Preventing an exodus of other employees while mass firing others? One developer holds a lot of sway?

Question

We are a company that tries to be "strong in performance management" (I know, a poor euphemism for throwing people out) and today we terminated about 10% of the company for a variety of reasons, ranging from need to low performance to pivoting (we do a lot of this). This included all the product managers as we decided to rehire all of them for more experienced ones. I didn't make the decision.

Here is my problem. I am the lead HR specialist responsible for hiring and retaining software developers.

The problem is that one of the key software developers is very close to one of the fired product managers and he holds great sway over what the others do as he is the kind to "guarantee a good reference to any member of his team the muppets order terminated." He is an individual contributor so not a manager and not that senior, but he has placed most of the developers who we have "performance managed" out so the other developers like him. He is the kind of person who has written dozens of LinkedIn references.

His support seems to help with retention as nobody quits the company (we pay very well) just in case as he is the backup plan.

We don't have a lot of leverage over him as he is the kind to regularly get offers and use them to demand a raise and if he can place people we terminate, he can probably get a job himself.

My problem is how to convince him not to quit over us firing all the product managers. One of the fired product managers brought him into the company so I fear that she will take him out and that he will hand out tickets to leave, leading to an exodus. And then I get performance managed out.

I can't fix the product manager issue as that is not my area.

Any ideas of what I can say to him?

Answer 1

To be completely blunt, it sounds like your company has no idea how to manage its most valuable resources: the people.

For as long as that is the case, there is nothing you can say to make the situation better.

Your company is a bad place to be in if you're a human, because it has signaled (multiple times, it seems) that you as a person mean nothing to them and you might be out on the street next month. That makes people perform badly, it can easily create a toxic culture, and all sorts of bad second and third order effects.

Nothing you say will change this.

I have no idea why this person has even stayed this long. It doesn't make sense to me. You have to ask them and figure out their deeper motivations for staying. Then appeal to those when you think they might be reminded of how it could be a good idea to leave.

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There is one good thing you can say to the remaining people during a layoff. It's "This isn't what it seems. We needed to do this just once. The rest of you have tenure for life, should you want it."

But then you must follow up, or burn through all of your trust with these people for the rest of your career.

Maybe you should be thinking more about how to tell off upper management than what to say to this developer?

Answer 2

Hand out gobs of money.

You have a bunch of all pretty mad people and some worried ones who are also very in demand in the current market, especially if this guy gives them a reference.

In their situation, I would have sent out resumes and messaged piles of old acquaintances today. It is quite possible that the people you want to retain are already booking interviews.

Hand out retention bonuses that vest in a few months. That will let the ill feeing die down.

Literally, walk down to where the devs work (if applicable) and offer 10K bonus for remaining 3 months.

Brutal companies generally need high compensation to retain people. Perhaps a lesson.

Answer 3

There's nothing you can say that will convince him, because you don't have the authority to back it up. If your company regularly fires people and you have no say in this process, how could you possibly give him any kind of assurances that it won't happen again, or that he won't be next?

If you can offer him (and his team) significant bonuses and pay rises that might buy you a bit of time, but given the culture of the company any good developers that you still have will already be looking for new options. Especially when they start talking to their former co-workers and find out how much more they're earning, and how much better the new company cultures are.

Brush up your CV, ask him for a good reference, and find yourself a job in a company with management that isn't isn't going to fire you because of its own incompetence.

Answer 4

"My problem is how to convince him not to quit over us firing all the product managers. One of the fired product managers brought him into the company so I fear that she will take him out and that he will hand out tickets to leave, leading to an exodus. And then I get performance managed out."

This is your core problem. It's not that you might lose these people. It's that you might get "performance managed out" for losing these people... As your company has a culture of firing people. So... the developers have a solution to this. They go to this guy. Maybe try doing the same? The fact is, your job is not stable. You are in charge of retaining developers in the face of bizarre and arbitrary firings, and you'll be fired if they leave. You need an exit strategy more than you need a retention strategy. (Both are nice, but the former is the more important for you, really.) So... Talk with the guy about it. Maybe he can hook you up.

