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Ask HN: Who is firing?

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Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?

#321

Post by JamesBarney »

traviswingo wrote: post #263
andy wrote: post #234

I was fired from Wickr.com a few months after their layoffs. I was fired from Wickr a few months ago. The given reason was they considered me not a Senior Android Developer and that was my title - I asked too many questions apparently. My manager indicated that if my title had been Android Developer there probably would not have been a problem. I don't care about titles really. I was hired in 2014 as a contractor for…

I would honestly refrain from telling people you were fired in that case, and simply state you were laid off. I would then begin to infer that something fishy was going on internally and that you're probably better off not being involved with the company anymore. It really sounds to me like management didn't know how to deal with the situation and a "performance review" was simply their scapegoat, and not the reality…

Most companies will answer two questions "When did Joe work here, and is Joe eligible for rehire?" This is why it's important for him to figure out if he was terminated-with-cause or not. If this was the case then he is not eligible for rehire and when a company does a background check Joe will run into this issue.

Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?

#322

Post by scaryclam »

throw1988_9121 wrote: post #107
hinkley wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much my experience. Once one useful person gets laid off, everyone can't help but think they're the next useful person to get laid off. And in small groups it feels personal. So now you're playing CYA instead of taking the good kinds of risks with big payoffs.

In your opinion what hurts morale more? One big round of layoff, or multiple smaller rounds? I've only seen the later happen, and personally I think I'd prefer the first one. If you know that after that large layoff round the rest of the company is safe, I'd venture that might be better for the morale of the remaining employees.

"Cut deep and cut once". Multiple rounds of layoffs is going to seed paranoia as well as hurt morale, so it's often better to over-do-it a little than end up with some of your best employees quitting because they're tired of wondering if they're next.

I've seen both in action, and while the large layoff is really nasty, the company can immediately start to look forwards into rebuilding rather than sitting in the "was it enough, who's next?" purgatory.

Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?

#323

Post by falsedan »

0xmohit wrote: post #134
singingfish wrote: post #128

my ex employer got rid of me in order to spend more $ on aws burning cpu cycles instead. Would like to hire juniors in spades though mind you.

in order to spend more $ on aws burning cpu cycles instead Maybe he was long on AMZN and desperately wanted the stock to move up.

Who isn't?

Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?

#324

Post by slgeorge »

mgkimsal wrote: post #297
kyrra wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. If your former employer is smart, they won't say much beyond "yes, that person worked here" when contacted by any company that is looking to hire you. If they say anything that directly results in you being denied a job, it opens them up to lawsuits. (at least that's my understanding)

> If they say anything that directly results in you being denied a job, it opens them up to lawsuits. This is the received wisdom, but not sure it happens. It might be something that happens at high levels, but it's uncommon for most people to even get a rejection letter or email in the first place, this notion of companies badmouthing you then them telling you that's why you were not hired is just... weird. Someone…

It may not happen, but many companies believe it could happen. Consequently, they say next to nothing about ex-employees - only the dates of employment. If you're the company being asked for the reference there is no upside in you saying that Joe was fired - why would you want to help another company, and why would you want to risk (however infinitesimal) a law suit. This is commonly defined by policy, simply ask the last company that you worked at what their policy is for references and what data they will reveal.

Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?

#325

Post by user5994461 »

Raed667 wrote: post #273
user5994461 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

34kE for a new master's graduate is rather low in Paris. It's rather high for the rest of the country. See here for discussion about French salaries. http://www.developpez.net/forums/f597/emploi-etudes-informat... That's the main french forum for professional developers tips & tricks & career advice & salaries.

Thanks, and do you have an idea about Nice / Sophia Antipolis ?

I am not familiar with the area.

Feel free to open a topic in the aforementioned forum, they'll know better .

Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?

#326

Post by tbrownaw »

vertex-four wrote: post #196
philh wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people think that pro-employee laws are not in fact good for employees. Regardless of whether or not you agree with them, it's super uncharitable to dismiss them in this way.

