Posted by Anonymous , Feb 02, 2008 3:47AM

What's with all the anti-Semitic stuff lately? Yesterday, a commenter wrote in saying db commenters were "classless NY kikes." Today, Bess said a guy seen crying after being laid off at GS was "a Jew crying over money." A commenter on this post said he had sex with "a little Jew bitch." At what point does the atmosphere become too noxious?

Posted by Anonymous , Feb 02, 2008 3:56AM

Goldman Sachs may lay off 5% of their staff every year, but this year they managed to do it in a particularly graceless way. What makes them such scientists to be able to identify the "least productive" 5%? It's hard to believe that the actions of the market didn't affect their judgment. Couldn't they just say the laid off people weren't a good fit with their organization at this time? Their HR tactics are horrible, and the PR is a mess.

Posted by Anonymous , Feb 02, 2008 2:07PM

PR Goon: GS could proceed as rationally as you argue they do, and still say something more neutral about the laid-off employees. What's wrong with saying that GS evaluates its organization annually, and the people let go weren't a good fit with the organization at this time? And then shutting up. There's nothing untrue about a less aggressive characterization of the fired employees.

I've been in the unpleasant situation of having to lay off people, and we had the following goals: (1) to be as humane as possible because we were inflicting life-changing loss on a person; (2) to keep from creating a demoralized atmosphere among remaining employees; (3) to keep the process orderly, efficient, and civil (people can "go postal" when they lose their jobs, and a petty run-in caused by a high-handed administrator can be a trigger); and (4) to avoid providing a "reason" for the individual lay-off because to do so invites employment lawsuits.

No matter what GS says, the net result of "setting the record straight" was the unnecessary humiliation of laid-off employees. I wonder how many problems they have created for themselves in terms of reduced employee regard of management, distaste of their tactics by outsiders, and employment lawsuits?

Posted by Anonymous , Feb 03, 2008 12:48AM

Every firm may conduct annual reviews, but not every firm lays off 5% of their work force in an annual ritual. PR Goon asks why any firm would hold onto its least productive employees. Most firms try to stay as lean as possible, and hire people as needed to get out the work product. A group layoff of 5% of an appropriately sized work force would disrupt the production of work. That's why most firms don't deal with underachievers on a group basis. Apparently Goldman can afford to over hire, and intricately plans for these annual disruptions.

In many communities, the word of an annual group layoff of 5%, coupled with the award of a stigma for each and every one of them, would earn a company the reputation of being an undesirable employer. If you put into the equation the possibility of earning great wealth by working at the company for a relatively brief span of time, you can apparently overcome recruitment problems ordinary companies would experience.

The third reason most companies don't purge 5% of the work force all at once and stigmatize the people laid off as problem employees is that the leadership of the companies doesn't have the stomach for it. This kind of behavior is seen as unnecessarily brutal. Many companies use employee assistance programs, progressive discipline, and offer problem employees the opportunity to resign rather than be dismissed. A stigmatizing dismissal is used only as a last resort. Obviously, these alternatives can't be used if a company is struggling with a difficult financial situation, and has to lay people off to survive. But that's a layoff, not a dismissal for cause.

Finally, if a company dismisses someone for cause, publicizes the reason, and happens to be proven wrong about the publicized reason, it's called slander, and people can recover large sums of money from the company. If a company dismisses a group of people for cause and brands them all with the same reason, the company increases its exposure to liability. Most companies are unwilling to take this kind of risk.

Goldman Sachs is apparently so confident of their system of evaluation that they feel they can live with the risk of mistakenly stigmatizing laid off employees. Or Goldman Sachs has such vast sums of money that a potential judgment is meaningless to it.

It all comes down to money in the end. However, even the wealthiest company is vulnerable to reversals of fortune. Now that Goldman has received bad publicity for this annual ritual, I wonder if they're planning to do it the same way next year?

Posted by Anonymous , Feb 04, 2008 12:30AM

Frat Stud -- you need a broader frame of reference.