After running layoffs, Bobby Powers found himself on the list

By Sophie Lindqvist

About a month and a half after helping run a media-startup layoff, Seattle leadership coach Bobby Powers, 39, was told in Las Vegas that his own job was in the next round of cuts. This is one person's career account, not a national labor-market indicator.

The as-told-to essay draws on a conversation with Powers; Business Insider verified his prior employment and subsequent layoff, then edited the account for brevity and clarity. The source names no employer and gives no layoff headcount, severance figures, employment dates or national, media-sector or role-level benchmarks. Its sample is one worker.

What made the first layoff so difficult?

Working in HR, Powers and his boss coordinated with executives on who to cut. He describes daily uncertainty over who remained on the list, although many affected employees did their jobs well. Updated budgets moved the target: lower revenue forecasts required deeper cuts, intended to avoid another layoff. The team also weighed where staff were needed most.

That sequence matters more for an individual worker than any generalized claim about resilience or performance. In his account, good work did not prevent selection, and revised forecasts could enlarge the cut list.

The lesson is specific rather than macroeconomic: employment followed the budget, and one employer's finances do not establish a wider sector trend.

Powers said: “You're putting humans in a spreadsheet.” He and his boss tried to counter that logic by asking how they would want the process handled and how they had seen other companies handle it poorly. He said the planning generated 100 or 1,000 questions about details he had never considered.

What did “preserving humanity” require?

They scripted the layoffs almost to the minute and converted their principles into operational choices:

• Managers decided who would make each call, and all calls would begin at the same time.
• They set the timing of the companywide email and of deactivating Slack and email accounts.
• They debated whether departing employees could say goodbye and whether they had each other's cellphone numbers, personal email addresses and LinkedIn connections for contacting friends and colleagues.

If no security concern arose, they wanted to give workers at least enough time to contact people, acknowledge the impact and thank them for their shared time. Yet Powers said there was no perfect notice period: zero time and immediate access revocation felt inhumane, while too much time created its own dilemma.

Even the meeting logistics lacked settled answers. What should the call be called? What if a worker could not be reached or declined the invitation because of a conflict?

The vast majority of the first layoffs were conducted by video call. Powers said the remote company chose video to add a “human touch,” although the logistics remained nuanced. He described these as some of his hardest conversations, particularly because he knew that some workers faced financial strain or had just bought a house.

What happens when the manager becomes the target?

Soon after the first layoff, work returned to normal. Powers received a promotion and earned more than he had ever made.

About a month and a half later, while taking notes at the Las Vegas conference, his boss said: “We're doing another layoff, and rather than us having these conversations with other people, I think we're on the chopping block this time.”

Powers felt partly floored and partly as though the outcome felt normal.

On the morning of the second layoff, Powers tried to check whether a companywide message had gone out, but he could not get into his email; he said the cord had been pulled. He could not use the account to say goodbye.

That reversal changed his view. Before running layoffs, he had assumed dismissed employees were low performers. After seeing the process from both sides, he became more sympathetic and stopped drawing the same conclusions from layoffs posted online.

What can this account tell a worker?

The source supports no claim about national unemployment, media-sector contraction or the size of either layoff Powers encountered. It does show a mechanism with direct consequences: falling revenue projections triggered deeper cuts; a first round did not end the risk; a promotion did not prevent a second round; and system access could disappear before a worker notified contacts.

For job seekers and employed professionals, the useful signal is procedural rather than macroeconomic. At a remote media startup, budget updates determined who stayed on a list, while management tried to decide whether notice, access and contact information would make a dismissal humane.

The case cannot establish how common any practice is because the source gives no company name, affected-worker count or comparison with other employers.

The forward-looking warning is concrete: a second round followed about a month and a half later despite a promotion, and no broader job-security conclusion is possible until named employers disclose headcounts and timing.