Not sure I believe any of this is true, but if my manage says it then it must be true, right?
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Wow, tech was effected. The meme came true.
It depends on the situation but in the vast majority of cases managers have very little input or even awareness. This is due to the fact that the execs don't trust management to make such decisions. They consider all long time employees as tainted by old scandals so there is zero trust that they would decide to downsize the right people. Not surprisingly that feeling goes both ways.
I’m a tech manager and was asked to rank my employees for a layoff planned for early next year. The actual decision as to who will be cut (which might include me) will be made by someone else. I expect to lose some good employees.
There's been a number of posts and evidence including from laid off employees that the company is using a third party to decide who gets laid off based on demographics and site.
This is for two reasons:
First, it protects the company against discrimination lawsuits because the third party's algorithm is specifically designed to be invulnerable to demographic discrimination.
Second, it avoids WARN notices making it in the news for nearly all the layoffs. Sure, not 100%, but what we've seen is that there only seems to be WARN notices for a tiny fraction of the headcount reductions that are public knowledge via the company's quarterly reports.
The only nuance is that it appears managers get to submit certain employees for protection and certain employees as "don't care" but none of the managers get to actually decide who gets laid off, only to vaguely shape the pool, but even the manager's input can be overridden, especially when whole departments are laid off or when the cuts need to run deeper than 30% of a department.
Steps -
Sr. Management is given % to cut and at what levels
Trickles down to managers of teams being cut
Names provided by managers to HR
HR checks for issues, confirms lets Managers know list
HR and Managers execute.
So, yes managers know, participate in the selection and are the reason specific individuals get cut.
So to say managers don’t know is not true.
It’s probably true. Going on cut#3. I have no say and neither does my manager. I don’t even think her manager does.
Different CIO’s might run it slightly different. For mine, I was told to pick one person, and then I had to tell them. I would have rather picked none, but that wasn’t an option. Others I’ve heard do not have any choice in whom is chosen.
Yep, it's true.
Staffing cuts are almost always from the top. We can submit the stack rankings and it may influence the cut or it may not. I have cut two people who were really good and I ranked them higher than others.
That's accurate. Managers have almost no authority when it comes to lay offs. They all come from OC +1
Well… I’ve heard the same exact thing from several managers. They submitted info and decisions were made and finalized above then. Of course they still may have had some input or impact on the decision, even if by making a role seem more or less important.