We're being asked to make cuts, do I volunteer people or claim we can't cut a single person?
Posted by YouDoHaveValue@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 106 comments
Memos have been going around and they are overtly looking to "eliminate redundancies" and "consolidate functions", etc...
Basically they want to cut people.
I'm a team lead for 8 people and I'm being asked if we have any functions we can cut.
Now, I know who pulls the weight for our team and who the slackers are.
But what I'm wondering is should I volunteer that information or should I claim we are are all essential and nothing can be eliminated and wait for them to force me to choose people?
I've never been through one of these as a lead and so I don't know what is better, to be honest and make honest cuts or to with a straight face say I can't give up a single body.
Will I harm my team more by claiming we can't cut leading to our whole team being eliminated?
Help me understand this situation.
alephaleph@reddit
The risk in not speaking up is that they simply choose for you and cut the most expensive relative to job function. Might end up losing high value people who are payed well for a reason. If you have a good relationship with your mgr, ask them your question, see what they advise.
josetalking@reddit
They might decide to fire him.
He is likely the more expensive and also he is failing at doing his managerial work (slim down when required is part of the job).
optimal_random@reddit
In these situations, his Manager wants a yes-man, not a conscious employee.
The situation must be dire in order to have to consider layoffs - so having another level of indecision and hesitation down the chain looks bad for everyone.
OP should consider in his equation:
A partial ordering of all Team members should arise from this, and if you have draws, the priority list should untie them.
If you have a draw between people with equivalent seniority, the most performant should stay.
If you have a draw between people with equivalent output, then the cheaper should stay.
If all the previous criteria stick to a draw, stay with the person that is better to work with and integrates well with the Team.
Ragnarork@reddit
Ha ha ha ha ha.
Without knowing the context of OP company, it's definitely not a safe assumption.
optimal_random@reddit
I don't know if you have realized, but the global economy is entering a recession.
Most companies are going through financial problems, even the FAANGs of this life are cutting down and bracing for impact.
Of course there are some sociopaths in management, but given the current timing and circumstances, I did not have a wild assumption.
nopuse@reddit
I don't know if you have realized, but shareholders want record profits every quarter, regardless.
optimal_random@reddit
Both things can be true: shareholders wanting profits every quarter, and having the right excuse to layoff folks during a downturn.
I'm not siding with the former, it's just how the game is played.
Ragnarork@reddit
I've seen too many companies doing layoffs after successful project launches or reporting excellent results to consider by default that layoffs are caused by financial hardships. Before, and during the current economical context.
Not having wild assumptions in my view means not assuming any situation is more likely than the other, especially without OP giving more context about it.
ab5717@reddit
White I think the logic of your
process of eliminationhas merit, I must respectfully disagree with your statement:Layoffs are so common and so accepted now, companies don't need much of an excuse to do it.
Many of y'all probably know this, but prior to 1982, stock buybacks were illegal and considered stock manipulation.
Also prior to the 1980's layoffs were viewed as a sign of corporate failure, bad business practice, and would damage the reputation of the company doing it. They were drastically less common, and many would argue a last-resort measure.
I think the term "Downsizing" was coined sometime in the 80s or 90s.
Since the 1990's the shift in mindset has accelerated and layoffs are now considered a routine management tool to cut costs, restructure, compensate for losses due to bad investments, or a whiff of fear about market outlook.
SoulSkrix@reddit
What?… no manager is picking their dedicated lead for asking for advice on something like this. Leads don’t often pick people to fire.
josetalking@reddit
He is a team lead, not a tech lead... isn't he supposed to have some grasp on the team?
SoulSkrix@reddit
Yes, what’s that got to do with it? He is supposed to feel afraid for asking a manager who regularly decides to hire or not, how to go about choosing somebody to let go? Managers will always have more experience with it, and a good one is going to be happy you came to them for their input on it. It shows consideration.
tigerlily_4@reddit
As an EM who has been through a few RIFs, I would volunteer a person as they're not likely going to give you another opportunity to provide input. If you don't give them someone the first time, it likely won't lead to the whole team being eliminated but they're just going to cut the highest-paid people or whoever a random spreadsheet tells them to cut. You can also use this as leverage in future negotiations and refer back to when you were a team player and reduced your team size for the better of the company.
herasi@reddit
Also, be prepared for the RIF to spook your good devs and make them start looking for new jobs, unfortunately.
