
How Bird Laid Off 406 People in Two Minutes via Zoom - LopRabbit
https://dot.la/bird-layoffs-meeting-story-2645612465.html
======
dang
Related from last week:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22707935](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22707935)

------
mtm7
This was exceptionally immaturely handled on multiple fronts:

> Thinking there were technical difficulties, some employees logged-off and
> were never able to return to the meeting. [...] Others tried in vain to join
> the webinar and got a message saying it was full, likely because Bird's
> webinar license didn't accommodate enough attendees.

> For the next five minutes, employees stared at a sparse slide with a dark
> grey background that said only "COVID-19." [...] A robotic-sounding,
> disembodied voice came on the line. The woman began by acknowledging "this
> is a suboptimal way to deliver this message."

> As the voice on the line was speaking, employees stared at their computer
> and began to take in the news that they were losing their jobs. Then their
> screens suddenly went dark and their company issued MacBooks restarted. By
> 10:40 a.m, everyone was locked out, just as employees were frantically
> trying to exchange personal numbers and emails on Slack and take screenshots
> of their contacts.

> It did not help that many managers were included in the layoffs and had no
> idea who on their team had been cut. Some resorted to messaging their
> reports on LinkedIn to see if they still worked at the company.

> [The person who gave the announcement] was not VanderZanden or a top
> executive. "It was a cowardly move," said a Bird manager. "Travis did not
> want to deliver the news."

> Workers were told they would be receiving three months of healthcare
> benefits but when they looked into it, they discovered the company is
> actually only providing coverage until April 30th.

~~~
heartbeats
Is it that bad? I mean, it looks bad, but no matter how they put it they're
still getting fired. And if they don't like it, too bad. They don't work there
anymore.

It's sort of ripping off a band-aid: it's better to have it done all at once,
than dragging it out over the course of a few weeks.

~~~
hnarn
Even if you elect to "rip off the band aid" there are about thousand ways you
could go about this in a more mature and professional way. A couple of things
come to mind:

\- Deliver your message with empathy and context as to why the decision has to
be made for the survival of the company.

\- Deliver the message in a way that scales. There's almost no point in having
a webinar if there's not going to be a discussion anyway.

\- Offer assistance to those being laid off to lessen the blow: paid leave,
coaching, extended health benefits etc.

\- Preface your message with the good stuff (point above) and explain why the
company has taken _any_ type of measure to lessen the impact of this sad but
unavoidable news.

\- Set up a way for ex-employees to keep in touch instead of locking them out
completely. Protecting corporate assets is understandable, treating people
like disposable trash is not.

~~~
heartbeats
But they're not their employees anymore. There's no point to doing any of
this. The purpose of having a webinar was, presumably, that it should be
atomic.

The rest of the things you're describing all cost money. Why spend money when
you don't have to?

~~~
hnarn
Look, if you are completely devoid of empathy that's fine but don't act like
this is how most people think.

~~~
HeroOfAges
While I would agree that most people don't think this way, the relatively few
people that occupy executive level positions certainly do. Haven't you ever
wondered why sociopaths are over-represented in positions of power and
authority?

------
lmilcin
Grow fast and don't care about your employees. How employees can stay loyal
after company does this at the time their employees need them most?

I saw a Polish meme recently:

During candidate interview:

Interviewer: So... is there any question you would like to ask us?

Candidate: Yeah, how did you treat your employees during coronavirus?

Interviewer: Uhmm...

I hope people take notice and will stay away from companies that have nice
words and "loyalty" for their employees only when it suits them.

Recently I red how Suzuki did not laid anybody due to 2008 financial crisis
and instead cut whatever they could (like R&D, participation in sporting
events, etc.) just to ensure employees have jobs.

~~~
kstrauser
On the subject of employee loyalty:

At a previous company, we were all called in for a mandatory employee meeting.
As we sat around in the office "living room", the CEO talk about how we were
going to pivot, and went around the room telling everyone what their new role
would be.

He skipped a few people.

When he finished, he thanked the "extra" people for their help but told them
that this was their last day at work. Then he went around the room and gave
each of them a chance to say what their time at the company had meant to them,
so we got to see our freshly fired friends stammer out stuff like "I thank you
for this wonderful learning opportunity, and, uh, can I have a reference?"
through choked-back tears.

