Intro
Adam: Hello. Welcome to CoRecursive. I’m Adam Gordon Bell.
Imagine this: you’re sitting in a Zoom call, heart pounding, knowing that just in a few moments, a few seconds, once this person joins, you have to deliver news that will change someone’s life.
Not in a good way, really. It’s a layoff.
You know, before I got laid off, there was an early round of layoffs at Ardsley. And so this was something that happened to me. There was this person that I worked with who was amazing—just somebody I loved to talk to, and he was so bright and fun. One of my favorite people in the world, uh, Josh. We were a team of two, you know, doing developer communication, and now it was going to be a team of one.
And I had to be on the call where he was laid off. And I felt horrible right after the call. I kept wondering if there was anything I could have done to save his job. Maybe things could have gone differently. It felt like there should have been a way to prevent it.
You know, you say yes, people have to go, but not him. It felt like a personal failing that this had happened. It felt like I had let somebody down and done something wrong.
So after some time, I tried to keep in touch. I wanted to maintain this friendship with this person, uh, who I just thought was terrific—talented and also just funny and, uh, pleasant to work with.
So we set up a Zoom call to catch up.
But when we met, it felt a little bit like things were weird.
Allison:Like after he had been let go?
Adam: After he had been let go.
Allison:Yeah. Because you were still there.
Adam:
I think so. I was still there, but I think also part of it was that, uh like I wanted to meet with him because like, I was feeling bad that he wasn’t there. And it’s the weird thing to put on somebody who you’ve laid off to like, oh, can you make me feel better about, about that?
It’s not like I explicitly felt that, but I feel like that was an aspect of it, right? Like I wanted to meet up with him because I wanted to see that he didn’t hate me, and that things were still alright.
Allison: That’s interesting. Yeah, it’s hard. I think it’s whether you’re laying somebody off or letting somebody go that we put it in our own heads as managers that it’s something we’re doing and it’s affecting us. We really have to remember, well, actually, the other person is much more affected by this, and you really have to park your own emotions.
Yeah, it’s interesting to hear about it after the fact that you were still struggling with that.
Adam: That’s Allison, she’s a director at Shopify with extensive experience in handling layoffs. Most recently, she had to communicate layoffs to 15 of her reports during Shopify’s 2023 round of downsizing.
Allison:
Yeah, it’s not enjoyable at all. There’s nothing, again, you’re just there to deliver terrible news, and I did know the people that I was speaking to, and you can’t change it. It’s hard. It’s just a hard day. And then to go, you know, you have one meeting, you have to switch gears to the next person that you’re going to be speaking to, and try to be fresh, try to be there for them, be in the moment for them.
I think that’s the only thing you really can do is just be present for the person, the colleague, the human that you’re talking to. And that’s all.
Adam: Today, Allison’s going to share her tips on navigating downturns: the tech reset of 2022-2024. It hit hard. With about half a million layoffs in the U.S. alone. Meanwhile, many other sectors thrived.
But Allison’s here because she’s been through this before, multiple times. And she’s going to share the story of that today. Because there have been other downturns; this isn’t the first.
Allison, in fact, started her career off in one. She was an intern at a high-flying Canadian telecom company, Nortel, when she was in university. And then she graduated right into a telecom downturn and got a job.
Tropic Networks
Allison: And this was because of my connections that I’d made at Nortel. I was asked to interview and later join this company called Tropic Networks, which was a startup in Ottawa, also doing networking work. There were a lot of people being let go around the industry. I had university friends who were asked to not even join the first jobs that they had lined up and were given a little compensation to just not show. So it was a mood. The mood at the time was very tense, I guess, for employees.
But every day you would hear stories even on the news of like, oh, these people showed up to their office and the door was just locked. Like there’s no more office to go to and people are standing outside or in some of the bigger companies, maybe badging, and their badge just doesn’t work. That’s kind of how you find out if you’re getting let go. I think the mood back in this time was just one of uncertainty. It had been such a big boom in the years prior, and all tech folks were really riding high, especially in a city like Ottawa, which is not a big city. We’d really grown our technical expertise and had a lot of people come here, and that was starting to diminish. So people were actually moving back out of the city. So it was a very strange time.
