The Morality of Mass Layoffs: What Business Leaders Need to Know

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Morality of Mass Layoffs—What Business Leaders Need to Know

Podcast: Business Lunch
Hosts: Roland Frasier & Ryan Deiss
Date: April 9, 2026
Theme: Examining the moral and practical side of mass layoffs—especially high-profile events like Oracle’s 30,000-person layoff—this episode explores the core question: What do business leaders owe their employees, and what is the right way to let people go?

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Episode Overview

Roland Frasier and Ryan Deiss use a recent news story about Oracle’s mass layoff of 30,000 employees to launch a frank, nuanced discussion about the obligations of business leaders during difficult workforce reductions. They explore the intertwined issues of morality, stewardship, economic reality, and the most humane way to handle such seismic organizational changes, especially in large companies versus small ones.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Morality of Layoffs in Prosperous Companies

• [07:04] The hosts reference the viral news that Oracle fired 30,000 people via a "cold" 6am email—right after posting record quarterly profits. They reflect on similar experiences at their own company and the personal pain involved from both sides.

“It does suck. Absolutely does suck. Now, was it worse for the people who lost their jobs? Yeah, probably...”
—Ryan Deiss [08:27]

• Morality Varies by Context: Roland and Ryan draw a strong distinction between layoffs driven by necessity (to prevent total failure) and those done by highly profitable companies.
• Stewardship Matters: If shareholders and investors are trusting you to run a business efficiently, you have a moral obligation to steward resources—including not unnecessarily employing redundant staff, even if it’s emotionally hard.

“If you’re one of those big companies... you have people whose pensions are invested in your company, and if you’re unnecessarily employing 30,000 people... then I think it’s morally wrong to keep them there because they will never advance.”
—Roland Frasier [10:06]

• It’s Not a Family: Ryan asserts that, contrary to what popular media or some company cultures claim, “The job of business is not to employ people. That’s just not the job of... no matter how many people say it is, it’s not a family.” [14:18]

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2. Reciprocity and Transactional Nature of Employment

• Both hosts reflect on employees’ ability to leave for better opportunities—sometimes after years of investment by the organization.
• This transactional reality means loyalty expectations must run both ways.

“What if this person had quit and gone to work for Google? Would it be right for Oracle executives to go picket outside that person’s home? Of course not. That would be weird.”
—Ryan Deiss [16:04]

"The companies are supposed to be loyal to us as employees, but we're supposed to be absolute scoundrels with respect to [them] ... Remember the great resignation?"
—Roland Frasier [16:50]

• They provide anecdotes about valuable employees who left for huge opportunities elsewhere—celebrating their success rather than resenting the departure.
• Ryan describes his approach to new hire conversations:

"This is a mutually exploitative relationship. Your job is to get as much as you can out of this relationship with us. Similarly, our job is to try to get as much as we can from you... As long as those two things are aligned, we're going to do great together."
—Ryan Deiss [21:03]

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3. Personal Growth and Resilience After Setbacks

• Both Roland and Ryan share stories of personal and professional rejection—how getting fired or missing an educational opportunity (Ryan being rejected by his dream business school) led not to ruin, but to unexpectedly better outcomes.

“Every door that closed, every gut punch I took, led to this better thing that I’ve got now... otherwise I’d be in a situation that wasn’t really optimal for me.”
—Roland Frasier [23:27]

• The hosts encourage listeners recently affected by layoffs to focus on asking: “What could be really great about this? What new opportunities and what new doors could this open for me?” [22:12]
• “That little mindset shift can make all the difference in the world.”

—Ryan Deiss [29:05]

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4. The Practicality—and Morality—of How Layoffs Are Delivered

• [29:45] Roland and Ryan shift to the mechanics of layoffs—was Oracle’s “cold email” wrong?
• Scale Matters: They argue that for mass layoffs—especially in the tens of thousands—personalization is logistically impossible. An email, with support programs and professionalism, may be the least bad option.

“You can’t maintain that level of empathy for 30,000 fires. Right. So what else are you going to do? I can’t think of it… Maybe in our company of 20 or 30 people … but not in a large company.”
—Roland Frasier [30:19]

• Guidelines by Company Size:
  • One or a few individuals: personal conversation, face-to-face.
  • 10 or more: do it collectively (either assembling physically or remotely)—don’t drag it out one at a time.
  • 30,000: logistics trump sentimentality; fast, clear, mass communication is necessary to avoid anxiety and rumor-mongering.

