Week 10 Stand-up: The layoff list

Layoffs are decided on a spreadsheet by function, cost and headcount target. No trick this week, because there is nothing on that spreadsheet a trick can reach.

13 May 2027

No trick this week.

Who paysThe best-rated person on the team, when the team is the line item.

That is not an omission.

In 2025 and 2026 the largest technology companies cut tens of thousands of corporate roles. Some of those cuts were framed as performance-based, and the lecture this week goes through what that framing meant in practice. Most were not framed that way at all: a percentage of a division, a cost target, a memo about “layers”. Whichever the framing, the list was built the same way, and the rating you spent nine weeks learning to manage was consulted late, if it was consulted.

Bring#

Nothing. Read the lecture sources before you arrive.

What happens#

In groups, you build a layoff list for a fictional company of two hundred people, given a cost target and an org chart, the way it is actually done: choose the functions, choose the level bands, hit the number. Then you are handed the performance ratings for everyone on your list and asked whether you would change it. Some groups do. Most find the ratings arrived too late to matter.

How you know it worked#

You can explain to a friend why the person with the best rating on the team was let go, without using the word “unfair”, and you understand why this course put this week after the tricks rather than before them.