'Dream layoff?': The unexpected carnage from the Canva job losses

Australian tech design giant Canva has made headlines recently for its mass lay offs - its first since its beginning 13 years ago.

Co-founder and chief executive Melanie Perkins  announced that the decision to restructure was “without doubt the hardest moment in our thirteen-year history…To set ourselves up for the next decade, we need to refound Canva, getting back to our roots of small, empowered teams with the freedom to make decisions, take ownership and focus on what matters most for our community.”

The news has gone viral because the number of employees - 1200 - fired is enormous, and they're going mostly because of the AI revolution.

And then there's the ground-breaking, unprecedented, redundancy packages. They include six-month severance payouts, $US10,000 each in seed cash, LinkedIn premium subscriptions and the gifts of healthcare and keeping their laptops.

Boasting of the ‘sweet’ conditions, many of those who have been made redundant have flooded social media with talk of ‘silver linings’, and gratitude for not being left high and dry.

One even said, “This is what happens with a minority woman leader.”

There are also many, many who have applauded Canva for their handling of the layoffs, such as the below creator:

However, the positivity has not been met kindly with the wider community, including others who've been made redundant at other workplaces who have not offered similar packages.

TikTok creators especially have been highly critical of the ‘cult’ of employees staying faithful to a company that has actually fired them. 

This LinkedIn post by UK tech founder Isvari Maranwe is just one example that is calling Canva and the redundancies out:

“What is this nonsense about the ‘dream layoff’? And ‘every company should copy them?’

“Have we lost our collective mind? Canva is laying off 22% of its staff.

“This doesn’t become good because of layoff perks. This doesn’t become good because the founder is a minority woman.

“That is just evil capitalism in a woke dress.”

Another post read: “We have lowered the bar so far that companies are now getting standing ovations for firing people nicely.”

Well, what's billion-dollar success company who wants to make more money to do, then?