Are Silicon Valley Companies Destroying Their Cultures?

The global economy is in crisis, and there are many businesses struggling to keep up and retain their workforce.

Now the sun isn't shining that brightly in Silicon Valley either.

Big Tech Layoffs and Back-to-Office Mandates

Musk has not only laid off people at Tesla but in November 2022, right after becoming "Chief Twit", he slashed Twitter’s workforce and banned remote work across the company. Not to forget that in June 2022, the billionaire had already expressed opposition to remote work when he issued a back-to-work mandate for Tesla staff stating that "remote workers only pretend to work".

At the end of May, Netflix laid off 150 employees as well as dozens of contractors and part-time workers.

Meta pulled internship offers from candidates who were expected to start on January 2023 and in November 2022, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the company was laying off 13% of its workforce (over 11,000 employees).

Apple tried hard to bring back workers to the office once the COVID pandemic spikes decreased. A group of employees called Apple Together now fights back.

Coinbase, Sonder, Unity, Wish, Remote, Paypal, Patreon - some more Silicon companies that have fired from a hundred to a thousand employees just this year.

The Future of Work Begs for Trust

Leaders are pushing their agendas onto their staff without getting people’s feedback and running proper culture and organizational assessments to understand how to best meet the needs of the workforce and align them with that of the business. As people become more and more willing to embrace new, more flexible ways of working, organizations fight to go back to the old systems they had in place before the pandemic.

The modus operandi of these organizations is not fit for the work mindset that has arisen during and after COVID.

Now that the challenges and problems are identified, what are the real solutions that these tech giants can adopt to save the business and their culture?

Let’s start with the one concept that can create the most impact on the relationships with all the stakeholders: Trust.

“Every day you can prove to people that they can trust you: you gain trust in drops, you lose trust in buckets. Bad decisions break people’s trust, and it is hard to regain trust”

According to Christian Wandeler, the founder of the Semco Style Institute USA, these organizations have been taking steps that not only damage the trust of their employees but eventually, and by being in the public’s eye, break the trust of their clients as well as potential investors and talent.

Short-term solutions for big problems come at the expense of long-term damage to the business.

Semco Style Solutions

So what are some of the solutions we suggest based on Semco Style’s list of progressive and human-centric practices?

Information belongs to everybody This is one of the best things you could do to drive up efficiency and bust bureaucracy. This can also help businesses be nimble in today’s fast-paced marketplace and it helps people make informed decisions on the go. The access to information across the board also boosts the sense of ownership people feel towards their companies. It fosters in them a sense of responsibility to use information wisely and to the benefit of the company. In times of crisis, the information first prepares them for the coming storm and it helps them respond better to difficult decisions from the management.

Salary cuts over job cuts Because crises don’t last but people do. Crises in the business world are almost never sudden. Instead, they simmer under the surface for long periods before things begin to boil over. While there’s no denying that the payroll of a company tends to account for the lion’s share of its bottom line, it’s not healthy, in the long run, to lose people, their technical know-how and the company’s overall goodwill. Instead of firing your people right and left, companies can deal with the situation by lowering the salaries of their employees instead of laying them off.

Live! Board Meetings Employees of most companies continue to remain clueless about the deliberations of board members – irrespective of whether those members meet at the same place or collaborate from around the world. If board meetings are treated like live webinars and all levels of employees are given access to them, it would tremendously improve the levels of trust and engagement they feel towards the business as well as drive them to take the best decisions and adjust their everyday work to achieve the best for the business.

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We are experts in supporting companies to build trust and we have developed a business based on trust. We help you include your people in tough discussions and decisions.

Semco Style has crisis-proven methods for assisting businesses during difficult times and cultural shifts.

When 21-year-old Ricardo Semler took over the Semco Group from his father, he democratized the company and flipped the old corporate hierarchy on its head. The company was democratic even before Brazil become a democracy. It overcame union strikes, extreme inflation, economic crisis and even a military dictatorship.

We take the framework developed by Semco and combine it with the knowledge and years of experience of our change experts to better support businesses to thrive in today’s challenging times.

By embodying the principles of trust, alternative controls, self-management, extreme stakeholder alignment and creative innovation in our way of working, any Semco Style help or intervention comes as a breath of fresh air to businesses struggling to keep its head over water.

If you are currently dealing with business challenges or if you are interested in developing a more attractive and resilient culture reach out to us! We would love to share some tips specific to your situation at https://semcostyle.us/#aboutUs

Ideas and concept by Christian Wandeler Written and edited by Sandra Gouveia

Track all tech industry layoffs on this site: Layoffs.Fyi