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Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?

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Re: Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?

#71

Post by pessimizer »

yardie wrote: post #12

Printing press. The pressman that operated the largest press quit, fired, no showed, or whatever. Margins are already thin so losing just 1 press can be pretty devastating. A pressman, even a trained one, has to be trained since each machine is build to order. It’s not something you can post a job in Indeed and have a new employee after a week.

I've seen this happen, and the company end up in serious danger (and they still were down a pressman and flailing last time I heard.) Somehow the fact that everything is depending on pressmen doesn't affect the way management pays or treats them, though.

Re: Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?

#72

Post by p1necone »

nomel wrote: post #11
jarym wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what makes a company poach like this vs do an aquihire

Cost, surely. Paying for 10 engineers is much cheaper than paying for them and the IP they helped produce over the years, especially if you're not interested in that IP.

I suspect this would work in a lot of cases if you can find out who the key engineers/strategy people in the company are. But working that out is probably the hard part.

If you have the money an acquihire guarantees you get everything. But then you still have to work out who those key people are after the fact and make sure you keep them happy.

Re: Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?

#73

Post by xani_ »

ethbr0 wrote: post #15
vsskanth wrote: post #9

There was a very recent case where an emergency trauma center had to shut down because all the nurses left for another hospital for better working conditions. It’s also common in rehab centers. You can’t take Medicare patients without a minimum staff count. If too many nurses leave, patients can’t be accepted and you end up bleeding. Basically any job that primarily requires human capital.

That's a lot of hospitals in the US and Canada right now. Turns out if you cut nurses' compensation and retirement match during the pandemic, ask them to work overtime due to understaffing, and then don't restore benefits or give them raises to match inflation after... they walk. Who knew?

I cannot imagine how the healthcare can cost so much yet still somehow there is not enough money to pay people that run it decently

Re: Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?

#74

Post by xwdv »

denkmoon wrote: post #43
orange_joe wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what's incredible about this is that Activision remains an industry leader whereas I'm not entirely sure if Atari even still exists.

Ironically however modern day Activision has the exact same attitude of Atari that caused their founding.

It’s justified though. Games are basically a solved problem these days, and the developers of today are most of the time just building on abstractions and best practices that didn’t exist during Atari’s time.

Once a particular domain of software becomes sufficiently mature, there is no real opportunity for heroic programmers to emerge who become too valuable to replace. Eventually more people emerge who are just as good.

Re: Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?

#75

Post by RajT88 »

1letterunixname wrote: post #61
RajT88 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of CEO's at places I have worked didn't really make decisions. They schmooze the biggest customers. Constantly, 12-14 hours a day.

It's also on them to manage, handle, and be responsible for everything. Walk a mile in their shoes and then try say it's so "easy" honestly.

I certainly wasn't suggesting they had an easy job. I agree it's quite a hard job.

Just that it's not always the job some people think it is.

Re: Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?

#76

Post by vitaflo »

coffeemug wrote: post #38
zomgbbq wrote: post #25

Atari in 1983 went from the leader in video game production to completely imploding. In 1979, four of their best programmers left after demanding equity in the sales and were refused. Their CEO Ray Kassar famously said, "You’re no more important to those projects than the person on the assembly line who put them together. You’re a dime a dozen. You’re not unique. Anybody can do ­a ­cartridge.". They left and formed A…

Is there a book on this you can recommend?

This is all laid out in the Nov 28, 1983 edition of InfoWorld Magazine.

Re: Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?

#77

Post by lvspiff »

reciprocity wrote: post #49
jzig wrote: post #44

You heard it here first - The Johns Hopkins Hospital. They would never admit their problems due to the culture, but I predict a devastating and irreversible brain drain in the next two years.

Could you please elaborate further?

not OP but work in healthcare. The culture of leadership in healthcare is frustrating. It's very political with everyone having their own agendas and fiefdoms. Cap it off with ever changing Govt regulations and you end up with a never ending cycle of audits, crazy ideas, and projects that go no where because the vendors are so far behind they don't understand anything. For the last year I worked on a scheduling system that got absolutely nowhere, a million $ investment in surgery center equipment that was not compatible with our current software, and the always fun rotation of passwords on over 1000 servers in 3 months that were mostly manual because the vendors all charge for an SOW to do that (oh yeah this is a YEARLY activity).

Re: Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?

#78

Post by 300bps »

MikeF_323 wrote: post #3

Borland. I worked there up until the mid 90s and then was recruited by Microsoft. They picked off all the great talent leaving barely any competent engineers left. I alongside a ton of other engineers were wined and dined and given a hell of an offer we couldn't refuse. It was insane, I should write a book honestly. I miss those days, it was the wild west of tech.

I should write a book honestly.

Please do! Turbo-C 1.5 and Borland C++ were two of my all time favorite programming tools.

I just got done reading Commodore, A Company on the Edge and would love to read about Borland/Microsoft back in the day.

Re: Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?

#79

Post by floatinglotus »

jarym wrote: post #5
MikeF_323 wrote: post #3

Borland. I worked there up until the mid 90s and then was recruited by Microsoft. They picked off all the great talent leaving barely any competent engineers left. I alongside a ton of other engineers were wined and dined and given a hell of an offer we couldn't refuse. It was insane, I should write a book honestly. I miss those days, it was the wild west of tech.

I wonder what makes a company poach like this vs do an aquihire

Cisco poached all of the server sales team from HO when they launched UCS. This caused a major problem within Cisco because that HP sales team (and engineers) were so absolutely atrocious that it ruined Cisco internally for almost 10 years.

Re: Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?

#80

Post by danieltanfh95 »

xwdv wrote: post #74
denkmoon wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically however modern day Activision has the exact same attitude of Atari that caused their founding.

It’s justified though. Games are basically a solved problem these days, and the developers of today are most of the time just building on abstractions and best practices that didn’t exist during Atari’s time. Once a particular domain of software becomes sufficiently mature, there is no real opportunity for heroic programmers to emerge who become too valuable to replace. Eventually more people emerge who are just as g…

I very much doubt that. There's a reason why innovation in games often happen, entertainment is not an easy problem to solve, with no set quantity to achieve
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