Ben Horowitz said it in The Hard Thing About Hard Things: if you made the hire, you need to be the one on their last day delivering the news. Not HR.
Look, I get it. 2025 has been a gong show. The market’s unpredictable. Start-stop-stop-start. But here’s what I don’t get: how are you hiring someone in July and laying them off in October? And then having HR do it for you? Worse, their manager had no clue these layoffs were happening. Are you all using a crystal ball for workforce planning? Cause something isn’t adding up.
If you’re still making hiring decisions without being certain you can sustain that headcount, that’s on you. Before you make a hire, time-travel three months out. The project didn’t land. The funding fell through. The technology isn’t working. Now you’re sitting across from someone you recruited just a few months ago, after you sold them a bag of moonshine, telling them it’s over. You’re gambling with someone’s life, not yours.
People’s lives are built around employment. They make decisions about where to live, what to buy, and how to plan based on the stability you promised them. And then three months later, you’re letting them go? How is that possible?
If it’s not performance-based, don’t sugarcoat it. The company failed them. Not “the market shifted.” Not “priorities changed.” You made bad calls. Own it.
And maybe the sting of that conversation will make you pause before you go asking for headcount again.
P.S. Hiring is a big deal. Treat it like one.