We can't lay people off to save ourselves, that's sociopathic. I can't do $0 though, I get paid 20% more than a senior engineer here, and I've not got capital investments.

Re: reduced hours/pay (or furloughing as someone else called it) is a great idea. I used to dream of the 4-day work week, ideally under better conditions...

Not enough money in the bank to do 6 months severance, but more than 2 is available along with all leave.

We'll lose the office too, so can't do office-space :(

Most of the others are doable I reckon!

I also suggested my own laying-off, since that'd save a bit more money and the engineers we've got are so great that they basically don't need management... The founders asked me to stay though.

We gotta, for sure right?

Yes, to be honest I assume that this will start a death-spiral. In that the people we want to stay (having the most hopeful combo of critical knowledge, skills, etc.) can just take a little longer to find a new job than those laid off but _will_ eventually. So then we need to replace them to even carry out the post-layoffs plan, and so then over time we drain knowledge and skills, and then it all falls apart.

That's sort of my assumption right now, but while enough are still here I plan to see if I can make it work for them.

Thanks for responding. I really want to do this, but I worry it is unfair to people in other departments who do not get the sneaky down-low info. Really the company itself has to be honest without delay, since that will achieve the same thing but equally for everyone; and I feel like that is what I will push for.

You don't need to worry about being unfair to other distant departments. You only need to tell your reporting tree.

Thanks for responding. We've been honest about the situation, but I think people will feel blindsided because due to our own mistakes we mis-calculated our expected runway by a disastrous amount. I only found this out a day ago, at my position.

You're right that my own issues are secondary, my family will support me there. My duty is to those who are being laid off, and then to those who are staying but losing their close coworkers.

Are you firing the person or persons who grossly mismanaged your books?

If not, it’s going to come off as pretty hollow.

Thanks for responding.

We have our own ideas about who we would like to stay (I mean, aside from "everyone" :( ), but we plan to tell everyone the severance package so that anyone we want to stay can still make their own decision with all the info.

This means then we need an idea of "if X doesn't stay, who Y should we ask to stay instead?", which comes uncomfortably close to stack-ranking.

Thanks for your advice. It doesn't have to be cruel, but I've just read so many stories here about times when it was... So _something_ drives that cruelty, and I need to avoid it.

Okay, so it sounds like company-wide announcement first and then start getting into the 1:1s quickly to prevent people from suffering in purgatory.

Being let go is definitely not personal for anyone, it's not a cheeky excuse to let go the low performers. I'd keep them all if I could, I've got good references for everyone, we got phenomenally lucky with hiring - just not phenomenally lucky with everything else.

I've worked at places where I can't do things like: give realistic interview feedback, give proper references to people leaving; I hated it. Now that I'm in a leadership position - as badly as it has turned out - I can at least make my choice to do these basic humane things.

You can have two tracks of 1-1s. You do the layoffs and pick a lieutenant to do 1-1s with the stayers. They should be able to get through those much quicker so you can leave your go forward team with as little purgatory time as possible. I would suggest prioritizing that list by how worried you think they’ll be as an additional attempt at humanity.

One other note: you are transitioning company size. You were on the cusp of midsize and you are right back to startup. Make your choices accordingly. Even if someone was going to be great at 50->100 they may be the wrong person for 25. Keep the scrappy, true-believer do-ers. You’ll need them.

Thanks for this advice. They're a great team, I know they'll move on to bigger and better things; but I know it will be stressful for them in the short term.

Being honest should be easy, because I will lose nothing by doing it.

I've run interviewing workshops in the past; as part of a diversity outreach programme for a FAANG and also just for friends looking for career changes/upgrades. So I'm sure I could put something together for anyone who feels rusty.

All that is well and good but I can't help but notice that you excluded anything about reducing the salary of leadership for making decisions that led to this in the first place. It could just be the cynic in me, and maybe you intend to do that very thing, but I also know it's the hardest one to actually do.

It's just symbolic, but if you want to save face, this is how you do it. Nothing else will matter if you and the leadership that caused this don't take a salary cut.

Yeah I'm the one who needs to take the biggest cut - the founders actually pay themselves less salary than me. For the ICs that stay though, we want to keep things the same.

Outsource job placement services.

Your job is to move the company forward.