Mark
Adam:Allison had only been at Tropic Networks for about two months, and she sat next to Mark.
Allison:We had these tables where two people sat at them, and they were my coach in a lot of respects.
So, that day, I think we just came in to work like a normal day. I kind of sat on the left-hand side of Mark, and Mark came in. We said good morning, you know, we’re booting up our computers, doing our normal thing, just getting rolling for the day. Yes, he was asked to go and speak to our lead in a different room and put his coffee down, you know, went away dutifully. And then, essentially came back with one of these dreaded boxes and had to put their belongings into the box while the supervisor watched and oversaw and said a very fast goodbye.
Adam:And that was it. Mark the expert, the mentor, the table mate. He was gone.
Allison: And so I was left sitting there feeling very uncomfortable, of course, and not really knowing what to do.
Um, I remember that coffee cup very vividly
oh my goodness, this person who I looked up to and who was training me and who was doing all these things and much more senior than me in their career has just been, has just been asked to leave.
and I remember just vividly seeing their coffee cup sitting there still steaming because it was morning time. I was like, Oh my goodness, what, what happens now? And if this person’s Be like, Oh, what’s going to happen to me?
I don’t remember if I then spoke to other colleagues about what happened or if my manager came to see me after the fact. Like I actually don’t remember the rest of that, that day. So it’s funny how some things really stay with you. But I remember just feeling worried about myself, my career, and just feeling like, my goodness, this person was so much more knowledgeable than me.
And what does that mean?
Adam: Yeah, and what do you do with that? Like, I don’t know. You just worry, just worry for the next.
Allison:Yeah, exactly. I guess you just worry. You work hard. I think, I was already working hard and spending long hours. That probably caused me to double down and do even more of that, like evening and weekend kind of work. So probably not the best response for work-life balance. But, I guess that was just the reality. So that was the first experience with guilt.
Survivor’s guilt goes hand in hand with imposter syndrome, where you just wonder, what did I do to deserve this? And maybe they were better at a certain thing than I am, and you just start wondering what you can do and just feeling bad about it. I think that’s just our way of coping with something that’s out of our control.
First Layoff
Adam: After a few months, Allison forgets about the layoff fears. And she just gets on with her job.
Allison: Um, and I was sitting at my desk doing my thing. You know, I think I wasn’t quite as worried because time had passed, and I had passed a little bit, and things seemed reasonably stable at the company.
Um, and I did get a tap on my shoulder, and my manager asked if I would come with him to a meeting room. I said, ‘Sure, of course.’ I got up, and he said, ‘You should bring your coat.’ I was like, ‘Oh.’ So I brought my things, and all of a sudden went into this meeting room, and he left, and then there was a bunch of a few people, like maybe it was a boardroom with about 10 people in it, and we were all sitting around a table. We didn’t necessarily know each other; it was people from different parts of the company. Somebody said, ‘What do you think the meeting’s about?’ I said, ‘Oh, I think we’re getting laid off.’ He said, ‘You are?’ I said, ‘No, we are.’
And then, sure enough, that is what happened. We were escorted out of the building right away. I didn’t even, um, fill my own box with my things. My manager actually dropped it off at my home a few days later. So it was really a fast departure.
Just, yeah, it was a strange time. I remember being scared and sad and calling my mother immediately and going immediately to the bank in order to get a line of credit just in case I had to be out of work for a little while and just right into action mode, and then, uh, yeah, probably spent a few days crying.
Adam: What did, like, what is the conversation with your mom?
Allison: Basically, I was just like, Oh, and then silence, I think her mostly telling me I’d be fine. and probably me telling her that I’ve got this action plan for what I’m doing immediately right now before I go break down somewhere. So yeah, my mom’s always been very supportive
General Dynamics
Adam:Her second call. Well, that was to her boyfriend. He worked at General Dynamics, and he was in a great spot to help her out.
Allison:He said, give me your resume and I’ll drop it off on somebody’s desk in the office.
Adam: Then came the interview.
