Seattle HR coach recounts layoff process after losing role in media startup cuts

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HR coach recounts layoff process

Highlights

Media startup's HR and management deepened planned layoffs multiple times as declining revenue and shifting budget forecasts forced increased cuts.
Layoff process involved remote video calls, careful timing of notifications, and immediate shutdown of digital access, prioritizing dignity for affected staff.
Final round of layoffs included high performers and HR leaders themselves, illustrating that financial pressures, not just performance, drove job losses.

How the layoffs were planned and carried out

As first reported by Business Insider, Bobby Powers, 39, described helping oversee layoffs while working in HR at a media startup, where shifting revenue and budget projections drove management to deepen planned cuts.

Powers said the process became a daily exercise in deciding which roles would be eliminated and which teams still needed staffing most. He said the company aimed to make reductions deep enough to avoid another layoff, but falling revenue forecasts kept changing the scale of the cuts.

He said HR and management also focused on how to handle the dismissals in a way that preserved some dignity for affected workers. That included deciding who would join the calls, when notices would go out, whether workers would have time to say goodbye, and when access to tools such as Slack and email would be shut off.

Because the company operated remotely, most of the conversations took place by video call. Powers said even basic decisions, including what to name the meeting invite and how to respond if someone missed or declined it, became highly nuanced during the process.

What the experience suggests about layoff stigma

About six weeks after the first round, Powers said he received a call from his boss while attending a learning and development conference in Las Vegas and learned that he and his boss were likely to be included in another layoff.

On the morning of the cuts, he said he discovered he could no longer access his work email, leaving him unable to reach colleagues to say goodbye. He said the experience gave him a clearer sense of what workers feel when they suddenly lose access and contact with their teams.

Powers said the experience also changed his view of who gets laid off. Rather than assuming job losses mainly affect weak performers, he said being involved in the decisions showed him that strong employees can also be swept up in cuts driven by company finances and restructuring.

In our earlier article on the benefits of early-career job-hopping, we reviewed research showing that changing jobs is often a key driver of wage growth and better long-term job matches, despite its negative reputation. The piece highlighted evidence that avoiding job switches early on can limit earnings progression, underscoring the gap between cultural stigma and how labor mobility can improve outcomes for workers.

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