The rest of us started looking for jobs that same day. The CEO was shocked and
offended that we'd walk out on him when he needed us the most. Well, if we're
not treated with respect and loyalty, what would you expect?

~~~
lmilcin
This happened because deep inside he was really a jerk. Maybe he thought this
was neat stunt.

"Normal" people consciously or subconsciously understand that people have
modus operandi and however they treat other people can happen to you in a
similar situation.

"Jerk" has no empathy by definition and that's what might be explaining their
surprise to how people reacted even though to a normal person this is all
completely logical. It just did not occur this might be a problem because
their system of value does not recognize it as a problem (unless they are
being fired) and at the same time their system of value is not concerned with
people who might find it an issue but are no threat.

If I witnessed something like this I would be looking for backdoor exit, too.

------
duxup
I was laid off via a video call a few years ago.

Granted I knew it was coming, but it didn't make anyone feel better when the
drone hired to give us the details grabbed the conference room camera off the
wall and pointed it at the ground after they gave their 3rd or 4th conflicting
answer to questions, and had backtracked a bit on who would receive what
payout.

The irony of staring at a dirty carpet with some spots of trash was not lost
on anyone.

Layoffs sometimes seem to get passed to the last folks who can't refuse to
actually present the layoff... and they're often not very good at it.

------
bryanrasmussen
This reminds me of a story about a top investment bank in Copenhagen (told to
me by a long time employee but don't know the level of embellishment), one day
there was a big company meeting down in the very expensive lovely cafeteria
they had.

When people came in they looked up their names and gave them either a red or
blue card. At the end of everyone coming in the person in charge stood up and
said "as you arrived you received a red or blue card, the ones who received a
red card have been let go, please get your things and exit the building."

~~~
spelunker
One of my previous companies handled it this way: We knew layoffs were coming,
and that they would happen on a certain day. On that day, you got invited to
one of two meetings - one on the 6th floor, and one on the 7th floor. One
meeting was for everyone getting laid off, the other one was for people
staying.

You didn't know which meeting was which until you got there, of course. It was
awful.

~~~
75central
One of my previous companies did this same thing, but the meeting where people
were being laid off (myself included in that group) was held in the large
break room. Everyone was crammed in there while a rep from an outside firm
retained to actually do the layoffs read a pre-prepared statement. What made
it super-awkward was the vending machine guy was there restocking the Coke
machine and no one asked him to leave.

------
ralphc
I'm a retired developer, successfully avoiding management through my career.
This is sooo bad, and I can come up with several things to do better, but I'm
having a hard time figuring out what would have been a _good_ way to do this.
You have to lay off hundreds of employees, ideally all at the same time to
avoid rumors & backchannels, and do it remotely. How do you pull that off?

~~~
andrewaylett
I'm not a manager. But I've been in organisations where staff were being laid
off. They've all started by telling _everyone_ that the layoffs were coming,
then holding individual meetings with everyone who might possibly be affected
to discuss what that means in practice.

You avoid the rumours by being transparent about what's going on. It's not
like it's not going to be public in a few hours anyway.

~~~
torstenvl
That is absolutely the worst possible way to do that. Your workers will become
paranoid and anxious. They will "go to ground" as is the natural instinct of
any prey animal. All of this makes the lay-off process much, much worse for
those affected, it also hurts the morale and productivity of those who remain.

~~~
samstave
And they will start backing up anything and everything they can to take with
them.

~~~
ginko
Why would they do that? Do you trust employees so little?

~~~
whatshisface
Let's say you trust one employee a lot maybe with a 1 in 1,000 chance of
defecting. The formula is 1-(1-1/1000)^n, so if you're sacking 1,000 people
that's a 63% chance of at least one defection.

~~~
oblio
If you're firing 1000 employees and 1 "defecting" (war time vocabulary you're
using there, referring to treason, by the way...) and your business is in
trouble, then your foundation is very shaky.

Plus if I were your competitor I could probably head hunt 5-10 of your key lay
offs and probably have them recreate your IP just based on their collective
memory, anyway.

This paranoia should stop. It's covered by NDAs and such, anyway.