ComprehensiveWord201@reddit
As they fucking should
herasi@reddit
100% agree, lol. It’s just always a bummer when my favorite people leave—having to rebuild teams after leadership makes stupid decisions has been one of the worst parts of being a lead.
Nyefan@reddit
When we went through layoffs, I think our company did it right. They cut most of the management and E staff and did a good job of identifying who were the high performers. Then they gave everyone who was left raises that brought us up to a good 20% over market. Since then it's been almost two years, and not one engineer has left out of ~25 people, and we've eked out the first two profitable quarters in the company's decade long history. So much effort goes into retention strategies, but the real answer is just "pay people". Even the occasional bout of boredom from never having production incidents anymore is pretty easily outweighed by knowing I'll be able to retire by age 42 (plus or minus a couple years depending on how many recessions of how long we have before then).
ab5717@reddit
Wow! That's fascinating! Despite this absolutely matching my idea of doing this the right way, I've never actually heard of an instance of a company actually doing this!
I don't have a great sample population, but this sounds like a major outlier based on my experience and everyone I know personally.
Nyefan@reddit
It's definitely an outlier based on my experience as well. It's the only time out of the six layoffs I've experienced where even a single e staff employee has been fired, and our board fired all of them except the CTO.
ab5717@reddit
Dang I'm sorry to hear that you're sitting at 6 layoffs :-/
My last 2-3 jobs in a row ended due to layoffs. My first layoffs experience was an acquisition -> liquidation
Nyefan@reddit
I only lost my job in one of them - devops/are is a hard position to trim down on. And I absolutely deserved it, since I stopped showing up when I started a new job 3 weeks before they finally fired me (they deserved that, too, for firing the entirety of sales, marketing, accounting, and HR two weeks before Christmas with no notice or severance after lying to our faces during all hands for months).
Roshi_IsHere@reddit
I love the idea of just nuking management. Sometimes it feels like they just pull us into meetings because they don't understand the work and then duplicate what we tell them up the chain to two separate meetings about the same thing.
fuckoholic@reddit
While our org is very lean and has always been profitable, the stories I hear from others induces thoughts that yours might be the way. Lean management and high performance. There's just no need to have too many qa people, scrum master, project leads, managers. Some orgs have more leechers than programmers. Considering, that not all programmers are great, there are times when three programmers carry the weight of a 15-20 person department, where you could literally fire everyone else and it'd be better.
Nyefan@reddit
It's been surreal honestly. We assign some feature work or infra work to someone and it just gets done. Since then, we've
Someone else raised the important question, "how do you identify the high performers?", and that's certainly the hard part, but it's definitely achievable if you pay people faang level salaries for remote work to keep them around once you identify them.
CommunicationGold868@reddit
Sounds like you guys have worked really hard. It makes a difference if you have senior management making sensible decisions. By that I mean, choosing to get more efficient rather than always adding another feature.
khaili109@reddit
What methodology did they use to identify the high performers?
ShroomSensei@reddit
I don't have nearly as much experience here as most people, but I see it's fairly easy to identify low performers and pretty hard to identify the difference between average & high performers with any sort of metrics. High performers, at least in my current org, are those that uplift others around them through different means. It may be management, moral, technical excellence, accountability or something else. None of that is really easily quantifiable through metrics, because it just looks like the others around them are doing better.
So to actually identify them? It's visibility, recognition, and word of mouth.
Nyefan@reddit
I was only a single team technical lead at the time, and my input was not requested for this, so I don't have an answer to that, sorry.
No-Date-2024@reddit
as soon as layoffs happen, I start looking for a new job. I'm not waiting until the next round and getting surprised. Also usually my workload increases for the foreseeable future every time it happens and then raises/bonuses get pushed or cut, so there's no real benefit in staying
Western_Objective209@reddit
Every time I've been on a team with layoffs, tbh the people who were let go deserved it and the others all said they felt the same way. I know it doesn't always go this way, but it does often. I've seen people get spooked the first time they've seen it, but you get used to it after a while
S0baka@reddit
I've seen it done both ways.