“You also want people who are on the receiving end of bad news to have other people around that they can in fact commiserate with, to realize that I’m not alone in this. That does make it feel a little bit better.”
—Ryan Deiss [32:49]

"I don't know how else one would do it when you're talking 30,000 people... Give me another thing that would be better." —Roland Frasier [35:36]

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5. Don’t Let Media Guilt Trip You Out of Stewardship

Ryan concludes by warning business owners not to let outside narratives (especially from media or "business journalists" with little real-world experience) prevent them from making hard but necessary decisions as leaders.

"For everybody who’s saying, 'Oh, this was unfair,' what else would you suggest? ... If you think that there are people on your team and you’ve been thinking for a good long while that like, probably let this person go, you probably need to let them go. And don’t let any outside person, especially people who’ve never run a business, make you feel guilty for being a good steward of your own, of your business."
—Ryan Deiss [36:24]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Stewardship:
  “Your first moral authority is to the owners of the company...and that's where it's got to begin."
  —Ryan Deiss [13:04]
• On “Family” Culture Myths:
  “It is not. It is definitely not a family. It's a team sport. But just like teams are going to have some roster changes from time to time, the same thing is going to happen with companies.”
  —Ryan Deiss [14:21]
• On Perspective After Failure:
  “Ask it now. Ask it when the email comes before you put yourself through all of the worry, which is just such a waste of time and energy.”
  —Roland Frasier [28:23]
• On Journalistic Critiques:
  “It’s comical how few business journalists know anything about business or have any business experience... the attitudes that come through are... Pollyanna-ish.”
  —Roland Frasier [20:12]

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Segment Timestamps

• Bantering & Customer Service Stories: [00:00–06:56]
  (Skip for main content)
• Introducing Topic – Oracle Mass Layoff & Morality: [07:04]
• Personal Experiences with Layoffs: [08:15–10:06]
• Philosophy of Stewardship and Obligation to Owners/Investors: [10:06–14:18]
• Transactional Nature of Employment: [14:18–20:12]
• Employee Loyalty, Resilience, and Opportunity in Change: [16:04–29:05]
• Processing Setbacks – Personal Stories: [23:27–29:45]
• Mechanics of Layoffs – Scale and Communication: [29:45–36:24]
• Final Thoughts and Lessons for Leaders: [36:24–36:51]

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Takeaways for Business Leaders

• Don’t conflate business with family—businesses are teams, and teams change.
• Layoffs, when handled as acts of stewardship (not vindictiveness or neglect), can be the right and moral thing—even in profitable times.
• The emotional toll of layoffs is real on both sides, but tough decisions enable the long-term survival and health of organizations.
• How you handle layoffs should depend on scale and existing company communication channels.
• Leaders must resist guilt imposed by media punditry—focus on stewardship and professional responsibility.
• Encourage a mindset among the laid off (and yourself) that setbacks can become the seedbed of future growth.

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For listeners (or readers) seeking practical guidance and philosophical clarity around the tough subject of layoffs, this episode offers both candor and empathy, with enough personal narrative to keep the focus human.

Transcript

[A]

Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the business launch podcast with your host, Ryan Deiss, and myself, Roland Frazier. Ryan, how are you today?

[B]

I am so good. By the way, I made a new friend. He told me to tell you. Hi.

[A]

Is it an AI friend?

[B]

It's not. It's the person from. What's all that? The AV equipment stuff where you bottle stove, Sweetwater or whatever.

[A]

Oh, Sweetwater.

[B]

Sweet. Yeah, I. So I bought some stuff for my, my kids school and I dropped your name because they were like, oh, how did you hear about us? I was like, actually, my business partner, Roland Frazier told me, like, wait, Roland Frazier from California? I was like, yeah. And they were like, oh. And literally I'm talking to the person. They're like, hey, this guy knows Roland and other people. So. Yeah. You know what that means? That means, man, you've got a problem. You've bought a lot of stuff from this company. How conservatively, how much do you think you've spent on this?

[A]

I don't know, but. But it's as much as anything. It's the length, like the length of time I've been a Customer probably for 40 years, you know, maybe.

[B]

Well, I was told by. And get his, get his, get his name. But I was told to tell you hi.

[A]

That's pretty funny.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. But I mean, I've.

[B]

I've bought.

