Corona Chronicles: The Shittiest Lay-Off in Corporate History

Inspired (or frustrated) by various corona crisis responses, I’ve been blogging on how companies handle these times. Earlier posts in this series discussed remote work and how crisis reveals character. This time? Lay-offs.

Bird

In 2018, Quartz reported electric scooter company Bird as the fastest startup ever to reach a $1 billion valuation. In October, they raised $270 million in funding, and another $75 million in January this year.

With a billion-dollar valuation, the company is considered a so-called unicorn. But while unicorns can look sweet and magical on the outside, the inside - Bird shows - can be rotten as hell.

Lay-offs

Due to the corona virus impact, Bird's leadership team and board of directors felt the need to let go 30% of its staff to 'extend its runway'. 406 employees received a vague invitation to a Zoom conference call on "COVID-19 Update".

When the call started at 10:30 a.m., employees were greeted with a 5-minute silence and a slide saying “COVID-19”. Some thought they were experiencing technical difficulties and left the call. They were unable to get back in.

They missed what goes down as one of the coldest, most unsympathetic company announcements ever. Here’s the recording of the now-infamous conference call, posted by dot.LA:

A suboptimal way

“This is a suboptimal way to deliver such a message. […] COVID-19 has also had a massive impact on our business. One that has forced our leadership team and our board of directors to make many extremely difficult and painful decisions. One of those decisions is to eliminate a number of roles at the company. Unfortunately, your role is impacted by this decision and Friday April 3rd will be your last day with Bird.”

“Thank you for helping build Bird and for making it so very, very, very special. When we come out of the other side […] we hope we can work together again.”

It seems to be a ‘very, very, very special’ company indeed. One that – hopefully – nobody will return to.

What was scheduled for 30 minutes lasted just 120 seconds. Even worse? The message was not spoken by CEO Travis Vanderzanden himself. What utter cowardice.

Disagreement remains about who was the person making the announcement. At first, we wrote it was Vanderzanden's assistant, but another employee (who wasn't fired) denied this. For sure, not many people would have wanted to be in the shoes of the unidentified woman.

Employees who had the day off couldn't get their computers to log in after the announcement, and had no clue as to why. Many found out through the media. In a follow-up memo, the company seemed more worried about getting their laptops back as soon as possible: "IT will send a box with a return shipping label to retrieve company assets (e.g., laptops, chargers, and badges). All items should be put in the box and mailed back to us by April 15."

Trying to care

Afterwards, Vanderzanden analyzed their handling of the situation as “not ideal”. The initial memo read "As you know, we strive to be community-focused at Bird - we always try to care deeply about the people we serve."

Really? If 'trying to care deeply about people' looks like this, you shouldn't be in the position you're in. Get yourself a new job, mate.

Or, take a good hard look at the proper way of dealing with a situation like this. Learn from Gravity Payments and its CEO Dan Price and other pioneering companies on our Bucket List.

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