Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 593 posts

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#331

Post by borisyankov »

bsanr2 wrote: post #39
lukax wrote: post #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).

Statistically-speaking, this will disproportionately effect women and minorities (low performance reviews !necessarily= low performance when implicit bias is present, which again, statistically-speaking, it is). Certainly these times suck for everyone, but there go the careers of black, brown, and female millennials with yet another black mark on their CVs before they've hit their 40s.

Statistically speaking this sounds like BS.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#332

Post by have_you »

neuronic wrote: post #305
mathattack wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The theory of weaker led on severance is: 1 - If you make it too hard to let people go, companies will be less willing to hire. (You’ve added a cost to the employee) 2 - If you make the cost of severance too high, it will kill companies that might otherwise have a chance to squeak through. There are plenty of good arguments on the other side (companies offloading social costs to the govt, etc) but these two are consi…

Yea, economic theories that all assume that consumers are rational actors. Thank you, next.

>>Thank you, next.

So have you run a business where you had to hire employees?

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#333

Post by toyg »

gcoleman wrote: post #314
toyg wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> based on performance of the stock price, Lulz, classic case of bad incentive: I bet revenues for online gambling are way up at the moment, now that more and more people are forced to stay home and be fundamentally unsupervised all day. But because stock markets are drying up across the board, stellar profits might well not get reflected in stock prices. Just another reason for not basing exec compensation on stock…

It depends on the type of gambling. Sports based gambling has basically disappeared. Bingo/slots/casual games are up in general I think.

Good point - I was thinking card games really, and it's true that most sports betting is currently frozen - although there are reports that minor leagues (which are still running in some countries) are being heavily targeted by desperated punters and gambling orgs.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#335

Post by Tainnor »

gigatexal wrote: post #327
Tainnor wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more than that. In Germany, you actually have to prove that the firing was really necessary from a business point of view. Given the current government measures (Kurzarbeit etc.) and the fact that it's not clear the role wouldn't come back in a couple of months, it's contested whether covid19 and subsequent lack of funding is a valid reason for termination. But IANAL. Of course, just because you could doesn't me…

You’re the second person to say this. Unfortunately I already signed the termination agreement. Honestly it’s probably better I just find a new role even though I think legally it’s a bit suspicious given the history of the company to experience mass layoffs.

I agree, as a tech worker it's probably easy enough to find another job, so it's not worth fighting over this.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#336

Post by devocris »

jmchuster wrote: post #60
sbt wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you characterize the quality of CircleCI? I've spent quite a few hours trying to work out mysterious bugs in a build process that runs fine locally. This morning the web ui was full of 'client error' messages.

We've seen great results since switching from Circle to Buildkite, not the least of which is cost, but you have to be willing to do a little bit of your own IT work.

But isn't that the point of Circle...not having to do any IT work? At some point the cost of Circle becomes negligible, especially when you consider how much your time is worth...and that you don't have to do any maintenance.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#337

Post by sneak »

omginternets wrote: post #201
sneak wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure I follow that logic. Written, signed contracts where the agreeing parties are not being coerced is presently our gold standard for opt-in consent.

>Written, signed contracts where the agreeing parties are not being coerced is presently our gold standard for opt-in consent. Except that you can't later withdraw your consent. You said that was "a violation of consent". Which is it?

Ahh, I see what you were saying now.

Employment contracts in the US (if they exist at all and aren’t simply an implicit agreement, so-called “at will” in most states) don’t generally provide for severance. Almost every one I’ve ever read allows for either party to opt out at any time without penalty, or explicitly states what the remaining liabilities would be in the instance that one of the parties did end the transaction.

If you don’t have a written, signed contract, you cannot assume future consent to perpetuating or extending a transaction. There wasn’t any explicit future-consent.

The existence of a written, signed contract changes that.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#338

Post by me_me_me »

rusticpenn wrote: post #182
me_me_me wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having not worked in USA, I always wonder how valid such comments are. Never really felt such thing being anything but odd ball case in Europe.

Depends on where you work in Europe. There is definetly a glass cieling for minorities in companies like VW.

I am not sure if it glass ceiling exists for minorities or simply for people who are not 'playing the game' or not fully participate in it.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#339

Post by killvenom »

dsfargeg wrote: post #214

Babylon Health furloughed 140 people. I think they're using this as an excuse to re-structure their organisation. The tagline is that they are furloughing 5% of staff. They've used it as an opportunity to make 30% of their mobile engineers redundant, as well as push many senior engineers on higher salaries towards the exit

This is news-worthy. They are mentioned on the BBC as hiring during COVID.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#340

Post by jazzyk »

mathattack wrote: post #294
WhyNotHugo wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surprisingly, severance is also mandatory in Argentina and many other "under development" countries. I'm absolutely amazed at how people in the US are so against severance being mandatory.

The theory of weaker led on severance is: 1 - If you make it too hard to let people go, companies will be less willing to hire. (You’ve added a cost to the employee) 2 - If you make the cost of severance too high, it will kill companies that might otherwise have a chance to squeak through. There are plenty of good arguments on the other side (companies offloading social costs to the govt, etc) but these two are consi…

Yeah, but because it is o easy to fire, some companies (especially startups which just got some VC money) over-hire and then are forced to let people go.

This creates a never-ending hamster-wheel of hiring-firing - not good for the employee and not good for the company.

Also, if paying 1 month of severance is too much for a company, then perhaps it is not run well and should be allowed to fail?

Post reply on HN