[A]

I've bought a lot of stuff from there, but. But I think it's probably like I've bought lots of littles from there as well. You know, like cables and, you know, a thing. I haven't bought like any. I've definitely spent more with like brokers because they don't carry the stuff that's like crazy, you know, and, and they don't carry more of like. They don't carry old stuff that's. That's like you would be looking for if you're a collector. They don't carry like, stuff like from boutique synthesizer manufacturers. They're very mainstream. I would buy a lot more from them if they kept the other stuff because I'd like them way better than who I have to buy from. But. But I don't know. I bet it's a couple hundred grand. Not, you know.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Over all that time, maybe it's three or 400 grand.

[B]

You know, I know it's not related to the topic of our discussion, but I do think it's cool that you have a business here. That number one, they bothered to ask, like, how did you hear about us? Right. And they obviously were writing it down and Making, making note of it. And they definitely know who their top people are and they make it aware to other people in the organization who their top people are. And you know, and I, and I heard back, they're like, so the person who knows, like reached out to me personally and I'm sure you're going to hear from them as well. It just, it's these little things right now that as companies are becoming increasingly, you know, less personal and more AI ified, like these little things that you can do to just make it feel more human and more personal I think is cool. It's cool.

[A]

And as I told you, I have a discount there that I've had for years and years and years because of the long term relationship. The other thing is they're aware of what my studio looks like and my studio is very, very unusually good. So like yesterday I went to this, this is great for the podcast. I hope you guys are loving all the business knowledge here. But I went to. But this is, this is what we talk about at lunch.

[B]

Welcome to lunch.

[A]

But I went to this synthesizer show in LA called Bookland Friends and it's all of the boutique manufacturers I was talking about. And I met.

[B]

Hold on, you went there during work hours? Roland did, did you request time?

[A]

It was on one of my days off I'd never take away from work because my business would completely fail if I wasn't there all hours of the day. And, and I met the, I met this new. They're just like all huddled in there together at little like tables, you know, not. They're like the. Imagine the booths we had at TNC that were the cheapest booths but without any decorations or anything in a kind of funky cool place in the industrial warehouse district of LA that you were kind of scared to go in. But, but I met them and they have this AI algorithm drum machine thing that you play whatever you want to play and then the drums come in. Like a drummer would like, you know, it knows all that stuff. And for whatever reason, the, the manufacturer, I was talking to him and it's a new thing, it's not out yet. And, and so I pre ordered one and they, they're not, they're six or seven hundred bucks. And the guy we ended up talking and one of the other guys that was there was telling him about the studio and he's like, oh, that's amazing. And there's a guy at our company named Roland and your name. And you guys like music, which there's this big company called Roland. And so I End up talking to him. And then he got me on yesterday with the founder and him and they're asking questions. They're like, you know, we. We're only going to sell 100 of these to start with. We hope we'll sell thousands eventually, but we're limiting it. And I've got questions, you know, for you. And they just asked, talked about studio and he's like, you know, hey, I'd love to come out with the camera crew and you know, get, you know, stuff of you using it in our, you know, in your studio with all the amazing things you have. And he's like showing me the, he's like, I just got this circuit board done.

[B]

What do you think about.

[A]

These are eight kinds of slider caps. What do you think is the one that you guys would like the best? And I got my son Ryan on it. So like, to, to your point, to me, it's really, really smart. And this guy was one of the initial marketing guys. I think he was the director of marketing at Reverb, which is this multi billion dollar used equipment for music site now. And so, you know, we got connected, we networked. I told him some people I Knew that are YouTube influencers that I thought would be good for him to have and said, I'll connect you to them. And he's like, you know, I definitely want to come and deliver this to you and you know, let's do a recording in your thing. And yeah, I mean, that's smart. You know, it's like good for them. He's getting feedback from a real user, you know, about which of these like nine knobs that he had, you know, and it was really funny. Both my son and I picked the same one. And then asking about like buttons and we're talking about, you know, should there be an air gap here? Like if it's a clacky button or what if there's no air gap and there's no, you know, tactility, that feedback to me and that connection with customers is going to be so valuable to everybody in the future, I really do think that's an important thing that a lot of people are overlooking with AI.

[B]

Yeah, agree. If you haven't talked to 10 of your customers in the last month and you're complaining that like, sales are down or that Amazon stealing all your stuff, like, I don't know, maybe you should try that. So anyway, that's what's new with me. What's up with you?

[A]

I think I just told you everything was right.

[B]

Yeah, you're Right, you did. So well then what the heck are we talking about?

