Three presidents of Factorial, a Barcelona company that develops human resources software for SMEs, In his latest podcast, he joked about recent layoffs at the company. The company gave up about twenty employees from its product team less than a month ago and remained within the legal limit to offer an ERE (30 people, as it is a company), reports El Periódico of the Prensa Ibérica group. more than 300 workers). One of those affected explains that several people left voluntarily. Factorial’s total workforce is 1,000 workers. The value of the company, which received an investment of 120 million euros in October, exceeded 1 billion euros.
“This is the first time we’ve been in the news since we started this podcast. Too bad,” the bosses laugh. “Practically, It looks like we’re going bankrupt and Factorial is so wrong (laughs). It would be very unfair if we didn’t comment on when we go to the press. From the outside it looks like a disaster, but from your personal point of view, how did you experience it?”
The podcast’s contributors are: Director Jonathan Centeno. growth (growth), Alejandro Rivers, brand and culture manager and Jacinto Fleta, growth. The episode was uploaded to different platforms from the company’s account on July 27. Despite disappeared from the main ones (Apple, Spotify and Ivoox) after receiving accusations social networks, still available on Podtail. This newspaper contacted three podcasters and Factorial with no response at the end of this article.
Bosses agree criticizing the news layoffsIn addition to the reactions to them on TwitterSince they became aware, several affected people have shared the news on the social network.
“When you live inside you realize how contradictory the news you are reading is with reality. Wow, what is the truth? Are they well-founded? Does that story have all the context to be compelling?”, says Nehirler. “Even though we all know what Twitter is like, I’ve read about real atrocities (laughs)”Centeno answers. “There are people who have worked hand in hand… Oyster, everything is so dramatic and normal. But other people at the company tell you: Oh, that we made changes to the product? Everything is maximized. It’s a bit apocalyptic and far from that.”
The employee layoffs came weeks after the chief product officer (CPO) was fired. The CEO of the company, Jordi Romero, said that the company justified this decision. “it was changing the way he created the product” and that it is no longer “compatible with our DNA”. According to one of the people affected by this newspaper, the person who managed the layoffs was co-founder Bernat Ferrero.
Therefore, the podcasters were not directly responsible for the expulsions and did not implement the decision. However, they were very satisfied with their speech. “We’ve made internal changes. The truth is I’m super happy”says Centeno. “I am happy with the change, no matter how much it has affected people because of the change and it is never easy to make difficult decisions: We needed this as a company. and it will help us a lot as a company to focus on the next few years.”
A few of those laid off complain, both publicly and privately, bad taste and little sensitivity from podcast members. “It’s extremely thoughtless and shows a great lack of critical understanding,” one of them decides.