~~~
whatshisface
> _war time vocabulary you 're using there, referring to treason, by the
> way..._

I was using it in reference to the cooperate/defect choice in the prisoner's
dilemma. It's a term of art in game theory.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma)

~~~
oblio
How does this apply here, though? I don't think it does...

------
ivanche
The world has gone mad if a scooter renting company(!) is valued very
comparably to Lufthansa.

~~~
Avalaxy
IDK if they're a US thing, but as a European I never even heard of Bird
before. This is literally the first time I hear of them.

~~~
drdeadringer
In the Bay Area at least, scooter-rental companies have become the latest fad
the past few years. In some places you couldn't walk 2 blocks without seeing
at least one discarded scooter splayed out on the sidewalk or grassy median,
perhaps kindly tilted against an alcove or tree. I live on a side street to a
side street, and once every blue moon I'd see an abandoned rental scooter --
and I can't even tell you where the nearest docking station is.

~~~
0xffff2
I wonder where in the Bay Area this is (downtown SF?). I never see scooters in
Mountain View and I don't really recall seeing them all over the place in
Downtown San Jose either. The only place I've ever encountered them en masse
was on a weekend trip to San Diego last year.

~~~
drdeadringer
I live in Campbell, which is surrounded by San Jose on three sides and Los
Gatos is to the south. I've seen abandoned scooters downtown San Jose and
along Lite Rail stops. And yes, off and on when I visited San Francisco.

Granted it seems to have calmed down the past year or so but 2 years ago I was
seeing what folks were complaining about on other social media.

------
Nextgrid
Just a reminder, Bird is the same nasty company that tried to get
documentation taken down about how to legally unlock & reuse their impounded
scooters: [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/01/bird-sends-
nastygram-r...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/01/bird-sends-nastygram-
reporter-describing-lawful-re-use-impounded-scooters)

------
astura
The most shocking part of this story is Bird had 406 employees to lay off.
What the heck were all those people doing?

The excessive headcount in these VC funded start-ups is truly mind boggling.

~~~
ThePhysicist
You need a lot of people to distribute and pick up scooters as well as do
maintenance on them.

~~~
whoisjuan
Corporate employees don't do that. They have "juicers". Gig economy workers
who pick the scooters late at night, in rented vans or their personal pick-up
trucks. They charge the scooters and then re-distribute them early in the
morning.

------
meowface
This article just lays out shitshow after shitshow. What are the chances Bird
will still exist in April 2021?

~~~
blakesterz
I don't claim to be very good at predicting the future, but I'd say the
chances are low for Bird, and any scooters being used at all a year later.
Maybe in a few very limited places, but no where near the levels they are now.

~~~
CydeWeys
I'm not understanding why you're thinking scooters would disappear entirely.
Here's what I'm seeing.

I'm in NYC. We don't have any scooter share companies, so the only scooters
you see on the streets are privately owned. And I've seen an explosion of them
over the past year. A lot more people are getting around using them, and I
don't see why that would be affected one whit by the scooter share companies
(which don't even operate here) shutting down. When those companies shut down,
I'd just expect a lot of people who were formerly using them to switch to
privately owned ones as well. That's the nice thing about these scooters;
they're small and light enough that you can own your own even if you live in a
tiny apartment.

~~~
moooo99
I'd assume he meant sharing scooters. I totally agree that these scooters can
be a really nice way to get from A to B and if you actually own them, they're
probably way cleaner than the alternatives (maybe except for cycling). But the
sharing system has so many flaws, I'd assume its very unlikely that they'll
survive this crisis.

\- The scooters are subject to vandalism everywhere, this reduces their
lifetime and makes them incredible expensive to maintain

\- They are cluttering the sidewalks, rules are basically impossible to
enforce

\- They are driven recklessly by a lot of users. While there are technical
solutions to this like geofencing and speed limits, they are not applied

Lots of people (at least here in Germany) don't like them at all. In major
cities I've been to, basically all sharing scooters are used by tourists.
While thats certainly a market, its nowhere near the mobility revolution they
claim. Basically all of these companies are surviving on VC money, very few
cities are actually profitable. Since tourism is completely gone and most
people are on WFH, I doubt there are any users for these scooters right now. I
think its unlikely that they'll be able to sustain their buisness if lockdown
lasts more than a month.

~~~
leetcrew
one additional problem (which I guess is a corollary of your first point):
they are too expensive for the end user. in my area at least, renting a
scooter to go a short distance is 50-75% as much money as an uber/lyft, and
you might have already walked a quarter of the way there before finding one
with a decent charge. over longer distances, the scooter is a lot cheaper, but
also much slower. they only make sense for a narrow range of medium-length
trips that are too long to walk, but still short enough to get there in a
reasonable amount of time at 15mph.

I do enjoy using them sometimes when I'm feeling lazy but still want to get
some fresh air, but it's not really an economical means of transportation.

