You’re Let Go

Back in the day, I worked for a company where the CEO had a very special talent: turning employee terminations into public announcements like he was running a reality show called “Survivor: Office Edition.”

I’m not joking.

Every time someone got let go, it was a whole event.

Not a quiet HR exit. Not a discreet handoff of duties.

No.

This man would stand in front of the entire team, usually holding a coffee mug and a printed quote from Elon Musk, and say something like:

“Just so everyone’s aware, Carl is no longer with the company. Carl lacked urgency. Carl was not aligned with our vision. Carl brought Tupperware that smelled weird. We wish Carl the best.”

Then he’d smile like he just delivered a TED Talk on accountability.

We’d all be sitting there, fake-nodding like “Yes, thank you for this transparency,” while also internally screaming “Did he just publicly roast Carl’s leftovers??”

It got so bad, we had a running office betting pool on how each firing would be spun.

“Oh no, Melissa’s desk is cleared. What’s it gonna be?”

“Melissa failed to synergize vertically across platforms.”

Translation: She asked why we had seven different project management tools and that made Chad from Product uncomfortable.

The worst part? He’d always end it with “If anyone has concerns, my door is open.”

But it wasn’t.

It was metaphorically open, sure.

But if you walked in there with actual feedback, you’d walk out with a PIP and a suddenly missing LinkedIn profile photo.

One time he fired a guy named Jason, and the announcement literally went:

“Jason is no longer with the company. He struggled to keep up with the pace and, frankly, was not obsessed with excellence.”

Sir.

You just dragged Jason’s entire personality in front of people still trying to finish their bagels.

We lived in fear.

You never knew if that 9 a.m. all-hands meeting was going to be an operations update or a public shaming.

Slack messages would blow up:

“He just printed something. He’s coming down the hall. Someone’s getting the speech.”

Eventually, people just started quitting quietly.

And you could tell the CEO hated it because he couldn’t narrate their downfall.

He’d be like:

“So, Jenna has chosen to pursue other opportunities. We assume. She didn’t actually say. Very unprofessional. Let’s move forward.”

Anyway, I’m out of there now.

But I’ll never forget that feeling of watching a man in a Patagonia vest deliver live performance HR updates like he was hosting an awards show.

To this day, whenever someone leaves a company quietly, I feel a little uneasy.

Like… where’s the monologue?

Where’s the post-mortem PowerPoint?

Where’s the internal Slack message that ends with “Let’s all reflect on what we can learn from this”?

Truly, an era.