Bobby Powers Helped Cut Jobs. Then He Was Cut Himself

By Amara Osei

About a month and a half after helping a media startup cut staff, Bobby Powers, 39, a Seattle leadership coach, said his own job was on the next layoff list. He had worked in human resources at the startup, and Business Insider verified his prior employment and subsequent layoff.

Powers said his boss and he ran the first layoff, coordinating with the executive team on who would lose their jobs. The daily work of deciding who appeared on the list and who did not proved jarring because the group included people Powers knew closely. He called the back-and-forth soul-crushing.

Powers said the company needed deep cuts even though the affected employees were doing great jobs. The goal was to cut enough positions to avoid another layoff. Updated budget projections kept the target moving, and falling revenue projections increased the required cuts.

How did Powers and his boss try to preserve humanity?

Powers said he and his boss wanted to preserve humanity throughout the layoffs. Their main questions were how they would want the process handled and how they had heard other companies handle terminations poorly.

• Who would call each employee, whether all calls would occur simultaneously, and how each conversation would be scripted nearly minute by minute.
• When the companywide email would go out and when Slack and email access would end.
• Whether departing employees could say goodbye and had colleagues’ cellphone numbers, personal email addresses and LinkedIn connections for contacting friends.

If no major security concern existed, Powers and his boss wanted to give workers at least some time to message colleagues and thank them. They rejected zero notice and immediate access shutdown because it felt inhumane, though they also recognized that extended notice created its own problems.

Powers said planners confronted 100 or 1,000 questions they had never considered. Most layoff calls used video because the company was remote and because he wanted a human touch. Naming the meeting remained another problem when an employee could not be reached or declined the invite because of a conflict.

Why were the layoff calls so difficult?

Powers said the layoff calls ranked among the hardest conversations he had ever had. Some employees had endured financial struggles or had just bought a house, so he knew what waited beyond the termination.

Powers described the method this way: “That's the tough thing about the corporate world: Whenever you're dealing with a big layoff or any other big, companywide decision, at the end of the day, you're putting humans in a spreadsheet, which doesn't feel great.”

How did Powers end up on the chopping block?

Soon after the first layoffs, business returned to normal and Powers received a promotion that paid more than he had ever earned. About a month and a half later, he attended a learning and development conference in Las Vegas and took notes when his boss called.

Powers said his boss told him: “We're doing another layoff, and rather than us having these conversations with other people, I think we're on the chopping block this time.” He described his reaction as partially floored and partially normal.

On the morning of the layoffs, Powers checked whether a companywide blast had gone out and found he could not access his email. Access had already been cut, and he could not reach out to say goodbye.

Powers said he had once assumed layoffs mainly removed low performers. Running the process changed that view, while seeing the experience from both sides gave him more empathy for what workers endured and the judgment they faced. He said he no longer jumped to the same conclusions when layoffs appeared online.

For employers facing deeper cuts as revenue forecasts weaken, Powers's account leaves a practical test: whether a scripted termination preserves dignity when the decision itself has become a spreadsheet line. His experience shows that a human touch on video can coexist with severed access, as it did in his case, leaving him unable to contact colleagues before the layoffs.