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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?

#361

Post by JadeNB »

baud147258 wrote: post #333
badpun wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

Exactly—people aren't willing to pay for someone else's education, but everyone needs an education, so teachers who care enough that they are willing to teach for minuscule pay wind up squeezed between societal apathy and societal need.

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

#362

Post by eloisant »

gfxgirl wrote: post #210
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 agree 100% with much of the sentiment here that creators deserve respect and a cut of the spoils At the same time, it really depends.... I'm pretty confident that there are very few engineers at FAANG that can't be replaced. I'd also expect there are very few engineers at Epic, Activision, Blizzard, Naughty Dog, Sony, Rockstar, Ubisoft, Valve, etc... that can't be replaced. Sure, if 30%-70% of the team left on any…

Most developers working on products, not just at FAANG, can be replaced but it's very costly.

You need to find a developer in the specific niche he was competent. Not easy because there is a shortage of developers. Then he needs to get up to speed with the stack and the processes used in the company.

So in theory yes, engineers can be replaced. In practice it's costly, with no guarantee of getting the same productivity, and the process to find someone will leave you with one person less for many months. When you have competent engineers that you want to keep, the last thing to do is to play the "I don't need you anyway" card.

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

#363

Post by RuggedPineapple »

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…

Black Isle is another great example. Interplay was going under and selling off any IP of value to get some cash out of the end of the road. The staff, seeing the writing on the wall, quit more or less en masse and started Obsidian together. The name is even a bit of a pun- Obsidian, a black volcanic glass, is what you might expect a Black Isle to be made from.

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

#364

Post by eloisant »

shp0ngle wrote: post #204
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Atari still exists today. In 2018 I met Frédéric Chesnais in NY, and learned about the latest things related the company. Here's an interview I found from 2019. [0]. It seems that the current CEO is now Wade Rosen. [1] Company is still up and running. [0]: https://frenchamerican.org/interview-frederic-chesnais/ [1]: https://venturebeat.com/games/atari-ceo-wade-rosen-interview...

It’s just a shell that rents the name to whoever gives them the most, right? There is “atari NFT” and “atari blockchain casino”

Not really, it's a French video game company (Infogrames) that bought Atari when it was just a shadow of its former self and rebranded itself Atari.

Anyway no relation to the original Atary.

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

#365

Post by prepend »

eloisant wrote: post #354
pmontra wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's why you have to be extra careful when writing, especially in discussions with strangers.

That’s also why you have to be extra careful when reading, especially in discussions with strangers.

When I read something where the author sounds rude, I try to step back and think if there is another way to interpret it.

It’s unlikely that strangers will accept advice on writing styles, so I try to adapt my reading style while I wait for a perfect world.

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

#366

Post by joyfylbanana »

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…

> That studio owner literally made a billion dollar mistake by not simply being fair early on to the team. Never, ever, treat a team that has achieved rare success as replaceable cogs. If they've shipped, they can find more money people any time they want.

That wisdom applies to that specific industry. In gaming, the people you hire are the asset. However the same doesn't apply to all industries. Sometimes people are more and sometimes less replaceable. If you are running a fast food chain and manage to piss all your employees, yes, it is likely a problem, but if you hire new people and fix your behaviour it is likely that the business will continue to run as usual.

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

#367

Post by prepend »

bigie35 wrote: post #360
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…

Lately HN feels more like a bunch of lawyers quibbling over semantics... It gets really old, really fast. Whatever happened to assume positive intent?

> Whatever happened to assume positive intent?

I think positive intent is different from truth.

To make good decisions, I need to drill down to the truth of the situation. People can be super honest and be wrong or conflate ideas.

So for me, I work on being politely skeptical and assume it’s false until substantiated.

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

#368

Post by spaceprison »

tomblomfield wrote: post #41

Famously, the Traitorous Eight left Shockley to found Fairchild Semiconductor. This was essentially the origin story of Silicon Valley. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traitorous_eight https://www.amazon.co.uk/Power-Law-Venture-Capital-Disruptio...

PBS has a great documentary about silicon valley that goes into some of this.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/silicon...

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

#369

Post by TheCondor »

lvspiff wrote: post #77
reciprocity wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 syste…

MDs that don’t actually do doctoring tend to be very ineffective leaders and possibly just generally toxic. Not all, but there is a trend. I think it’s almost like how the best CEOs are a little sociopathic, something in med school or maybe the reason they go to med school makes them think they know everything and anything not medicine is trivial monkey work.

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

#370

Post by swyx »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #63

I worked for a company big enough to be in the HN headlines (sorry, have to stay somewhat anonymous) where development virtually stalled for a couple years after a mass exodus event. The CEO went on a rampage and fired some people on the spot for something they weren’t even responsible for, which destroyed the already fragile morale and created a steady exodus of good talent over a couple of years. It didn’t kill the…

i havent actually done this but just pointing out that with 55k HN karma and 7 years of HN comments, you're pseudonymous at best :) maybe if youre far enough from the company i'd give it like 5 years statute of limitations before you can start naming and shaming?
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