Tech companies have been laying off workers in droves this year. One big reason is that they hired too many people in the first place when times were easier. Stewart Butterfield, the former CEO of Slack, shared some insights this week on how the over-hiring can happen, identifying a behavior among supervisors that he considers the “root of all the excess.”
Butterfield cofounded the messaging startup in 2009 and watched its valuation rise dramatically in the following years, with one massive funding round following another until its successful IPO in 2019. Salesforce then acquired the venture for $27 billion, and earlier this year Butterfield left the company, admitting that he “wasn’t very successful” at integrating the two cultures. The billionaire now buys luxury real estate with his wife, Away co-founder Jen Rubio.
