RETAIN Series 1: The Broken Deal

With this article I’m kicking off a series dedicated to a topic I’ve deeply cared about for a long time: my firm belief that companies having their people’s back and companies delivering strong results aren’t two different things pulling in opposite directions – that they are, in fact, two sides of the same equation.

I’ve watched markets go through boom and bust, seen corporations handle hard times in wildly different ways, and observed legendary tech companies built by brilliant people lose their magic within a few years of letting their talented people walk out the door. That interest feels sharper now, when mass layoffs have become a knee-jerk reaction to any sign of trouble – a cure-all for problems they were never built to solve.

The Broken Deal

I want to be precise about the claim before anyone dismisses it. I’m not saying “no layoffs, ever.”

My claim is more realistic. If a company sets a clear, objective performance bar, everyone above it should reasonably expect real security. Not a slogan but security backed by a disclosed sequence of cost levers worked through before headcount is ever touched.

That deal isn’t new. Google went roughly 25 years without a mass layoff, until the Jan’23 cut of 12,000 hitting employees who’d been told for years they’d cleared an extraordinarily high bar (well described by Laszlo Bock in his brilliant book “Work Rules!”) They were never promised that clearing the bar bought permanent security but they inferred it anyway based on past company behaviour… and 2023 is when it broke. The same compact has quietly died across most of public tech, replaced by quota-driven performance systems (widely reported at FAANG companies for example) and layoffs done as readily to boost margins and share prices as to ensure company survival.

There’s a serious case against reviving that deal. Reid Hoffman’s “tours of duty” and Netflix’s “No Rules Rules” both argue that the old loyalty pact is gone for good (replaced by finite tours with mutual benefits while they last) and that admitting it plainly beats reviving a promise you can’t keep.

They are right that honesty beats false promises. I just disagree on what counts as honest. Impermanence isn’t the only honest option. A real, disclosed, verifiable bar with genuine security behind it is honest too and it holds up better because it can be checked.

Over the next 11 articles I’ll lay out RETAIN: a six-part maturity framework for what an honest version of that old deal could look like now, based on public numbers, not anecdotes and vibes. I’ll come back to Hoffman and Netflix at the end because a framework that can’t answer its strongest critics isn’t worth building.