First layoff I ever witnessed at my own workplace, the first three people out the door were a VP and two managers who'd been making everyone's work life hell for years and were causing high turnover (including people leaving to work for competitors). Followed by one of the managers' entire team of yes-people. Ngl, I opened a bottle of scotch that night that I'd been saving for a special occasion. It was scary to see coworkers escorted out, but at least almost everyone who it happened to that day had been someone who'd been actively harming the workplace.
Last year my workplace was acquired and new owners did several rounds of layoffs that made no sense. Several times a week, we'd hear of another key person/high performer getting the axe. To the point where I was asking myself if there was anything wrong with my performance that I hadn't been laid off yet.
An old job reportedly had a layoff where they cut everyone older than 60 and replaced with offshore. In a company where many people had worked for 30-40 years, since college, never leaving, only to then get canned, it wasn't a good look and I still don't understand how the company got away with doing this.
TL;DR as with everything else, the efficacy of layoffs, as well as their effect on the morale, both depend on the leadership.
thekwoka@reddit
yeah, if everyone is equally valuable, than the easy cut is the one paid the most.
Fun-You-7586@reddit
Pin and present every member of a team as someone it would cause cash-valued problems to lose. Be generous with your calculations; fuck knows the MBAs will.
jessewhatt@reddit
they will likely cut you if they think you're protecting people.
Mrqueue@reddit
I’ve been asked this in the past and said my team was all vital. If there are large cuts you might have people decide for you but unless they’ve told you we want to cut x people from your team I would assume you can get away with it
Decent_Project_3395@reddit
Talk to your boss. They will be the ones who know what is about to go down.
notger@reddit
It depends what you want to achieve.
You will most likely not stop the cuts, so the question is whether you want to keep your hands clean or have a say in the team you will continue working with.
Keeping the hands clean means others will make the call for you and they might be less well-informed. Think: Most lines of code = most productive team member. That sort of thing.
Having a say means you have to point out underperformers but if they listen to you, you get the chance to work in a team of strong performers, which is always a joy.
Lastly, being a lead means you have to make tough calls. You can not be everybody's darling and your responsibility is in equal parts to the company as well as your team. So technically, you have to answer the call and point out underperformers and all things considered, I would also say it is the right thing to do, as this is the only way to protect the good performers, i.e. the people who earned their protection, in a way.
(Before the shit storm begins: I am not debating whether optimising profits this way is the right move or not, I am merely accepting it as given background for the decision.)
mattgen88@reddit
Suggest that whomever is asking you to suggest people, that they be the one to be cut since they do not know what anyone else is doing.
csueiras@reddit
I went through something similar, I just answered truthfully and with all the information available to me. Thats part of the job, as hard as it all might be.
DrNoobz5000@reddit
Lmao you fucking idiot. At least that other commenter was like ey, use this as leverage, but you’re over here just being the best dang corporate employee you can be. Fucking tool, I swear…
sakkdaddy@reddit
This is the way.
MrMichaelJames@reddit
Now is the time to shape the team how you want it to be. Offer up. Otherwise they will pick. If they pick someone you want around might get picked instead of who you want.
nhass@reddit
You should already have a ranked list of your engineers in order of importance. Volunteer a name or two but not all of them at once and communicate the impact of losing them (stretch it out a bit, there are more factors than you can estimate).
Cuts happen and it's better they happen on your terms than on theirs.
MichaelLeeIsHere@reddit
I was managing a team through several rounds of big layoffs. The best way is give them a list, containing all the names and their impact, ordered by the importance from your perspective. Usually some high level leadership makes the decision, they usually cut the people according to their compensation and importance.
ALAS_POOR_YORICK_LOL@reddit
Jesus Christ why would you protect slackers?
Maybe your "slackers" are just people who dot heir just just aren't proactive.
Actual slackers kill team morale and I am happy to try and get them off my team if they seem receptive to feedback.
In the middle of that currently actually.
Do you not discuss performance with your manager anyway? My managers generally know who the high performers are because we touch base on such things
kernel_task@reddit
I have no idea why anyone would want to protect slackers. They’re such awful coworkers.
Xenolog@reddit
In general, a good team lead won't have "slackers" per se. The weights of a team are numerous and all of them require pullers, so basically you more or less can and will keep everyone occupied with team-relevant workload.