Allison: I’m sure I felt shameful at the time. I don’t now. I think I do feel like I’m fortunate that it happened so early in my career so that I could really understand that, oh, your life doesn’t end. You go on to the next thing. And I think that helps me too, as a manager and a leader, be able to share that with other people.
People get laid off, especially in our industry. We’ve had a few big downturns in, you the last 20 some years and it’s just a reality. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you.
Career Growth At General Dynamics
Allison: So when I did join that company, I was one of the few younger people in that age group. A lot of people had been there for 20 some years. It was kind of a place where you would grow your entire career. Over the next few years of my being there, we won a few big contracts.
And so we actually hired a lot of people. The defense industry is really interesting because the people follow contracts. If one company wins a big contract, then that means they’re probably hiring, and they come from the other companies who didn’t maybe win that contract. There’s a bit of a movement that happens pretty regularly.
So during my time there, we grew; we hired a couple thousand extra people or at least 1,500 additional people than we’d had. While I was still there, we reduced a lot of that workforce also. That meant we did have to make big cuts, and in that company, the cuts were basically program-based.
Adam: Program-based means people aren’t moved around. If you worked on project X and it was being shut down, you were gone.
Allison:So that means in that role, I also saw the company grow and then the company shrink.
And in that case, there was really nothing that I could do, I guess, about it at that point in my career; it was just happening around me and in multiple waves at the time. I don’t remember the exact cadence, whether it was a few months or kind of once and then the next year, but it seemed very frequent when you didn’t know exactly what was going to be happening.
And I think as a person who was just an employee there, you didn’t know if it was going to be the same shape. Like what if the program I’m on is the next one that has something bad happen to it, or if they change the way that they operate and it’s no longer program based.
And so there’s just another sense of worry. I don’t think I felt all through my career that I was always worried about my job security, but maybe in those times, it’s definitely a prominent feeling or you’re like, “Oh, so and so that was on the lunchtime soccer team. They’re just no longer here.”
Adam: Is that the hard part? Like just people kind of disappear?
Allison:Yeah. And you have to wait to see where they land and where they, what happens to them after that? Like you just don’t know. So that means then there’s a little bit of like rumor mill of trying to keep on track, on top of who’s gone where and what’s happening and how are they doing? I guess in a positive way, cause you’re worried about them.
And that really does create a terrible environment for the employees who are still there, and the ones who have left, of course, are obviously the most affected by things.
But always being worried about your job security is really, it’s really terrible for productivity. It’s terrible for morale. I think that is the hard part.
The Witness
Adam:As Allison’s career progresses, she starts to occasionally see some of the other side of exits as HR calls them. Because each termination. It needs a witness.
Allison: So I was, um, I was asked to be physically in the room when people were, were let go. And I remember one instance was definitely the worst. So first of all, it was a friend of mine. And second of all, I didn’t. I had like zero warning. I was like, come into this room right now.
This is what’s happening. Like, Oh, okay. And, uh, Some people, a lot of people don’t react immediately because they’re in shock, but this was one of the instances where there was a, there was a lot of crying immediately. And I just remember thinking, I mean, you can’t, I couldn’t say anything. I’m literally just supposed to be quiet and in this room.
And I did get up and get a box of Kleenexes and hand those over. But, um, Yeah, I felt like a voyeur or something. You’re like witnessing somebody’s worst moments. No real business being part of it. Like they weren’t in my reporting chain or anything like that. It was like an adjacent role. yeah, that was not, not fun at all.
There’s a lot of human moments that you go through in these, these different jobs of ours that are definitely not fun.
Adam:Like in that situation, you can’t say anything, but like, you know, what would you say to somebody Yeah, you’re right. There’s nothing to say. It’s probably better to be not allowed to say anything than to try to come up with words, but yeah, I think there’s nothing to say because it’s not my, in that case, it wasn’t my decision. It wasn’t me who had to judge their, their performance
Allison: and yeah, it’s just hard. It’s just hard to see people going through these moments.
Adam:Yeah.
Allison:I know that that person found another role very quickly also and was doing well. So, again, a moment in time, and maybe a push to actually do the next thing that they’d been thinking about doing but didn’t feel comfortable doing.
