Soft Skills Engineering - Episode 341: Offer rescinded and layoff stuff

Episode Date: January 30, 2023

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I am an American student finishing my undergraduate degree in computer science in the Midwest this semester. I am concerned about the economic climate of the technology industry. I am doing my second internship at a major technology company this summer (Microsoft). After that I will go to graduate school and try to ride out the storm. I have applied nearly a dozen programs including one year and two year masters programs, and even a few PhD programs (MIT plz accept me). My biggest concern is having my offer rescinded. I thought there might be economic turbulence, so last summer I had my return offer place me in the most profitable and highest growth division of the company. How do lay-off decisions get made on the issue of rescinding offers versus laying off people? How can I reduce the risk of the offer getting pulled? I am working on finding another software engineering internship, but it’s extremely difficult to find any open roles. Listener Andre says, I need a gut check here. I have a senior engineer on my team that does not perform well. He keeps procrastinating on tasks that I know wouldn’t take much effort. I think it would be great for the team and the company to substitute this engineer for someone with more passion. One idea I have is to volunteer this person to my director to be laid off. It would be great for the engineer to feed on the potential 3-month severance package. Firing him doesn’t seem like an option because he does the bare minimum for his role. What would you do?

it takes more than installing blackout blinds in your office to turn on dark mode in real life to be a great software engineer this is episode 341 of the soft skills engineering podcast i'm your host jameson dance i'm your host dave smith and soft skills engineering is your weekly advice show where we talk about non-technical stuff about the technical field of software development i guess you could make blackout blinds technical if you wanted to automate them yeah a little iot yeah i've recently gotten into that and it's just yak shaving all the way down it's like there's no such thing as like automating something you have to like build a system that allows you to configure the thing that can then debug the thing that you set up to configure the

thing that then you can automate which is fun it's cool i'm enjoying myself but boy is it not making my home any smarter yet that's funny i thought i waited long enough to get into it too i would have expected so at this point it's been quite a what number of years now let me tell you just barely like 2023 the the exciting announcement of one new standard to unify them all to replace the existing like 15 standards for protocols for communication surely this will not be a 16th incompatible this time we got it right yeah exactly but that's not well i don't know yeah well no it's not what this show's about that's right that's too technical that's right we're here to talk about other stuff like our patrons yes i want to thank those patrons

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it okay because we really liked it besides that that's the only reason we did just rolls off the tongue yeah uh should i read our first question yeah go for it this is from an anonymous listener who says i'm an american student finishing my undergraduate degree in computer science in the midwest this semester i'm concerned about the economic climate of the technology industry i'm doing my second internship at a major technology company this summer microsoft after that i will go to graduate school and try to ride out the storm i've applied to nearly a dozen programs including one year and two year master's programs and even a few phd programs in parentheses mit please accept me. My biggest concern is having my offer rescinded. I thought there might be

economic turbulence. So last summer I had my return offer place me in the most profitable and highest growth division of the company. How do layoff decisions get made on the issue of rescinding offers versus laying off people? How can I reduce the risk of the offer getting pulled? I am working on finding another software engineering internship, but it's extremely difficult to find any open roles. This is very interesting because 20 years ago this month, I was doing the same thing. You were trying to go to grad school because you were worried about the economic climate? Yep, that's exactly right. I was like having a hard time getting calls back from companies. I applied to a few grad school programs and they all reported the same thing to

me, which is we've had an unusually high number of applicants this year. I remember University of virginia i applied to their computer science master's degree program and they told me they had something like 30 seats or 90 seats something in that range and like 900 applicants i did not get that i did not get one of those seats you were the 91st yeah right on the edge so close anyway okay i want to make sure i understand this so this person is they're they're worried about their internship offer being rescinded yeah before they go off to grad school is that right yes as opposed to the grad school offer i think so yeah and not like this isn't like a full-time like once you finish grad school then you can come work here yeah uh maybe but i