All the tougher it is do the scales and measure things people do, to determine whose weight is "less relevant".
ALAS_POOR_YORICK_LOL@reddit
There are people who will slack no matter what work you give them.
terrany@reddit
Context matters as well. I've known "slackers" who were just really burnt out employees who gave everything they had for 3-4 years and were promotion baited by several managers. On the whole, they more than delivered their fair share to the company even if they've taken a backseat to things in the last few months or years. It's also not as if executives at the top are being optimal with their project vision or expenditures either, so if I can help it I won't always try to see it from management's point of view.
hermesfelipe@reddit
As a team lead you probably don’t have all the information necessary to judge whether or not the layoffs are really necessary. You play your role, and trust that the people above you are playing theirs - it’s not perfect but it’s the only way. If you don’t do your job and provide your inputs, which are valuable since you’re the closest to the team, you risk losing good resources and keep the not-so-good ones.
PerilApe@reddit
Give them a rank of everyone on your team in terms of performance, then afterwards attempt to lay out best guesses for how and what projects/work/etc will become delayed by how long based on cutting the bottom, bottom 2, bottom 3, etc.
I would not just say "this is our worst performer you can get rid of" but instead say "here is our worst performer, but if you get rid of him this will happen to the projects/business". That way you are essentially arguing for them to not cut at all, but giving them a roadmap if its going to happen regardless, and levelsetting expectations for your teams outputs if they do.
Epiphone56@reddit
Putting up the least productive people in the team as candidates could actually improve team productivity. If they're gone, others in the team that thought they could hang back a bit because X hardly does anything might suddenly up their game. I witnessed this first hand with a high performer noticing that another team member who was paid more was doing less, so started to do less themselves.
Posted by my Slightly Evil Capitalist Manager Persona
DanRunsOnRamen@reddit
Not to mention that leaving poor performers in place can be incredibly frustrating for other engineers. Their incompetence drags the rest of the team down because nobody can rely on them and they require extra supervision or hand holding to get anything out of them.
Addition by subtraction is a real thing.
BudgetStorm@reddit
Also, usually all members of the team know who the slackers are. Worst that can happen is that someone else gets axed and then you have some explaining to do to your team.
It's never easy to choose who is let go, but why wouldn't you want it to be someone who doesn't really impact what you are doing?
BudgetStorm@reddit
It's often times difficult for anybody outside the team to figure out who actually does stuff and who's just talking and acting as important piece of every puzzle.
I've seen absolute net negative resources survive just because they are likeable and well known. "He's a good guy with a lot of good ideas and he's involved in so many things..."
(At times corporates seem to think they're making the lay offs easier for the teams to handle, by not involving the direct superiors... And by doing so actually cutting the only reliable source of information from the process.)
mercival@reddit
"front end and data visualization dev team lead for 8 people"
Honestly to me, of all teams this sounds like one you can't claim all are performing perfectly, and are required.
Nothing against what you're doing, but it definitely has bells and whistles label on it compared to other teams.
tjsr@reddit
8 is too big for a team. As a dev working in teams this size, it utterly sucks. You end up being responsible for way to many things, so have to keep all that on the top of your heads at all times and have to just keep context switching. I don't ever want to work on a team with that many devs again, and frankly I see any manager who can sort out that sizing and the problems that come with it as needing improvement themselves.
YouDoHaveValue@reddit (OP)
That's fair. I scrambled the truth a bit here, but you are in essence correct that it would be a difficult sell for what our team does.
It's just that sometimes the right answer is not the intuitive one, so I wanted to hear from people who have more experience than I do.
Comfortable_Ask_102@reddit
This is very mature of you.
I can acknowledge that there's some instinct that tells you "I want to be a good lead and protect my team." I've never been in a position of having to pick some one to be fired, and I'm certainly not looking forward to it.
mercival@reddit
I've never had to deal with anything like this (staff route), but I'd appreciate a manager fighting for the team mid-term instead of fighting for the dead-weight short-term.
ThlintoRatscar@reddit
So... I think I'm probably going for lowest score here ( as usual ).
First, your manager/director/vp probably isn't an idiot so any games you play will be obvious. And... you work for them, not your colleagues on your team.
