They are bad in the sense that people lost their job. I don't think that has changed. However, layoffs are usually necessary for one reason or another. Companies need to shift and change in order to keep moving forward. Or they are out of money. Or whatever. If a company is shifting to evolve to keep up with changing trends, cutting jobs is a necessary evil. Whether you see it as "bad" or not in that circumstance depends on if you are an executive, shareholder, or employee who just lost your job. The problem I see with layoffs is when you see them happen repeatedly. You lose 20 people, 6 months later hire 20 people, 6 months later lose 20 people. That sort of cyclical bullshit is ridiculous and unnecessary and a sign of bad management. It's a sign of living sale to sale, not having any long term growth strategy, or a business goal in general. My father tells me a story of the first time his company hit really hard times. It got to the point where he had two months of payroll left. They had about 40 employees total, only 2 of which were managers (my father and his partner). He was like...we either cut everyones wages in half or we cut half the staff. How to you make a choice like that? Especially when some of your employees have no where else to go or have families or are about to have families. He was super transparent about it and let everyone know what was going on. Some people left and some people stayed with a pay cut and he had to let some go still. One of those guys who stayed with him is now about to take over the company - a company with more than quadruple the number of employees now. That type of company is far different than a company employing 100,000 people. He had to look in every one of their faces and he knew their names, their wife's names, whether they had just put a down payment on a house. I think when you are running a company like that - 1 person, 10 people, 50 people - you have a obligation to your employees. The decisions you make for your business tend to be about keeping them employed, not lining your pockets or looking for a cheap way out. Usually at that size you aren't public so you don't have shareholders to answer to. But with massive companies, it's much bigger than that. You have executives that have little or no personal stake in the company (their pockets aren't going to be emptied due to a bad decision, just not as hypothetically full with stock options, etc). For them, it's just "we need to cut payroll by 3m next year. How do we get there?" Or their greater reputation as an executive. In no circumstance is my dad going to be looked at favorably when he lays of 30 employees, no matter how necessary it is. When you're running a company like HP though, making tough decisions that achieve the greater business goals and staying relevant is what earns you respect. Not firing 30k people when that was the only way to take 3 steps forward would ensure you lose that job and never have another job again.Are layoffs inherently bad now?
Necessary is a tricky word in this case though. If she laid off that metric buttload of people to preserve somebodies multimillion dollar bonus, I would say that's not necessary. If she did it to stop the company from going under, costing EVERYBODY their jobs, that's a different animal entirely.usually necessary for one reason or another
Lets say a business is like a basketball team. The team only really needs 5-10 players, but they have 20 on the team. Their top 5 players earn the most and the team pays them handsomely to keep them. But there is a salary cap coming. They could drop 5-10 players and still keep paying the 5 starters handsomely, keeping them happy or they could cut the 5 starters salary and likely lose them to another team. What do you think they're going to do? What would you do? This is how it goes. I've been with my company for 6 years and I'm just an employee number to them. They have 60k employees. That's reality. I wouldn't fault my company for laying off whole divisions of people if their roles became unneeded or unjustifiable from a cost perspective. Necessary is not a tricky word. There's no "10 people are more important than 1.. cuz fairness and stuff." Companies have an objective, -to make money. Period.Necessary is a tricky word in this case though
-No it's not, it means there's not a better option. If she laid off that metric buttload of people to preserve somebodies multimillion dollar bonus, I would say that's not necessary.
-Is this how you think things happen? Let's assume, and it's a huge assumption, that she laid off all those people so that people at the top could have bonuses. What would that tell you? Would it tell you that perhaps those people at the top were essential to the organization and would take their skills elsewhere if they couldn't max out their earning potential? Would it tell you that those that got laid off weren't essential to the ongoing function of the organization and were therefore more expendable?