what i read is i'm doing my second internship at a major technology company this summer and mentions microsoft so i think what's being asked here is how do i make sure i get that internship this summer and and don't get it rescinded because let's i'll be honest there's a good chance these big tech companies are going to rescind internship offers this summer yeah i mean we're we're in a climate now where just i mean the day we're recording this google announced that they're laying off 12 000 people i don't remember hearing if microsoft did layoffs but i think they did amazon's laid off 18 000 facebook's done layoffs yeah it would be weird to me if a company lays off that many people and then resumes their internship program at the same

volume that they had done in previous years yeah so you're saying it's not it's not automatic that they would just cancel all internships but certainly i don't know a risk i would like to use the word unprecedented but it's not this is exactly the same thing that happened 20 years ago it's different companies and it feels like the companies i mean google is more of a real company than pets.com that's true but at the time i remember that so here's a couple i remember i remember microsoft in 20 years ago and i knew people who went to work for them and i remember intel hiring a bunch of software engineers and other engineers and i remember hearing stories of intel making offers to people for when they graduated in a few months time you know so maybe

four or five months in advance and then telling the people hey we're actually not going to hire you and you can go ahead and keep your signing bonus like 20 grand or something and uh don't come into work at the start you know after you graduate because you don't have a job here so that happened and there's a chance it could happen here too i think random googling has revealed the internet is not in agreement on whether whether internship offers will be rescinded the internet doesn't agree on everything weird i wonder if well first i don't know like i've been around uh an internship program at a big company but i wasn't behind the scenes running it and it was not in the unprecedented

yet still precedented times of the actually precedented money yeah the actually precedented times of of less money but i'm trying to think through like what the consequences of this would be on the one hand if you're not paying people who already work there anymore it seems like it's kind of a no-brainer to also not pay people who don't work there right to also not start paying new people yeah but at the same time i wonder if it's like i mean internships are time limited like the the cost is lower it's not like they're taking on new headcount forever yeah that's that's what i was thinking is that there's actually quite a bit of negative optics that happen if you cancel an internship program especially since internships are relative to full-time employees very inexpensive

you know typically there's no benefits package involved the rates are lower and like you said they're time limited which means you're not signing up to recurring cost it's a one-time fixed cost which companies typically don't have to grimace as much when they think about taking that cost on so i don't think these things are necessarily connected but they are i guess it's it's a question of to what degree they are connected i was thinking the same thing about the optics of like if you take on interns and then don't hire them full-time that's i don't know that's one thing happened yeah but if having interns come in and then leave at the end of their internship is sort of like investing in the hiring brand of your company for the future

where maybe you do want more people to work there and i mean i assume that they would still make some offers to interns maybe it'll just be a lot more competitive like they will they will filter out a lot harder yeah exactly i think you're right if i was running a company which heaven forbid and thank goodness i'm not but if i were running a company and i had the option to do an intern like i had to decide whether to resume an internship program i would take a good hard look at the cost of the program and the benefits to the company and i would think you know fully canceling an internship program will have far reaching effects like it will it will have repute will cause reputational damage because people will think some people will think oh microsoft

doesn't have an intern program you know and they won't apply because you might be surprised to learn that most of these companies are actually desperate to have people apply to their internship programs they aren't they do get a lot of applicants but they're not overwhelmed with applicants and they do go to great efforts to convince people to actually apply so anything that would damage that it's also like a prestige thing in a way it's it's like with colleges where like sort of a a mark of pride to say we had so many applicants because so many so many interns want to come work here yeah it's like self-sustaining after it is it is and so they would unravel some of that that built up prestige if they just cancel the program for one summer

so i would i would be very surprised if they cancel the intern program completely also these companies do need to continue innovating and building and a lot of these intern projects produce not a lot but like you know they're they're they are kind of doing this moonshot let's be honest yeah like not very many some number of intern program projects produce valuable business outcomes that these companies can leverage and make money on so they don't want to completely discount that either so you know is there a chance your internship offer will be rescinded yes if i had to guess i would say the chances are less than 20 and this person has already done the number one thing to make sure that theirs doesn't get rescinded which is

