Yes, this is common. It's not just tech companies. As an example, a number of years ago Best Buy had a huge round of layoffs amidst a revolving door of unsuccessful CEOs.
Stores that were closing did not know until a specific date, when they'd go into work as usual and open a securely delivered packet. If the packet delivered was packet A, it informed them that they were laid off, effective immediately - all employees of that location. Packet B informed them that they were not closing. They had no idea what the case would be until the morning they opened the packet, and the packet was delivered the previous night.
Wow. I've never heard of layoffs being done this way before. I guess it's a scalable way of doing mass layoffs, but still ... that is really cold-hearted.
It's cold-hearted, but if scale is an issue, then some of the alternatives can seem equally horrifying. Is it really more humane to send a couple of axe-wielding Bobs to the office, set them up in one or two rooms, and then steadily parade people in and out over the course of a day, the rest of the team trembling and gossiping and worrying about when and whether their turns will come up, their eyes locked on every colleague and friend to slink back to his desk from the abattoir?
Think about that at 1,000-person-layoff scale. If we apply some basic Little's Law math to the process here, we quickly see how "by-hand" firings would drag on for quite some time, perhaps needlessly prolonging the inevitable, and almost certainly disrupting work at the entire office for days on end.
There is no "good" way to do this. I've never had to do it myself, and I can only hope I never have to. The thought of how "best" to do it would keep me up for weeks. At the very least, I suppose in-person messengers are better than automated voicemail recordings, or sealed envelopes. But even if using a human messenger, a mass layoff is not going to go down well for the people being laid off. There is something to be said for ripping off the band-aid (though perhaps in timed batches, so you're not just dumping N people out into the cold, to fight over the same jobs on the market all at once).
> There is something to be said for ripping off the band-aid
If you're keeping any significant portion of your existing workforce, absolutely. Doing a single round of layoffs and then being able to tell the remaining employees "If we haven't talked to you, you're staying" can make the hit to morale that much smaller. It'll still lower morale, that's unavoidable. But it will take away the stress of "is my job safe?" for the remaining employees.