Shopify
Adam:Allison mainly sticks to military adjacent things for awhile. But then, a tech company in Ottawa, Shopify started gaining a lot of attention.
Allison:So I, being an Ottawa native, I watched Shopify grow over many years and had known some people that I worked with go there. Funnily enough, I was like, “Oh, what would they want with me?” And so I never actually applied until much later in my career. I ended up going to work in the U.S. for a little while, and it was time for me to come back home.
So I started looking, job searching in Ottawa, and I actually went to a career fair in one of the Shopify offices and ended up speaking to some of the people who worked there, and they encouraged me to apply, and I did. And that’s actually how I ended up there. So a bit of happenstance, but I’m very, very happy.
When I joined Shopify, I started in an inventory management team, and prior to that, I’d been working on drone delivery, leading an engineering team at a startup. I remember a lot of my friends and family saying, “What do you mean now you’re doing inventory management? That sounds so boring compared to drones.”
And I would have to tell them, “No, actually, it’s a really hard space. There’s tons of technical challenges.” And I was very excited about it. And they’re like, “Okay. Just doesn’t sound as sexy, sure.”
People Manager Central
Adam:Allison’s career at Shopify is successful. She becomes a director. She finds talented people. She grows her team.
But, yeah, today we’re focusing on something else.
Allison:So when we did layoffs, one of the hard, the hardest things about having layoffs happen, I think, as a manager, like leading up to it, is knowing that it’s coming. And I’m very thankful that Shopify limits the amount of time that I knew that this was happening to a very short window.
And it feels funny because at the time you think, Oh, I’m, I don’t have control. I’m not making tons of these decisions, but at the same time, it really is a lovely protection, I guess, for the managers who have to then let people know.
Adam: The layoffs were May, 2023.
Allison:I found out a few days before, with some of my counterparts, that we would be letting people go. I didn’t know the extent of these layoffs at the time. Anyway, the day came, and I had some meetings pre-populated in my calendar and had to start working through my little list of people to chat with. I had to inform people that they had been let go. In those meetings, people come in, and you give them the news.
I had probably 15 or so emails, maybe a dozen to 15, in this one day. So they’re all very clumped together because you want to deliver the news really quickly. Now, I will say people had received emails ahead of time, so they weren’t just hearing about it right then.
So that’s good, I guess, that the company did share this news with them, and then by the time I got on the call, it was to say that verbally, to share that there was going to be information about what the next steps were coming soon. But, yeah, it’s not enjoyable at all. There’s nothing, again, you’re just there to deliver terrible news.
Adam:In these meetings, it’s natural for people to try to negotiate. Can I switch teams? Can I work on another project?
Allison:And that’s one of the worst questions to be asked. It’s like, can you change it? Because there’s no, there is no good answer to that question. And of course the answer is no, and there’s no way to deliver that well. It’s hard. It’s just a hard day.
And then to go, you know, you have one meeting, you have to switch gears to the next person that you’re going to be speaking to, and try to be, try to be fresh, try to be for them, be in the moment for them.
I find often they’re very quiet. The reactions are for the most part, quite small in, in the moment, because I think people have to process, but, some of the people actually say, um, “Oh, how are, how are you doing? Are you okay having to go through all this?” And it’s so surprising that that is people’s reaction, or at least the people that, um, that I was talking to his reaction.
Even in those worst moments for those, those folks, they, they showed up that way. And I don’t know, I don’t know if that makes it easier or harder to deliver the news when the person is being so nice and so caring, but, uh, just want to reciprocate.
And obviously I want to make sure that all those people land somewhere good. And I think everybody that I’ve, that I follow up with definitely has, which is great. But, um, yeah, it’s really hard. There’s nothing good about doing that.
And we definitely have to remember, it’s not about you as hard as it is for me to deliver the news. It’s harder to, to receive the news and, and I think grounding yourself in that before every conversation. Um, making sure to give space for somebody to react. However, they need to react, even if it’s not as graciously. That’s okay.
I think that’s the only thing you really can do is just be present for the person, the colleague, the human that you’re talking to and that’s all.
Post Layoffs
Adam:But the day wasn’t done after all the layoff calls.