[A]

Yeah, last time we talked about this is where the podcast starts. Last time we talked about a bunch of stuff including what Oracle had done. And there was this just kind of. As I was looking around I saw a headline that said Oracle fires 30,000 employees with a cold email at 6am or something like that. And we were talking about that. How else are you supposed to fire them? I mean you're going to make 30,000 calls to people to say that they're no longer, their services are no longer required. I mean that's going to be by call number 15,000. Pretty daggone cold. It's probably going to be like don't come to work, you know. So we were talking about that and we were talking about like businesses as families and what should you do and all that kind of stuff. And so I thought maybe we could riff on that a little bit. What, what aspects of it do you think would be good for us to share with people?

[B]

Yeah, I think there's, there's kind of two things here, which is just the morality of laying off 30 people in general and then the mechanism by which.

[A]

Do you remember how you felt when we had to let 265 people. I think it was on like in December, what was it, 15 years ago or so?

[B]

Yeah, I do, yeah. Awful. Awful. I mean some of, some of the worst days of my life were the days preceding a layoff. Now one could argue that's because I've had a pretty awesome life and I would agree with. But they have. It does suck like it absolutely does suck. Now was it worse for the people who lost their jobs? Yeah, probably, like I'll give that as well. So I'm not suggesting that people necessarily feel sorry for me, but there's a lot to should these big companies who are so profitable because everything that I saw about it was in the vein of positioned as Oracle lays off 30,000 people after posting record quarter quarterly profits. Right.

[A]

As though is consistently ranked in the top richest people in the world also.

[B]

Yep, yep. He's number two right now. Exactly. Yeah. So like the morality of these layoffs when the companies are doing so well I think is kind of is one thing that's, that's worth discussing for maybe the entrepreneurial from the business owner perspective because that's not really getting, getting much coverage. And I think it can cause a lot of us to feel a lot of guilt around layoffs because if, you know, we see the media portrayal as like all these Business owners and these executives as the enemy because they did this layoff, it can really cause us to think, well, maybe I shouldn't do it because I'm a bad person. So I think there's the morality side of it and then there is the how they went about it. Because one could argue that, you know, the layoff itself was okay, that that was fine, but the way they went about it was the wrong way. Or you could say both are wrong. Or you could say morality first. Okay, you want to go first? Yeah.

[A]

I mean, so to me it's with the, let's start with the contextual side of it that you are in our situation, when those 200 odd people got laid off, we were having to fund the company from our personal bank accounts. At that point there was not going to be a company and not going to be us and certainly not going to be jobs more than another month or so there. So I think that the better thing to do was to let them know what was going on so that there was a process and you know, a flow to being able to find re employment if they wanted to do that. And it would have been irresponsible to just operate the company until we were all bankrupt and they were still left jobless only 30 to 60 days later. So I think it like I, I wish that that wasn't necessary because I wish that company had been successful. And you know, you and I both lost a lot because it wasn't. But I think that I don't feel bad about that at all, morally or otherwise. You know, it sucks, but that's just to me, kind of like that's what happens. If you are a wildly profitable company and you're doing that, then I think that the moral question is more interesting. But I don't come up with a different outcome because I feel like that you have an obligation. If you're one of those big companies, you've taken public money, you have people whose pensions are invested in your company, and if you're unnecessarily employing 30,000 people at whatever pay scale, that's a lot of money. And it's not fair to the people who have invested the money that you have a obligation to take care of for you to be a poor steward of the company that they've invested in. And if those people who were needed before but are no longer needed, are no longer valuable to the company, can no longer support the roles that they're in and aren't contributing, then I think it's morally wrong to keep them there because they will never advance. They'll only be a burden. People will ultimately likely be looking for reasons to fire them and let them go. And the best kindest thing that you can do is to let them know that they're no longer needed and have a transition period to allow them to, you know, hopefully support them in some way. We talked about that. There are, you know, relocation, re employment, re education programs and a lot of these bigger companies that do well. I think that if you're doing really well, it would be kind of not cool morally to fail to provide support for that transition. But I don't think continued employment is, is appropriate. I think it's bad for them, bad for the company, bad for the investors, bad for the economy. And that's kind of how I feel about it. What's your take on it?

