NPM Apologizes For the Way It Handled Recent Staff Layoffs (theregister.co.uk)

JavaScript library manager NPM on Wednesday apologized for its handling of a contentious round of recent layoffs. The Register reports: The company statement, which comes a week after product manager Rebecca Turner resigned in protest, is co-signed by chief executive officer Bryan Bogensberger, chief product officer Isaac Schlueter and chief data officer Laurie Voss. "Recently, we let go of five people in a company restructuring," the statement says. "The way that we undertook the process, unfortunately, made the terminations more painful than they needed to be, which we deeply regret, and we are sorry." By way of explanation, the statement attributes the changes at the company to shifting the firm's source of financial sustenance from venture funding to product revenue. That requires "new levels of commitment, delivery, and accountability," the implementation of which "has been uncomfortable at times."

In response to a question posed by The Register via Twitter, the company's former CTO CJ Silverio said, "The main thing I want to note is how NPM's statement is not an apology by [Isaac's] own standards. His blog post about apologies is very clear about the three things an apology must contain, and it seems to me that all three items were missing from that statement. It said nothing substantive. It went so far as to blame NPM's users for forcing them into the move."

Comments

WTF? This is insane

[quantaman]

Our source described a culture of suspicion and hostility that emerged under the new leadership. There was recently an all-hands meeting at which employees were encouraged to ask frank questions about the company's new direction. Those who spoke up were summarily fired last week, the individual said, at the recommendation of an HR consultant.

So they had a company meeting, found the few individuals who actually cared about the company and were proactive about making it better, and fired them.

I mean we don't know anything outside the news article, and maybe "spoke up" was a synonymy for "toxic employees who were destroying office morale" but phrasing as-is reads pretty bad.