Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–410 of 508 posts

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

#401

Post by yamtaddle »

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?

Intense levels of plausibly-deniable passive aggression, and absolutely god-awful intent being treated as something better to the detriment of discourse thanks to the "assume positive intent" rule, are what I consider some of the core defining features of the HN experience.

I dunno if it does any good, but these days when I smell ill intent beneath the surface of a "just asking questions" post I just flag the bastards rather than trying to help them by answering. Responding is simply feeding trolls, and HN threads are full of that sort of thing. Argumentative jerks who are just trying to argue, while staying just civil enough that they don't get slapped down (not too quickly, anyway).

My kingdom for sigs and blocklists.

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

#402

Post by reportingsjr »

BurningFrog wrote: post #377
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...

Did Shockley die though?

Shockley Semiconductor, the company? Yes, it eventually closed because of this. It took a decade of them floundering, but it did happen.

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

#403

Post by screye »

> if half the staff left a nursing home, it would be forced to shut down

This is only true when the rank and file employees have a relationship with the clients. National nursing home chains will be just fine if they churn through 50% of their staff. A local mom-n-pop business that runs because each of the employees has a strong relationship with the entire community will not survive the damage to reputation. Rank and file programmers are replaceable.

On the other hand, an artistic endeavor without the creative source will fail (see new Metal Gear games or new Star wars movies). A field that needs technical breakthroughs will fail unless you have the 1 of the 10 people capable of making that breakthrough happen. A small-ish company that relies solely on visionaries as their identity will die without the visionary (Jobs 1.0)

I can't think of many other companies where the rank-n-file are not replaceable. Slow death is always possible, but the above scenarios practically guarantee failure.

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

#404

Post by s1artibartfast »

egberts1 wrote: post #392
_nalply wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the good ones left when they realized what was going on and the mediocre ones stayed. I, being Deaf, would have been forced to stay with the mediocre ones because interviewing is difficult for me. I am lucky that I don't need a job now.

As I’ve posted my story below, I also wanted to point out that I was uniquely Deaf, but nonetheless a rockstar programmer then. Interviewing is hard. Notably Google’s digital interviewing where they insist that they call you for an interview. I aced all their backend questions so they kept trying to call me until I insisted that I call them. Then it went silent. Their loss. This approach doesn’t leave us Deafies a wh…

Can you play audio explaining the situation asking for a call back number or email?

I imagine this situation comes up frequently and not only with hiring.

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

#405

Post by dahart »

echelon wrote: post #191
dahart wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Stop perpetuating shit you read on some gamer forum Whoa brother, maybe cool your jets and don’t make hasty assumptions. I was a lead game dev for a decade. I didn’t work on Call of Duty, but I did work on some large titles, and I did put in two decades of work hours in one decade. The studio I worked at was always perpetually on the edge of closing, and that was used to push people to work harder. I also worked an…

I would love to read a write-up of your experiences if you have written them down somewhere or plan to do so in the future.

Hey thanks! I actually never even thought of writing it up outside of here, I’ll have to let that thought steep for a while. I give talks to college game dev and CS classes every now and then, and there are quite a few tidbits over the years I’ve added in comments here on HN. Maybe someday I could smoosh it together into something coherent. I’m just not sure it wouldn’t be crushingly boring. :P

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

#406

Post by colordrops »

Not really that worthy of note, but I worked at a small startup in SF in 2014 with 2 founders and 3 employees. We all quit within 2 days. It was uncoordinated and coincidental.

The founders were flabbergasted. I spoke with the others and the reasoning was the same. We were all very seasoned senior engineers, but the founders didn't trust us and handed us kanban tickets like short order cooks because they had PhDs. It was demoralizing.

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

#407

Post by pdntspa »

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.

This isn't wikipedia; claims on these forums do not need to be substantiated with fact. I agree with the sibling comments that there is too much fact-checking here and it is rude AF

Storytelling does not require that one cites their sources. Especially when that source is, "I lived it"

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

#408

Post by ido »

yamtaddle wrote: post #401
bigie35 wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Intense levels of plausibly-deniable passive aggression, and absolutely god-awful intent being treated as something better to the detriment of discourse thanks to the "assume positive intent" rule, are what I consider some of the core defining features of the HN experience. I dunno if it does any good, but these days when I smell ill intent beneath the surface of a "just asking questions" post I just flag the bastard…

The problem is that your figurative sense of smell may not be correct. It really is quite easy to mistake an honest question or assertion as passive aggression or sarcasm in text form.

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

#409

Post by samorozco »

colordrops wrote: post #406

Not really that worthy of note, but I worked at a small startup in SF in 2014 with 2 founders and 3 employees. We all quit within 2 days. It was uncoordinated and coincidental. The founders were flabbergasted. I spoke with the others and the reasoning was the same. We were all very seasoned senior engineers, but the founders didn't trust us and handed us kanban tickets like short order cooks because they had PhDs. It…

I have a very similar story. Small startup, 6 developers, 4 other employees and 2 founds. They fired an employee for lack of output and then all but 1 developer left the company.

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

#410

Post by BurningFrog »

reportingsjr wrote: post #402
BurningFrog wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did Shockley die though?

Shockley Semiconductor, the company? Yes, it eventually closed because of this. It took a decade of them floundering, but it did happen.

OK. Close enough!
Post reply on HN