DualWannabe

Downsizing Dukaan: What should I do?

This was an interview question at FinTech unicorn for a Director level role:

Imagine, you're a senior executive at Dukaan facing severe financial challenges.

The board has proposed a drastic downsizing plan that includes laying off 30% of the workforce to cut costs.

The alternative is to risk potential bankruptcy within the next year, which could result in the loss of all jobs. As a leader, what do you do and why?

How would you solve this?

Proceed with the Downsizing Plan: lay off 30% workforce

Seek Alternative Solutions: figure other cost cutting ideas + alt revenue source

Reject Downsizing: hope for a market turnaround or external financial assistance

364 votes-247550m left

5mo ago7.7K views

MrRobot1992

Early Stage Startup5mo

Raise more money from existing investors with a promise to reach profitability in 2 years. (Or raise it via debt financing)
Pause all hiring for next 2 years.
Be honest to your employees. Tell them the financials are bad without using any fancy talk. Just be open. No shame in that.
Identify redundant roles and give the employees an option to pick a different designation or they can leave with severance.
Ask your PMs to build features that can bring in revenue. Pause the features that focuses on user aquisition.
Restrict company travel expenses.
Restrict engineering and product expense on new tools. Prefer opensource atleast for 2 years.
If you are the CEO, cut down your salary to 50% for 1 year. Tell that to your employees which may serve as an encouragement.
Tell your employees that there won't be any hikes for the upcoming financial year. Be open. No shame in that. Some might leave but that's ok.
Start to hustle like you did when you started the company. Your thought process should be on how to get back up and running, not how to pleace investors.
This attitude is a risk for a CEO because the board can easily fire you. But its a risk that comes with benefits if you succeed.

tatiana_xoxo

Razorpay5mo

@MrRobot1992 This is actually a very solid answer.

Soprano90

Stealth5mo

You do what the investors/board ask you to do. Director level folks don’t have the kind of power to overrule the board. Even the CEO might not have it always

SouthIndianBatman

Amazon5mo

Layoff people, and Have a media appearance and tell them I'm letting go of my family members(cry a little while you are saying that) and blame the investors and board members by shashi tharoor English so that investors ko fark na pade..

AnonymousInfoscion

Infosys5mo

How toxic you are yaar

SouthIndianBatman

Amazon5mo

This is what I've heard recently by an edtech CEO told,

Brutallyhonest

Stealth5mo

Investors and board are kings. Period. Done. If they say downsize these new age founders will downsize.

Dihaadi

Stealth5mo

If I’m a senior executive at Dukaan, I’ll slap the living daylights out of myself and the arrogant entitled founders for demeaning customers, investors. Fire myself as part of the downsizing and ask investors to put in a proper operator.

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Curated from across

DRoseUnemployed13mo

Thoughts

Layoffs layoffs here there start ups companies tech giants. What are they trying to downsize? Product hunt says need to narrow down on speed and focus. What focus and speed that they couldn’t do being a bigger organisation. Companies h...

GlassIsHalfEmptyStealth18mo

What would you do in similar position?

We are seeing news of lay-offs from many companies- in India as well as RoW; Being at the receiving end of it is utterly painful. But who is to blame?

Hindsight is always 20/20; So in the current moment, we can go about and blame the m...

SeriousProcastinatorSpinny16mo

Another layoff coming up at Dunzo🥲

Dunzo laying of 20% or 200 employee (approx) majority in tech and product. Is this end of dunzo?

Top comment

Hope they get their severance packages (I mean salary).

DjokerDeloitte7mo

Signs of layoffs because of AI and how to prepare for it in Big 4? 😱

I am an entry level analyst in at Deloitte. Just wondering if these are some signs of a practice not doing great + potential layoffs in a few months/year.

Utilization: ~45% last quarter. They originally said that it was a slow star...

ProductPayU16mo

Ex-Dunzo employee. AMA.

Since I am Done-Zo with Dunzo, AMA anything. Here to spill all the scoop that’s happened.

Or get it on the stores.

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