Ask HN: Who Is Firing? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#321

Post by rmvt » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 1:35 PM UTC

sleepychu wrote: post #76

kmlx wrote: post #56

a quote i remembered from twitter: "This is the best time to get rid of employees". a startup based in London just fired 10% of their workforce. all were given two options: government's furlough scheme where the state pays 80% of the salary, or outright dismissal. interestingly, half chose to quit.

For a bit of context, at London startup the furlough scheme is very unlikely to be 80% of their salary because it is capped at 30k per year pre-tax/80% of your salary whichever is lower. That said, I'm surprised half of people turned down 2k/month to job hunt.

you need to bear in mind that the government's furlough scheme is capped (gross £2.5k per month) and it has an expiry date. this means that in such a situation, you can't assume you'll be on furlough until "normality resumes". even if the government extends the scheme, the company can still fire you and opt for not having you on furlough or not. overall furlough is as uncertain as it gets. on the other hand, dismissal might come with a "severance package".

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#322

Post by blaser-waffle » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 1:35 PM UTC

growlist wrote: post #256

gigatexal wrote: post #79

No 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.

Whether the European social model is sustainable is another question. There are plenty of apparently reasonable economists that argue it is not.

American Capitalism sure as hell isn't. The rest of the world started down that path and now the rivers and oceans are choked with plastic, to the point there is a giant plastic island in the Pacific, and the world keeps getting warmer.

Europe has problems, but they've had their periods of extreme expansion and contraction and learned their hard lessons.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#323

Post by john0990 » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 1:39 PM UTC

Arcus FI (https://www.arcusfi.com/) a fintech just laid off our NYC office and a bunch of people in our office of Mexico City without offer any severance (they owned me commissions). Furthermore, the last 6 months around 15 people quit because the founders’s behaviour (no professionalism, no strategy and pathologic liars about the money raised, with the customers, the investors and the employees). One co-worker told me they threated one employee from Mexico to break his leg if he leaves. Really bad company.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#324

Post by blaser-waffle » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 1:46 PM UTC

raghava wrote: post #84

Insanity wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guess they might just be using Covid as an excuse to get rid of some people? Wouldn't be ethical, but wouldn't be surprised if some companies took advantage of the situation.

> Wouldn't be ethical, but wouldn't be surprised if some companies took advantage of the situation. I know for the fact that few US, Indian firms with offices in India are just using this as an excuse to trim their workforce, enforce paycuts (upto 50%), hold back increments for the year (and even next) and restructure salaries drastically - by moving almost 60% to vaiable pay(which typically never gets paid). Such a…

Our experience with Indian firms during COVID has been rocky.

Most of the big firms (Tata, CTS, CapGemini) have big offices or call centers, with VPNs or private connections to western infrastructure -- otherwise you would have random Indian IPs logging into your systems, and that would make my security team lose their minds.

But with COVID they can't congregate in those offices, and the logistics of getting additional VPNs, working around geo-fencing, and the fact that some of the admins don't have internet at home means they're not able to support anything.

The handful of Filipino and Mexican offshore talent has been more successful in that regard. Mexican talent in particular has been pretty good -- more expensive than Indian hires, but generally more qualified with overlap of US timezones.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#325

Post by bald42 » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 1:50 PM UTC

speedgoose wrote: post #104

throwaway9002 wrote: post #77

Playtech 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.

YMMD

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#326

Post by sleepychu » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 1:52 PM UTC

rmvt wrote: post #321

sleepychu wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a bit of context, at London startup the furlough scheme is very unlikely to be 80% of their salary because it is capped at 30k per year pre-tax/80% of your salary whichever is lower. That said, I'm surprised half of people turned down 2k/month to job hunt.

you need to bear in mind that the government's furlough scheme is capped (gross £2.5k per month) and it has an expiry date. this means that in such a situation, you can't assume you'll be on furlough until "normality resumes". even if the government extends the scheme, the company can still fire you and opt for not having you on furlough or not. overall furlough is as uncertain as it gets. on the other hand, dismissa…

Right of course if you have a severance package on the table you need to weigh that against the expected payout across your expected out of work period but in this climate I'm not convinced you can safely estimate that out of work period as short.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#327

Post by gigatexal » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 1:54 PM UTC

Tainnor wrote: post #315

gigatexal wrote: post #79

No 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.

It's more than that. In Germany, you actually have to prove that the firing was really necessary from a business point of view. Given the current government measures (Kurzarbeit etc.) and the fact that it's not clear the role wouldn't come back in a couple of months, it's contested whether covid19 and subsequent lack of funding is a valid reason for termination. But IANAL. Of course, just because you could doesn't me…

You’re the second person to say this.

Unfortunately I already signed the termination agreement. Honestly it’s probably better I just find a new role even though I think legally it’s a bit suspicious given the history of the company to experience mass layoffs.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#328

Post by catacombs » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 1:56 PM UTC

onychomys wrote: post #136

Hospitals are having a surprisingly tough time of things. I work for a very famous hospital in a small town in the American midwest, and we've (our IT department, that is) laid off all our contractors and the rest of us have mandatory furloughs coming up too. They're doing everything they can to not let us go, but some of us will probably end up getting sacked. And this is maybe the richest and most well-connected ho…

For-profit hospitals are a stain on the American healthcare system.

I worked for one of these facilities years ago, and elective surgery was the only thing the administrators cared about.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#329

Post by Slam7min » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 1:57 PM UTC

I work for a large city government (10K employees), most of our non-first responders were just furloughed ranging from full-layoff (1K), 10% pay (1.5K), 80% pay (3K), 95% pay (100), and 100% (5.5K). I fall into the 80% category.

It works out great for me because I now qualify for state & federal unemployment benefits that will allow me to net more than I'm actually making at least through 7/31 while working only 4 days a week.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#330

Post by obfk » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 2:03 PM UTC

anonymousci wrote: post #7

CircleCI. 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...

There's nothing to say the two events are correlated. As far as we can tell, they could have been underperforming sales people who were let go. Hiring/firing is _not_ based off the single criteria of raising money. There are complex business decisions between events like this, regardless of the coin in the coffers.