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Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

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Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#321

Post by samfisher83 »

PopeDotNinja wrote: post #159
Rebles wrote: post #44

At the beginning of the year, I decided it was time to find a new job after 10 years with my employer. I spent February doing interview prep and conducting interviews. Back then, the COVID-19 was mostly limited to China, markets and governments weren't terribly concerned about COVID-19. I accept a job offer, put in my two weeks notice, and my last day at was last Friday. Hardly anyone was seriously concerned about CO…

Start interviewing again. Seriously. Worst case scenario your new job works out. That's pretty good downside.

A lot of companies have stopped travel, interview, vendor visits.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#322

Post by porkloin »

johnmarcus wrote: post #305
porkloin wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally valid point. I think they were simply surviving by merit of the fact that the market was good, and really any major speedbump would have caused the company to fail. It's an excuse in the sense that they're not addressing that the reason coronavirus has destroyed the business is because it was built on a poor foundation.

Why do you think they owe you that? You think they don't cry enough when they go home to it? Of what purpose would this info help you or anyone?

I don't feel like they owe it to me at all – I'm just being honest about what I think is happening. I know that to some degree they probably even believe that the virus was the cause of the closure. This is my opinion, of course, but to me it seems clear that this is all about them having an opportunity to close that leaves them with a narrative of how it happened that lets them sleep better at night, which frankly I think is something they deserve. They've worked hard - the company has succeeded at times, but in its present form it wasn't ready to handle the relatively minor turmoil we've experienced from the virus thus far, but that's not to diminish how hard the closure is on them at all.

Sorry if I'm coming off as if I'm bitter or frustrated with the ownership. I'm truly not intending that - I just generally have found the whole process interesting, the way in which the narrative has been spun toward the coronavirus causing the closure, etc. I legitimately feel for these people who I have worked for for several years and think of as not just bosses, but friends. I might be letting some of my own personal emotions bleed into my writing since I'm frankly a little stressed about my own situation, so I apologize if I'm giving the wrong impression here.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#323

Post by ma2rten »

lamberciak wrote: post #138

Really sorry for everyone affected by the current situation. We have open roles at DuckDuckGo for SREs and director level hands-on engineers (in mobile and frontend). There should be a senior frontend engineer role coming up soon too. Check out all open roles at: https://duckduckgo.com/hiring/#open . We're a fully distributed team of 85 aiming to raise the standard of trust online and have been profitable for over 5…

What are "director level hands-on engineers"?

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#325

Post by geggam »

henryfjordan wrote: post #313
geggam wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am experienced and biased because of that obviously but I have seen so many train wrecks created with this method. The amount of waste in corporate american and startups is insane. IMO There are solutions experienced folks know that save so much money when you look at the big picture it always baffles me when I see that.. The other thing that baffles me is when a CIO makes choices based off of things he has read on…

It's all a fancy optimization problem. Each project can be broken into tasks that take X amount of skill/experience and you have workers with varying skill. If you only have high-value workers, you'll be wasting a lot of skill/experience on the menial tasks. If you only have low-value workers then some projects will fail because none of them meet the skill thresholds. As a company you want a diversity of workers to a…

There is some merit to that but what I see over and over is companies try to use too much.

Most menial tasks senior guys have figured out how to automate. We hate menial repetitive tasks and find ways to eliminate them so the ROI of having a senior guy is yes payroll is higher but you have less headcount.

There really isnt anything new being done. Containers have been around for ages ( Solaris doms / freebsd jails )

What I see is companies prematurely optimizing by saying they need portability and multi cloud strategies before they have achieved profitability.

Multi cloud is expensive and difficult and if you don't have a successful business you really don't need it to be portable.

