Google Meet: Hunger Games edition

We’re 20 days into 2024 and nearly 10,000 people have been laid off at over 60 companies (info sourced from layoffs.fyi). This isn’t good news, but compared to January of last year it’s not too bad.

We’ve also seen multiple people record the layoff process which is absolutely wild, but hey, who am I to judge? Some companies handle layoffs well. Others don’t handle it as well. I was recently reminded of a scene from Moneyball in which Bradd Pitt’s character shows Jonah Hill’s character how to fire someone (or at least tell them they’ve been transferred to another baseball team) calmly and professionally. I thankfully have never needed to lay someone off, but this scene was a good reminder to treat people like adults and get to the point.

Even when they know what to do, people at times buckle under pressure. This makes me wonder… what if the firing process could be offloaded to a computer? For example, Google Meets could have a Hunger Games-esque feature where a certain number of employees (let’s say 1,000) have to complete some sort of work-related challenge, and only the first 100 to finish keep their job.

Putting aside that this is an abysmal way to evaluate talent, very few people in their right minds would want to work at a company that subjects their employees to sick games like this. However, if you abstract the layoff it could be a fun team-building and educational exercise.

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