Answer 5

You're part of the problem.

That might sound mean. But, take a look at a few parts of your question:

nobody quits the company (we pay very well) ... he is the kind to regularly get offers and use them to demand a raise

So, in other words, you try to convince people you pay so well that nobody quits... and yet one of your most talented employees is getting better offers from other companies. Maybe you even believe it yourself, that the company pays extraordinarily well... but if that were the case, the dev in question wouldn't come back from their periodic job hunts with better offers.

We don't have a lot of leverage over him

So... you haven't asked them what they actually want, but you've taken stock on what ways you can control/coerce them? General rule of thumb: anyone that talks about having 'leverage' on another human being generally isn't being much of one.

I can't fix the product manager issue as that is not my area.

Aka, "I wash my hands of any responsibility of the bad things that have occurred."

You're the "Lead HR Specialist", in charge of the recruiting and retaining of the software devs. How vocally did you protest what happened? How firmly did you inform upper management that, if they go through with those firings, that it would lead to massive ill-will and likely lead to widespread turnover - and that the additional people leaving would be the most talented?

Did you go to bat for them? Even if only to illustrate potential retention issues you'd run into if upper-management proceeded?

... I have a feeling that you're not going to be regarded as an ally in this. If I were in one of those devs' shoes, after a massive 10% layoff, that I'd look at the "Lead HR Specialist" as a potential enemy.

Answer 6

Any ideas of what I can say to him?

Of course, a spontaneous idea...

Today we kicked out a vital amount of people which removes experience and capacity with immediate effect and will cost us additional power in the future because everyone's mood is going down and down.
Particularly all product managers are gone. For those who don't know, these are the ones at the head of (new) products which means without them and their knowledge we could be stalled for an undeterminate time and all of our workflow will be twisted, even if we would find new ones today.
You are a valuable member of our team and you seem to be enough of an idiot so I seriously ask you to stay with us, until eventually we kick you too or go down the drain because there is no more background in this place that allows reasonable working.

Please take it more serious than it appears on the first glance ;-)

Answer 7

Frame Challenge:

This company sounds like a toxic hell hole (it may not be, but that is how it sounds), so instead of worrying about how to prevent people quitting when mass firings are the order of the day, I would recommend you polish your CV and go work for someone else while leaving is still your choice.

As for answering your question: as others have already pointed out, you really can't. If he decides its time to move on he will, and your employer's actions are making that increasingly likely.

I have seen more than one company make redundancies and then bleed to death as the talent they wanted to retain also found new jobs because they feared their positions were no longer safe. Indeed, after the first time I was among those leaving. There is no point waiting for the company to go bust because it no longer has the devs to service its product(s).

Answer 8

This isn't the person you should talk to to solve this problem.

You cannot expect that if you fire 10% of your employees in a day, that the rest will feel secure and happy in their jobs.

You cannot treat some people like they're valuable while treating others as if they're disposable, and expect morale to stay high. That would be expecting them to cease being human, having any kind of empathy or connection to the people they work with.

While that is obviously a reasonable thing to ask of your management, it's not at all a reasonable thing to ask of an emotionally mature and healthy human being who understands the consequences of their actions.

What you should do instead is focus on explaining this phenomenon to your leadership, so that they can make an informed decision about how they'd like to handle staffing in the future -

They can either double down on being soulless ghouls, and make sure that they're building in redundancy to your processes (this will be hard because apparently they keep firing the people who would author those processes), or they can learn not to pink-slip 10% of your staff on a regular basis.

Answer 9

I feel like you may be trying to put a square peg into a round hole.

Your problem is that you just laid off a ton of people, including your lead developer's best friend (at the company), and you want the rest of the people staying to "feel safe". You are trying to solve that problem by throwing money at it, as if making $100 now is going to make me feel better when I get fired in 3 months anyway.

The thing about job security is that it is job security. If you pay me $100 more now, or $1000 more, or $10000 more, then you fire me in a month, then in a month from now I'll have zero income and have to find another job. Even if it is easy to find another job (and that isn't always the case, even when you think it is), it's still a hassle, and you may wind up making less money than you were before because you can't negotiate a salary when you have none to compare against.