Just some observations from someone watching various business models

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#326

Post by corwinstephen »

dathinab wrote: post #192

My predictions: DISCLAIMER: I'm not a expert wrt. any of this. Don't listen to me ;=). It's all just speculation. Companies which plan to downsize since a will will do it now, using COVID19 as a excuse. Companies who have shifted some "bad consequences" into the future might now book them using COVID19 as a excuse for why they exist. Companies who are already on the last straw will end now, (Such which without COVID1…

I spent most of the last 4 years running a startup that has proven to be the steepest or uphill battles. Struggling to find investors willing to take a chance in our space vs the trendier ones, struggling to convert slow moving clients, struggling to find engineers willing to work in our very unglamorous niche.

We’re a platform for designing and managing digital government processes for permitting and licensing.

After for years of pain, struggle, and doubt, we’ve had more inbound interest this week than ever before, and I feel incredibly lucky to have landed in that small number of startups.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#327

Post by newen »

johnmarcus wrote: post #305
porkloin wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally valid point. I think they were simply surviving by merit of the fact that the market was good, and really any major speedbump would have caused the company to fail. It's an excuse in the sense that they're not addressing that the reason coronavirus has destroyed the business is because it was built on a poor foundation.

Why do you think they owe you that? You think they don't cry enough when they go home to it? Of what purpose would this info help you or anyone?

To be a good human being? Why does every interaction have to be run through a cost benefit analysis?

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#328

Post by geggam »

johnmarcus wrote: post #320
geggam wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am experienced and biased because of that obviously but I have seen so many train wrecks created with this method. The amount of waste in corporate american and startups is insane. IMO There are solutions experienced folks know that save so much money when you look at the big picture it always baffles me when I see that.. The other thing that baffles me is when a CIO makes choices based off of things he has read on…

Another reason is 'experienced' developers can sometimes be difficult to work with. They can be arrogant and bull headed, 'my way or the highway' sorta attitudes. Negative to others with new ideas, etc. Teams that already have some vets on them like working with Jr folks precisely because they are moldable.

Good read for you

http://boringtechnology.club/

I'll leave this one alone as opinionated experienced guys get like that for a reason

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#329

Post by traitsnspecs »

eropple wrote: post #125
Rebles wrote: post #44

At the beginning of the year, I decided it was time to find a new job after 10 years with my employer. I spent February doing interview prep and conducting interviews. Back then, the COVID-19 was mostly limited to China, markets and governments weren't terribly concerned about COVID-19. I accept a job offer, put in my two weeks notice, and my last day at was last Friday. Hardly anyone was seriously concerned about CO…

> But in February, there wasn't any sign of an economic downturn. Everyone was enjoying the bull market. First: I’m super sorry about what you’re going through and I hope things work out with your new employer. Second: I worry that “nobody could have known” will be the narrative. A very large portion of my circles was aware that COVID was about to explode and that the prevention measures would either drastically slow…

If we had not taken prevention measures, the economic impact would be worse? I'm very skeptical of this. Keeps in mind that the disease has a 2-4% mortality rate among hospitalized patients, and the real rate is very likely to go down, not up, since most sick people do not immediately go to the hospital and there is an unknown-but-surmised-be-very-large population of infected people with mild symptoms.

There is a real chance that our lockdown will kill more people through stress-induced heart attacks, suicides, and general fallout from food and income insecurity than the virus would have.

My only takeaway from all of this is that our hospital system is really, really bad at handling any kind of temporary spike in disease or death. And I'm upset with our governor for panicking and putting the entire service industry out of a job, which may actually cause harm to them in great numbers beyond a probably sub-1% chance of dying from a flu-like illness.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#330

Post by hosh »

I got lucky. I started a full time remote job in an edtech platform, and this one has some capability for supporting distance learning.

A friend of mine started a new full time remote job several months ago at a 12-person startup doing telemedicine and remote patient onboarding.

I think it depends on what it is. I would have expected Slack to be launching like a rocket ship, but they are actually have an in-office-first culture and resisted the transformation into a fully-remote culture.

I'm still wondering where all those VR startups and entertainments platforms are. I haven't been hearing anything from Second Life, for example.

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