~~~
CydeWeys
The economics of scooters really suffers from being dockless. I can see the
appeal from a VC-funded startup perspective, because you can get a lot of them
out there quickly without having to build any infrastructure, but the ongoing
daily costs of charging them all (and replacing losses) makes them expensive
to operate, hence the high cost. A dockless model would allow them to be much
more affordable; in NYC, for example, you can do unlimited rides on docked
rideshare for an annualized cost of under 50 cents per day. There's no reason
in principle that a docked scooter system, with scooters charging from docks
and prevented from theft while not in use, couldn't have costs come down to a
roughly similar amount.

------
andrewaylett
My observation is that it's relatively easy (not actually easy though!) to
appear to be a good manager when things are going well. And that can last long
enough for someone to be promoted several times.

But it's hard to tell whether someone is _actually_ a good manager until
you've observed their reactions in times of stress. If they've reached senior
levels already then it probably doesn't matter whether the managers under them
are any good or not: it's not going to go well.

------
pjc50
Note the UK process for comparison: [https://www.gov.uk/staff-
redundant/redundancy-consultations](https://www.gov.uk/staff-
redundant/redundancy-consultations)

This would have required a minimum 45 days statutory consultation period.

~~~
blaser-waffle
I think what happened in the OP is crazy and insensitive, but 45 days is
ridiculous.

~~~
pjc50
It's a consultation period. The idea is that as much effort as possible should
go into avoiding it, such as providing an opportunity for people to take
voluntary redundancy, search for positions elsewhere in the company, and so
on. While also making sure that people have been selected on a fair basis.

------
linuxhansl
How companies and employees are managed in a time of crisis shows the quality
of the leadership and the personal courage and characters of the leaders. It
also brings out the cowards and people of low character. Every schmuck can
manage and lead when things go well.

Well, there's nowhere to hide. These things will be remembered. They will have
a very hard time hiring people back. And as this make its rounds people will
be less likely to use their service.

I'm fortunate enough to work for a company that is handling this all
exceptionally well with a great deal of compassion for the employees, their
families, the customers, and the community around the offices - even when that
hurts the short-term bottom line. We will also use some of this time for
trainings.

That is both compassionate _and_ smart!

When all of this is over we will have happy customers and motivated employees
and will hit the ground running.

Bird will not. Short term thinking and unprofessional behavior like this story
never pays off in the long term.

Now. Maybe there's a backstory we do not know. Perhaps this was the only way
to keep the company going for the rest of the employees. Still, the way it was
handled was just terrible.

I'm reminded of this example with the same message delivered with compassion:
[https://twitter.com/marriottintl/status/1240639160148529160](https://twitter.com/marriottintl/status/1240639160148529160)

(I do not work for Marriott)

------
toasted_flakes
The Uber cowboys are really a cancer for this industry

------
ornornor
> In retrospect, we should've made 1on1 calls to the 100s impacted over the
> course of a few days."

Geniuses at the helm it seems. This is abysmal and shows how disconnected some
SV executives can be from real life.

------
treelovinhippie
_screams into the void_

Everything about the Silicon Valley VC-fueled startup culture is against the
goals of humanity.

Startup culture: _ignores and continues to destroy lives and planet for the
profit of a few individuals who will later inevitably go on to develop mental
health problems and commit suicide_

------
nytesky
I'm pretty sure Keeptruckin laid off 400 people during a zoom meeting too. Not
sure if they called each individually before?

~~~
sct202
I personally don't think laying people off during a zoom meeting is that bad
in itself; like, there are limited other options and all of them could go
horribly wrong in their own way. I think that it's really the execution issues
that has gotten Bird all the negative press.

------
holtalanm
That IT guy that wrote the script, though. Man, that's rough. It like hiring a
guy to dig his own grave. Oof.

