- Sampark Sachdeva fired 25 employees in one day, describing it as a dark corporate moment
- Managers were instructed to deliver terminations without emotion or sympathy, following strict protocol
- Employees affected included a single mother and a father with a new home loan, highlighting personal impacts
Sampark Sachdeva, a corporate trainer, shared a heart-wrenching LinkedIn post about firing 25 employees in one day, calling it one of his darkest corporate moments. The viral post detailed the emotional toll of delivering scripted, emotionless terminations, including to a single mother and a father with a new home loan. He recounted the stress such decisions take on both the individuals losing their jobs and the managers responsible for delivering the news.
Mr Sachdeva described the rigid process, where managers were instructed to maintain a detached demeanour, offering no sympathy or apologies. Instead, they were directed to follow a strict protocol: collect ID cards, retrieve company property, and inform the employees that HR would follow up. The first employee he met was a single mother, who broke down in tears as she realised she was about to lose her livelihood.
"I saw the tear form at the corner of her eyes. And then, snap, it dropped. She was a single mother, sitting across the table. And I had to say the golden words we were trained to say, “Today is your last day.” It remains one of the darkest days of my corporate career. The day I was asked to fire 25 people. Back-to-back. One after the other. Each with a story, a home, a life that would be disrupted that evening. We were told to keep it cold. No emotion. No softening of the blow," he wrote in the post.
See the post here:
Behind each name on the list, Mr Sachdeva recalled, was a complex personal story. He remembered a father worried about providing for his children, a young employee stressed about a new home loan, and another who had relocated for better opportunities. The weight of the day's events eventually overwhelmed him when he broke down in private, hiding his tears from the remaining staff, and later struggled to sleep, consumed by feelings of guilt and helplessness.
In his post, Mr Sachdeva highlights the importance of compassion in organisational decision-making. He emphasised that employees are more than just numbers on a payroll-- they have families, responsibilities, and aspirations beyond the office. He noted that leadership involves not just making decisions, but also the words and silences that accompany them.
On LinkedIn, many empathised, praising his vulnerability, while Reddit's LinkedIn Lunatics community criticised it as performative, with some users mocking its dramatic tone and questioning its authenticity. Others defended Mr Sachdeva, appreciating his call for compassion in corporate decisions.
