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Ask HN: Who is firing?

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Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?

#371

Post by pjungwir »

daveloyall wrote: post #316
frogstomp19 wrote: post #37

Not technically "firing" I suppose but all of the dev org in Atlanta and SF, including myself, were laid off at athenahealth last week. Something like 120 people. Sucks.

Do you know anybody who might be interested in wiring Apache Camel up to be a Rhapsody replacement? The NEDSS Base System has an expensive dependency on Rhapsody, but all it does is grab incoming HL7, do some transformations, and dump the result into a NBS table. (For the uninitiated: State Health Departments are generally the users of NEDSS Base System... Rhapsody is a graphical ETL tool.)

I could do this. I'm not from Atlanta, but two other developers and myself have a small company, Columbia Ops, that has done a lot of HL7 work. Usually we use Mirth, but we could do it in Camel instead if you prefer something lighter. My email is in my profile.

Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?

#372

Post by nathan_long »

acedinlowball wrote: post #363
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…

From this comment, I can get a sense of why you were fired. "The reason I emailed was because we were just in a scrum meeting where management was asking us for feedback on how the sprint went." They wanted feedback on a sprint and you complained about overtime? Pretty easy to see why you got the axe.

> Pretty easy to see why you got the axe.

What!? "How did this sprint go?" "Well, I had to work a lot of overtime to finish my work on it."

If you're the manager, do you 1) take this as a sign of poor planning or 2) fire the employee?

I mean, it depends on context, but if you fire people because they complain, you're going to lose all trust and everyone who knows they can find work elsewhere.

Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?

#373

Post by andy »

acedinlowball wrote: post #363
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…

From this comment, I can get a sense of why you were fired. "The reason I emailed was because we were just in a scrum meeting where management was asking us for feedback on how the sprint went." They wanted feedback on a sprint and you complained about overtime? Pretty easy to see why you got the axe.

Yes, I liked being a contractor for that reason.

Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?

#374

Post by throwaway2942 »

germanthrowaway wrote: post #366
throwaway2942 wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intresting, Im suprised this hasnt gotten any coverage or attention really. This is the first time Ive heard of it, but it correlates with a recent change in attitute with some of my contacts there. Some outright dont respond to messages, others reply with "Things are fine" etc... Do you anticipate this getting more coverage in the comming days/weeks? When was the last missed paycheck if I may ask? Thanks again. Your…

the reason for the coverage being low is that no one is saying anything and information on glassdoor is being ignored by most people anyway. full disclosure: i am from the sofia office but i think that this is dangerous to say because we are fewer than the germans. in the sofia office we have not been paid for two months now and before that we had to wait two months for salaries, so it makes a total of 4 months of wa…

Generally the best way to do this is to post an email regarding NDA, payments, whatever sent to a large group and block out the "To" but keep the sender and as much of the content as possible.

Up to you if you post it publicly, I couldnt see the harm there but alternatively you could email it from a disposable email to a gaming news site. They are very careful with their sources and can help. They have experience breaking stories like this. You should get a reply in less than 2h from most press sites for a story like this.

Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?

#375

Post by patmcguire »

d23 wrote: post #247
patmcguire wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter is a known tire fire. When I was out in San Francisco everyone who worked at Twitter had a shell-shocked look and talked about the experience the same way they would if they'd just gone to use the restroom and found a dead body.

Can anyone actually give any details here or is everyone just gonna do the "nudge nudge wink wink" thing?

I don't know any specifics of Vine. I didn't get a whole lot of details of the internals of Twitter, it seemed to be the usual complaints about companies — "things get done for the wrong reasons", "sudden changes in direction", "bizarre politics", "only care about the money now" — but compressed into a much shorter time frame.

Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?

#376

Post by d23 »

wyldfire wrote: post #272
d23 wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That came around before August.

But it might take some months before that change to reddit reverberates into imgur visitor metrics and on into advertising revenue.

Ah whoops, I thought something else was being implied.

Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?

#377

Post by NicoJuicy »

Animats wrote: post #328
NicoJuicy wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Well, if you have the code and an example file it would still be usefull ( as reference ). Thanks for the information!

Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?

#378

Post by webmaven »

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…

Here is how it happens:

You're applying at a bunch of places, some of them being internal referrals from friends of yours. After a while you notice that all of your job applications are fizzling out, so, frustrated, you start asking for feedback (especially since a friend of yours kept getting rejected for talking about SOA instead of RESTful APIs).

The answers you get aren't helpful, like "we just felt that you weren't a good fit", and in a couple of cases somewhat antagonistic.

Eventually, you hear through the grapevine that you might want to check the references you're using.

So, you get your Significant Other to pose as an employer checking your employment history and references, while they record the calls with an app.

Guess what? One of your references is actually trashing you, saying you were unreliable and a troublemaker. It also turns out that another reference just blows everyone off and never returns calls.

Ta-da! You have a recorded evidence. BIG PROBLEM for the reference that bad-mouthed you.

Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?

#379

Post by scolson »

JamesBarney wrote: post #362
scolson wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, not confusing it. Your original message was WRT paper trail, which is not required in all cases. To your message here, fired means something very specific. Though fired can be for cause or no cause. And the reason of cause matters for unemployment. Laid off means something else. So really, there are four categories from an unemployment standpoint: 1. Fired - policy violation 2. Fired - "incompetent" (note: in the…

Do most companies when contacted by future prospective employers disclose which of these 4 was the reason for termination?

Depends on who is asking, what they ask, and for what reason. Though it is generally avoided.

If it is a simple reference check (never minding why a terminating company would be listed as a ref...) then as little information as possible would be given; possibly as small as "so and so no longer works here and that is the limit of what we can disclose with them" in order to avoid a bad reference lawsuit.

If it is an employment verification firm, depending on how rigorous the verification, it may come up by direct questioning and this should be expected by all parties.

Some companies do have strict policies about not disclosing some/all details. I am aware of a few firms, that wether good or bad, have policies against providing any reference, similarly, to avoid any potential lawsuit.

Now, when it comes to unemployment, if an ex-employee files a claim, the gloves will very likely come off. If the company can avoid a claim being made against their account, that is the difference of a lot of money on a recurring basis. So in this sense, reason very much matters.

Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?

#380

Post by mgkimsal »

webmaven wrote: post #378
mgkimsal wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Here is how it happens: You're applying at a bunch of places, some of them being internal referrals from friends of yours. After a while you notice that all of your job applications are fizzling out, so, frustrated, you start asking for feedback (especially since a friend of yours kept getting rejected for talking about SOA instead of RESTful APIs). The answers you get aren't helpful, like "we just felt that you were…

Cue people spouting how it's illegal for you to record a conversation.
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