Skip to content

Work in the office, get fired at home

    This week, McDonald’s asked corporate employees, who usually work in the office at least three days a week, to do the work from home. The plan was to lay off hundreds of employees, DealBook learns, and the company preferred to deliver its news virtually.

    McDonald’s isn’t the only company to adjust its layoff book. In January, Google laid off thousands via email. And Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO, announced plans for a year of major budget cuts last month in a 2,000-word memo, explaining that Meta staff “rather wanted more transparency in any restructuring plans.”

    Like many workplace norms, firing people is being rewritten in the aftermath of the pandemic, when downsizing companies often had little choice but to fire through Slack, Zoom and email, and often did so sloppily. With offices reopening and remote working becoming more common, companies now have options — and it’s not necessarily clear what’s best for employees.

    “If we had this conversation three years ago, I would have said this is cruel and unusual punishment,” Bob Sutton, a Stanford professor and the author of “The No Asshole Rule,” says of ranged shooting. “But it’s changed so drastically since the pandemic that I’m confused.”

    The case for virtual layoffs. Cynthia Huang, a senior marketing executive, was fired in February from a consumer goods company with a hybrid work policy. Since she was working remotely that day, she got the news via video call; others were let loose in the office.

    Huang said she preferred to receive the call at home. “It felt more comfortable than having to physically walk out of the office, have everyone look at me, grab all my stuff,” she said.

    Firing people at home can sometimes be more compassionate in the era of hybrid work, Sutton said. “When you call people into the office who don’t go to the office often to fire them, it’s kind of weird,” he said.

    The case for face-to-face shooting. When layoffs are done remotely, managers may not fully feel the human cost of their decisions, Sutton said: It’s “kind of easy come, easy go.” And with a personal message, employees have the chance to say goodbye to colleagues.

    Kim Scott, a former Google executive and the author of “Radical Candor,” suggested that awkwardness or embarrassment could be avoided by planning ahead, such as having an extra meeting room where people can gather themselves and an option to store belongings after hours. to get.

    The medium matters. A video conversation with your manager beats the impersonal e-mail. “It’s very hard to personally care about email,” Scott said.

    And experts question the wisdom of Zuckerberg’s pre-resignation announcement.

    “At the same time you have to be prepared to talk to people about both the process you’re going to go through and what people will be offered if their job turns out to be on the line,” says Professor Sandra Sucher. at Harvard Business School. “Because if you don’t do all of that at the same time, you will only bring a lot of uncertainty into your organization.”

    Scott recommends a short period between announcing and executing layoffs. “That makes everyone nervous,” she said of the Zuckerberg approach.

    But even the most thoughtful version of letting someone go is still painful. “It just felt very much like there was no human touch,” Huang said of her experience. “But I don’t think that was necessary because it was virtual versus in-person. I think it’s just the nature of a layoff. —Sarah Kessler

    Donald Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 minor felonies. The allegations of falsifying company records are all linked to hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016. Even if convicted, Trump would not automatically be disbarred from the presidency.

    Job growth slowed in March. Employers added 236,000 jobs, the Labor Department reported Friday, up from an average of 334,000 in the previous six months. The gradual slowdown appears to reflect the impact of rising interest rates, which is good news for President Biden.

    Jamie Dimon discussed the banking crisis. In an interview with CNN, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase said turmoil caused by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank would make a recession more likely. “We see people cutting lending a little bit, cutting back a little bit and pulling back a little bit,” he said.

    Credit Suisse leaders mourned the end of their bank. At the Swiss bank’s annual meeting on Tuesday, top officials acknowledged it would be its last as the company prepared to be absorbed by its arch-rival, UBS. Credit Suisse chairman Axel Lehmann also apologized for the scandals and missteps that led to the bank’s demise, but shareholder after shareholder bitterly attacked corporate executives: “You can almost taste the feelings of disgust and betrayal here today.” said one investor.

    Why we published an obscenity. Because the tone of a Times article should be thoughtful and understated, we generally avoid publishing vulgarities. In exceptional cases, however, we publish offensive language, such as when an important public figure uses such language in a public setting, or when the use of the words themselves is the story.

