{"id":6137,"date":"2026-08-27T15:09:54","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T15:09:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=6137"},"modified":"2026-08-27T15:09:54","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T15:09:54","slug":"we-laid-him-off-then-we-hired-him-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=6137","title":{"rendered":"We laid him off. Then we hired him back"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Right?<\/p>\n

Wrong.<\/p>

<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n

Within a few months, several of the people I had expected to keep resigned. Suddenly, in our push to be more efficient in the age of AI, we lost some of the very talent we needed.<\/p>

Read more Despite having a net worth of $400 million, Kevin O\u2019Leary still shops at Walmart for $29 jeans: \u2018I\u2019m always looking for a great deal\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

The good news: Jonathan came back. In August, he applied for one of our newly-opened roles, and we rehired him. On a Zoom call, he told me sheepishly that coming back felt like \u201csneaking back in the house after I got kicked out.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was a gut punch. But the next part was worse: When we reactivated his account, he said, he found our cold, corporate restructuring announcement still sitting in his inbox. What struck him was how impersonal it felt. In my mind, we were announcing a restructuring. In his, people he knew and worked alongside had just lost their jobs. Why couldn\u2019t we have simply acknowledged them\u2014and said something kind about the people who were leaving?<\/p>

<\/div><\/div>\n

Cringe. I won\u2019t have to learn that lesson twice.<\/p>\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n

At a time when every CEO feels they have to move faster, get leaner and reorganize completely around AI, it\u2019s easy to undervalue the people you already have. AI-attributed cuts peaked in May, when\u00a0US employers announced 97,000 job cuts\u00a0and blamed 40% of them on AI.\u00a0Zillow cut more than 500 people\u00a0earlier this month, announced the day before earnings, according to executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.<\/p>\n

The AI excuse is getting old. Former Lululemon executive Julie Averill wrote a\u00a0piece in the New York Times\u00a0earlier this month saying you either see leaders believing they can fix a problem by waving AI at it (\u201cAI wishing\u201d) or blaming AI on job cuts (\u201cAI washing\u201d) credited to efficiency that doesn\u2019t exist yet.<\/p>\n

Companies are imagining what AI might make possible, and making moves before fully understanding how to get there. Three in 10 employers eliminated positions after implementing AI, only to later add those roles back, according to an\u00a0April 2026 study\u00a0by global staffing firm Robert Half.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not saying companies shouldn\u2019t change. That\u2019s not the lesson.\u00a0We<\/em>\u00a0had to change, when we shifted from being more of a pure software consultancy to becoming an AI-centric technology company. Advisory work remains an important part of what we do, but the center of gravity shifted. New priorities required new roles, and inevitably, some restructuring. But I did learn something about the danger of chasing the Next Big Business Model before fully understanding whether the skills, experience, and institutional knowledge you already have can evolve with you.<\/p>

Read more \u2018You only get like two hours of alcohol or two hours of cigarettes a day\u2019: Former Meta engineer on child safety settlement<\/a><\/p>\n

There\u2019s a refrain in the market along the lines of \u2018knowledge work is becoming irrelevant in the age of AI.\u2019 I\u2019ve come to believe almost the opposite: AI can make experienced people even more valuable, if you give them the right tools to adapt. Roles can evolve. Skills can be rebuilt. But that requires leaders to invest in training and creating a path for people to make that transition. And as leaders, that\u2019s on us.<\/p>\n

The bottom line is: People aren\u2019t interchangeable parts. Institutional knowledge, trust, relationships, expertise\u2013all those things take time to build and sometimes you don\u2019t fully understand their value until they are gone.<\/p>\n

In the end, I share this small yarn about Jonathan because it is ultimately a story of second chances\u2013both for an employee taking another chance on a company, and of a company taking another look at what it values.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also about reinvention. As leaders, we spend so much time looking forward that we forget the value of also looking back, and questioning the decisions we made along the way.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s okay to change your mind. To reinvent yourself. Reinvent your company. Reinvent your team. Reinvent your leadership style. Sometimes moving forward means admitting you got something wrong\u2013and getting a second chance to make it right.<\/p>\n

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of\u00a0<\/em>Fortune.<\/em> This is a repost of <\/em>Pay Dirt,<\/em> the Substack by regulator <\/em>Fortune contributor Maria Colacurcio about compensation, AI, and the systems we choose to build.<\/em><\/p>

Read more His state Democratic Party is still divided but Michigan\u2019s El Sayed gets it, he says: \u2018losing is hard\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n<\/figurlazyload><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Right? Wrong. Within a few months, several of the people I had expected to keep resigned. Suddenly, in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"yoast_head":"\nWe laid him off. Then we hired him back - Cross Country Moving Team<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=6137\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"We laid him off. 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