~~~
doublerabbit
I've met sociopathic SysAdmins who would more than be happy to create such a
script.

~~~
vb6sp6
Revoking permissions is a normal part of the SysAdmin routine. People come and
go all the time. In fact, it would be incredibly stupid not to have a script
like this.

~~~
reaperducer
it's incredibly stupid to deploy it during the firing process, preventing
people from seeing the entire video.

~~~
vb6sp6
No one is saying that part was smart

------
apple4ever
Makes me really appreciate my current company. They did the same Zoom with no
chat or participant list. But the CEOs came on video and spoke. They said they
debated how to do to this, separately or individually. But they said the best
way would be to do it together, with the whole 2500 person company. They said
some people would be furloughed. Here is the list of departments and titles
affected and not affected. Here is what we are doing to help the people
furloughed (health insurance until this is over). It was well done.

------
stygiansonic
I found this rather disconcerting:

" _A month earlier, someone in Bird 's IT department had been tasked by his
superiors to write a script that would allow the company to instantly shut
down all of a user's accounts – computer, email, Slack – with the click of a
single button, according to an employee. He was told the script would be used
for general off-boarding rather than the mass layoff that he ended up being
included in. Last Friday, the script seems to have been activated early._"

------
nogabebop23
At first I thought this was a "how-to" brag from bird themselves. Based on
what they actually did, would you have been surprised?

Please put a little conscious effort into reminding yourself that the way
people perform in difficult times is how we should judge character. This
doesn't mean not doing hard things, it means a focus on compassion, empathy
and aspects outside your own immediate environment. The simple act of truly
giving a sh!t gets you a long way towards the ideal.

------
tssva
I was once laid off as part of a massive layoff in the late 90s and was not
laid off but was around for a massive layoff in the early 2000s. At each
company the layoffs were done by having employees join a conference call where
a HR rep read off a script letting everyone know they had been laid off. This
is just business as usual but with the modern replacement for the conference
call being used. It sucks but is it news worthy?

~~~
reaperducer
Just because other companies have pulled a similar dick move, doesn't make
what Bird did not a dick move.

------
jacquesm
What a bunch of cowards.

I loathe these polluters anyway, can't walk the streets without tripping over
abandoned scooters. Good riddance to the company, pity for the employees.
Trying to imagine how the company will survive this but this is about as toxic
as it gets and I assume that those that still work there will be looking for
alternatives real-soon-now to avoid getting caught when the next wave of lay-
offs hits due to Corona.

------
code4tee
It’s painful and sad sad for those subjected to such poor leadership. However
in the end things have a way of working themselves out.

Companies with leadership teams that are this poor tend to get washed out in
the long run. Those let go just get a head start on moving onto what’s next.
There are exceptions but the market does a decent job of dealing with this
sort of behavior... eventually.

------
marban
At least the guy who wrote the script can now make a fortune selling it on
CodeCanyon. /s

------
cameronfraser
Even before COVID was anyone still using the scooters? Hardly saw them around
anymore and the novelty seemed to wear off for most locals at least.

~~~
blaser-waffle
Agreed. Their utility was overstated. For roughly the same price I could get
an uber to go a short distance, or just take a bus. Plus I live in Canada, so
they're only a thing for a few months during the summer/fall.

------
josh_fyi
You can request a refund though the app; Bird Support tells me that they will
make this refund. This is especially important given that they require an up-
front minimum payment rather than accepting payment as needed.

------
segmondy
breakups are hard unless mutual.

------
rconti
Shrink hacking.

------
Nextgrid
A significant part of the technology industry is a big bubble that was going
to pop sooner or later - the pandemic just slightly accelerated the process
and we're seeing the results now - the market is finally adjusting itself.

This company was never viable to begin with, and the same applies for the
majority of current startups.

------
heartbeats
Why does it matter? If they're fired, they stop being the company's problem.
As long as they don't have to pay their salary, any method works.

In fact, it would have been more efficient to simply turn off their computers
without any warning and then send them a text informing them about their
situation. That way, the 'time-in-flight' is just a few minutes.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faql1idkAcA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faql1idkAcA)

~~~
ghaff
I sincerely hope you never manage people.