Allison: because then I wanted to make sure that the people who were were there and my leads were equipped to who are some of them also having these calls were doing okay also, and that we could talk to the people who were still on the teams and kind of regroup. This did affect a lot of things. It affected the projects we were working on. A lot of things had to be canceled. And so it very immediately people were asking what they were supposed to do the next day. Like if key participants in their, their work, uh, were no longer there and there wasn’t enough. power to continue on the efforts.
What should they be doing?
That was a very, very long day and I think just exhausting and, and frustrating. Knowing that that was going to be the thing to do that morning, the night before, means you probably haven’t slept the night before.
I know I don’t. And so, yeah, it’s, it’s exhausting, it’s hard, and then I think just trying to be there for the people who, um, who you were close to, who maybe did lose their jobs, and also for each other, our peers who are also going through some of these, these challenges of having to deliver this news and deal with it.
Processing
Adam:And then how, like, how do you process that day? Like, I mean, I know it’s not about you, but it’s a hard thing to go through,
Allison:Yeah, that’s just a blur of emotion and long weeks. By the time you get to kind of the next week after a few days, it’s a little more calmed down, but even just understanding the landscape of who is no longer there was a bit of a challenge, right? What does this even mean? And as you look around to neighboring teams, what does it mean for them?
So it’s definitely, it is a big deal to do a layoff. It changes everything about the way you work. I’m sure even in the small company where you were, when there were just some 20 odd people, some of them are gone. That’s a big change to the team.
Adam’s Layoff
Adam:Yeah. I, yeah. So continuing my, my little personal journey, right. I eventually got called into a call myself where, It’s funny because, like, uh, there was a Zoom call with my boss, but I couldn’t get the audio working, but I knew when I joined it, that it wasn’t good because there was another person in the meeting.
I knew, like, you know, you get a sense when things aren’t going well.
Allison:Did you have a sense beforehand?
Adam:So, it’s interesting, we, we were, we were struggling, but then things seemed to be getting better. Uh, but yeah, so I, I was expecting that, that there was going to be layoffs, but I thought that we kind of got through that, but then we didn’t. And I got called onto this call and I, and I knew it was a layoff call because yeah, there was another person there for no particular reason.
You know, then whatever you leave the call. I texted my wife, who like came home. I mean, she was more upset than I was. But the interesting thing is people from the company, uh, would reach out to me as I was job hunting. And because I had previously gone through this, I could feel that they were anxious, right?
Like they, they were asking me, If I found something new because like they were anxious for me, but also for themselves, right? It’s that it’s that guilt aspect of it And it’s got it’s it’s a weird because you Would like to reassure them, but also how is that your job? Right? Like, like, don’t worry. I’ll be fine.
Allison:But now you’re settled in.
Adam:Yeah. Now I’m settled in and everything’s great. But, but yeah, I, I don’t know, it’s just these emotional aspects of it are interesting to me. Like I’ve never been laid off before. Now I have, but I would have never thought that there’s like in a, you know, like an emotional component between the people who stay and the people who didn’t get to stay, which is interesting.
Allison:Yeah. Yeah. I really am thankful that it happened to be so early in my career. I think especially as a people leader, like just to understand that a little bit more from the other side.
Allison:One of the nice things that we did at Shopify is they actually created a goodbye Slack. And so it wasn’t that these people just vanished with their steaming coffee. We actually did have a space where people could go and they could tell their colleagues that they would miss them and share their personal emails and different things like that, and share words of encouragement, and I think that’s just a lovely way to humanize. Um, so that was really nice and I think a lot of people took advantage of being able to do that and say their goodbyes.
I think the way that a company and the managers at the company say goodbye to these people is really important because that affects the way that they will speak about your company and remember their many years or many months there, and how, whether they’ll want to come back at some other point in time or recommend talented friends to come, all that’s really important. Nobody came to a locked door or something like that—a locked computer in our remote world.
