Ask HN: Who Is Firing? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#341

Post by raghava » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 3:03 PM UTC

blaser-waffle wrote: post #324

raghava wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 addition…

> some of the admins don't have internet at home means they're not able to support anything

Yes, this is the reality. Most of these shops do not believe in issuing a laptop along with a secure connectivity option, simply because they deem all of that as a sap on procurements.

And they still use shitty 2005 era desktop since work gets done on VDIs (citing info sec and DLP) and desktops are mere dumb terminals. But even to operate those dumb terminals, they are ready to spend cost on electricity and logistics but will actively avoid issuing good equipment just to avoid cost on licenses and manageability.

Bunch of old coots that do not ever learn.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#342

Post by jazzyk » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 3:05 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...

Were any execs let go?

I bet they all had severance guaranteed in their contracts...

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#343

Post by tarsinge » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 3:10 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…

We may disagree on political solutions, but I hope at this point everyone will acknowledge that in a society with otherwise so much wealth, health care shouldn't be that dysfunctional.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#344

Post by jazzyk » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 3:12 PM UTC

Kiro wrote: post #316

throwaway743 wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless of timing or events, the 30mil individual bonus was still taken while 10% of employee's salaries were cut. That's excessive and a slap in the face to those employees.

No-one could have predicted this pandemic and the drastic measures companies have to take. When they paid the bonus they had no idea they would have to cut salaries a few months later. The timing is essential since one event happened before the pandemic and one afterwards. We could argue about bonuses in general but that's a whole different topic.

But perhaps, just perhaps, the CEO could take $2M as bonus and save $28M for a rainy day?

A rainy day will arrive sooner or later - whether it is a pandemic or an economic crisis or a dry spell in additional funding, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#345

Post by esel2k » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 3:18 PM UTC

rk06 wrote: post #317

esel2k wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So also here healthtech startup letting people go?! Why? I thought you guys would get more business in these times?!

That's a false statement. My sister is a doctor. She told me that she is getting less patients, as only those are very serious, are coming. Plus transport system is down, so only ambulance can be used for transporting patients to and from hospital. So this puts a limit to hospital's income source.

But what about telehealth?

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#346

Post by tarsinge » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 3:22 PM UTC

mathattack wrote: post #294

WhyNotHugo wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The theory of weaker led on severance is: 1 - If you make it too hard to let people go, companies will be less willing to hire. (You’ve added a cost to the employee) 2 - If you make the cost of severance too high, it will kill companies that might otherwise have a chance to squeak through. There are plenty of good arguments on the other side (companies offloading social costs to the govt, etc) but these two are consi…

I must admit that as a small business owner in France unfortunately I am unwilling to hire because it's so hard to let people go, so putting the weight only on companies is maybe not the answer.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#347

Post by growlist » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 3:37 PM UTC

blaser-waffle wrote: post #322

growlist wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Really??? If you want to get into the environmental side of things there is endless ammo. We could start with Germany intervening to water down carbon emissions policy in order to protect its auto industry, and go from there...

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#348

Post by nemo44x » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 3:39 PM UTC

DonHopkins wrote: post #252

nemo44x wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies that were fucked, as their name documents. Got their start in the heyday of the .com crash as domino after domino fell and many companies were exposed for the unviable company’s they were. The site took great joy in documenting (mocking) companies that were once tall and proud and quickly collapsed.

I always wondered if fuckedcompany.com had back-door access to the Internet Confessional database.

I think they just allowed anonymous posts. Different era where they were actually sort of reliable. I think they got sued a lot which forced them to shut down. In the end Fucked Company was fucked, too.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#349

Post by growlist » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 3:41 PM UTC

jventura wrote: post #264

growlist wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Whether the ${COUNTRY} social model is sustainable is another question. There are plenty of apparently reasonable ${PEOPLE} that argue it is not. ${COUNTRY} = "USA" ${PEOPLE} = "americans" it seems to compile as well...

What does this contribute other than snarkiness?

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#350

Post by hhmc » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 3:43 PM UTC

altacc wrote: post #253

tcard wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other things equal, if companies need to pay severance, employees get paid less each month, because companies need to take into account expected severance costs in their total labor costs and there's less money left for other benefits. So all employees effectively pay for layoffs, which goes against you if you're not the one that gets laid off. (I am very much in favor of mandatory severance and generally other kinds…

Having done budgeting for hiring employees in the UK, for small and medium sized companies, the factors that went into calculating staff costs never included any severance or redundancy factors. Paying redundancy is relatively rare, so doesn't need allocated funding until you're in that process. When you're employing people you're not already thinking about their future exit. You hire based on your growth, so you're…

> but after that you're into a long "managing them out of the business" process that may or may not end up with a pay off.

I'm sure you already know, but in the UK you can be fired for any non-protected reason within the first 2 years of employment. I think UK companies are typically less cavalier than their US counterparts when it comes to firing, but in the frist 2 years, the employee protections are similar to US at-will states.