trying to shoot for an internship position that is located within the company in a high profit high revenue area or high growth area yeah that's what i think i wonder if you could reach out to them to confirm or maybe they would see that as a sign of weakness or you lack faith that your internship will be there so you don't believe microsoft yellow what's their color i don't know uh microsoft red blue yeah what's the windows logo isn't it red blue oh it's red green yellowish blue and gray according to google yeah you don't bleed microsoft red green yellowish blue and gray if you have to ask us this question yeah maybe it's just like xbox green yeah there you go but i i actually the reason i love this question is because it shows that the impermanence

and circular nature of economies and i'm going to wax a little philosophical here but it makes me feel very i don't know it's a new feeling to be able to say i've lived through this almost exact kind of downturn 20 years prior yeah it's like the first time in my life where i've been able to really just really lean into the word whippersnapper it feels good back in my day just kind of rolls off the tongue oh yeah constantly yeah yeah that's really interesting i i definitely i came in a bit later i came in during like the housing crisis like parts of the economy were not doing great but not our part our part was fine yeah tech was like boy it would suck tech go through a downturn yeah i wonder what that would be like yeah i

remember i was you know i was pretty nervous but i think right now i would be a lot more nervous at my stage in life yeah but i'm not i don't feel too bad about it but i remember like i was it was a struggle and i went from believing that i could make a certain amount of money right out of college as a software engineer to realizing that I was going to make 40% less than that at my first job. And also just having to come to terms with that. But you know, the beauty of being young

is I came to terms with it immediately. Like I didn't, it was no problem. It was just reality and I had no options. I didn't even think about alternative realities. I will have 40% less disposable income. No problem. What's for dinner? You know, so you move right on.

oh man what an interesting thing to see huh well have we answered the question we kind of skipped the how do layoff decisions get made oh yeah painfully in the dark yes i don't know the room no one smiles coming out of after the decision is made yeah there will be anger it's tough but but realistically for a job seeker or a returning intern how do they get made at a company the size of Microsoft, it is, for me, impossible to predict what the heuristics are that guide their layoff decision-making, especially offer recension decision-making for interns. You would like to believe that they do a holistic evaluation of every role and every team member's performance and everything, and then make a rational decision. But at the numbers we're

talking about, there's no way. There's no way it happens that way. They will probably make decisions at the business unit level and say, we're going to invest 10% less in this business unit. Maybe it's Xbox, maybe it's Microsoft retail stores. I don't know. But there's probably not going to be any kind of real serious hand-wringing about individual roles. It's just, that's too much. The scale is too big for anyone to decide that. One more thought I had is if last summer's most profitable and highest growth division is this summer's cost-cutting target, if it was very profitable and very high growth because of the frothy economic market, then maybe I would be a little more concerned. But if it's a bit more durable, then maybe you're okay. Yeah,

I would talk to them, honestly. I would just reach out to them and say, are you worried about it? yeah i agree i would do that because otherwise you're just going to sit there and worry and now you can sit there and worry with an actual reason because they told you your offers rescinded go to grad school early yeah have you answered the question i think so good luck i'm sorry that you're entering the industry at this time but i can say from experience it works out okay yeah do you want to read our next question dave yeah this comes from a listener named andre who says I need a gut check here. I have a senior engineer on my team that does not perform well. He keeps procrastinating on tasks that I know wouldn't take much effort. I think it would be

great for the team and the company to substitute this engineer for someone with more passion. One idea I have is to volunteer this person to my director to be laid off. It would be great for the engineer to feed on the potential three-month severance package. At the same time, I feel like I wouldn't be doing my job if I just get rid of him instead of trying to work with him to perform better firing doesn't seem like an option because he does the bare minimum for his role what would you do interesting so someone who's kind of borderline and you're wondering do i do i offer him his tribute yes sacrifice him to layoffs there's and then and then soothe yourself soothe your conscience by saying he'll get a great severance yeah the severance was good if you

