Layoff experiences

[NotAllThere]

Over 25 years ago now, so an old story. I worked for a firm which had over-hired somewhat and then needed to make quite a lot of people redundant. Those selected to go got decent payoffs and those of us who remained actually got pay rises - I got 10% and was astonished!
It was an 'interesting' perspective on how to manage a cull.

For me it was 1994. But yes, same kind of deal. I took the payoff.

[Protagoras]

Over 25 years ago now, so an old story. I worked for a firm which had over-hired somewhat and then needed to make quite a lot of people redundant. Those selected to go got decent payoffs and those of us who remained actually got pay rises - I got 10% and was astonished!
It was an 'interesting' perspective on how to manage a cull.

In more recent years I've had a lot of friends take 'voluntary severance' which tends to be on generous terms but under NDA.

[jackii]

I worked at a place where they did the "call you into a meeting room" thing. But they did it on a Friday afternoon. Everyone who was staying watched people walk past with boxes. Morale was gone after that. Half the remaining team quit within 3 months.

[courtg9000]

Working for a now infamous Telco in the Dublin office (2002) I was literally terminated on the spot when it all kicked off. The news came out and within a few mins of the email going around I was terminated.

[TheDude]

After reading today that Oracle have laid of 30k people by 6am email I am curious about the layoffs you have experienced or witnessed.

The worst I have seen was when working at (what was then) a UK supplier of news and financial information. Rumours of redundancies had been in the air for a while. I was always first into the office at around 7:30am and one morning was surprised to see the department manager loitering by the door. As others started to arrive some were approached by the manager and sent to a conference room which slowly started to fill up employees everyone new were low performers or slackers. The thing is some people always arrived a lot later than others so people were kept waiting in the conference room for nearly two hours before all those who were being let go had arrived. The manager then let them have the bad news and they were escorted from the building. 30 minutes later the manager was then summoned by HR and was let go himself. We met up with the lot of them in the pub at lunchtime and they had all twigged what was happening the second they were diverted to the conference room.

I also used to work for a US bank and one of my responsibilities was maintaining the access lists to trading and risk systems for traders, sales, back office and technology. These access lists were reconciled several times a day against corporate windows credentials and discrepancies would be flagged.

We knew almost immediately when people had been let go. Sometimes you would see them answer the phone and walk off to a meeting never to return. Other times they were escorted to their desk to collect belongings with a stunned look on their face. One time someone received a call whilst on the train telling them to come back because dismissed the wrong 'John Smith'.

Personally I would rather receive a 6am text/email telling me not to bother coming in.