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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?

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could not imagine being a nurse or a teacher in the US right now. I wish they realized that they have the leverage and can go on strike. I imagine that's difficult for many of them as they most certainly need the income. A rock and a hard place. I always smile when I read about a nurse or teacher switching to a completely different career field and finding themselves more content.

It's sometimes illegal for teachers to even go on strike. My area had an incident where striking teachers were arrested and taken to jail.

In jail they won't come to work either. That sounds more like a scare tactic

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

#223
post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are also illegal in most European countries.

Nope. They're just in legal practice way more limited in scope. It has to be with a company that actually competes with the company you left.

Notice the most.

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

#224
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.". Imagine any software company CEO nowadays saying that out loud, no matter what they privately thought.

today they have their scrum masters whisper it in our ears at the daily stand up

no scrum mumbo:jumbo in daily meetings; only engineers

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

#225
post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are also illegal in most European countries.

Do you have a source on this? I am currently looking into the limitations on non-competes.

Not really, other than having discussed this issue several times with the union people throughout the years, and knowing for sure that in countries like Portugal, this is definitly not a thing, given how we jump between companies.

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

#226

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.

atari very much does not exist, the trademark/name has passed through like 3 or 4 different hands now. whatever corporate entity is now calling itself atari has absolutely no relationship to the original.

This is correct. Nolan Bushnell sold the brand to WMS Industries in 1996.

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

#227
post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are also illegal in most European countries.

They're not illegal in Germany, but the legal requirements are so onerous (50% salary paid for the duration of the non-compete) nobody does it. I believe it's similar in France.

Interesting, as given most of my clarification talks with Betriebsrat, I thought it wouldn't be valid in court, unless they can prove you are doing some kind of industrial spionage like working in exactly 1:1 competing product.

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

#228
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…

And let’s not forget that the great Woz and Jobs were once Atari employees who left to start a new company called Apple.

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

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gaming abounds with stories like this. A friend of mine went to work for a small game studio in Oklahoma that'd gotten some acclaim for their quake mod pack. They took that momentum and started on their own novel IP as a quake licensee. They made a ahem mildly successful game named Medal of Honor. Some time down the road, the owner of the studio didn't want to share the wealth. As a result the top programmers, design…

What an interesting story. It made me look up how medal of honor started. Could you clarify a few things? I don't think the story adds up. Wikipedia has the followin information. Medal of Honor was made by DreamWorks interactive. [..] Filmmaker Steven Spielberg Spielberg founded DreamWorks Interactive in 1995. [1] And: Danger Close Games (formerly DreamWorks Interactive LLC and EA Los Angeles) was an American video g…

Yes, I'm talking about 2015.

The first two Playstation only MoH games were not exactly failures, but they were little more than Goldeneye clones with WW2 themes.

The first PC game is really the start of what we think of as the Medal of Honor franchise proper.

The team that bailed founded Infinity Ward, which was the origin of Call of Duty, or at least the first like 8 games in the franchise.

So yes, my story does in fact check out. Which is because I lived it. My friend tried to get me to join the team for 2 years because he knew they were onto something, but I'd fled a childhood in Kansas to build a life on the west coast and wasn't looking to move back to Tulsa of all places. That proved to be a bad career decision but I'm ok with it as a life decision.

Can you have some self awareness of how annoying it is for you to adopt this skeptical fact checker tone when you have so little familiarity with the events and people involved you don't even really understand what to google for and which wikipedia articles to read?

Edit: I'm annoyed because if you tell someone their story doesn't check out, calling me a lair in this case as the story is direct personal experience, you probably need more of a basis for that claim than googling a wikipedia article about a story you'd never heard of 5 minutes ago.

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

#230
post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Noncompetes are pretty toothless Not true. They’re illegal in California, but in other US states where they are legal they can be quite toothful. I have seen several ex-employees of my prior company get sued and lose. It became a silent doctrine to just leave a two year gap on your public LinkedIn after working there. If you put anything in that period (the length of the non-compete), you were at risk of the CTO sui…

They are also illegal in most European countries.

They are illegal for pretty much all but the board members, and even then the salaries must be paid to enforce it.
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