do layoffs usually you wouldn't replace those laid off positions i mean sometimes that happens but it's always a weird it's always weird optics because when you do layoffs usually you're talking about like business climate and like we can't afford to keep these people here then if you go back and hire for a role you just laid off and everyone kind of raises an eyebrow and thinks how true was that or were you just trying to get rid of people that you didn't want to work there anymore so my point there is to say if your intention is to say let's lay this person off also can we hire someone to replace them that's that's not typically how it works i would say that's not a layoff yeah yeah that's definitely called firing someone yeah that's called firing

and replacing and backfilling i think is it fair to say that layoffs by definition you don't backfill i think so yeah yeah like you're trying to cut costs usually usually you're trying to spend less money and and typically i mean severance is expensive so you're like paying a lump sum to cut yeah recurring costs right i guess that's right and i can see why the concept of layoffs and performance-based termination can be conflated because i think a lot of times you think well we have to save costs and we have to let some people go who do we choose and you know a natural place to go is to try to evaluate people's performance and use that as the to eliminate the lowest performing people but yeah if you're going to replace them with higher performing

people that's not a layoff yeah at the end it says firing him wouldn't be doesn't seem like an option because he does the bare minimum for his role at least in the u.s it's always an option for better or worse there's uh with some exceptions you can quit or be fired for for without yeah it's it's at will employment your company can for any reason you don't want you to work here anymore yeah and when companies do that though they do they do expose themselves to certain legal risks that people will sue them for wrongful termination and so even though the employment agreement and the law officially allows you to do that it's not without its costs and so most companies will go to great lengths to cover their butts when it comes to justifying the termination

but i i guess i want to feel like i'm gonna sound heartless so i need to to recognize there are humans involved and there's pain involved in being fired and and that sucks but also it sounds like this person isn't a good fit for the job like they're not just barely doing the bare minimum it feels like not someone you want on your team and and the average replacement developer might be more valuable or more helpful and somewhat cynically there are a lot of developers looking for a job right now so you're you're you're you're it's it's much more of a of a an employer's market because there's so many layoffs so it is right now be a chance of like maybe maybe it's even maybe it's easier than normal to find someone very talented because so many people are being

laid off that is true so but i also i want to latch on to those words this person is doing the bare minimum for his role so sounds to me like you haven't i mean in in one breath you're saying this person is doing the bare minimum for the role which means they're doing the role so maybe the minimum isn't actually what you think it is or maybe it's higher than you've said but on the other hand you're saying they need to be fired because they're not performing so like which is it you know um and i think this is a case where it really behooves you as a manager to clearly articulate to each team member what are the minimum requirements to be considered for continued employment you know yeah that's a good point because if there's some kind of

performance rating or performance management framework it'll probably have a range of ratings from you're doing super great to you're doing poorly but you're doing poorly is usually below the minimum for the role like i don't know how do i explain this there's like the minimum to be acceptable in the role and the minimum to i don't know now that i'm saying this it feels fuzzy and weird in my head when it's coming out of my mouth it sort of makes sense in my head yes it felt better inside than outside like it was beautiful on the inside it's it almost feels like there's two standards there's like the minimum to be doing a good job which if someone was doing at the very minimum of that you'd be like yeah i'm glad they're on

my team and then there's the minimum to i don't know to not how do i put this be fired yeah but but i i would argue that if they're below the minimum to do a good job those those feel like different levels and and you might be looking for a clarity that is not there like you might be looking for something so egregiously bad that it is unlikely to happen but if they just kind of do a pretty cruddy job for a long time uh-huh that that might not be good enough as well i think i'm saying you know what as usual i'm saying what you say but with more words and less clarity okay that's what i've decided yeah it's a good thing your words sound which is very pleasant and yeah maybe if you don't understand the language then you're like

