Last spring, Joel Gascoigne realized he’d made a big mistake. He’s the CEO of Buffer, a social media management company, and business was doing so well that he aggressively staffed up — going from 34 to 94 employees in just more than a year. But although Buffer was still bringing in $875,000 a month, the increased salary burden was eating up all that money and more. “We didn’t get the productivity impact or growth we thought we might get from hiring that many people,” says Gascoigne. Buffer was likely to be broke in five months. So in June 2016, he laid off 10 recent hires. Then the 29-year-old CEO faced an even more daunting challenge: He’d have to explain […]
