On Tuesday, Axios revealed it would be laying off 50 employees, or about 10% of the media company’s staff, in the largest round of layoffs since Axios’s founding in 2016. The job cuts were announced in an internal memo from CEO Jim VandeHei cleverly formatted like an Axios newsletter.
“We’re making some difficult changes to adapt fast to a rapidly changing media landscape,” wrote VandeHei before turning to Axios’s quintessential format. “Why it matters: We’re eliminating about 50 positions to get ahead of tectonic shifts in the media, technology, and reader needs/habits.”
We’ve already entered the era of the branded apology. So perhaps the era of the branded layoff was only the next logical step.
With the same quippy bullet points and bolded subjects that you would find in an Axios newsletter or article, VandeHei detailed how newly unemployed workers would receive their severance packages, explored the economic pressures facing the company, and conceded that Axios is not necessarily a struggling business.
“Yes, we’re doing better than others in our competitive set—by growing readership, rapidly expanding events and high-end subscriptions, and cranking out viral content for a demanding audience,” wrote the CEO. “Yes, we’ll grow revenue and audience year-over-year. But we need to stay ahead of changes unfolding fast across American media.” (Affected employees were told they would soon receive an “accompanying email” detailing their severance package and a calendar invite for a meeting with someone on their team.)
Many on social media found the format of the memo distasteful. “Everything about this copy is cringe,” said one X user. But some Axios employees maintained that the style of the memo is not what really matters to affected workers—or their colleagues.
“It’s a sad day for those of us at Axios that are losing beloved colleagues,” posted Axios’s senior tech policy reporter, Ashley Gold on X (formerly Twitter). “I promise our internal email format is not the most gutting thing about this news and saying so is not very nice to those laid off!”
Axios’s CEO is just the latest to be criticized for how he communicated layoffs. (Axios was not immediately available for comment.) In 2022, Elon Musk unceremoniously fired half of Twitter’s workforce with a now-infamous email. And Better.com CEO Vishal Garg garnered plenty of headlines for the way he laid off hundreds of workers via a rambling Zoom call.
Media theorist Marshall McLuhan wrote that “the medium is the message,” meaning that the format in which a message is sent (an in-person meeting, an email, a Zoom call, etc.) is itself an important part of what is being communicated. Fast Company contributor Mita Mallick argues that there are several common mistakes leaders often make when communicating tough information about downsizing. That includes laying off workers over email, taking the attention away from laid-off workers, and ghosting laid-off workers.
While this may be true, Gold suggests that we may be paying too much attention to the medium of the announcement. “Real people lost their jobs, but hey let’s make fun of an email format [because] that’s somehow the news here,” says Gold.