A Warm Welcome

In the style of Rowan Atkinson

[A glass elevator descends through ambient hold music and the faint sound of someone crying on a Teams call. An HR Executive in a tasteful blazer, carrying a tablet, smiles warmly at the assembled audience.]

Ah, hello! It’s lovely to see you all here. As the more perceptive of you have probably worked out by now - yes, this is that meeting, and I am your… well, ex-Chief People Officer. Karen. Now, HR stands for Human Resources - and I want to be very clear that the company valued its human resources enormously. Right up until the point where it didn't.

Which is, broadly speaking, why you're here.

Now, you’re all gathered for... (checks tablet) ...an indefinite period of professional transition! Which in today’s economy could be a heck of a long time, so you’ll get to know your LinkedIn connections very well by the end. But for now I’m going to need to split you up into groups. Could you please stop texting your teammates to find out if they're here too. They are. Different room. We find it's cleaner that way.

Now - Google? Google, if you could come over here please. And Meta - yes, there are rather a lot of you, aren’t there - if you could form a line over there. Microsoft, you can join Meta. You’ve had practice.

Intel, if you could just... wait, are you here again? That’s three times in two years. You know where the chairs are. Amazon? Yes - find the group yourself. Consider this your us-east-1 moment. Everything goes down eventually.

Ah - Atlassian! Welcome, welcome. You can stand anywhere you like, you’re quite good at self-organising. Block? Yes, you're exactly half the company. Which sounds bad until you realise the other half have to do all your jobs now. So.

Engineers? If you’d step forward. My goodness. Could I split you into “genuinely surprised” and “had a go-bag ready since 2023”? Lovely. DEI teams, if you could come down here - I am so sorry, you were the first to go and somehow the last to know. The irony is not lost on me, I did flag it.

Senior middle managers? Over here please. There’s a sub-group specifically for people whose entire job was to attend meetings about other meetings. You’ll feel right at home. Technical Program Managers? Over there. You'll be pleased to know we've created a Confluence page documenting today's meeting. No one will read it.

Heads of Engineering? You’re in that corner, thank you. I know this is difficult. You hired most of these people. You fought for the headcount. You made the business case. In 2021.

People who found out via a 2am email - if you’d just... yes, that’s right. And people who found out when you were forcefully logged out of the meeting you were midway through - if you’d join them. I know. I did raise the communication strategy in planning but that feedback wasn’t actioned.

Now, Performance Improvement Plan alumni? Yes, all two of you. You’re in that group too. No need to look surprised - you’d already seen the preview content.

Right. Are there any questions? Yes. No, I’m afraid the severance isn’t negotiable. If you read your employment contract - and I appreciate many of you did not - you’ll find your options are quite limited. The equity cliff situation is particularly... well, yes. The career coaching is complimentary for thirty days, after which you’re on LinkedIn Premium, which gives you five InMail credits a month to contact people who are also on LinkedIn Premium looking for someone to contact.

(brightly)

I’ll hand you over now to Brad from Outplacement. And I’ll see you all at the networking event - which is, yes, a webinar. Unmute yourself if you need anything. The company's stock is up 3.4%.

[Karen steps back into the elevator. The doors close. The hold music resumes. Somewhere, someone is still crying on a Teams call.]