This is not a problem that gets solved with money. Money is, of course, nice, but the core issue is that people will start looking for a new job as soon as they lose their feeling of job security, to minimize the amount of time they are without salary, and not a moment earlier or later. So even if you give this dude a substantial raise to keep him on, the fact of the matter remains that you just fired 10% of your company which screams some kind of managerial problem, financial insolvency, or some other such issue, and if it were me I'd want to jump off that ship ASAP while there are still lifeboats available, so to speak.

This begs the obvious question: If you give a person a "retention raise", why would that person not have faith in their job security? And the answer is that companies do shady shit all the time. I had a job a while back where I got a raise, and a promotion, and a glowing review from my boss who promoted me, and within 6 weeks I was terminated (the company was insolvent). Just because you give the person a raise doesn't mean (to me at least) that you're not going to do something shady and turn around and turf him the next day, and would not change my opinion regarding if I am/should be job hunting elsewhere.

So, the real question is, if throwing money at the problem isn't a solution, what is the solution?

Well, I never said that throwing money at the problem doesn't help, only that it's not a full solution. If you pay this guy a ridiculous rate that no other company would even think of matching, then he's less likely to quit, simply because he'd have to take a pay cut if he were to quit; absent other considerations it may make him less likely to make a move, because making such a move would cost him money. This strategy only works if he would be quitting for reasons other than job security, such as a retaliatory move for the aforementioned firing of his friend; as I said, there is no reason a company wouldn't do something shady like firing someone immediately after giving them a massive raise, and there is no reason that shouldn't be in the back of this employee's mind, particularly if he perceives the company to be insolvent and you're offering to make that insolvency problem worse by giving away more of the company's money.

However, be aware that if you intend to try to solve this problem with money, it has to be a lot of money. You're going to want to go above the pay cap of any local competitor by at least 15-20%. To put this into perspective, let's say you're a small company and you are in a region where Google has a regional office. Your small company, being a small company, will pay a good developer $150k. Google will pay a good developer $250k, but Google's interview is way harder to pass than yours, because they're Google. Your goal is to make this person not want to even attempt Google's interview, because if they attempt Google's interview then there is a chance they will pass (especially since you value this guy so much, the chances he's good enough for Google are high), and they will leave. So, in order to have that, you're going to have to pay him more than Google would, if he tried and passed Google's interview. Which would put his salary probably around $300k in order to make him not want to leave. Can you afford to give him such a salary increase?

But again, that doesn't solve the real problem, which is that if a company fires 10% of their workforce, then they are seen as insolvent. Companies don't just fire 10% of their workforce, including an entire department, "just because". If I was such an employee, my first thought would be either that management is cleaning house, or that management is trying to cut costs, both of which boil down to me being very concerned about my job security. You're going to have to be creative about solving this one; the goal is that you want your employees to not feel like they need an exit plan from your company on an immediate basis, which is how they feel right now. A possible solution to this would be some kind of written documentation that no other employees will be fired for a certain amount of time, with some actionable punitive damages to the company on the condition that someone was fired this way. Something like this:

To all employees:

As you may know, ABC Software Inc. just went through a large round of layoffs. Management would like to assure you that the company is not insolvent and we are continuing operations as normal. In order to make you all feel secure in remaining with ABC Software Inc. for the future to come, in addition to this letter promising that our current layoff round is complete, we will be paying $20,000 bonus severance (in addition to any other severance promised) to anyone terminated without cause from ABC Software Inc. until December 31, 2021, who was fully employed (not on probation or PIP) as of August 18, 2021.

Thank you all for your continued service through these trying times.

If I was to receive this notice, it would make me feel that the company is really not going to fire me, at least not this year, because it would be prohibitively costly for them to do so, and I wouldn't need to find another job. Of course, this does make it difficult to fire anyone for the rest of the year without a significant reason for doing so, but them's the breaks of breaking your employees' trust; you have to take the burden of repaying those costs.

There may be other solutions as well (this is just one I can think of), so be creative!

Answer 10

I have to agree with those saying that your employer is too barbaric to work in a HR role for.

