An IT manager from Chennai posted a heartfelt Reddit post that touched social media users as he revealed he had been asked to fire 12 employees who had worked with him for almost a decade.
The manager said it was one of the hardest moments in his professional life because people on the list were not just colleagues but family to him too.
The account shared on Reddit says that the manager is a Delivery Manager at one of the top IT companies in Chennai. He said senior executives called him into a closed door meeting recently and handed him an Excel sheet with names of 12 employees who were supposed to be terminated by Friday.
He was said to have been told to meet individually with each employee and convey the decision within 15 minutes.
But doing the instruction was emotionally difficult because most of the employees had been on his team since 2016. They had worked together through deadlines that were hard to meet, late-night production problems and difficult assignments.
The manager remembered how they all ate together, went to weddings and celebrated important personal milestones together. Their relationship had moved beyond the usual manager-employee relationship.
One thing that really brought out their closeness was how team members referred to him. They called him ‘Anna’ (Tamil word for elder brother) affectionately a Tamil word used to refer to an older brother.
Employees Facing Difficult Personal Circumstances
The manager said the decision was especially hard because several employees on the list had serious personal and financial obligations.
One senior developer had just taken a large home loan so losing his steady income was especially scary. Another employee’s mother was sick with cancer and the company’s medical insurance apparently paid for her treatment.
A third team member was expecting a child his wife was due the following month.
For the manager these were even more distressing because he now had to deliver termination notices too. How could he look at people who trusted him and say they didn’t have jobs any more
Manager Considers Resigning
The pressure became so intense that the manager “considered resigning rather than carry out the layoffs” (sic).
His wife reportedly told him that leaving the organisation wouldn’t change anything. The company could just hire another manager to tell them the same thing.
That made it hard for him to follow orders from senior leadership or deal with the emotional consequences of decisions he hadn’t made.
He was also frustrated by the corporate structure: senior executives make cost-cutting decisions and middle managers have to communicate them directly to employees.
'Good Morning, Anna' Is What Hurts Most
Perhaps the most emotional part of his account was when he talked about how much he was looking forward to meeting the team again.
He pictured the employees smiling at him as usual, saying ‘Good morning Anna’ and casually asking about his family without realising what difficult conversations awaited them.
The post has been noticed because it shows what happens to people in corporate restructuring and workforce reduction.
Companies might see layoffs as financial or operational decisions but the manager’s situation shows the personal relationships and responsibilities that develop within long-term teams.
His account has also led to discussions about how middle managers bear the emotional load when layoffs are announced and treated with dignity.
For the manager it’s not just about doing a corporate task assigned to him; it’s about facing people he has worked with for ten years and telling them what they are going to do that could change their lives.
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