We have had another round of layoffs recently, and it was done in such poor taste that if anyone is taking notes for a revival of The Office, you have my permission to use this material.
The layoffs were done in several stages and none of the departures were communicated, so people found out that their colleagues, and sometimes their managers, we gone by trying to write to them and noticing that the user was deactivated. Some people ended up alone in meetings because all of their coworkers were laid off and they didn't know.
Several days later (days!), the CEO sent a clearly-AI-generated email to let us know about the layoffs, but it was just typical AI slop. Nothing was announced in a formal meeting. All we got was an AI-generated e-mail telling us that AI was going to improve our productivity so we had to let go of some of the people. I will reiterate, because this says everything about this person: some of our most beloved colleagues are gone, and the entirety of the effort she put into dealing with it is prompting her favorite AI to write a lil bit of word salad.
The people who were let go were bright, knowledgeable people, some of whom had been with the company for close to 10 years. They took all of their knowledge with them. Our documentation is not great, and some vital people had already left over the years, so now we have some major gaps in skills and knowledge that were not transferred by people who've left abruptly. In some cases there is only one person left who has the knowledge of an entire system. In some other cases there are no people left that know how a certain system works.
Both the CEO and the CTO are flailing while trying to appear tough. They both try to cringely seem cool and caring sometimes, kind of like the "how do you do, fellow kids?" meme. Some jokes that fall flat here and there, and the CEO occasionally remembers to say something about how we are valued, akin to an alien who learned how to human from a book.
A note: I was wondering why nobody who's left a bad review crossed the CEO approval box, and it turns out that the option doesn't exist on the Glassdoor web version. That's why it seems like most people are neutral about her.