[B]

I love your, I mean, I agree just, I'll say at the outset, obviously I love your, your framing though, when you, when you described it as stewardship, because I think that's such an important point. And as an executive leader, whether you're a business owner or a CEO or a coo, cfo, anybody who's put in charge of this, you are a steward of that company's resources, which means it's not just yours necessarily. And I would argue even if you are the business owner and it is a wholly owned company, you own all of it. Even then, there's likely other people in your life who depend on you. Right. And so you want to make sure that you're a good steward of these assets as well. And so your first moral authority is to the owners of the company, to the, to the people who actually own the business. They're the ones who have, who put that in. And that's where it's got to begin. So I'm going to say something that I think is kind of going to be unpopular and maybe a little pearl clutching for a lot of folks. But the job of business, the role of business is not to employ people. That's just not the job of, no

[A]

matter how many people say it is, it's not a family.

[B]

It is not. It is definitely not a family. It's a team sport. But just like teams are going to have some roster changes from time to time, the same thing is going to happen with companies. And so they have to look at first, what is the best thing for the stakeholders of this company. It's owners, shareholders, all the above. They also have to look at what's the best thing for the customers that we're serving. What's going to put the company in a position to succeed not just today, but in the long run. And ultimately what the folks at Oracle decided, and they could be right or they could be wrong, but they're choosing to make a resource allocation decision to say that we are better off to allocate our resources towards data centers and AI capital investment and things like that and away from this human capital investment that we are making. And, and I don't think that there's anything morally wrong with that. In fact, I think there's something morally wrong about making business people and executive leaders feel guilty or make them feel like that they're in some, that they have an obligation to pay people. That would suggest that we exist in a socialist, communist type state, which we don't. At least not in these United States of America where you and I are operating our businesses. Yeah, not yet. Moving towards it pretty quickly. And what I would also say is why don't we invert it? Because there was one person I read in the article, there was one person who said, you know, drove up from Texas and kind of stood outside of executives thing and held up a sign like, you know, I built your data center for. I spent 12 years building your data center. Yeah. Who got laid off.

[A]

For which you were paid.

[B]

Right. And that's, that's the point. Like you, you were absolutely paid. I would assume that this person was paid for 12 years for that. And so it is sad and I do sincerely, I feel bad that this person was let go after 12 years. That sucks. Objectively, we can hold both of these truths in our head at the same time. We're all smart, wise people. It sucks that this person was let go. But let's invert it. What if this person had quit and gone to work for Google? What? How uncool would it have been if executives from Oracle went and picketed outside of this person's home and said, we paid you for 12 years. How dare you. Right. Of course that would be weird.

[A]

And it brings up a metric loyalty expectation. That's a really good thing to point out. Right. The companies are supposed to be loyal to us as employees, but, but we're supposed to be absolute, you know, just scoundrels with respect to remember the great resignation. Remember when there weren't enough employees and everybody was like, I'm outta here to go to this company to get paid more and screw you. It's like that. Like it's clear that that's the case. And I didn't really hear any big pushback out there in the world from anyone, including business. About that. It was just kind of like, yep, that, that makes sense. They can pay you 100 grand more than we can. You know, I, I get it. Right?

[B]

Well, there were, there are plenty of mature business owners who responded that way. We had a number of clients and I had a number of friends and I had to talk off of ledges and I know I've been certainly early in my career guilty of just being very self righteous and very. How dare they, how dare this person leave. I can't believe after, after we've shown them so much loyalty at the company, how dare they do that? And I've had to look, they get to do that. This is a transactional relationship. If they can find a transactional relationship, if they can get a bigger, better deal somewhere else, then they should take that. And we, there was, we had somebody working for us for a number of years. Her name's Susie. And we basically taught her everything that she knew about community management. She started out in customer support, learned community management from us, got so good at it that she was literally poached by Facebook to be Facebook's community manager over their community of community managers. Like, how freaking Meta is that for meta to go and do right? So that's the job that she got. I remember she came and she felt really, really guilty. She's like, I don't know what to do. I feel really, really bad. And I'm thinking to myself, like, this sucks. Like, I don't want to lose this person. She's incredibly valuable. We have invested a lot into her. And I was like, well, what are they going to pay you? And she told me and I was like, look, you have to take the job because I'll never be able to pay you that they have.

[A]

All we had to do was create stock that would appreciate at the same rate that Facebook would.

[B]

Right. They have the ability to monetize you and your brilliance better than we can. And so good for them. We, you know, obviously I need to get my act together and do a little bit better like, you know, Facebook does if I want to be able to retain talent like you. And you know, she ultimately did take the job. You know, we stayed in touch, like still friends to this day. And she went on to do very be very successful. But I could have very easily been like, no, that'd be really disloyal of you and that would have been horrible. That would have been incredibly wrong to do that because again, it's not a family. But I See, businesses do this a lot of times in manipulative ways. And everybody agrees that that's manipulative if a business does that. And yet now the media is wanting to come over the top. And as long as the company is big enough, basically argue that, no, no, no, it should really be a family and you should care for them forever. I just don't think you can have it both ways.

