Any company will do lay-offs sporadically. We have never had a downsizing issue ever, but we have had occasional situations where a big project is completed and then we had to move people. But we found them other roles in the company. I think downsizing should be done humanely. The best thing is to not beat around the bush, but just tell the truth that you have a business problem. In America, they call it a role redundancy rather than people redundancy! People should be told that there is nothing personal about it and it is just a business exigency that caused it. As a culture, we tend to be very defensive about these issues. There is an anecdote from my stint in my previous company Aptech that I would like to share: We had to ask a US employee to leave and I took on the responsibility personally. I agonized over the decision for over two weeks and finally sat down with him at our training centre in Princeton USA and started talking to him. After sometime he got my message and he aske...