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Ask HN: Who is firing?

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Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

correct so I will give up crytek

Any proof?

Star Citizen's developer, Cloud Imperium Games, was pretty forward about getting a blazing deal on a bunch of churned out crytek engine devs a few (weeks/months) back; I recall hearing a lot of discussion on their subreddit/forums/chat about the issues at crytek that lead to this migration, so the parents statements certainly don't disagree with other facts that I trust.

Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?

#282
I was let go two weeks ago from a small downtown, Austin dev shop. I was let go because they couldn't afford to keep me on anymore. I could see the decline in the company as it was happening so it wasn't a huge surprise. Still sucks. Now I'm scrambling to get my tech stack up to date and find new work.

Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?

#283
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In your opinion what hurts morale more? One big round of layoff, or multiple smaller rounds? Both hurt morale. I've seen many rounds of redundancy and layoffs in UK companies and both the huge layoff rounds and the slowly trimming back everywhere. With the big rounds, the "We'll only do this once so we'll do it big and won't do it again" is never true. The whole company knows it's just time but at least you can pre…

If I'm understanding this correctly, does this mean no company can recover from a situation where they had to let go of people?

The companies may survive, departments may survive. They'll need time to recover, rebuild, find new confidence and morale.

But... in the short-term, once cuts start they don't stop.

It's always too little too late. The big cuts are indicative of how bad things already are, the small cuts are indicative of how bag things are yet to get (but it is coming down the line and aimed at you).

Once the axe starts swinging, be in control of your situation and look elsewhere. Don't wait to let the situation dictate to you.

Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?

#284
post #279

The Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan (OTPP) in Toronto, Ontario, Canada is currently laying off over 100+ (union, management and contractor) IT folks from the Enterprise Technology Solutions (IT operations) and Testing teams. All of the affected positions are being transferred to Tata Consultancy Services (TCS - India based offshoring service company), with those who are affected being mandated to knowledge transfer wi…

This reminds me of the RBC debacle a few years ago, where they abused the Temporary Foreign Worker Program to replace capable, salaried Canadian IT workers with offshore services.

That stint hurt not just those workers but other companies that were trying to hire the best in the world, only for the feds to deny visas due to one bad apple spoiling the bunch.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/news/rbc-temporary-foreign-work...

Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?

#285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it comes to software development, London (and the UK) certainly seem to have a low pay culture.

Can you make 6 figures in Berlin? (In London, it's doable) I hope you're not saying "low pay" because you compare to the USA. The Europe and the USA are not in the same league, they shouldnt be compared.

There is a difference between "acheivable" and "culture". I should also probably add I'm thinking of London-Non-Finance which is admittedly smaller than London.

Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?

#286
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'm not looking to sue Wickr! I am sure I was fired not laid off. I don't bring up to people on interviews that I was fired. I wait for them to ask. I have my own company, so I am even considering taking Wickr completely off my resume completely. I don't know.

Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?

#287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it comes to software development, London (and the UK) certainly seem to have a low pay culture.

Can you make 6 figures in Berlin? (In London, it's doable) I hope you're not saying "low pay" because you compare to the USA. The Europe and the USA are not in the same league, they shouldnt be compared.

100k+ is definitely possible in Germany but hard in Berlin itself, even for a principal engineer.

I'd say you need be be at least Manager/Director/VP of engineering, depending on the size of the company.

Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?

#288
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…

Something funny is they granted me some additional stock options which I did not purchase after my negative review and before they fired me. Being fired was actually a surprise to me, I thought I had improved at least a little bit.

Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?

#289
Hertz laid off nearly the entirety of their rank and file IT staff earlier this year. https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/02/13/1630244/hertz-is-pu...

In order to receive our severance, we were forced to train our IBM replacements, who were in India. Hertz's strategy of IBM and Austerity is the new SMT's solution for a balance sheet that's in shambles, yet they have rewarded themselves by increasing executive compensation 35% over the prior year, including a $6 million bonus to the CIO. http://insiders.morningstar.com/trading/executive-compensati...

I personally landed in an Alphabet company, received a giant raise, and now I get to work on really amazing stuff, so I'm doing fine. But to this day I'm sad to think how our once-amazing Hertz team, staffed with really smart people, led by the best boss I ever had, and were really driving the innovation at Hertz, was just thrown away like yesterday's garbage.

Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?

#290

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.

The entire org?? Why? I recruited for a company that started a few innovation centers around the country. Part me now wonders why they needed all those devs. This was around 3 new centers that hired about 70-100+ each in mostly non tech hubs. The way tech advanced in the last 3 years I'm sure most of their work is or fastly becoming obselete.

Probably using a new platform and/or being bought.
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