Weathering the Storm — Greenhouse, Daniel Chait (April 17, 2020)

Summary

This Greenhouse post, credited to Daniel Chait and dated April 17, 2020, addresses the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the company. It states that Greenhouse made the decision to reduce the size of the team by 28%, with cuts prioritized to focus more deeply on Sales & Marketing while preserving capacity in customer success, account management, support and R&D. It says every team member leaving receives a severance of 8 weeks and extended healthcare of 8 months. The post says the 2020 roadmap will focus on automating more tasks for lean recruiting teams.

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Weathering the storm

Contributions by: Daniel Chait

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April 17, 2020

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February 24, 2026

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February 24, 2026

The impact of the global pandemic is slowly playing out with devastating effects. On behalf of myself, my co-founder Jon and the entire team at Greenhouse, we hope that you and your families are safe and managing through these unsettled times.

As we all grapple with COVID-19, we’ve been in constant conversation with our customers, industry experts and talent professionals in every industry. The central theme from those conversations seems to be that this ‘new normal’ is extremely challenging and unsettling.

Admittedly, as a company headquartered in NYC where the impact of the pandemic is particularly severe, it’s been scary. Like most companies, we’ve taken many steps to reduce the impact of the virus on our business and ensure a solid footing given all the uncertainty around.

Our priority is our customers

While we considered how Greenhouse can weather the storm of this global crisis, we were 100% clear our number one priority would be to continue taking care of our customers. We want our customers to know they can count on us being there for them when they need us, even in difficult situations.

We’ve had to do a layoff

But because of the extensive disruption, the current economic situation and its unknown duration we have made the difficult and painful decision to reduce the size of the Greenhouse team by 28%. We have prioritized these cuts to focus more deeply on Sales & Marketing, preserving capacity in customer success, account management, support and R&D.

My heart truly goes out to all of those people who we had to lay off. This was not caused by them. The virus, and resulting economic effects, are what made this necessary. And as CEO, I am ultimately responsible for this decision. The company has done what it needed to do in order to weather the storm, and though it hurts us to see them leave, the people who were laid off – and their families – suffer more. My thoughts are with them at this moment.

We are doing all we can to take care of every team member leaving Greenhouse by providing a generous severance (8 weeks) and extended healthcare (8 months) package. Were it not for COVID-19, we would not need to say goodbye to any of our amazing team members, and we will always consider them part of the Greenhouse community.

Looking forward

Looking forward, our priority is to help our customers as they adjust to a new hiring reality. Our 2020 roadmap will have a sharp focus on addressing highly relevant problems such as automating more tasks to create efficiency for lean recruiting teams. We are thankful for our strong customer relationships and believe they will also help us sustain and nurture Greenhouse through these times.

In conclusion

Jon and I founded this company with a long-term vision. We always knew that if we were going to accomplish something ambitious we would encounter good times and bad. Nobody could have predicted a crisis precisely like this one, but that does not change the fact that we are in this for the long haul and that means we will need to deal with all kinds of situations on the way to achieving our mission.

When this is all over, people will still be the most important thing to any business. Unlocking the power of human potential will still be a compelling purpose. Helping companies become great at hiring will still be an incredibly meaningful mission for us to work on. And our culture will continue to be rooted in our values – Creating Belonging, Working Together as Entrepreneurs; and Acting with Purpose.

Before the virus hit, Greenhouse was growing strongly and consistently for years, as more and more companies realized the advantage they get from great hiring. Despite the incredible difficulty in the near term, we know that at some point, this too shall pass. Companies will start to hire again. When the economy does turn around, Greenhouse will still be here, helping our customers to hire for what’s next.

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