[A]

I think it's comical how few business journalists know anything about business or have any business experience. Like, when you read by so many of them, it's just like, I mean, it seems like to be a business journalist, you should not just be a journalist, you should actually have some experience being a business person. Because the attitudes that come through are, you know, very Pollyanna ish. I think.

[B]

Yeah, I would. I would expect that if somebody's going to be a sports writer, they maybe didn't have to play the sport, but, like, perhaps you were around it from time to play Little League or, you

[A]

know, Pop Warner or something, right?

[B]

At some point. Let me see if. Just throw a ball. I just want to see you throw a ball or kick a ball, like just do something ball related if you're going to write about the thing. And so whatever the equivalent of that is from a business perspective, like, just show me that you can do that because, yeah, just the level of business illiteracy is astounding. And what pisses me off about it is that's the thing that much smaller business owners will use, and it'll be in the back of their mind, and it's the reason they'll delay making the decision that they need to make and feel guilty about making it when ultimately that's what they gotta do. And that, that's why this frustrates me so much. I'll tell you the thing that I've started saying. I've been doing this now for many, many, many years to anybody coming into the company, especially if they're gonna be kind of even. I don't really have any direct reports anymore, but if they're even gonna be in my orbit, what I say during the interview process is, look, this is a mutually exploitative relationship. And I use those words intentionally because I want them to, like, hit. Your job is to get as much as you can out of this relationship with us. Similarly, our job is to try to get as much as we can from you. Right. As long as those two things are aligned, we're gonna do great together. If at any point in time you feel like you can get more from someone or somewhere else, then you should leave. And my only ask is that you give us notice, you leave on good terms. And my agreement to you is that we'll do the same thing. And I do believe that that is the obligation, is that when it does come time to part, that you part the right way and to the extent that you're able, that you part professionally. And so that's. Maybe we could talk about. Is sending an email the most professional way to do it? Are there better ways to do it? But I absolutely think in terms of. Is this the moral thing to do? Absolutely. For the stewardship of the company. But you brought up another point. It's the right thing to do for those people. Those people. Nobody asked the question, and I hope there's 30,000 of them. And I'm sure none of them were asking this the very. The day that they got that email. I hope now that it's been a little bit of time and they've had an opportunity to think about it and process through it. I hope at least some of them are saying, what could be really great about this? What new opportunities and what new doors could this open for me? Because many of them will be far better off because of this than they would have.

[A]

Yeah. I wonder for you. For me, my experience has been I've had a lot of really, really bad things happen to me. I mean, I have had. I've been through some stuff, and I have always found. I think about this, I have thought about it, but just like rethinking it, I mean, it's always ended up putting me in a position to be better off. Even if there was a time of adjustment, you know, I had. I got. When I got divorced, I mean, that was like the gut punch of gut punches in a very, very difficult time. But it was, you know, I was not in a position to be a good spouse at the time, and. And the relationship wasn't the best relationship for me. And ultimately it, you know, took me a good year of, like, not wanting to get out of bed. But. But it basically led to a significantly better life. And so, like, I guess if you're happy with your life now and you feel like you've advanced, you can look back and say every door that closed, every gut punch I took, led to this better thing that I've got now, because otherwise I'd be in a situation that wasn't really, you know, optimal for me. And I'm guessing that that's the case for you, too. So if what you learn after you go through some of the more severe ones is that when it happens, you don't have that visceral feeling. You're not afraid because you've seen yourself get through it. I think that's a big thing. Like, if this was your first job and you worked in it for 12 years and you got a cold email from the company that you, you know, that the boss was like, we're family here at Oracle, and you thought that was your career path forever. And now you just bought a house and, you know, had a baby and got married, and you're like, how am I going to pay for all this stuff? That's a tough spot. But if you've been through it before and seen yourself be resilient and seen that tomorrow comes, you know, it really is a gift to go through those things and get that confidence in that level of, you know, perseverance and resilience, you know, known resilience. And you really are going to be better off because if either of the two parties of a relationship is in there when they don't want to be, it's not going to be good for either of.

[B]

There was a time I was utterly undone. And I thought my professional career, my professional life was. Was just broken. Like, it was. I was never going to be what I thought I could be because. And this is important. I don't know if you even know this about my history, Roland. I was rejected from the business school at the University of Texas. I applied for it. They wouldn't let me in.

