As is the way, an incredibly inexplicable (to those who don’t work in the industry) meme has emerged from one corner of Tech Twitter: the idea that DocuSign has 400,000, or 4 million, or 40 million, employees. The origin of the meme appears to be the fact that DocuSign, up until recently, had some 7,000 employees, making it a much larger organization than almost anyone expected considering its relatively simple product.





The meme recently went into overdrive as it was announced that DocuSign would be laying off approximately 6 percent of its workforce, totalling about 400 employees. At least one Twitter user predicted this, tweeting late last month, “You guys are going to cyberbully DocuSign into having layoffs.” Oops.



The layoffs didn’t stop people from continuing to crack jokes. One user tweeted, “Just got laid off from Docusign. Sick to my stomach — can’t believe they would treat their millionth employee like this.” The old rule of last hired, first hired strikes again; condolences, friend.


Another user tweeted, “To all the 4 million DocuSign employees who lost their jobs today, stay strong,” while another also urged laid-off employees to remain stoic, writing, “Losing your job like this always hurts. To all the 10,000 DocuSign employees who lost their jobs today, stay strong.”


The likelihood is pretty small that the memes are what drove DocuSign to lay off 400 employees and not something more mundane like finances or a potential takeover, but never say never: Tech CEOs have done far stupider things for far sillier reasons. The owner of Twitter comes to mind, for example.