since COVID — more than 500 people.
He had some interesting things to say about it. He doesn't feel bad for the employees laid off. In his words, "They did it to themselves."
When I asked what he meant by that, he said during COVID, they all started working from home. The company survived for awhile that way. Then when the pandemic was over, management tried to get folks to come back to the office and they basically refused, saying they wanted to continue to WFH. The company is now down 30%. There's no innovation. And the fact that everybody was WFH meant the company had to really define roles well and make sure every employee could work self-sufficiently in their lanes.
That made every one of those WFH jobs super easy to outsource. And that's exactly what the company did.
So, you WFH warriors beware. You may be making yourselves easily expendable.