Second, there are two main reasons for layoffs ( or RIF - Reduction In Force ): either your company can't pay everyone if revenues stay as they are or they have a buffer of idiots that need to go and a RIF is an easier way to flush that buffer than PIPs and severance.
Which situation applies is something your management should be transparent about when they talk to you in confidence as a lead.
If it's a buffer flush, then the question is there anyone you're looking to let go of and just don't want to PIP? If so, this is a time to get that done. If you have nobody, then nominate nobody.
If the company can't afford everyone, then you have the shitty task of picking the people most likely to maintain or improve revenue and putting up those that aren't as immediately valuable. This is the worst since they may be nice or have potential, but you simply can't afford them.
Leads are often too low on the org chart to have this distasteful responsibility, so make sure to work with your boss on the best plan and then put on your adult pants and get it done.
If you can't do this, you're likely not gonna have a good time as management. It's a necessary, and unpleasant, skill. Ideally, you can avoid this by being stingy about hiring and amazing at making revenue so that you're the wind lifting the sails rather than the anchor slowing it down.
YugoReventlov@reddit
That last sentence, oof
voLsznRqrlImvXiERP@reddit
I have been there. What we did instead is asking in each department who could afford to reduce hours for a while. Many participated including leads, management and founders. Nobody had to go. Some people with children appreciated the extra time. Others continued working same hours, got paid less and collected some extra vacations. It was tough but now everything is back to normal with the team as we know it.
Idea-Aggressive@reddit
You know about who the slackers are and you haven’t done anything to protect the ones who put the work?
Ridiculous
SpringShepHerd@reddit
You should speak up if it's reasonable. The most likely result of saying there's no one to cut is they pick one for you without your input.
Talamand@reddit
MediumInsect7058@reddit
Tell them who the slackers are, it might even boost morale for the rest of the team. Otherwise you risk getting some good guy fired randomly.
fuckoholic@reddit
If, in some unlikely scenario, we are on the same team then please don't fire the person who always wears the blue shirt, thanks!
jah_broni@reddit
Be honest, but you can and should also lay out exactly what from your roadmap or typical responsibilities is going to suffer because you lose people.
_sw00@reddit
This is the way. Cover your ass and put it in writing of potential downsides and impact on future work - of course assure them that you'll try and mitigate as best as possible.
satansxlittlexhelper@reddit
Volunteer yourself or STFU. Everything else is handwringing drama.
MCPtz@reddit
Let me tell you the opposite.
They didn't ask the manager and a team I was on lost two legacy members with a lot of experience who we could trust to do anything, and instead kept two new people who would take months to train, and at least a year or two before they could be trusted to do anything / be experts in multiple pieces.
My guess is they probably saw salaries on a spreadsheet, because they clearly didn't think strategically with the stated company goals.
It's bad to skip your chance at input.
cjthomp@reddit
You want to keep everyone. That's noble.
If they're asking you this question, there's a very high probability that someone is going. You want input into that decision, you don't want it handed down by a bean counter.
old_man_snowflake@reddit
I was just RIF'd two days ago. shit sucks, but that's the industry and the time we're in. i just hope to find something soon.
kayakyakr@reddit
I had a team of high performers. I talked them up and got one one of the few promotions and raises during a cycle.
Layoffs came around and I was the one that got cut.
It's shitty, but if you have someone that is a weaker performer and you could actually go without... You have to put their names in.
cooks2music@reddit
If a company is saying they need to make cuts, it’s serious but it doesn’t have to mean cut the team. You can propose cuts and better margins by a number of different avenues. Look at reducing cloud spend for development, introduce a way to deliver faster with the same staff (different framework, buy vs build something, faster pipeline, …). Those things really do reduce cost.
Trick-Interaction396@reddit
Start taking bribes
Trick-Interaction396@reddit
Nominate your boss
Parking_Association2@reddit
Cut the dead weight. Nothing personal, based on performance and business.
ActuallyFullOfShit@reddit
Give half the slackers. Save rest for next round of layoffs.
Do NOT volunteer them as slackers or low impact losses. Lie about their importance. Emphasize that losing them will have major impact on X, Y or Z project, etc. That your team really does need its current staffing level, etc. BUT if someone was gonna get cut, you'd prefer them because blah blah blah.
Why?
