2022-November layoffs:

1. Twitter laid off roughly 50% of its 7,500 employees, the company’s head of safety and integrity confirmed. CEO Elon Musk said they were offered three months of pay as severance.
2. Warner Bros. Pictures, the movie-making arm of Discovery, is cutting an undisclosed amount of employees, according to Bloomberg.
3. Affirm, a San Francisco-based “buy now pay later” platform, laid off an unspecified number of employees, according to posts by LinkedIn members.
4. Lyft is cutting its workforce for the second time this year, reports the Wall Street Journal, laying off 13% of its employees, approximately 500 people.
5. Digital bank Chime is laying off about 160 people, or 12% of its staff, according to TechCrunch.
6. Digital payments giant Stripe is cutting 14% of its workforce, CEO Patrick Collison wrote in a staff memo. The layoffs affect more than 1,000 employees, according to Bloomberg.
7. Hootsuite, a Canada-based social media management platform, cut 5% of its staff, its second round of layoffs since August.
8. Real-estate platform Opendoor is laying off about 550 employees, 18% of its workforce, a move announced by CEO Eric Wu in a blog post.
9. Database management giant Oracle laid off as many as 200 employees in its Oracle Cloud Infrastructure unit on Nov. 1, a week after “quietly” laying off workers in another cloud division, according to Business Insider.
10. San Francisco-based software management platform Gem laid off about 100 employees, or one-third of its workforce, according to affected LinkedIn members.

Layoffs that made headlines in 2022-October:

1. Real-estate platform Zillow cut 300 jobs in its second round of layoffs this year.
2. Mental health startup Cerebral laid off 20% of its staff.
3. Dutch technology giant Philips cut about 4,000 jobs — 5% of its global workforce — after five consecutive quarters of declining sales.
4. Delivery startup Gopuff let go of as many as 250 workers in its third round of cuts this year, according to Bloomberg.
5. Microsoft, LinkedIn’s parent company, let go of about 1,000 employees across multiple divisions, Axios reported.
6. Warner Brothers Discovery laid off more than 80 employees.
7. General Electric slashed “hundreds of jobs” at its onshore wind-turbine unit in the U.S.
8. Peloton cut staff for the fourth time in 2022, this latest round affecting about 500 employees, or 12% of its workforce.

Whether it’s this morning at Twitter, yesterday at Stripe, Lyft, and Chime… or earlier this year at (insert almost any company name here)… it’s soul-crushing to see so many people getting blindsided by learning they no longer have a job.  Don’t just cut off someone’s access, or send an email telling someone they no longer work there. Be a human being and tell someone to their face.

They are human beings who made sacrifices to grow your company, to help boost revenue, to launch a new product feature, to assuage a key client’s concerns, to communicate key news and strategic initiatives into the digital space.

They are human beings who were thrown into stressful situations around last-minute changes to figure out child care, to figure out after-school activity arrangements, to tell a loved one they will be late coming home, to miss a child’s activity… all so your business could succeed.

And all you can do is instantly shut off access, or send a callous email? Companies who do this don’t get to say they have a “family” atmosphere, or “we’re all in this together.”

If business “leaders” want to know why employees aren’t sticking around, it’s because day after day we are seeing companies treating our friends, family, and people in our communities like garbage.

They are human beings. They are expecting parents, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, sons, and daughters. They are our neighbors, our friends, and our community.

They are human beings. Treat them as such.

With each layoff you experience, you learn something new.

That’s a good thing, right?

You learn what not to do, and you learn what to do differently the next time around.

You learn who you can trust and who your real friends are. That’s HUGE right there!

One of my biggest takeaways from my very first layoff experience had to do with the Separation Agreement. You know — that legal document that holds your severance pay hostage until you sign it?

I was in a much different financial situation back then. I had been with the organization for 15 years and therefore, was entitled to the max severance pay offered, which was 12 weeks. Not that I earned a lot of money, but 12 weeks was enough money to get me to sign. I’m not gonna lie — my household needed it. But shortly thereafter, I regretted signing it for reasons I can’t get into right now. I made a decision right then and there to never allow myself to be placed in a position like that again. My integrity is no longer for sale.

Life… No one gets out without acquiring some scars, hardship, and pain.. Seeing all of these posts about layoffs, and the people effected by them is heartbreaking..

I got laid off during the initial 2020 pandemic, and I vividly remember the panic and ruminating despair that flooded my mind. It took a while to pick myself back up and accept the situation for what it was, but as with everything else.. you always find a way to get past it. Everything that life has ever thrown at you.. you got through it.

If you know someone who was laid off recently, take a second and write them a recommendation on LinkedIn. Reach out to some past recruiters, get them connected with the people you know. Times like these provide an opportunity to show how far a little compassion, community, and support can go.

As of right now, I know nearly a dozen incredible sales people looking for the right team. And this isn’t just some lip service either – these are the first people I would call if I was putting a team together.

If you have any opportunities open on your team, please shoot me a DM and I’d happily get you connected with them.