Software companies today have the most unusual expectations. They expect staff to arrive fully au fait with all their existing and prospective technologies. Then they cry foul when such self-taught and self-reliant staff decide - quite reasonably - to leave for better offers. They provided no nurturing or training to the careers of the departed yet enact airs of grieved betrayal.

You've provided no pen-pictures of the senior management who call the shots on commercial and technological decisions in the company. But I get the feeling that several are examples of people (usually men) who after early "success" in coding start to think that their limited good fortune will translate into more of the same in new ventures. Experience shows that those associated with repeated commercial success in software usually engage closely with other experienced professionals before making major investment decisions. I don't get that feeling about your superiors: it's more like a case of a group of drunks blundering around in the dark of night in an unfamiliar farmyard.

Look for a company that invests more in staff training, especially training your graduates.

Answer 11

Offer Generous Severance

The only company I know of that regularly fires people is Netflix. However, they offer a 4-month severance package - this reduces the pain of leaving. As an employee there, sure, you might get fired... but you also get 4 months to take a break and find a new opportunity.

Even then... it's a pretty tough culture and a lot of people won't like it.

Answer 12

Let me explain to you a simple fact of life: people want stability. Whether their situation is good or bad, what they really want is for tomorrow to be pretty much like today. When a company prides itself on firing a bunch of people on a regular basis, that company is going to have a problem retaining people. Put simply: your company is a hell-hole, and nobody who knows about that self-defeating "policy" would choose to work there regardless of how well they're paid. You can hire two kinds of people: 1) those who have never heard about your "strong in performance management" policies, or 2) those who don't have an option. In other words, the clueless and the hopeless. As far as "How do we retain a really important contributor when we're firing everyone around him/her?" - you can't. If this person gets job offers regularly they will take one of them eventually. So, my suggestion is - start looking for your next job, because it sounds like sooner or later- and probably sooner - you're going to need it.

Answer 13

Your company's policies indicate that they like churn. They like it when people leave and when the remaining employees have to re-invent all the knowledge that walked out the door. They like everything that makes employees feel unwelcome, unwanted, insecure, and expendable. The only way to keep this guy around (or anyone else, for that matter) is to alleviate those concerns directly.

Others have suggested that you offer this guy a bunch of money. That's probably not going to be enough to keep him, since a huge raise isn't worth much if you're canned in two months. Also, you risk having to give him another huge raise the next time the company jettisons a large portion of its personnel.

What you need to give this guy is a contract. Alleviate all the concerns that he has by giving him a legally-binding guarantee that he will not be subject to any of the regularly-scheduled summary executions. Since you already pay him quite well, job security is the biggest thing that he's currently missing. Research has shown over and over that the way to retain employees and keep them happy is the exact opposite of literally everything you're doing, so you need to exempt this guy from your current system. Words aren't enough here, you need a written guarantee that he can take to the bank.

Some companies give out big stock awards that vest over the course of 3-5 years. Those make it harder for someone to leave because they know they'll be forfeiting a future windfall. A stock award isn't as attractive in this case, though, because the way you're managing employees casts doubts as to whether the company will be around long enough for the stock to vest.

Another option would be to promote this guy to the same level of management that his friend was previously in. A promotion shows employees that you value them. It also reduces the chances of his friend poaching him, since following his friend would mean he'd be taking a demotion. This one's a bit of a long shot, though, since a lot of people will happily take a lesser position in exchange for a company that doesn't treat them like hot garbage.

One of the fired product managers brought him into the company so I fear that she will take him out and that he will hand out tickets to leave, leading to an exodus. And then I get performance managed out.

Issues like this are normally handled with anti-poaching clauses in the documents people sign when they're hired. They prevent any former employee from actively recruiting current employees for X period of time after they leave the company. If you don't have those in place, it's too late now.

The last sentence is concerning. If your performance is being judged based on whether other people decide to stay or not, then your company has already set you up to fail. They're spraying you with a fire hose and then complaining about how wet you are. I don't know if they want a scapegoat for the consequences of their bad decisions or if they're just incompetent, but either way it's highly unlikely you'll last very long with these impossible criteria. Free yourself from this circus and don't look back.