Adam:Yeah, no, it is. It’s an interesting place to show strength
like you can. really endear yourself to people by, you know, staying strong, true values then. And when, when I was laid off, uh, similar to your story, , there was, uh, an ability for us to chat , with other people who were still at the company, well wishes and connecting and exchanging contact details. And yeah, I mean, I think that is important. I think there’s legal concerns and people are like, you know, Oh, it’s better if we can just, you know, walk them out the front door with their box or, or their computer locks and a FedEx box shows up and they, they send it in it.
But I think that if you can, you know, these people that you worked so closely with, like, don’t just pretend that, that, they’re gone.
Allison: Yeah, definitely. I think when we’re, uh, or at least I received this advice a lot. But when you’re younger and you’re thinking of changing a job, like, I think, uh, people wiser than me and my parents and mentors would say, don’t always leave a job on good terms. Right? If I’m deciding to leave, you should be really nice and you want to make sure that you don’t burn any bridges, and, and, uh, this is just the other side of the conversation, but we don’t often hear about it. And maybe that’s a nice, a nice thing in, in tech where people are just empathetic and more caring about how these things occur.
Finding New Roles
Adam:Ending well matters, especially in the long term. I think people really remember that. But also, these people need new roles. And in a soft market with layoffs everywhere, that is tough.
Allison: at Shopify, we saw people creating different spreadsheets where like, who are, here are the names of the people, add your name to the list, and then we can give you referrals and tag you into our, our network.
And that was really a grassroots thing that happened by just some of the folks on the team. And it was lovely to see that and be able to help them share these talented folks with the rest of the community. Um, so I think reaching out and just telling people that you’ll be, a reference if you’re willing to do that and you’ll share their name.
Um, I also find myself sharing a lot of job postings and, and different things with people and kind of doing it both ways, recommending individuals or also recommending they reach out to a certain company. And that doesn’t take a lot of effort. It doesn’t have to be awkward.
Saving Morale
Adam:The next thing on Allison’s plate. She doesn’t want the thought of more layoffs in people’s heads. She has to reassure them. She knows, otherwise, that will kill morale.
Allison:You can really look them in the eye and tell them that they’re not affected by these changes.
You’re not going to wake up tomorrow and have another email or another thing happen.
You know, we don’t know how long, how many tomorrows, but definitely a fair number of them. And you can promise, forever.
And that is a really big change. It’s a really big difference, because then you can turn to being optimistic about the future, and you can start regrouping and reforming. And that’s not to say that there’s not a period of, kind of, mourning, where you need to deal with feelings and allow people to have space to feel.
Adam:I think this is what I struggled with. The feeling of guilt post layoffs.
So Allison made sure her team had space to process things.
Allison:I think going through this, you have to, in those days and those instances, put the people first. This is the time to really be focused on the individuals, and nothing else mattered in that moment. And even in those couple days of moments, that was the main thing. And then, after that, then you can worry about, okay, what is the work that we do?
And then you have to be, you have to be the cheerleader. You have to be the rallier of these people to get them back on track, but that can’t happen if you do it. If you try to do that too soon, like you really need to give space.
The New Plan
Adam:Meanwhile, you’re literally working with fewer people, company-wide. So once you regroup, it’s time to make a new plan.
Allison: One of the big concerns I think people have in these moments is do I have to do all the same work but with less people? And do I have to now do two times my job because somebody else isn’t there? And so making that, um, not a reality as fast as possible and changing those expectations as fast as possible is actually really important to do too
And so we definitely did that. So we canceled a lot of projects. We reprioritized things as a company. We looked at what does the team make up now? Does it, do we need to change people’s managers? Do they not have a manager anymore? All those kinds of things that are just the practical realities of dealing with major change.
So I think in particular, we looked at everything that we were planning on doing and then we were able to reprioritize and cut things that weren’t the most important thing for our, our merchants and our clients. And so we were able to really refocus on, okay, our mission, our goal. It’s our mission, but are the things that we’re doing right now really the most impactful things?
And focusing those decisions not on does this team still have critical mass, whereas this one doesn’t and cancelling it just because of the sheer numbers. We really refocused on, on the work and the efforts and are they the right things? And then we moved people and we moved our plans around to accommodate that.
And I think that. also helps people understand that the work that they’re doing is very valuable, uh, which I think is a good reinforcing function in these times also, because if you know that the thing you’re doing is really important to the company, then hopefully your anxiety goes down as well and added benefit.
