It’s been noted how terrible Satya Nadella’s letter to Microsoft’s employees about the upcoming layoffs was. Stephen Elop — the guy who left Microsoft to run Nokia into the ground and then return to Microsoft triumphantly as the Executive VP of Devices and Services — wrote a matching company-wide email that pertained specifically to the Devices and Services division, which would undergo “an estimated reduction of 12,500 factory direct and professional employees over the next year”.
It begins with this salutation:
Hello there,
Really? “Hello there?” “Hello there” is a suitable opener for an announcement such as “The restrooms on the 4th floor are out of commission today” or “The email servers will be down for an hour tomorrow”. It is completely inappropriate for a memo that essentially says “We’re firing 12,500 of you…and it could be up to a year before you find out if you’re one of them.”