Building teams in tumultuous times. Lessons learned after multiple layoffs
summary
Four rounds of layoffs happen across a career including four layoffs two in management, a sector-wide wave hits with 400,000 people laid off ≈1,200/day, and early work builds a VoIP app in Costa Rica. At SoundCloud a 40% cut leads to 80% of one team gone, then the remaining people reorganize into a platform org, add dashboards and observability, run frequent demos, do internal hiring and retrospectives, and rebuild trust — the rebuilt team becomes more focused and productive.
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chapters (10)
- 0:00Introduction
- 2:32Personal layoff experiences
- 6:45First layoff Costa Rica
- 8:35Second layoff SoundCloud
- 11:24Rebuilding team dynamics
- 14:152022 layoff role changes
- 16:02Preparing for layoffs
- 18:09Conducting layoffs
- 19:34Rebuilding trust
- 20:15Key learnings
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