[A]

Man, this kind of changes our. Like, maybe we should. I mean, this kind of changes our partnership.

[B]

I know, I know. I don't. I don't have a business degree. They wouldn't let me in. But. No, I mean, they'd search you by a business school. My sophomore year of college, I was. I. I started out as, like, liberal arts, undeclared. And I was like, okay, no, I definitely need to business. I'm going to do business stuff. I'm going to. Y' all businessy. And so I tried to get into. And all my other friends were able to transfer to the business school. I had made a C in ancient Greek, which is different, you know, you know, different story altogether. And because of that, my degree, a

[A]

critical core course for business.

[B]

Critical, Critical. I wasn't. I wasn't able to get in. And I. I thought. Then I was like, that's. That's it. Like, I don't. I guess I'll be poor now. What actually happened, right? What actually happened is I started my own business. And fast forward those who know well, that worked out. And I shudder to think how different my life would have been in probably not as good a way had I gone into the business school, because I don't think I would have started my own business. I think I would have taken a very different path. And I don't think it would have been as good of a path. And I think similarly. And I'm not saying that all these people who got let, let go, that all of them will take an entrepreneurial path. So I'm sure some will and I'm sure it'll be great. They will all take a different path

[A]

that will leave them better off than had they stayed where they were.

[B]

They. They may wind up going to a smaller company where they have more upward potential. Where they won't be is in a big company that clearly doesn't value them because they got laid off. Right? And that's like, that's the important thing. And now they have the opportunity. And so I just think it's important. Anytime something bad does happen and this is how start to build up some scar tissue and some resiliency is just to ask, how could this wind up being a good thing? What could go right about this? And it's really hard to ask in the moment.

[A]

I like the timing of when you said to ask it too. Ask it now. Like, ask it when the email comes before you put yourself through all of the worry, which is just such a waste of time and energy. That. That's a really good point that you made, I think.

[B]

Well, and that's maturity, right? And that's. I think you're. You're able to do that because you've lived in, like you said, you've seen yourself go through it. I mean, you and I have experienced our fair share of business and life failures and have watched us come out the other side not just alive, but better for it. And so we can be on the brink of one and be like, I don't want to do this. It hurts, it sucks.

[A]

This sounds hard and unpleasant, right?

[B]

You can say that. Yeah, it's hard. I don't. I'd prefer that it just work out, but if it doesn't, I know I'm going to be okay. And what could make this awesome? Like, what about this? If this does happen, you know, what about it could make it an even better situation? And it's just that little mindset shift can make all the difference in the world. Like I said, that's such a. I know I'm saying this from A position of privilege and whatever. Give me all the comments you want. I don't actually care. But the people who say that of the 30,000, they will be better off for it than the ones who just decide that because of this, their life is undone and they were just a victim of the system.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah, I think so. So then let's go to the last part of the analysis that we talked about, which was beyond the moral, just the actual means. I don't really have a problem with a text or an email that lets them know because I feel like, particularly at that level of scale, that most of the relationships are impersonal anyway. And I don't know how you would make 30,000. 30,000 meetings, 30,000 phone calls, whatever. I think about George Clooney and Up in the Air and I think about Norm from Cheers in one episode was so good at being empathetic that they hired him to fire everyone. And he started from taking them to the bar and like crying and being sad and all to just being kind of being like, yeah, you're gone. You know, you can't maintain that level of empathy for 30,000 fires. Right. So what else are you going to do? I can't, I can't think of it. I, you know, maybe in our company, you know, like one of our smaller companies where you've got, you know, 20 or 30 people and you've gone to, you know, I will actually, I'll give you and Richard. Right. If for some reason things align so that, and Richard's an owner, so it wouldn't apply just for those of you who are listening, but, but let's say in this situation, Richard is, you know, he, he reports to you and he wasn't an owner and things were such that he needed to be let go. I think it'd be pretty fricking cold after you playing golf and, you know, everything else with him and having a friendship for years and years to just send him an email and go, okay, so I won't be seeing any more at the office because you're done. That context is different, but not in a true. Just, you know, in a larger company where there's lots of employees and especially if it's a mass layoff. I don't know. I think it would be ridiculous to do anything different.

