Ben Horowitz wrote in The Hard Thing About Hard Things that if you made the hire, you should be the one delivering the news on their last day. Not HR.
The observation holds up because of how decisions are actually made and carried through organizations. The same people who advocate for headcount are often no longer present when the outcome of that decision becomes visible. The responsibility shifts. The consequence does not.
Where the hiring decision actually sits
Over the past year, hiring patterns have been uneven. Teams expand, pause, and adjust in short cycles. Against that backdrop, it is not unusual to see someone hired mid-year and let go within a quarter. What stands out is not the volatility itself, but how little connection there appears to be between the decision to hire and the conditions required to sustain that decision.
In practice, the hiring moment carries a level of certainty that rarely exists. A role is approved based on a set of assumptions. Revenue will materialize. A project will move forward. Funding will hold. The work will remain relevant long enough to justify the addition. Those assumptions are rarely stated explicitly, yet they underpin the decision.
When they do not hold, the organization adjusts. Priorities shift, timelines move, or initiatives are deprioritized. The adjustment often appears later, when someone is told their role is no longer required. By then, the original context behind the hiring decision is no longer in the room.
Where the impact actually lands
For the individual, the timeline looks different. The decision to join is not treated as provisional. It influences where someone lives, how they plan financially, and how they orient themselves professionally. The level of commitment is asymmetrical. The organization is managing variables. The individual is making a life decision.
This is where the separation becomes visible. When a layoff is not tied to performance, the explanation tends to centre on changing conditions. Markets shift. Priorities evolve. The language reflects the present moment. It rarely traces back to the assumptions that made the hiring decision possible in the first place.
Inside organizations, those connections are understood implicitly. Headcount requests are made with an awareness of uncertainty, but that uncertainty is often absorbed rather than surfaced. By the time a role is approved, the decision has taken on a level of clarity that the underlying conditions do not fully support.
What follows is not usually treated as a continuation of that decision. It is treated as a separate event.
The earlier framing suggests it is the same event, observed at a different point in time.
When leaders remain connected to both moments, the decision tends to carry more weight. When they do not, hiring and layoffs begin to operate as distinct processes, each rational on its own, but disconnected in sequence.
The gap between those two moments is where most of the impact sits.
Hiring carries consequences that rarely appear at the point the decision is made. Treating the two as separate events makes that gap easier to ignore.