Worst Mass Sales Marketing Layoffs Stories

What is the worst mass layoff stories you have heard about?


I heard about one travel booking website that was a unicorn with offices in SF and Palo Alto (name omitted to not publicly shame anyone). Covid hits and travel stops (i.e., no one is using their product), and then they have layoffs. Not that great of a story because they just mailed everyone boxes with return labels with an additional "We're all on this together, thanks for working for us!" slack.


So, what's the worst mass layoffs story you have ever heard about?

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poweredbycaffeine
WR Lieutenant
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Toast laid off 50% of their total staff at the height of the pandemic. Scooped up 3 of their best for my last SDR team.ย 
Rallier
Politicker
3
SDR Manager and Consultant
I don't have any connection to it, but the WeWork layoffs from a few years ago sounded pretty bad. Here's an excerpt from Business Insider

"Moments after discussing a round ofย layoffsย to cut costs in 2016,ย WeWorkย CEO Adam Neumann treated employees toย tequilaย shots and a performance by a member of Run-DMC"
funcoupons
WR Officer
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Classy.ย 
CuriousFox
WR Officer
0
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Martini classy ๐Ÿธ
SADNES5
Politicker
1
down voters are marketing spies
Not sales specific:

Energy is a very large roller coaster employer, with a boom and bust cycle.ย 

Long story short from insider knowledge. IT was going through the list of the people that were getting layoff notices in the morning. (540+) when they came across their own names.

They locked out the laptops/keycards/cellphones of all employees on the list, and just packed their stuff and left. As they just found out they were laid off.ย 

Employees showed up to work in the am, not being able to access the building, log into remote laptops, make calls on cell phones.ย 

feel free to google for the news articles:ย  layoff-surprise-workers-losing-jobs-barred-from-building-too-early
CaneWolf
Politicker
2
Call me what you want, just sign the damn contract
Good for IT though. Burn the fucker down at that point.
Smithy
Politicker
1
Director of Sales
Company my friend worked for last year.ย 

management said everything was cool and they were doing fine at the start of the pandemic. One day, at 3pm, everyone gets the company get a call put in their diary for 4pm and told that they MUST be in the call.ย 

Suffice to say the company said they we making layoffs, 300 to be precise, and that everyone needs to watch their email for the next hour. If you get an email, youโ€™re done and if you donโ€™t, youโ€™re ok.ย 

Two friends in the same team. One gets the email and one doesnโ€™t. AWKWARDย 
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