321–330 of 333 posts
OT, but I've been getting a lot more feelers for (remote) jobs over the last two weeks. I'm not switching, but I hope that that translates into more work for those who need it.
Being forced to run a remote team of 10 has really opened me up to hiring people remotely in the future, hopefully others will come around as well.
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Being forced to run a remote team of 10 has really opened me up to hiring people remotely in the future, hopefully others will come around as well.
Out of curiosity, what was stopping you before? Remote is quite prevalent for years now, especially in IT.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Out of curiosity, what was stopping you before? Remote is quite prevalent for years now, especially in IT.
Just uncertainty. I am a pretty new manager, and fwiw it wasn't easy even when forced, but since the whole team suddenly also got a crash course, it helped a lot.
I am thankful that people like you exist and are willing to take the plunge and then find out that it wasn't that bad. You're certainly doing a much better job than most managers I ever worked under.
Everyone took a 20% pay cut, lots of people have been furloughed so workload has also increased. Would've been nice to have had a voice in the company's decision; kinda caught between a rock and a hard place at this point.
Sincere question: If you had a voice in the decision, what would you have done differently?
Based on various articles I've read here on HN, it would have been nice to have more transparency into the financials of the company versus all messaging completely devastating morale, and leaving an air of uncertainty. We know we're hemorrhaging cash right now; who isn't, though?
That being said, I would've furloughed everyone that isn't absolutely vital to maintaining bare minimum operations. Made one painfully large cut -- kinda like peeling a bandaid quickly instead of ripping out fifty individual hairs multiple times. I think this alone would've offered a much better sense of security for those that remained, as well as allowing them to stay at their normal salaries.
Next, I would proceed with identifying the clients that are most likely be unable to continue operations themselves, and proactively suspend services. After that, renegotiate quicker payments, and potentially rate increases on services with the remaining active clients.
That would enable the company to turn down anything that's deemed as nice-to-have in our service offerings (no room for luxuries right now), and evaluate all infrastructure costs. We would then have full insight into knowing how much we could scale down our IT infrastructure. We could then proceed to contact vendors, and renegotiate service agreements, further maximizing savings, and decreasing our burn rate.
I would've done everything possible to keep the remaining employees secure, and confident. By performing more drastic cuts initially, scaling back operations, and retaining core teams, everyone could have kept their pay at normal levels, and I think the burn rate would've been significantly less.
Like I said, though, I've never been in the captain's seat and right now may not be a great time to try to say what I'd do. Each day brings less inspiring news and being kept in the dark hasn't helped anyone be more productive.
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Just uncertainty. I am a pretty new manager, and fwiw it wasn't easy even when forced, but since the whole team suddenly also got a crash course, it helped a lot.
I'd advise you to not shy away from remote in general. Many people, apparently yourself included, think it's some sort of a grand transition. It really isn't. :) I am thankful that people like you exist and are willing to take the plunge and then find out that it wasn't that bad. You're certainly doing a much better job than most managers I ever worked under.
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> I wish the employees had a seat at the negotiating table for any of this If the tech industry didn't seem to despise unionizing so much this could've been possible. Maybe that will change once the current disaster is behind us.
Unfortunately, in an economic environment like this a union won't help you. We're seeing many public services staff that are unionized laid off (in Canada) and I'm sure this is happening around the world. By the end of this it's quite likely this will look similar to the Great Depression.
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It wouldn't stop all the layoffs but that isn't the goal. The goal would be to give employees a vote when decisions are made on how to deal with the economic fallout instead of being the passive victims of whatever decision is arrived upon by upper management and the board. Instead of instantly laying off as many people as possible, the union could have brought other proposals to the table to try and help both the co…
Unions sort by seniority and screw everyone else. Always.
20% paycut here. This comes after being laid off a few months ago when Docker sold their enterprise version (sort of, the new company made us all offers but they have terrible benefits among other problems so most people didn't take the offer or only stayed long enough to find something else), so we're all a bit sad. There was then an immediate around of layoffs right after that (though thankfully my department wasn'…
> I wish the employees had a seat at the negotiating table for any of this Perspective from the other side of the table: I can't speak for every company, but we've worked day and night for weeks to figure out a plan that puts employees first and gives us a fighting chance to emerge from this crisis. It may not feel like it, but damn we fight for every single person's job. Paycuts w/o layoffs is a win.
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Sincere question: If you had a voice in the decision, what would you have done differently?
You know, it's hard to say. I've never been in the position where I have both investors, and several thousand employees to answer to; let alone having to dictate who's going to get let go. As such, I'm by no means an authority on this nor can I fathom what the C-Suite must be going through. Obviously, there is an emotional tax associated with these kind of decisions. Based on various articles I've read here on HN, it…
Best of luck