Today, we are parting away with 13% of us.
It is a wednesday.
Wednesdays are usually noisy. Since it is supposedly no meeting day. People tend to send more chat messages, open more pull requests, and write more posts. But today is especially quiet.
This is the 2nd time that I’ve been through this. Last time, it was worse. It was about 35%. Some have been with the company since the early days. Some were (supposedly) close friends with the CEO.
I cannot imagine being the leader in a situation like this. How can you face those who are departing, and those who are staying? How do you explain that, due to your over-optimism and mis-judgment, now hundreds and thousands of families are in trouble?
Running a business can sometimes be so ruthlessly brutal.
Running a business, by the end of the day, is a complex optimization problem. But the goal of optimization is the success of the company as a whole.
As much as we would like to tie the success and future of the companies with each individual. It is not always the case. When business is going through tough times, we say that we have a shared vision, that we are all in the same boat, that we are a family. But when it rains too hard, or the wave is too rough, we will have to leave some in the water.
During the weekend, there was a leaked article from WSJ. Whether or not it is intentional, I think it is for the better.