Answer 14

Like others already said. How can the company expect to fire 10 percent of the workforce in one day and not expect severe unrest among the remaining employee's, with a fair number of them probably already polishing their CV's?

However I don't see see why keeping this particular software developer is crucial for also retaining the rest of them. Sure he might be popular and write a lot of nice recommendations for his colleagues on LinkedIn. Nevertheless will him staying or not really be such an important factor for others to stay or not? I severely doubt it.

So rather than focusing your energy on this particular developer you should focus on them as a group. Like another answer says you can assure them that this layoff was just a onetime thing. And/or you can increase their overall compensation package (salary, number of free days, retention bonus, just a foosball table and free sodas).

Answer 15

I'm not going to say stay or leave your position. If you stay, suggest conducting Stay Interviews with the remaining staff (esp. the influential developer). I've used them as a tool to get to know the motivations of staff. It is a simple 5 questions and I don't take notes during the discussion so they can answer honestly.

1. When you travel to work each day, what things do you look forward to?
2. What are you learning here?
3. What keeps you here?
4. When was the last time you thought about leaving? What prompted it?
5. What can I do to make your experience at work better for you?

Answer 16

Many answers are basically criticisms of the company and OP for this lame situation. I'll play devil's advocate (or maybe good answerer) and try to give some practical ideas. I believe OP is aware of most of the criticism posed here even before he asked his question.

First, whatever your plan, you need to lay this situation and explain it to the higher management of the company. Some C-level staff might be completely oblivious to the fact that in tech fields some people are actually irreplaceable. The idea of showing this meme comes to my mind. This is never the case for big accounting companies or law firms. You need to have some bone you can throw.

Also, try making plans so that this situation can be prevented in the future, maybe suggest using different buildings for different departments or creating better tasks segregation such that one individual contributor can hardly be known or so influential to a significant amount of people.

But if there is an irreplaceable employee:

Option 1: Try to get him on board

Maybe instead of a simple employee with a salary, he should be offered a partnership. Possibly this partnership can come with a quarantine time after he quits the company, i.e. he would still hold stock in the company should he decide to quit, but he cannot work at a competitor/similar company for X years. This could prevent him from asking for raises and from quitting while aligning his interests with the future of the company. But this is not a cheap option.

Option 2: Earn his trust

Whatever the hell happened, and you are probably not saying in your question, I think both you and this guy deserve to know. I don't buy that a company fired that many employees on a whim of upper management. Is the company struggling financially? Then find out and tell him, ask him to stay otherwise all employees will need to find a job quite suddenly, and won't have the luxury of having a job while searching. Or maybe some people from the old POs group were caught in some devious plot. Well, you are likely not able to disclose this freely, but if there was actually a fair reason for the termination that upset everyone, then maybe find the channels to let him know, and have him onboard. Yes I know the situation may backfire if he decides to make this worse, but it is also not so easy getting a new job if you quit your previous one throwing shit on the fan.

Option 3: Slow cook and Terminate him

While he should have no problem finding a job, maybe you can stall his ability to get jobs for other people in the meantime. Consider making this guy take a course in a different city, then give him some vacations, and fire him. This keeps him out of the workplace for a while, with (hopefully) limited contact with other employees and people in his network. From what you've written, he's not exactly a wizard, the company can go on fine without him, except that he could trigger a mass exodus. So tie his hands for a while, then get rid of this problem at once, so he will have to use his network for his own benefit at first.

Regarding other employees

Consider calling everyone for a meeting (or several meetings) to explain (in euphemized manner) why the mass termination happened. The phrases I'd expect to hear would be "We have studied for a long time the performance of everyone in the company, and decided to terminate some low performing employees along with the ones we believe would not be necessary for our new strategic plan. The company has no intention of changing strategy often, and the good performance shown by the remaining staff is a strong reason to avoid further terminations in the near future and mid-term."