We’re working on the right things. That’s win win.
ReOrg
Adam:Focusing people in on what truly matters is great, but also moving people around could backfire.
Allison: In one of the cases, we—I think we made some mistakes where we told people, “Here’s your new team. This is where you’re going to be now.” Right after having layoffs, people were already in a very anxious state. They don’t know what’s happening. They’ve lost their teammates, and now they’re being told they have to go do some other thing with some other people that they don’t know.
Some of the people did great, and they’re thriving on those new teams, while others just didn’t want to be there. It meant that they eventually bounced out to go to another team, or they left altogether. It just didn’t work out, and they had to be exited.
Adam:I had experience with reorganizations before and I remember a thing that people would get upset with is Yeah. Is like, you’re a resource. Like we have re you know, we
Allison:Reallocated.
Adam:we, you’re a box over here, but we need more boxes over here. And so we’ve moved you. Um, people aren’t boxes. people don’t want to be called beautiful, unique snowflakes, but we are all unique in our interests.
And, and maybe I was interested in this area and I could become interested in this new area, but Yeah, I would like some empathy from the organization that maybe my, my wants matter, or I
Allison: Exactly. And in moments, there are moments like in a layoff where maybe I can’t offer anybody that decision-making power, but there are other moments when maybe sometimes we don’t offer them that decision-making power as much as we should.
Adam: Yeah, because I think that it’s like, acknowledgement is sometimes very valuable. Let’s say you are, you know, on a team where you need to do like front end and back end development, but you are only really interested in doing the front end stuff. And you say to me, “I don’t want to do so much back end development. I would prefer to work on the front end stuff.”
I think that it’s powerful even sometimes to say like, “Okay, well, I understand that, and I would like to make that work for you.” But I currently cannot, but like, let’s work on that, right? Like, let’s continue to have this conversation. We need you to work on this back end thing for the next quarter.
But like, I understand that you have preferences.
Allison: No, I think that’s helpful because, and I think you have to solicit that information from the people that you work with to be able to then find them the right opportunities. But I think that’s so important and probably an overlooked aspect of, again, this performance management that is sometimes a dirty word, it’s really understanding that what are the people’s desires so that we can help them get there and do the things that they find fulfilling or learn something that they’re not doing currently.
Mm I think one of the big things that I pull from my experiences, is that I want to give as much autonomy to people as I can. And what I mean by that is I would love to not have to lay somebody off ever again, but I know that that’s not going to be the case. But when I’m looking at the people on the team and thinking about, oh, does this person need to be.
handheld a little bit more to be given the right opportunities, then how can I do that with, with them, not in spite of them? And if this person is wanting to make a change, I want to be supportive of that. Again, maybe in spite of the current situation on the team, but to help them and their opportunities going forward and based on their desires.
And when we do restructuring, I want to be able to give people the choice of is this actually the next thing that they want to do? Do they want to come join my team because it’s where the need is? Or do they want to go somewhere else?
And I guess all of these experiences of watching myself and other people go through go through the changes of, restructuring or layoffs or, exits. I just want to make sure that we always, ourselves and the people first in those cases. And if the company needs something, that is a driving factor to maybe have some conversations, but it doesn’t have to be the Be all and end all decision.
Company Health
Adam: Yeah, like, is it healthy in general, like, for a company to do this? Like, I don’t know. Like, is this a thing that needs to happen? occasionally for a company to be healthy or,
Allison:I don’t know that I would recommend that a company grow in order to shrink, but I think there are, there are times when it’s just a necessity, right? So whether it was in my previous life where big contracts came to a natural end and there wasn’t a replacement for it and there’s just literally no work to pay for the people, or in this case we grew really big and then it turns out that well, we couldn’t continue forever and we needed to right size. Um, these are just things that need to happen. Sometimes you need to take a chance and bring more people on to work on something big. Um, and I think, yes, they needed to happen here. We weren’t, we weren’t doing all of the things that we absolutely needed to do.
