Layoffs are always a bad thing for employees. The former boss of Slack now explains why he can understand such layoffs. Because many of these people are not needed at all.
Microsoft, Google, Amazon and other large companies have been laying off many employees for weeks. Now Stewart Butterfield, the former CEO of Slack, explained in an interview that there are good reasons for laying off certain people.
Because the hiring, which is now followed by dismissals, is primarily a calculation on the part of certain employees.
New employees hire more people to gain more power
What does the ex-CEO say? Stewart Butterfield told Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast that it’s all about power (via spotify.com). Our Spanish colleagues at Genbeta.com are reporting on this.
If a person is hired by a company, the company will first hire new people if the budget is available. The reason for this is that “the more people depend on you, the more prestige you have and the more power you have in the organization.”
Because the more people depend on you, the stronger your position within the company. And that would also encourage your ambition to move up faster. He told Bloomberg:
If you’re a manager, you want to be a senior manager. If you’re a senior manager, you want to be a director. That’s a very strong incentive. That’s the root of all excesses, in my opinion.
This whole problem ultimately leads to a company having a lot of employees who shouldn’t be there and, in the worst case, who don’t have anything to do. And these are exactly the people who are the first to be laid off when there are waves of layoffs.
In addition, being responsible for other people also works well on social media. When looking for a new job, for example, a person who has many employees under their responsibility may be more valuable to a new company if they say they managed a team of 100 employees, explained the former boss of Slack.
What else is a problem? Butterfield added that this problem is especially prevalent in companies where there is too much money available: “Either because you have a monopoly on search engines or because venture capital funds give you a lot of money.”
Although he does not mention Microsoft and Google by name, it is clear who Butterfield is addressing here.
One trend seems to be particularly popular among young people of Gen Z: job ghosting. This is now shown by survey data from a platform that surveyed applicants and companies: 78% of all applicants are said to have deliberately ignored the employer: There is a popular trend among Gen Z: They do not go to interviews