Because if things turn around, it sets you up for some backfill justifications in the future. In addition to getting rid of freeloaders and looking like a "team player" to the pricks up the ladder.
Corporate office politics is a game, play it smart.
DallasActual@reddit
You have two options: make the choice yourself or have it made for you.
Which do you think is more likely to lead to a functioning team?
What would the remaining team members think if you couldn't make the choice yourself?
DigThatData@reddit
Sorry to hear you're being put in this position, no one likes to be told they have to make a decision like this. As if your decision weren't hard enough already, here's another angle to consider the problem from: who will be the most likely to land on their feet if you let them go? Life isn't fair: it might make more "business sense" to e.g. cut less productive junior members of your team, but it might take them two years to find another job (who even knows in this market), whereas your 10x senior engineer will probably find a new gig in a week.
There's a human component to this, whether it's in the interest of the business to admit that or not. Sorry for making your decision more complex and uncomfortable than it already was, but I do hope you factor this sort of thing into your decisions.
jjirsa@reddit
If you say you can't cut anything, and they have to cut, they're cutting based on whatever signal they have, which may not be the people you want. They also probably stop trusting you, because you lose credibility when you offer no help.
"The stack rank of people / value is this order, with an annotation on growth potential. If you remove, remove from the bottom to the top. The projects / deliverables impacted will be this order. If you'd like to discuss, let me know."
IrrationalSwan@reddit
If you choose to provide input, how you do it is as important as the actual input you give.
If it were me, I might do something like:
Team is critical to x and y efforts with z revenue impact. Any cuts will likely push the timeline out by x or add y risk.
If they're necessary, person q is valuable, but doesn't the same impact as other people at their level for. They're still doing valuable work, but they have less impact than others at the same price point.
Makes the case for your team in terms of revenue, sets you up to have timeline leverage if the cuts do happen, and makes sure that you don't lose a high performer someone doesn't like.
bwainfweeze@reddit
Delivery time will also affect revenue especially if you have competition. I don’t think the last place considered that when figuring out how to manage margins. Having a bunch of people working on functionality only designed to reduce costs means they aren’t working on functionality to retain customers.
petiejoe83@reddit
If you have honest-to-goodness slackers, list them. A few other comments called out that some people add value in ways that are hard to measure. That's not true of everyone and I think most good leads/managers are already aware of that added value (even if it's hard to quantify).
If there really isn't anybody that can easily be cut, you really need to at least list the people that are most critical. The cuts won't go away just because you don't play their game. Saying "nobody" gives your top performers as much chance of losing their job as the bottom performers.
Loose_Voice_215@reddit
You guys are getting asked? My experience is they just cut people without warning who aren't connected to the current leadership. So you know, the people who've been there a long time and actually understand how the systems work.
quasirun@reddit
Hire some sacrificial juniors and pip them right away.
NoYouAreTheFBI@reddit
"You think you know" The issue is that some of your underperformers may actually be a load baring boss for other departments.
I know my plate is pretty stacked with things outside the scope of my role.
Fadamaka@reddit
I might be a bad person but when I was asked who to cut I did not hesitate. That guy was making my daily job a living hell.
utihnuli_jaganjac@reddit
Well ask them what feature/functionality/app they want to cut and then you fire the person working on it.
Helpjuice@reddit
In business sometimes cuts need to be done for business reasons. When we reach out that is going to be your only time to get the slackers cut off the team without much resistance. These are good only if you have people on the team consistantly not holding their weight for business as instead of wasting time with a PIP, they get put into the RIF pool to get laid off immediatly.
Now if everyone is carrying their weight and you find that your team will be severily incapable and incompasitated on making deliverables on time you normally will be able to make the case if you can provide evidence to back it up. I have been able to normally keep my entire team due to being able to provide justification. Then when I did have slackers I put them on the list to do the entire team a favor as it takes too much time and effort to build the perfect team to have others come in and mess up a good thing by not carrying their weight over a long period of time.
Additional-Map-6256@reddit
I would try the "we can't spare anyone" approach first, and when they give pushback, say "these people absolutely cannot be cut or the company will go under" and name people in order of how essential they are. Unfortunately, top performers are not always the most necessary to the business so you'll need to consider what will make the remainder of the team function best after cuts.
eraserhd@reddit
The answer is always, “We can make this level of cut, and here’s is what it will cost the business in terms of delivery schedule and customer retention.”
