Astek Group* (a french consulting firm) laid off around 5% of its sophia-antipolis office (~15 out of 300), which put them in conflict with the government that has put funds to help people maintain 84% of their salaries if they work part-time (furlough?).
Ask HN: Who Is Firing?
101–110 of 593 posts
Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?
#102Can someone please change the title of this - just as with other similar posts - to use "laid-off" instead of "fired"? Regardless of how loose some may be with language, there's a clear distinction between these terms. For example, my home state's Employment Security Department: https://esd.wa.gov/unemployment/laid-off-or-fired Given that there are non-US readers here, maybe there's another pair of phrases that Hacke…
This is just grammatical nitpicking. People are not working in company X any more against their will. One can call it "removing", "laying off", "dismissing", "number cutting" or whatever corporate BS speak says is correct these days, but reality is that they're fired.
Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?
#103No severance?! I, as an expat, am absolutely grateful and have changed my tune on the “European welfare state” trope to “this just makes sense”. I got let go from a Berlin based fintech and got 3 months pay plus a small severance. They did this likely because funding fell apart during the pandemic but it could have also been to cull people that they didn’t need but they did do right by us.
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.
Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?
#104Playtech in London isn't firing but cut all employee salaries by 10% across the board. The CEO just awarded himself a 30mil bonus: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/playtech-plan-to-pay-boss...
As a Frenchman I can recommend light protests, from home.
Instead of burning a few wooden pallets and having a BBQ while blocking the company entrance, you guys could perhaps put a firewall rule to drop all incoming traffic to the VPN and having an online video party.
Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mandatory exercise? How does that work?
In the UK you are only allowed out once a day for 1 hour maximum
That doesn't make it mandatory. :)
Your original phrasing is incorrect hence the confusion by the other persons' comment. It would be more accurate to call it a restriction.
Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?
#106Playtech in London isn't firing but cut all employee salaries by 10% across the board. The CEO just awarded himself a 30mil bonus: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/playtech-plan-to-pay-boss...
> cut all employee salaries by 10% across the board
How does that work exactly? I imagine you're presented with a contract that says "you salary is now 0.9>"* and you're also told (or heavily implied) that if you don't sign, you're fired.
Surely the employer can't just start paying you less than specified in your original contract? And maybe if you don't sign, you're owed some benefits (but who wants to be jobless going into pandemic+recession+inflation)?
Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?
#107CircleCI. Last week during covid crisis, all while announcing a $100m Series E round of financing, they let some employees go and did not offer any severance. Disorganized management, and with some teams, passive-aggressive management style. Would not recommend joining...
Wow, I actually really concidered CCI. It seemed like such a great company to work for. It's good to know this.
Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?
#108Can we say that the layoffs are mostly happening in US ? I can't see that trend in Europe, correct me if I'm wrong.
The news here in Romania say that there are 1M fired. I don't believe that, smells like fake news. However I don't see how small firms will survive a two month pause. We will surely have lots of people fired but they won't make the news because they did not work at Google ;)
Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?
#109No severance?! I, as an expat, am absolutely grateful and have changed my tune on the “European welfare state” trope to “this just makes sense”. I got let go from a Berlin based fintech and got 3 months pay plus a small severance. They did this likely because funding fell apart during the pandemic but it could have also been to cull people that they didn’t need but they did do right by us.
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.
Americans are amazing like that. "Free healthcare? That's communism!!!"
Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Although lots of UK companies won't be making any redundancies until the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme ends. It's much easier to put UK workers on the 80% pay furlough scheme than firing them. As soon as that money dries up expect companies to make lots of mass redundancies. It's going to be interesting to see the UK government's exit strategy from this crisis, immediately terminating the scheme before the economy…
> but keeping the scheme means productivity won't recover as people able to work productively are sat at home doing nothing. Productivity will recover when businesses can use resources productively. It's either keep the scheme running until quarantine measures are reduced enough to allow businesses to start ramping back up and productivity increases again, or remove the scheme and push people to unemployment which is…
This depends on which is worse for productivity: unemployment or furlough. I think in some cases furlough is worse for productivity as workers that could be working for another employer and have in-demand skills are sitting idle. In a free-market devoid of minimum wages and government packages, wages would be going down massively but fewer people would be doing nothing.