Layoffs. Ugh.

There are four events a manager needs to go through in order to say that he/she knows what the hell they are doing.

They are: hire a person, fire a person, do a review, and do a layoff.

One would think that firing is the hardest, but it's not. Layoffs are. When you fire someone, you both basically know what's going to happen. In a layoff, you're likely trying to figure out who to let go from a pool of folks that you really like.

Dealing w/ the actual layoff talk/walk-out is a tricky thing... I've done it four times now and each time has been a different experience... probably worth a full column