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Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?

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Re: Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?

#271

Post by scarface74 »

zomgbbq wrote: post #25

Atari in 1983 went from the leader in video game production to completely imploding. In 1979, four of their best programmers left after demanding equity in the sales and were refused. Their CEO Ray Kassar famously said, "You’re no more important to those projects than the person on the assembly line who put them together. You’re a dime a dozen. You’re not unique. Anybody can do ­a ­cartridge.". They left and formed A…

Or it could have been caused by the whole video game crash of 1983 and not four employees leaving…

Re: Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?

#272

Post by rvanlaar »

rkangel wrote: post #267
ClassyJacket wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They asked very politely for you to clarify some details after they tried themselves but were unable to verify it by looking it up. Your hostility is unwarranted and rude. People are not psychic, it was quite reasonable for them to ask.

I think there's hostility on both sides here. "Could you clarify a few things?" is one thing, but "I don't think the story adds up" is a direct accusation of lying.

Thanks for the responses, much appreciated.

Re: Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?

#273

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

rkangel wrote: post #267
ClassyJacket wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They asked very politely for you to clarify some details after they tried themselves but were unable to verify it by looking it up. Your hostility is unwarranted and rude. People are not psychic, it was quite reasonable for them to ask.

I think there's hostility on both sides here. "Could you clarify a few things?" is one thing, but "I don't think the story adds up" is a direct accusation of lying.

Maybe it's an unfair assumption on my part, but the post starts out exactly in the format of deliberately written /r/IAmVerySmart satires. But it's not. Just because you're using polite vocabulary does not mean bare toothed sentiment doesn't read through.

Re: Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?

#274

Post by ornornor »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #165
aaaaaaaaata wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> always fun rotation of passwords on over 1000 servers in 3 months that were mostly manual because the vendors all charge for an SOW to do that (oh yeah this is a YEARLY activity). Why do I smell Windows Server 2008?

NIST stopped recommending regular password rotation years ago. Why are mega corps still insisting on this? Security theater? Unknowledgable?

“We’ve always done it this way so we’re not about to change”, or a customer somewhere has an audit checklist that mandates password rotations every 3 months.

I know of people stuck with such a moronic password change policy, and the new password can’t be the same as the last five or whatever. So they change the password five times in a row so they can keep using the same password over and over.

This kind of thing makes me so so so depressed about work. It’s overwhelmingly self inflicted suffering for no benefit, and it makes millions of people miserable for nothing.

Re: Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?

#275

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

barrysteve wrote: post #263
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gaming abounds with stories like this. A friend of mine went to work for a small game studio in Oklahoma that'd gotten some acclaim for their quake mod pack. They took that momentum and started on their own novel IP as a quake licensee. They made a ahem mildly successful game named Medal of Honor. Some time down the road, the owner of the studio didn't want to share the wealth. As a result the top programmers, design…

I agree with your message though there's a scarier story in there. What if those people never left to make Call of Duty? Under the boss they would have made more Medal of Honor, and maybe the next MoH's were not billion-dollar products. Maybe had they gotten equity, we would never have a billion dollar CoD series!

Indeed.

It's very similar with tech startups. Once you've been around the washing machine loop a couple times you realize just how much of this stuff is arbitrary and luck dependent. Unicorns born upon butterfly's wings. Having a certain background lets you buy more chances at the luck part. It's not fair. It is.

Personally my read on this is we should have some humility about how unpredictable this all is.

Re: Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?

#276

Post by scarface74 »

pc86 wrote: post #47
CamperBob2 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good riddance. I don't want antivax nutcases on my healthcare team. They picked the wrong profession.

It's insane to me that this got downvoted. Medical exemptions are a thing. If you truly can't receive a certain vaccine, you should still be allowed to get whatever job you want. But I'm sorry, if you "don't believe in" vaccines in general, or certain specific vaccines that have - for reasons passing all comprehension - become extremely political, you should not be a healthcare provider.

If your health doesn’t allow you to get the needed vaccines and you are putting other people in jeopardy who are already more susceptible to death, you are just as unqualified for a job in the healthcare industry as I am of being a brain surgeon with cerebral palsy (I do in fact have CP) that leaves me unable to use one hand.

Re: Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?

#277

Post by avg_dev »

Respectfully, I believe that your premise is flawed. The symptom may be qualified, good employees quitting and leaving the company unable to fulfill its obligations, but the root cause is the poor leadership that caused them to leave in the first place.

Re: Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?

#278

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

KptMarchewa wrote: post #245
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gaming abounds with stories like this. A friend of mine went to work for a small game studio in Oklahoma that'd gotten some acclaim for their quake mod pack. They took that momentum and started on their own novel IP as a quake licensee. They made a ahem mildly successful game named Medal of Honor. Some time down the road, the owner of the studio didn't want to share the wealth. As a result the top programmers, design…

Funny thing is that the owners did the same thing a second time, going back to the EA, forming Respawn Environment.

yeeeeeeuuuup :P

Re: Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?

#279

Post by mod »

pryelluw wrote: post #219
jamestimmins wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now that the company is gone, have you considered using your experience to build a similar product in that space?

Yes, but it’s not what I want to do with my life. The journey is the destination.

You should post it in the next "idea" thread.

Re: Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?

#280

Post by zo1 »

vintermann wrote: post #235
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Atari still exists today. In 2018 I met Frédéric Chesnais in NY, and learned about the latest things related the company. Here's an interview I found from 2019. [0]. It seems that the current CEO is now Wade Rosen. [1] Company is still up and running. [0]: https://frenchamerican.org/interview-frederic-chesnais/ [1]: https://venturebeat.com/games/atari-ceo-wade-rosen-interview...

No, the Atari name exists today. Famous defunct company names regularly get bought by entities wanting to cash out whatever goodwill or positive associations still left in them. Would-be buyers with less extractive ambitions can't compete in the auctions. So no, Atari doesn't exist today, what exists is a company wearing Atari's skin as a suit, in order to fool you. Don't be fooled by names without the organisational…

Another famous example of this "brand" re-use that I only recently found out about: AEG

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AEG

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