the cadence sounds okay as long as as long as you're not paying attention to the content it's good good tempo good inflections yeah it's good therefore yeah therefore it is correct hmm at the very least it does sound like you need to have a conversation with this person saying that you expect them to do more yep and and i agree that leads them to doing more right you have to give them a chance and remember that an important part of your job is communicating to your team members their performance levels especially when they're underperforming the sooner you can share the better and this doesn't have to be a sit down like oh guess what you are underperforming it can be as simple as saying this deliverable did not meet

our expectations for your level and experience you know and it's just like state the facts tell them how you want it to be better yeah and if you don't ever do that and then you decide to fire them boy you really honestly you really have failed as a manager in my opinion and just so many this happens so often in fact i might even i might even venture to say this is the number one failure of people in in people management roles is not sharing concrete feedback soon enough and it becomes too late and then they find themselves in this awkward situation where they need to terminate someone but they haven't told them and it's a big surprise and then you're in this i speak from experience you are in this dilemma of like the business needs this person to not work

here anymore but i have not given them a fair chance to improve but also like one of those things pays my bills and one of them makes me sleep at night and i can always go to sleep on this pile of money i'll just just take it from my experience sleeping on a mattress stuffed with hundred dollar bills is not as comfortable it probably smells atrocious it's bad yeah uh yeah talking about this stuff is tough because yeah i i feel very ruthless i i feel like i i want to do the right thing and the right thing is fuzzy and ill-defined and and for who and in what capacity yeah i don't know it's tough and also hard and painful to do right and that's like for me it's maybe the number one thing it's

like it's no fun telling someone they didn't meet your expectations you know yeah it is always more fun to say nothing until the time when you have to say sorry we have to let you go and you haven't talked about it before yeah hmm well we've talked about a bunch of stuff what would you do so so i guess what we would do is talk to this person about their performance yep and and then also So a couple of things, you've got to clarify in your mind, a layoff is not a, I don't know, what's the right word here, but this isn't a layoff situation. You have an underperforming team member that you want to replace, not a layoff. You can let them go. You can give them a generous severance package. Just don't call it a layoff because it's not, it's not the end of the

world. If you do call it a layoff, like we're not going to call the police. I mean, Jameson might, but I'm not going to, but don't call it a layoff. If you plan to backfill them and get on a performance plan right away with this person. So they understand where they are and what the risks are if they continue down the path they're on. Some people surprise you and will just turn it around and be amazing. It sounds like in this case, that might actually be this person because they had some potential, they have some good skill. And some people will just might not be able to. But in either case, as a manager, it's your number one priority to clearly articulate to them what how well they're performing or not performing at the moment. So that's that's what

I would say to you. Regardless of whether it's a layoff, you can negotiate a good severance. And I think that's probably the last point i want to make about this is that severance and layoffs are orthogonal concepts that sometimes go together but don't have to you you know companies can lay people off with no severance they can also lay people off with severance you can also terminate someone for low performance with severance and you can terminate someone without with low performance without severance so i think i covered the whole truth table there but it's a you know it's two bits one of the zero that's and all four combinations are united states and the parts of space that we're familiar with truth table but very different rules in europe and other countries

as well that's right that's right so and that's something to be treated with care and i honestly don't really know in europe or other countries if the layoff distinction is the same i hope for my sake that it is what does that mean it sounds potentially dire i just didn't want to sound dumb okay i thought you were like because i gotta go do it a bunch of times to some folks that live in europe yeah okay yeah that is also dire it's sounding dumb all right that's all i got i got nothing nothing else yeah don't undersell yourself that wasn't nothing that was great advice dave thank you for allowing me to listen to it and repeat it poorly you enjoyed the tempo and yeah And what it meant.

I enjoyed the meaning I got from it. What can people do if they want their own advice? Go to softskills.audio and click the ask a question button where you can fill out our form. Thank you so much to everyone who does that. We love you. Keep those questions flowing. They are the life of the show.

Thank you so much. We will catch you next week.