Pro-employee laws are not good for employees in the success case - that you're a top 10% worker in a field that is growing and has lots of demand. The thing is, if you think about the failure case - you're a disposable cog in a field that's stagnating - there's issues which need to be solved, unless you're a staunch libertarian with a belief that people who are unable to find work should die. Nobody wants to pay for…

The alternative to making it impossible to fire people, is to make getting fired less of a big deal. Instead of adding friction to the employment market, implement a decent social safety net that includes provisions for voc ed / retraining.

Instead of focusing solely on prevention, work on mitigation. To much prevention can make everything grind to a halt.

Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?

#327

Post by mlent »

issaria wrote: post #230
expertentipp wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Berlin startups are infamous for hiring foreigners from countries with low salaries, ideally from outside of EU (so no free movement of workers with Germany) and paying them below the market salary. Low pay + dealing with German bureaucracy + sky rocketing prices of everything in Berlin = person has a problem. As for Axel Springer - their understanding of internet innovation is quite... "skewed". e.g. as some kind of…

Chinese developer working in a Berlin startup here. I agree the Berlin startups do hire a lot of foreingers (there is a report stating that 49% of employees are foreigners), and it drives the salary down, but I can say my salary is the same level as others developers, as developers has such a huge demand here that you can change jobs freely, unlike American H1B visa. Also because the EU bluecard has a salary requirem…

Second this (as another non-EU citizen working in Berlin) -- you have to make at least 38k euros per year to work in Germany as a foreigner, which is enough to live comfortably in Berlin IMO. However, as you said, there are definitely plenty of companies that are paying more than this. Changing jobs is a non-issue when you're on the ground.

Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?

#328

Post by Animats »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #214
Animats wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had Downside's Deathwatch, a simple automated cash flow analysis.[1] It's still up, frozen in time. All those "Chart is not available for this symbol" entries are dead. In the first dot-com boom, many companies went public before profitability. So anyone could see how much cash they had and how fast they were burning through it. I just calculated how much time they had left until cash went to zero. That's the "deat…

This is awesome ( i mean, there is beauty in the simplicity of it) Any thoughts to share the code which you used to analyse edgar? :)

It's no longer useful. The SEC used to require an EX-27 schedule in SGML with useful data. They discontinued that around 2001. Years later, they started requiring that data in XBRL format, which is more detailed. You could do this today with XBRL tools, which are available.

Downside was written in Perl, in 1999. There's a system in there to parse financial statements written in HTML for humans, but it's for HTML 3.1 and was never updated.

I used to get hate mail from CFOs over this.

Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?

#329

Post by soulnothing »

SamUK96 wrote: post #252
soulnothing wrote: post #228

At one of the bigger cable companies. My contract was recently terminated, I was told end of September it would end by December 30th. Luckily I knew this was coming, as my project wasn't feasible. Oddily enough this is my second contract with the company. Same thing happened the first time around. On to greener pastures I hope.

Isn't constructive dismissal supposed to protect you from being put on a failing project/team just so they can fire you?

I worked as a W2 contractor, and in turn expect no rights. I also learned my lesson the first pass. I asked for something more challenging, because I had nothing on my agile board for 3 months. I in turn was given notice.

It's a dance I've unfortunately gotten used too. Join the project sounds fun. Project was not scoped, it's pared back. Then my contract is rescinded.

While I talked to my contracting firm, they gave me other roles. They were tech support, customer service, etc. variety.

Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?

#330

Post by virtuallynathan »

soulnothing wrote: post #228

At one of the bigger cable companies. My contract was recently terminated, I was told end of September it would end by December 30th. Luckily I knew this was coming, as my project wasn't feasible. Oddily enough this is my second contract with the company. Same thing happened the first time around. On to greener pastures I hope.

Comcast? or Charter/TWC?
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