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Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

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Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#411

Post by bosie »

alecbenzer wrote: post #242
Kwantuum wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to say, your online presence is dreadfully low for a web developer.

Whether this is true or not, there's much better ways to phrase this. > Your online presence is dreadfully low for a web developer. Just dropping "Sorry to say" makes it sound less condescending. > Your online presence is really low for a web developer. Dreadfully -> really. Could argue that this changes the meaning somewhat, but I think the change is more in tone (again, less pretentious/condescending sounding) than…

Not op but I appreciate the detailed rewrite. I do find your notes confusing though.

The claim that your last sentence is more constructive seems a bit weak. what is constructive about it, you basically just derived a logical consequence that touching the website yields a result? Also, what does 'expanding' even mean in this context? At no point did you give any constructive feedback (what should be improved, why is it low, why is it 'really low' etc).

on the note of 'really'. i find 'dreadfully' much more useful than 'really'. much stronger, gives a clearer indication of how bad it really is. 'really' doesn't do anything in this context, let alone be less pretentious.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#412

Post by wayoutthere »

listenallyall wrote: post #400
lozaning wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in most US states that never changes. You can generally be fired without cause all the time. I've got a 4 year record of bi annual performance reviews where I've gotten 120% of the available performance based bonus, but I dont have tenure or anything. If my boss decides he hates my shoes and fires me, Im gone.

In a weird way, getting 120% of the available bonus works against you, in terms of demonstrating you're an excellent worker. Clearly, there's more "available" than the stated amount, which demonstrates the whole thing is a fiction to make people feel good. I mean, in the real world, 100% is the maximum of any thing, then there are made-up phrases like "giving 110%" or "8 days a week" or "120% of the available bonus."…

Yeah, once I got on the management side I learned the whole "oh you got 100% of the bonus but our numbers feel off so the bonus pool is only 75% funded so you only get 75%". It's all made up and we have to balance a dozen situations and someone is always going to get screwed. To be honest I usually give bigger bonuses to the people who are already underpaid, which is what I suspect may have happened to GP.

It's also why VP and above bonuses are written into our employment contracts -- we know better.

Also yeah, definition of "weird flex but ok".

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#413

Post by dangoor »

krsgoss wrote: post #366
dangoor wrote: post #36

Khan Academy is still hiring, though our focus is backend and full-stack engineers right now[1]. I hope you're able to find new work soon! This is an odd time for us. We're an online education non-profit. With all of the school closings[2], we're seeing a huge spike in traffic. Fortunately, our infrastructure can handle it, but we are still spending some effort staying on top of the rapidly changing traffic patterns.…

Just came here to say big thanks to you and everyone else at Khan Academy for the tremendous work you're all doing. As a working parent who has now been thrust into the role of teacher, it's been incredibly helpful. Thank you!

Thank you! I'm happy that we're able to help.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#414

Post by smoyer »

mehrdadn wrote: post #402
dang wrote: post #391

All: a user emailed with the brilliant suggestion that HN do a "Who Is Hiring Right Now?" thread. We'll do that soon; maybe tomorrow. This will specifically be for jobs that are ready to hire, and able to onboard, quickly. If any of you have suggestions for how to make this most helpful under current conditions, please share them. I'll check this thread later tonight.

It might be helpful to highlight whichever of the following are feasible: - Remote work (even across the country, with no expectation of travel) - Short-term work (like a few months, no expectation of staying for > 1 year) - How long the employer roughly expects to be able to provide the job in their projection of the current economic conditions - Rough company size, given the US Congress just passed a bill concernin…

Perfect time to test an alternate way to conduct interviews too. Give several of the second round candidates paid work on something you actually need to have done (perhaps pick tasks that are a sprint away). It should be a great test of both who can produce working code with tests (production code is way different than white-board pseudocode) as well as who can stay on task remotely. I can't imagine paying three people for the same work would cost more than flying them to your office and torturing them for a day or two. The one downside I can see is that currently out-of-work developers should be happy for a bit of 1099 work. Those who are looking to change jobs may not be so amenable.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#415

Post by _bxg1 »

jee1shi wrote: post #373
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…

What's the difference between a software engineer and "just" a programmer?

Lately "software engineer" feels a bit pretentious to me, with all the articles about how we're co-opting the word "engineer". I've started using the word "programmer" just to avoid the pretention and because it has a nice old-school ring to it.

I kind of doubt employers read it as such a technical term that it would factor into the hiring process.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#416

Post by dang »

treve wrote: post #404
dang wrote: post #391

All: a user emailed with the brilliant suggestion that HN do a "Who Is Hiring Right Now?" thread. We'll do that soon; maybe tomorrow. This will specifically be for jobs that are ready to hire, and able to onboard, quickly. If any of you have suggestions for how to make this most helpful under current conditions, please share them. I'll check this thread later tonight.

I would be very interest in a variant that's looking for non-fulltime. It's getting tougher as a freelancer too

Have you looked at the freelancer threads that the whoishiring account posts monthly? They don't get as much frontpage time but they're there.

Edit: if anybody has an idea about how to let more people know about those, as well as the "Who Wants To Be Hired" threads, I'd like to hear it. The problem is that frontpage space is the scarcest resource on HN, and it's hard to justify using 3 of those slots for whoishiring posts.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#418

Post by dangoor »

codr7 wrote: post #205
dangoor wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple of things: one is that there is additional legal/compliance stuff to deal with for each additional country (EU might count as one, when it comes to that), but the bigger reason is that we wanted more overlap in working times. It's also less expensive when we do get together in person at headquarters in California (which has typically been 3-4 times a year).

As far as overlap goes, I strongly prefer working nights anyway. And you could get around a lot of legalities by hiring as a consultant and billing per hour, a friend of mine runs a company that I've occasionally worked through. I honestly don't know why I even bothered to answer, but something about your post felt right and my intuition has served me well so far. I'm afraid I don't have much backend stuff to show, a…

Neat language. Looks like a fun project, and I totally get that your previous work is generally owned by the folks you did the work for and therefore non-public.

I can ask when I next meet with my manager, but I can say from my nearly 5 years at Khan that engineering has not desired to spread out beyond the timezones we're in. I did work for Mozilla for 4 years, so I do know that it can be done and what the tradeoffs are like. This is just not a step we've wanted to take at Khan.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#420

Post by EastSmith »

jbkiv wrote: post #288
cpr wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious why you can't hire world-wide for remote workers.

Hiring remote workers at scale is super complex if you want to comply with local laws (and you must). Hiring contractors is easy but if your contractor should be indeed classified as an employee you will be in trouble one day or the other. You have to set up a legal entity in that country/state, provide workers' comp, health benefits, unemployment, comply with various laws on leave, vacation, medical, etc... This is…

> but if your contractor should be indeed classified as an employee

What would be the reasons for that?

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