Remember that cutting anyone from a team will have a negative impact. Remember that the output of the team is not the sum of the output of its members, and that the best team members are facilitators and will likely have low individual output.
LogicRaven_@reddit
Talk with your manager, if you can.
Evaluate the position of your team and the seriousness of the financial trouble.
Of course every team works on important things. But be brutally honest with yourself - if the company has to cut roles, would it survive with less people in your team or in team X?
If your team is the breadwinner for the company, then you might not need to volunteer people in the first round.
In other cases, you might want to stack rank your people and let your manager know who has the least impact. That way you have more control over who is selected, so lower chance of losing your top performer.
_5er_@reddit
I would dunk the slacker every time. Nothing worse than working with them. They take out the last drop of joy out of work.
They waste everyone's time and money. At the end of the day company revenue depends on the workforce. If everyone is slacking company will earn less. Hence lower pay or job cuts.
tetryds@reddit
If you don't choose they will choose and you know they will not make the best choices
Necessary-Ad-2395@reddit
This is a matter of company politics more than being a dev, but it's a good learning experience. I was the head of a software dev department through COVID and we had waves of layoffs we went through, until eventually the entire department was axed.
Essentially you have to be able to make a business case for each person on your team. The way you do this isn't really a dev skill, since it comes down to budgets and arguing what the ROI for each employee is and also being able to effectively make your case to your superiors. Keep in mind you're likely in competition with other departments at your company, you may be able to keep people at the expense of other departments. That can further complicate office politics down the line.
Also as a lead you need to be aware of who your weakest links are, that's part of the responsibility of being in a leadership position. Nobody ever wants their teammates to be cut, but if the business says it has to be done you have to be prepared to make a responsible recommendation to the company.
On the other hand, of someone is very obviously slacking in a way other people are noticing, that's a different kind of problem and it might be a good time to correct the situation. If you're in a leadership position it means the company trusts your judgement, so just do your best.
Sorry your going through this, it can be very tough and kind of isolating. It really damages morale and people will be looking to you for leadership. Don't bad mouth the company or other departments, just own that it's an unfortunate situation that's outside of your control and keep everyone moving forward.
Fancy-Nerve-8077@reddit
Say you cant cut anywhere because let’s be honest, one less person means more work for everyone else, which make the job just a little bit more difficult. If they hold your feet to the fire, then speak up on who you can let go but I wouldn’t volunteer it. Senior leaders only see dollars and big picture, they don’t see the work that comes with it.
canihaveanapplepie@reddit
If you don't choose, a choice will probably be made without your input. You'll still be losing someone, but you don't get to pick who
maria_la_guerta@reddit
Sorry. This always sucks.
If you are going to claim you can't cut anyone, you need to make the business case for it. And you need to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that a company looking to get rid of employees physically can't afford to cut one of yours. That's pretty much impossible to do, and more often than not you'll fail and they'll just pick someone for you.
This is the shit part of the job, but it's part of the job. As others are saying, give as few names as possible as any other law performer will likely pick up speed once layoffs do hit.
Primary-Walrus-5623@reddit
or they'll pick you! if you haven't already been picked by your boss.
08148694@reddit
If you are not accurately assessing your team members performance then you are not doing you job
If your performance assessment isn’t going up the chain then you are not doing your job
You don’t need to make the decision to fire someone, but you need to give that decision maker accurate information
Primary-Walrus-5623@reddit
a lot of places have a wide range for "3"s. For instance at my place 70% of the company gets 3s. Some slackers are going to be in there along with some pretty good people. No one a level up will read performance reviews to figure this out
EnderMB@reddit
Sadly, no one will believe the latter, and you'll basically force your leadership's hand in making the decision for you.
One option available to you is to discuss voluntary redundancy. I've worked in a few places where cuts were needed, and those that set out an initial period where they asked the entire company if they'd be willing to quit there and then for 2-3 months pay. This was during an awful economic period and some still jumped at the chance - either because they didn't like the job or because they had a foot out the door already.
Obviously you'd need leadership approval to do this, but it might be a viable option that can make everyone happy(ish).
serial_crusher@reddit
If there's a severance package, give them my name