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Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

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11–20 of 593 posts

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#12
In some companies it feels like they are firing the people that they could not easily get rid of otherwise - cutting of the bottom 25% of staff (based on low performance reviews or personal grudges).

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#13

I’ve been checking layoffs.fyi every day and it is incredibly bleak

And as far as I can tell that’s America only, nevermind Europe and Australia...

Or non-Western countries!

And the list is just startups, too - they're obviously more vulnerable in many ways to financial shocks than large companies, but large corporate layoffs are going to be where the big numbers are.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#14

CircleCI. Last week during covid crisis, all while announcing a $100m Series E round of financing, they let some employees go and did not offer any severance. Disorganized management, and with some teams, passive-aggressive management style. Would not recommend joining...

Looks like their chatbot needs to sanitize input - "All set! I've sent an email confirmation to sales@circleci.com." that will be interesting.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#15

I’ve been checking layoffs.fyi every day and it is incredibly bleak

What I don't quite understand is why startups who either just received funding or companies who were doing reasonably well decide to do mass layoffs during economic downturns? I mean they provide $reasons but I have a hard time taking them at face value.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#16
From an anonymous employee I know: SimilarWeb fired 10% of their workforce - mostly sales engineers and sales people they recently hired and cancelled their holiday bonuses.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#17

I’ve been checking layoffs.fyi every day and it is incredibly bleak

This is looking 2001-dot-com-crash bad, but much, much faster. It's worth remembering there are plenty of companies not laying people off, and "normal" will return eventually. That said, I was watching The Big Short yesterday, and a line that I had noted before haunted me even more: "For every 1% unemployment goes up [in the USA], 40,000 people die". Stay safe, stay positive.

> This is looking 2001-dot-com-crash bad, but much, much faster.

Also probably much more transient, no?

Is there a reason to think this trend would continue beyond say... six months? (or whenever quarantine measures are mostly relaxed).

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#18

I’ve been checking layoffs.fyi every day and it is incredibly bleak

And as far as I can tell that’s America only, nevermind Europe and Australia...

Australia apparently saw a minor rise in employment[0] for now.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/finance/markets/australia-unexpect...

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#20

I’ve been checking layoffs.fyi every day and it is incredibly bleak

Are they seriously listing down emails and mobile numbers of the people layed off? Is there no privacy concern here or am I missing the bigger picture?
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