And maybe we’d grown too big. Um, Are we in a good place now? So now it’s a couple of years, well, a year and a half later. And I think we’re in a really good place. Like I hope that our teams are happier and people are doing well, and we have shipped a lot of great value in the interim. So, like I say, all those other folks who were impacted, we see them succeeding in other places, which is great.
So, I don’t know, not something you want to go through, not something you want people to go through, but do we overcome it for sure?
Adam: and you mentioned before, I don’t know, a certain amount of thriving that happened post, layoffs.
Allison:
Yeah. So I think, uh, there was thriving. I think sometimes when you refocus on what you can do with a small, smaller set of people. And Shopify is still big. So I’m speaking in the, of, in the smaller teams and the smaller groups of people when they’re looking at, okay, what can we actually accomplish?
And one of the things that was happening before was we were spending a lot of time hiring people, and just by virtue of not doing that anymore, it gave most of the engineers and all of the managers, myself included, a lot of time back in a week. And that time can be repurposed on different things. So that’s less about layoffs and just more about not growing as fast.
But, uh, yeah, you can do all sorts of different things. So whether it’s spending more time doing the actual work or maybe it’s planning more things out into the future, um, looking at how does our being really critical, looking at how do our components that we’re building actually work together and focusing on that for a couple of years or a year has been really impactful for us.
Reflections on Hot Coffee
Adam: and what, if you could talk to yourself back, you know, the hot coffee cup still lingering there, is there advice or recommendations?
Allison:Yeah, now having seen so many situations, and gone through a layoff myself, I know that there are jobs out there for people. Then sometimes you need a forcing function to go to the next place, and be even happier. And understanding that that’s the case, I think really helps in getting over kind of your, your own guilt for these things.
And then being able to see the people thriving in these other industries, and I remember when I first joined, especially in the defense world, I couldn’t understand how they knew all these people who’d worked in this one company for so many years; knew people in all these different companies. I was like, how do those things happen together? And it was because they had this like, movement within the industry. And now I think big tech and the startup world all have similar occurrences of people who kind of move in similar spheres, and you see them again and again. And that’s really fun.
Adam: So, for instance, somebody on your team gets laid off and you shouldn’t feel bad because maybe you’ll work with them in the future.
Allison:I mean, I don’t want to be too blasé about it because I’m sure there were people that had a hard time and maybe there’s some that are still not doing well exactly where they’d like to be, but for the most part, the people that I know are doing really well, and they’re happy. They speak fondly of their time and how, whether they’ll want to come back at some other point in time or recommend talented friends to come, all that’s really important.
I mean, I think it’s okay to feel bad, first of all, so, but I think you should also feel hopeful that, yeah, maybe if you really enjoyed working with them, there will be opportunity to do that again. And it’s just growing your understanding of the landscape through other people. And so it’s great to keep in touch with those folks so you can understand where they end up and if you help them get there.
The next role or whether you don’t, maybe one day they’ll be helping you get an extra role somewhere else because they’ll have expanded their circle of folks and their experience.
Outro
Adam:That was the show. Thank you, Allison, for sharing.
You know, as I reflect on my personal journey, from first seeing my teammates get laid off, you know, seeing them find new roles, and then me being laid off, and then myself finding a new role.
As I reflect on all that, you know, I want to say to everybody, if you’ve been laid off in the past couple of years, I hope you’re doing okay. I hope you found your great next thing.
I actually found my role because of Gavin, who worked with me at Earthly, and introduced me to the hiring manager, Aaron.
I want to remind you that the tech industry is more than just a bunch of companies. Right? It’s actually a bunch of communities of people. So no matter where you are or how well or poorly things are going or did go, you know, reach out to your peers. Keep in touch. See what everyone’s up to. Some of them might have great new roles; some of them might have opportunities for you.
Some of them might need your help. There’s this kind of great migration that was caused by this tech reset.
And I hope that that’s all over. But now that it is, it’s a great chance to reconnect and support each other. You’ll probably see some of these people again, like I am right now, so reach out and say hi, so people are.
Let’s embrace change and continue to just build a resilient community together.
And until next time, thank you so much for listening.
Sticher
Overcast
Dec 02, 2024
42
min