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

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331–340 of 508 posts

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

#331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think there's hostility on both sides here. "Could you clarify a few things?" is one thing, but "I don't think the story adds up" is a direct accusation of lying.

The tragedy of the written word between people that don't know each other. One could say "Could you clarify a few things?" in anger or "I don't think the story adds up" smiling and with a friendly tone. In writing the intention of the writer is in the mind of the reader.

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

#332
post #67

I have the inverse story; factory workers picketing outside. First day the owner of the company walks up to them and explains: this company is worth $X. The terrain (land) it occupies is worth $10X. Please get back to work.

That signals an extraordinarily inefficient use of land.

With land that valuable, and a land value tax/higher property taxes he'd have been run out of business years ago and replaced by one or more economically efficient companies.

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

#333
post #268
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think most job salaries can be linked directly to how much of a difference the employee can make. I think that the world's, or at least the US's, teachers are a glaring counterexample.

The problem is that the value that teachers create is hard to compute and hard to capture, so in the end, no one is willing to pay for it.

> no one is willing to pay for it

parents paying for private schools seem to be willing to pay that for their children

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

#334

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).

My mom, who's a programmer, once worked for Computer Sciences Corporation, which she jokingly referred to as "the whorehouse of the computer industry".

But she was just being charitable, because they were into so much more that just that!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Sciences_Corporation

>The company has been accused of breaching human rights by arranging several illegal rendition flights for the CIA between 2003 and 2006, which also has led to criticism of shareholders of the company, including the governments of Norway and Britain.

>The company has engaged in a number of activities that have resulted in legal action against it. These are:

>Its so called WorldBridge Service (Visa Services), which processed and issued millions of visa applications to enter Britain, did not involve British authorities.

>CSC was one of the contractors hired by the Internal Revenue Service to modernize its tax-filing system. They told the IRS it would meet a January 2006 deadline, but failed to do so, leaving the IRS with no system capable of detecting fraud. Its failure to meet the delivery deadline for developing an automated refund fraud detection system cost the IRS between US$200 million and US$300 million.

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

#335
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Games are basically a solved problem these days I... have you played games at all recently? Have you seen the recent major releases? BF2042, Cyberpunk, etc. Even the highest quality game studios (not the aforementioned) have trouble making good high quality releases, especially with consistency. Games are certainly not a solved problem.

people in the tech industry like to overestimate their own skills.

we see the same attitude in software industry - somethin' that has existed since the 60s that software is solved problem. yet everyone has difficulties in shippin' software that actually works whether that's titans like Apple / Microsoft to small mom and pop shops.

Games the difficulty is two-fold. 1: games are an art - and making art to good taste is a complex problem. 2. games are software - thereby suffering from problems encountered by the regular software industry etc lack of labour / resourcing etc

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

#336

Not shut down but my company is one of the top 3 largest in its sector, but it's third place. It has failed to transition to modern IT practices over and over again. Important ICs generating millions in value keep leaving because IT at this company is so frustrating to work in. There has been so much turnover few projects can deliver on any sort of timely basis. The stock just is going to continue to get hammered as…

Name and shame.

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

#337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 menta…

Moreover, people often forget that the poster probably took some time out of their life to chronicle something. Starting by acknowledging personal experience and their effort documenting it goes along way towards building a collaborative discussion.

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

#338
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Schmooze is a bit of a demeaning word, isn't it? If the CEO is learning from customers and helping the organization react accordingly, that sounds very valuable.

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

#339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't need to go on strike if there's an alternative employer available. They just need to quit. Going on strike turns these things from being focused on bad managers to focusing on intransigent employees. Leaving means the management needs fixing or changing.

I am not in nursing, but from what I have seen in corporate America: even when there is a lot of churn, bad managers always think everybody else is the problem.

Of course. But they don't assess themselves :)

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

#340
post #94
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's insane to me that this got downvoted. Medical exemptions are a thing. If you truly can't receive a certain vaccine, you should still be allowed to get whatever job you want. But I'm sorry, if you "don't believe in" vaccines in general, or certain specific vaccines that have - for reasons passing all comprehension - become extremely political, you should not be a healthcare provider.

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…

"There are many valid reasons for not wanting to take part in the covid vaccine experiment."

I will just ignore the full three phase trials on volunteers, because I am an antivaxer.

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