    LIV Golf players tee off for the first time at the Masters Tournament. A strong performance would be a breakthrough for the league, which is financed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. The tournament ends on Sunday, weather permitting.

    A year ago this week, Elon Musk revealed that he was Twitter’s largest shareholder. Soon after, he signed a deal to acquire the company for $54.20 a share, beginning months of drama and legal challenges that ended with Musk owning it.

    He has since fired thousands of employees, made changes that caused some advertisers to flee and confused users by tinkering with the app, most recently by adding the Dogecoin logo to the site’s homepage and blocking likes or shares of tweets that contain links to Substack.

    But what if the board had rejected the offer? It’s impossible to know for sure, but let’s play it out.

    Twitter would have cut costs anyway. If his offer had been rejected, Musk could have launched a hostile bid. But he could have just gone on with other things, crashing Twitter’s stock by selling his stock. In either situation, the board would have had one clear task: to raise Twitter’s share price to $54.20 — up from about $40 the day before Musk announced his bet. JPMorgan Chase had already done the math on behalf of the board and was not confident it could be done. Twitter should have streamlined spending and years of over-hire was a clear starting point. Had the board not accepted Musk’s offer, it planned to announce significant layoffs in April at Twitter’s quarterly results, a person familiar with the company’s strategy told DealBook.

    Advertising revenue would have continued to decline. Faced with economic uncertainty, major advertisers have cut their spending on digital advertising, which accounts for 90 percent of Twitter’s revenue. Even without Musk at the helm, Twitter’s advertising would have been “decimated,” said Rich Greenfield, an analyst who labeled Twitter a public company — though, he added, “clearly not as bad as what happened under Elon. ” Greenfield estimated that shares of Twitter would be worth $10 to $20 today.

    Other activists may have struck. If Twitter’s stock price plummeted below Musk’s bid price, Twitter would have become vulnerable to activists pushing for a board shake-up, or to the impeachment of Twitter’s recently installed CEO, Parag Agrawal. (Musk fired him shortly after acquiring the company.) And they could have pushed for a sale. No actual bidders came forward to challenge Musk’s $54.20 offer, but if the stock price had halved over the next year, would a deal with Disney have been struck? Comcast’s NBCUniversal? Apollo?

    Any of those options would most likely have shortchanged shareholders compared to Musk’s offer. According to some, society would have benefited. But that’s not who the board thought it was reporting to.

    According to Zippia, a site that provides job seekers with information about a company’s culture, American employees, on average, spend time in meetings they consider unproductive.

    In Hollywood, there are talent agents and there are entertainment moguls. And then there’s Ari Emanuel, the CEO of Endeavor.

    On Monday, Endeavor announced an agreement to buy World Wrestling Entertainment for a value of $9.3 billion, the latest historic deal in a decades-long career that has elevated Emanuel from a star agent to the premier gatekeeper to a wide array of content and talent.

    Emanuel co-founded Endeavor in 1995, famously performing a night raid for his own office files at International Creative Management. (He’s also, famously, the main inspiration for foul-mouthed cop Ari Gold in “Entourage”.)

    He has steadily built Endeavor through a series of deals: first taking over the old guard William Morris Agency and later closing a deal to buy the IMG agency, giving Endeavor both a sports agency and a foothold in live events. Likewise, Endeavor purchased both Professional Bull Riders and Ultimate Fighting Championship, the latter of which brought mixed martial arts to the masses.

    Along the way, Emanuel has put together an enviable Rolodex that includes Dwayne Johnson, Mark Wahlberg, and Elon Musk (while maintaining a notoriously disciplined fitness regimen that reportedly includes daily ice baths and highly restrictive diets).

    Behind all that dealing is a bet on scale. Endeavor represents talent in books, movies, music, sports, television and theater; distributes and licenses content; and owns live events such as MMA matches.

    Combining WWE with UFC is meant to create a behemoth of live events, with viewing platforms paying handsomely to show the fights. It will also make Emanuel the CEO of not one but two publicly traded companies: Endeavor, valued at $7 billion, and the unified UFC-WWE, which is valued at $21 billion and will be spun off.

    “He’s going back to the playbook,” Brandon Ross, an analyst at LightShed Partners, told Bloomberg. “Ari likes to get bigger.”