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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?

#321

Post by ethbr0 »

scarface74 wrote: post #319
ethbr0 wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that there exist people who are vaccine skeptics and are trained to a higher skill in life support than I am. I try not to judge people completely based on a single characteristic.

That makes it worse not better. If my wife were pregnant, I also wouldn’t have her go to a doctor who “didn’t believe in abortion” under any circumstances even if her life were in danger.

That's a strawman, because it's a directly impactful choice at the time of care.

How does a person's personal vaccination status, ceterus paribus, affect the care you're likely to receive?

Outside of, you know, directly asking them "Should I get vaccinated?" and being told "I wouldn't"?

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

#322

Post by lultimouomo »

MikePlacid wrote: post #256
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. A daughter of my friend was not very happy in her job: a Silicon Valley company hired her as a security pro, but was using as a coder, which she hates. She was going to leave, but decided to wait ten months or so until her stock options vested. She and a big group of other engineers were fired right before the ves…

> She was going to leave, but decided to wait ten months or so until her stock options vested. She and a big group of other engineers were fired right before the vesting moment.

I'm not an expert in the Silicon Valley ethos, but to me it sounds that both your friend's daughter and the company were playing the same game: trying to extract the most value from the other party without actually having a long term commitment. I suppose she was not going around saying how much she hated the company and that she would have left as soon as it was convenient.

The company had the upper hand, but can she really complain?

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

#323

Post by gpderetta »

hackernewds wrote: post #307
Aloha wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shockley inadvertently by being an asshole created more wealth for more people possibly than any other single person.

That is like attributing the Big Bang to why inflation is at 8.6% currently.

Well, inflation[0] did in fact start shortly after the Big Bang.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_(cosmology)

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

#324

Post by justin66 »

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…

Atari collapsed under its own weight because of some pretty profound mismanagement, which led to massive layoffs. (you mentioned in another comment that engineers “left in an avalanche.” The word is “layoff”) There were plenty of extremely capable designers and engineers (and researchers) who were let go in a very short period of time, people who had not gone off to do their own thing. Atari was big.

If anything, other companies making good games for their platform aided them, and they were famously bad at seeing that. Engineers leaving to develop Atari software didn’t move the needle in terms of their collapse. Not giving individual credit on games is a tiny footnote in the book of things Atari management did wrong.

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

#325

Post by TrueSlacker0 »

nikau wrote: post #192
ipaddr wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many valid reasons for not wanting to take part in the covid vaccine experiment. The first long term studies are due in 2024. Whatever informed opinion you hold the studies haven't come out yet and you are taking a gamble. A gamble society encourages all to take and punishes those it can. If you can't staff your healthcare clinic or hospital because you fired experience doctors, nurses and staff there is a…

This is akin to my mechanic being anti oil change due to some conspiracy theories - I don't want them touching my car.

The car manufacturer states that the oil should be changed every 10k miles based on 100 years of research. The vaccine hasn't been through a long term study yet.

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

#326

Post by motoboi »

lultimouomo wrote: post #322
MikePlacid wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine any software company CEO nowadays saying that out loud, no matter what they privately thought. A daughter of my friend was not very happy in her job: a Silicon Valley company hired her as a security pro, but was using as a coder, which she hates. She was going to leave, but decided to wait ten months or so until her stock options vested. She and a big group of other engineers were fired right before the ves…

> She was going to leave, but decided to wait ten months or so until her stock options vested. She and a big group of other engineers were fired right before the vesting moment. I'm not an expert in the Silicon Valley ethos, but to me it sounds that both your friend's daughter and the company were playing the same game: trying to extract the most value from the other party without actually having a long term commitme…

Yes, she can complain.

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

#327

Post by ido »

a-dub wrote: post #296
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…

The story is more complex than that, Atari split in 2 (the games company and the consumer electronics company) and neither really exist anymore (and haven't for a long time now). But basically yes - they never replicated the success of the VCS and arcades stopped being a major part of the industry in the 90s. All of Atari's biggest hits were in the 70s and (early) 80s.

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

#328

Post by gpderetta »

pjmlp wrote: post #180
n0tth3dro1ds wrote: post #30

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 not illegal in the UK although there are some limits in time and space. You might still end up out of work for 6 months ore more. Worse they are sometime applied to relatively unskilled jobs.

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

#329

Post by wink »

lultimouomo wrote: post #322
MikePlacid wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine any software company CEO nowadays saying that out loud, no matter what they privately thought. A daughter of my friend was not very happy in her job: a Silicon Valley company hired her as a security pro, but was using as a coder, which she hates. She was going to leave, but decided to wait ten months or so until her stock options vested. She and a big group of other engineers were fired right before the ves…

> She was going to leave, but decided to wait ten months or so until her stock options vested. She and a big group of other engineers were fired right before the vesting moment. I'm not an expert in the Silicon Valley ethos, but to me it sounds that both your friend's daughter and the company were playing the same game: trying to extract the most value from the other party without actually having a long term commitme…

You are entitled to hate your job and still do what you're being asked. For lack of knowledge about more facts we should assume the friend was doing the job.

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

#330

Post by ido »

RajT88 wrote: post #58
readme wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the irony is that the CEO probably does less work than the assembly line worker

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 really depends on the company. It sounds like you were working at a B2B/enterprise company? But yeah, getting new business and/or funding is often a big part of the job. It doesn't meant they don't also make decisions - but I guess the bigger the company the fewer different roles the CEO is filling.
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