In three sentences, years of work collapse into a permissions change. This is no longer an exception. It is a template.
The list of companies reinforces the pattern. Oracle, SAP, Amazon, Microsoft, Tata Consultancy Services, Block. Different geographies, same execution logic. Since 2024, hundreds of thousands of technology workers have been displaced globally, with a growing share tied directly to automation and AI-led restructuring (AI washing is only partly true). The scale matters, but the method matters more. What is being refined is not just cost control, but the process of removal.
The justification follows a script. Severance packages, extended healthcare, transition support. The transaction is presented as closure. It is not. Severance settles a contract. It does not address the manner in which a person exits a system to which they contributed wholeheartedly. Treating the two as interchangeable reveals the underlying assumption: employment is purely economic. Once that assumption holds, the person becomes a variable data point. Impersonal. The exit becomes an optimisation problem.
That logic does not remain contained within the organisation. It shapes how the organisation is perceived and how it is trusted. Companies spend heavily on hiring narratives, culture messaging, and claims of psychological safety. Those claims are stress-tested at the point of exit. A single morning of impersonal notifications can undo years of positioning. Employees who remain take note. So do those considering joining. Within hours, the experience of being laid off is public, documented in detail across platforms where the company has no control over the narrative.
This is where the argument shifts from ethics to design. Compassion is not a sentiment layered on top of operations. It is a choice within operations. Manager-led conversations before access is cut. Time to hand over work. Space to say goodbye. Communication written for a person, not generated for a group. None of this requires new technology. It requires a decision to treat exit as part of the employment lifecycle rather than an event to be executed quickly and quietly. Organisations that make that decision retain trust even in contraction. Those that do not pay for it later, through hiring friction and internal disengagement.
The pattern becomes more serious when placed against the conditions the current workforce has already navigated, especially younger cohorts. Job stability has weakened over time. Housing in major cities has moved out of reach for many. Contract and gig work have normalised uncertainty. Add to this a financial crisis, a pandemic, and now AI-driven restructuring, and the signal is consistent. Institutions optimise first. Protection is conditional.
The response from workers reflects that learning. Reduced discretionary effort, open conversations about pay, and coordination across borders are not signs of apathy. They are adjustments to a system that has made its terms clear. When exits are handled through automated systems with no human interface, the message is reinforced. The breach is not merely personal. It accumulates across a cohort that shares information in real time.
At that point, the role of the state becomes unavoidable. Leaving dignity to corporate discretion is not neutrality. It is a policy choice. The structure of work has changed, but in many places the rules governing it have not kept pace. That gap appears most clearly during layoffs.
Closing it does not require abstract debate. It requires specific constraints. Companies can be required to engage employees before termination decisions are finalised. They can be required to disclose how decisions were made, especially where algorithmic systems are involved. Minimum standards for severance and transition support can be defined in a way that prevents firms from exploiting weaker jurisdictions. These are enforceable measures, not theoretical ones.
There are working examples. In Germany, employee representation is built into governance structures. In France, companies must follow formal social plans during large-scale layoffs. These systems do not prevent workforce reductions. They shape how they happen. The difference is procedural, but the impact is tangible.
The question, then, is not whether better offboarding is possible. It already exists in fragments across organisations and jurisdictions. The question is whether it becomes standard practice or remains optional. If it remains optional, the direction is predictable. Trust continues to erode. Employees engage less. Institutions find it harder to command commitment beyond the contract.
What is at stake is not reputation in the short term, but the stability of the relationship between work and the people who diligently perform it. When that relationship is reduced to access rights that can be switched off without notice, the system still functions, but it does so with diminishing belief. Over time, that cost compounds.
The architecture of layoffs is being optimised. The question is whether dignity is designed into it, or engineered out of it. The alternative is a generation that has already stopped believing in institutions and is running out of reasons to remain silent about it.
Source – https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/abrupt-layoffs-and-the-erosion-of-dignity-at-work-14014282.html