Keep in mind that it does not suffice to pay well, it is paramount to pay above the market average/median when you believe people are unhappy with the company culture. But know that salaries are sticky, in many countries you cannot lower the salary of an employee, just hope that inflation does this "job" for you. So check if the employees at risk of leaving are being paid above the average market rates. While some people say that nobody should work in a place as you describe, most people would enjoy working in a place that pays very well to good performers, even if at risk of being fired at any time, because people with that kind of self-confidence are easy to find everywhere. Plus, cases of people quitting for a lower salary are incredibly rare. The only ones I've heard about involved people leaving to pursue an academic career in a different country or working for non-profit/NGOs/charities. Even people with mental health issues often wait until they get a proposal with a raise. A possible exception would be an employee with no growth perspective leaving for slightly lower pay in a place he believes he can get raises/promotions over time.

By the way

For context, I live in a city where a company with around 10k employees is known to have mass terminations every few years. Legend speaks that once they've told employees to check the gate machines when passing their employee ID cards on their way out that day, and if the machine didn't blink they just needed not to return, as they would have been terminated. This company is around 40 years old, still exists, is not known for paying very well, and had a (not so massive) termination program during the peak of the COVID crisis (though it wasn't so poorly handled). The point of the story is that these companies exist and no amount of idealism is going to solve this problem in the near future. Yes that sucks, yes that company is never featured in a list of best places to work, still either for lack of other options or due to whatever other reasons, a lot of people depend on it for their income. Maybe that's OP's case.

Answer 17

My problem is how to convince him not to quit over us firing all the product managers.

If you want to know what will convince him - get to know the guy better or ask him directly.

For example:

I would like to talk to you directly. You are a valued employee. A number of product managers were fired. I heavily advocated against this

(assuming you did)

but they were fired due to

(hopefully some sane reason which is not drug related)

Our future plan is

(hopefully there is some plan or strategy in place)

We would like to keep you on and I would like to hear your take on what happened.

(at this point pause and let the guy talk and just listen)

Not only might this give you valuable insight. This also gives what most people want the most - someone who actually listens to them. In a company as the one above - this is even more valuable. But, it has to be genuine. I am not proposing a method of manipulation - which is easily sensed by most people (even over the telephone).

The problem is - some of the other answers imply that job security is the most important thing for the guy and other employees. I don't know if this is true. Do you?

For me, I would just be so aggravated, I might even quit just because of that. For me, the insanity of management and the complete disregard along with the feeling of being dispensible and management ignoring common sense would be the main problem.

In my case, actually EXPLAINING the decision of upper management might help. If there is a good, sensible explanation.

Personally, it sounds like someone has a problem regulating their cocain usage or something like that. Or the mindset which made the global financial crisis of 2007 possible.

Yes the other answers make a good point - you should weigh in more BEFORE these layoffs are done and not just deal with the fallout. And you probably should also quit. But, that did not directly answer the question.

Answer 18

Here's my 2 cents on how to retain him and why maybe he is still in the company in the first place. I might be wrong, I might be right, it's pretty much guesswork.

At first, I would like to say what you said in some other words. If I am misunderstanding you there, we can forget the rest.

but he has placed most of the developers who we have "performance managed" out so the other developers like him. He is the kind of person who has written dozens of LinkedIn references.

What I hear is: we frequently fire software developers and this guy finds them new places to work at.

Now, I am a software Developer, I just quit at my current job. My current company pays anyone who can bring in a new Dev that stays for at least 6 months 1000 €. My wifes company (she is also a SW Dev) pays 4000 € for that.

I frequently get contacted by headhunters who made a living of exactly that.

So maybe, this guy is not just helping others, but also making some profit for himself. He finds himself in a rather lucky position:

• He has already helped several coworkers to find new jobs in other companies. That means he has a huge network. Should your company ever fire him, he will have a new job the next day.
• He sits at a constant source of new Software Devs to reroute and make a profit every time he does.
• Your company just made a huge mess and he will probably have more Software Devs to reroute in the new future.

So... why should he leave?

If I am right, then you should do nothing, just let him continue the way he is doing.

Edit: But in case you don't have a network like him and you would have difficulties finding a new job super fast when you get fired, maybe you should considering searching for a better workplace