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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?

#291

Post by blarg1 »

ethbr0 wrote: post #87
mud_dauber wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife (ER/ICU nursing) walked away from a 25 yr career. She ended up in the kitchen of an upscale grocery store - still working with her hands for 1/3 the salary. (Granted, we could withstand the financial hit.) She would still come home bone-tired after being on her feet for a shift - but much more interested in the work. Not having to deal with the public was another big benefit -the epidemic turned too many peop…

Interesting factoid: "computer programmer" + "nurse" are one of the most common spousal profession pairings. Per a recent HN link/study.

That's my parents :)

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

#292

Post by andersonmvd »

kkarpkkarp wrote: post #285
senko wrote: 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.

> Imagine any software company CEO nowadays saying that out loud, no matter what they privately thought. Comarch CEO famous quote: "any developer could be replaced with finite number of interns" This is Polish software company (quite big, one of the biggest) and since this quote went public, they don't have best reputation among developers. You go to work there only if you are actually intern fresh after uni.

Do you have a source? I couldn't find it in English at least

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

#293

Post by reaperducer »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #194
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…

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…

If they've shipped, they can find more money people any time they want.

Quotation of the month. Devs should have this knitted into a pillow in their cubicles.

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

#294

Post by wikfwikf »

diob wrote: post #183
walrus01 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Video game studios taking advantage of young, naive people who will burn themselves out working unpaid overtime for the privilege of working for a game studio? I'm absolutely shocked, shocked I tell you! Some of them probably get 50 applicants for every position they advertise. It's a meat grinder.

Video game developers (and working class in general) desperately needs to unionize, young folks are too naive to realize they're working towards chronic health conditions.

My sister is a vet. She works in a normal vet practice in our city dealing with mainly cats and dogs. Once I asked her why she doesn't work as a vet in the zoo, an extremely prestigious and wealthy institution with zoological research, wide variety of animals, etc. She just said that all young vets want to be a vet in the zoo. So they have much worse pay and conditions than other vet jobs.

Video game developers don't have terrible conditions and relatively low pay because of some anomalous lack of bargaining power which can be fixed by unionization. They have lots of bargaining power, most of which they use to choose the industry they work in. There are lots of young men who want to work in games, and far fewer who want to work in financial software. So pay and conditions are far worse in games, to the point where supply meets demand in each type of development work.

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

#295

Post by conjectures »

ClassyJacket wrote: post #239
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They asked very politely for you to clarify some details after they tried themselves but were unable to verify it by looking it up. Your hostility is unwarranted and rude. People are not psychic, it was quite reasonable for them to ask.

Actually I sympathise with this response. Getting tired myself of people larping as fact checkers and professional skeptics.

Not enough detail in someone's response? Here are some ideas:

1. Ask moar polite. Not, "I don't think the story adds up."

2. Assume the story is yet true and go to prove it to your satisfaction. Post the links and thank op for the interesting nerd snipe.

3. Enter the proposition into your mental database with some lower level of confidence and move on.

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

#296

Post by a-dub »

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…

i thought there was an industrywide videogame crash in the early 80s that was blamed on the atari consoles being too open. (everyone was making cartridges, even companies like ralston-purina, quality fell under the flooded market and consumers gave up).

my understanding is that this gave rise to nintendo's tight control over developer licensees while atari was sold off and pivoted to home computers (specifically the st line) under jack tramiel.

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

#297

Post by Ziomislaw »

andersonmvd wrote: post #292
kkarpkkarp wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine any software company CEO nowadays saying that out loud, no matter what they privately thought. Comarch CEO famous quote: "any developer could be replaced with finite number of interns" This is Polish software company (quite big, one of the biggest) and since this quote went public, they don't have best reputation among developers. You go to work there only if you are actually intern fresh after uni.

Do you have a source? I couldn't find it in English at least

I don't think there are any online sources. I don't think I've met a polish coder that wanted to work for them. Some companies won't even hire a candidate that spent more than a year at Comarch (they would argue - if a candidate could withstand that company for that long there must be something wrong with them).

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

#298

Post by tehCorner »

My first job was in a company fully dedicated to milk the European H2020 projects' cow. Their business model was to offer the lowest budget on a series of projects and then have a bunch of interns like me do all the work on their own with very bad conditions (very few were actually even paid and we didn't have right for holidays).

At some point we all realized the profit the company was making with us and demanded better conditions, they rejected our claims and we planned to leave all at time they had to deliver the projects and get paid. Nothing got delivered, they didn't get paid and just went out of business.

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

#299

Post by ethbr0 »

midoridensha wrote: post #282
ethbr0 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sympathetic to your point, but if your problem is "We don't have enough critical care nurses to provide care", then maybe don't do things that turn away nurses? Not saying it's acceptable or to be encouraged, but desperate times, lesser evil, etc.

So you're ok with incompetent nurses? Not me.

The perfect is the enemy of the good.

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

#300

Post by retcore »

Ziomislaw wrote: post #297
andersonmvd wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a source? I couldn't find it in English at least

I don't think there are any online sources. I don't think I've met a polish coder that wanted to work for them. Some companies won't even hire a candidate that spent more than a year at Comarch (they would argue - if a candidate could withstand that company for that long there must be something wrong with them).

>- if a candidate could withstand that company for that long there must be something wrong with them

Or just being exposed to a architecturally dysfunctional organization breeds negative behaviour and mentality.

Privately I consider this kind of behaviour espoused by executive management to clearly qualify as harmful to society surpassing criminal threshold. This needs concerted study however to form the basis of anything more than a grizzled opinion.

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