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Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

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391–400 of 593 posts

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is looking 2001-dot-com-crash bad, but much, much faster. It's worth remembering there are plenty of companies not laying people off, and "normal" will return eventually. That said, I was watching The Big Short yesterday, and a line that I had noted before haunted me even more: "For every 1% unemployment goes up [in the USA], 40,000 people die". Stay safe, stay positive.

> Assessing the short term health impact of the Great Recession in the European Union: a cross-country panel analysis > Results > Overall, during the recent recession, an increase of one percentage point in the standardised unemployment rate has been associated with a statistically significant decrease in the following mortality rates: all-cause-mortality (3.4%), cardiovascular diseases (3.7%), cirrhosis- and chronic…

> An increase in the unemployment rate during the Great Recession has had a beneficial health effect on average across EU countries.

Many animals live longer in captivity than in the wild.

Restricting your caloric intake as much as possible will prolong your lifespan.

There's more to health than just how long you live.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#392
Several Utah startups have had layoffs due to COVID, not sure about the numbers for most of these though.

Rainfocus

Domo: 10% of workforce

Vivint Smart Home

HireVue

Divvy employees have been told that layoffs are inevitable.

No whispers yet of layoffs at the two Ycombinator startups in the state (Weave and Podium)

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#393

God this brings back memories of fuckedcompany.com Right after September 11th, that site got very popular among engineers like me -- seeing (on a daily basis) which company bloodbath was next. It was kind of fun, until it was our company.

Blind is the resource I use now to scratch the same itch

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#394
post #382
post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember a suggestion to place all startups in a death pool which they were only allowed to leave if they managed not to buy any Aeron chairs (those were all the rage at that time) after one year in business. I loved that idea.

My company was featured in a story on Herman Miller, where we spent more on Chairs then we had in revenue for the entire 24 months of our existence.

The other side of this, is the company I worked for about that time, purchased the entire set of office furniture from a defunct company to setup our office when we moved. Turns out we didn't need it all, and sold a lot of it. At the end of the year, the majority of our profit was the furniture hussle.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#395
post #388

Not naming the company, but I know of a startup that's got a round of $10M (not much but enough) who just applied for relief because their burn rate is $200K+ a month. They have no customers, have been in the red for 2 years and have been slowly building their product out -- like most early funded startups -- they are building potential without revenue (yet). Their theory is, get some free money and treat it like 6 m…

And that's why the fund ran out of cash within a week.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#397

God this brings back memories of fuckedcompany.com Right after September 11th, that site got very popular among engineers like me -- seeing (on a daily basis) which company bloodbath was next. It was kind of fun, until it was our company.

I wonder what Pud is up to now. Didn't he use to post on here?

He started and is running DistroKid, which is probably the most popular way for independent music artists to get their music into digital stores and streaming services.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just out of curiosity, is your comment about "for-profit hospitals" a non sequitur? Your parent comment refers to the Mayo Clinic, which is neither "for-profit" nor "a stain on the American healthcare system".

My parent comment does not mention Mayo Clinic. I'm mainly talking about hospitals that operate only for profit.

Apparently many US hospitals are formally non-profits but operate very much in a corporate logic. What did mayo do with its bn profit last year that Op mentioned?

Mayo earns $12bn per year.

As contrast, a hospitals in Germany for a whole year cost €105bn, with an average total cost per stay (including operations etc ) of 4500€.

https://www.destatis.de/DE/Presse/Pressemitteilungen/2018/11...

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#399

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…

Will be very interesting to watch financial reports from health insurers. Premiums are the same, despite (almost) everyone consuming less health services. Can Covid costs (at current patient levels) make up for the loss of other claims? I'm doubtful, especially since some Covid costs are evidently borne by the federal government. The suffering of hospitals is circumstantial evidence that insurers are paying out less…

No, the covid costs are actually not terribly high.

The other thing is that as millions of employees get laid off, millions of health insurance premiums stop getting paid.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

#400

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.

The differences between the two aren't what you think.
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