Better than one company I was at. Wednesday-evening meeting to announce that there will be layoffs. "If you are affected you will receive an email by 7am EST tomorrow." Which I summarized in slack as

"Sleep well Wesley, I'll likely kill you in the morning."

Nobody is getting good sleep that night, at least until the doom hour has passed without an email.

I took it as they said you’d get an email in 15 minutes but immediately (before then) locked your computer so you wouldn’t be able to read it anyway.

Telling people “wait to see if you’re fired” is absolutely cruel. Hold a virtual meeting, even if it’s just to play a video, and hit send on all those emails the instant it’s over.

What a horrible thing to do to people. Can’t even do it yourself? Gotta pre-record it?

> is absolutely cruel.

> What a horrible thing

They offered 6 months severance which dispels any serious notion of 'cruelty'. Substance over form.

> and hit send on all those emails the instant it’s over.

Ever sent an email and not had it arrive instantly? 15 minutes is enough wiggle room to clarify that.

Startup idea: developing a custom login screen for each OS, that is able to display a farewell video, so the user can be immediately locked out.

Microsoft is working on this because they'd be the primary user.

Presumably it was sent to both corporate and personal email addresses?

I have yet, in my entire career, to work for an employer that was at all disciplined about sending email that needs to address me, in the capacity of my employment, to the right email address. They almost all default to internal.

When I was involved in a mass layoff, all of the emails went to an email that was going to be cut off.