[B]

Yeah, I don't, I don't, I don't know how. So I've never been a part of a 30,000 person reduction in force, thankfully. But what I can tell you is the way that you do a layoff, if you need to let a couple of people go. And the way you need to do it, if it's 10 or more, it is different. And so if you're just gonna let a couple of people go, then you do go and have conversations with them individually. But if you do need to have a true reduction of force and it's more than 10 people, then what you do want to do is you want to bring them all into the same room and you want to do it collectively. You want to do it collectively because, number one, you, you don't want word to kind of spread and for the news to sort of trickle and to have everybody throughout the day wonder if they're next. You want to be able.

[A]

I would absolutely not want to be in that room. I would not want to go that way. I would way rather just get an email or a text.

[B]

Yeah, no. What. So whatever the means are, I think it, I think it depends on how.

[A]

Metaphorical room.

[B]

Yes. Yeah. And so, and I think what the room is, is a function of like, how do you typically communicate with, with these folks? So I do think if, if everybody's always under one roof and they're all used to working together, then yeah, I think it makes sense. Everybody comes in, let's get everybody in this one room. You have the conversation. If it's a remote company and everybody's used to communicating remotely, then yeah, you do it remotely. But the point is you need to do it together at once. You don't drip it out. You don't have one on one phone conversations because you got to get the news out all at once. You also want people who are on kind of the receiving end of bad news to have other people around that they can in fact commiserate with, to realize that I'm not alone in this. This isn't just me. That does make it feel a little bit better. So you need to, when you're more than about 10ish people, you need to do it collectively. Right. The layoff and the news should be distributed collectively. You don't do it one at a time. So if we're going to say that, well, if it's more than 10 and 30,000 is definitely more than 10, then we're going to need to do it collectively. You're certainly not going to fill a stadium. Okay, so in person is likely out of the question. Right. Because we need to generally do it at the same time.

[A]

I like that picture. It's like, all right, everybody come to the stadium. Because that's where they'd have to do it. And everybody's like, awesome.

[B]

It's going to be some cool football

[A]

surprise game and you have 30,000 people there. You better have an airlift to get yourself out of there.

[B]

Joke. Like, what are we talking about here? You even, even, oh, let's get everybody on zoom at the same time. Really? 30,000 people on Zoom at the same time in this particular situation? I mean, they talk about it being a cold email that's just editorializing. They needed to inform a lot of people that they no longer had a job anymore. And I didn't read the email. I'm sure it was written professionally and professional can sometimes come off as cold, but I don't know how else one would do it. So, yes, I don't have an issue. I don't have an issue with it. I do think if you're going to just lay off one person, you probably don't want to break up with them over email or text. You should probably have that conversation with that, you know, with that one person. You should probably have it, you know, face to face. I do think that's the right thing to do. It should be done by the person who's actually led them. You shouldn't bring somebody in from the outside to do it. It should be the leader who's made, made that decision, who is having that conversation with them. But if it is a mass reduction in force, the news needs to be distributed ideally in mass, as close to everybody at the same time is being affected as possible.

[A]

I don't know how else one would

[B]

do it when you're talking 30,000 people. So for everybody who's saying, like, oh, this was unfair, what else, what else would you suggest? What else? Give me another thing that would be better.

[A]

That's what I was thinking.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

What you got?

[A]

Well, I think that, I think there's a lot, a lot of interesting things from what we talked about. Have you, if you were listening or watching, have you gone through something like this? Are we wrong? Do you, you know, do you feel that there would have been a better way to do it given the current, you know, the things that we talked about? Have you been in a situation where you were effectively, you know, broken up with via text and had a much closer relationship and how did you feel about that and how would you have like it done different? We'd love to hear, and if you enjoyed this, we'd also love for you to share it with other people. And I think that's it for today, Ryan, unless you got anything else.

[B]

No, I just say if you think that there are people on your team and you've been thinking for a good long while that like, probably let this person go, you probably need to let them go. And maybe this episode was the sign that you were looking for. And don't let any outside person, especially people who've never run a business, make you feel guilty for being a good steward of your own, of your business.

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

Awesome. Hey business owners, I've got a quick question for you. Do you feel like you're missing the data you need to make strong business decisions? If so, it's probably time to build a CEO dashboard. It's an easy way to get everyone in your company literally on the same page, focusing on the numbers that matter.

[A]

So the scalable company put together a

[B]

free spreadsheet template that will give you everything you need to deploy your own dashboard. And to make it even easier, Ryan Deiss recorded a short training on how to use it. If you want to get your hands on the template, go to businesslunchpodcast.com dashboard that's businesslunchpodcast.com dashboard and you can download it for free.