Earlier quoted context omitted.
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. What prevented them from offering bad deals that are common today? Some examples I've seen: - give lots of equity, but vesting over long timelines - give no refre…
Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?
431–440 of 508 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?
#432Lots of small companies have this, since they often don't have any crosstraining or internal documentation of processes. Once a person leaves (quit, died, sick, whatever) there is no one else who knows what they were doing or how it got done.
It's basically the same mentality when they either not backup or they never test the backups are working.
Re: Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?
#433Earlier 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.
But games are not a solved problem. There are multiple overlapping reasons why.
One is that gamedevs often just don't do the research. Why would they? The deadlines loom, the milestones have to be delivered, nobody cares if it's a hacky mess right now, surely management will give us time to fix it once they realize that it's broken--but if we don't deliver anything, the publisher cuts our funding.
This overlaps with scheduling and management issues. It turns out that writing good software takes up time[1], and the problem with games in particular is that they don't make money until they're released.
You don't write games like you write business software, where the other company paying for your milestones is the company that's going to use the software; that company usually has a revenue stream even without your software, so they don't have to care as much. For a game, though, there IS no revenue stream until the game launches. Every year that a game is in development without a release is a loss, and that pisses the board of directors right the fuck off, so that means the game needs to be out ASAP.
Because of this, games are often not given enough room in the development schedule to be made correctly. There's no time for research, testing, planning, or any of the other important parts of software engineering--we have to write this code NOW, or it doesn't ship. And if you read that source I linked in the footnote, you'll know that this produces rotten software.
This is compounded by the kind of one-upsmanship that is created by such an environment--leading to a phrase I've heard from friends in other companies: "Very optimistic people who are no longer with the company made this decision". You get into a situation where people made promises to impress the publisher, claiming that they can turn out a game in an impossible timeframe, and that got them fired--but now you're stuck cleaning up the mess, and the publisher has already wasted a lot of money on the years spent thinking it wasn't a mess.
Mix in the siloing of information (because all of this shit is proprietary) and, despite all of the problems being solved on paper, nobody's solved video games.
Re: Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?
#434Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
My lawyer advised me not to reveal my handicap during any interview process. it really is about the skillset. It becomes a bonus for the company if HR finds out, but not necessarily for the line management. Problem is Google does not segregate such sensitive info (race, sex, handicap) between the hiring team and its HR. Google, however, elected not to use email and I am unwilling to reveal the real reason for me call…
Also not sure how google HR could firewall obvious disability from the hiring team if they are at all involved in the interview.
Re: Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?
#435I won't say shut down exactly, but I used to work for a small consultancy that was acquired by a huge corporate consulting firm (which made the news a year or two ago for a large contract they'd failed miserably on). Within a year or so of the acquisition there was a trickle of departures that eventually turned into a mass exodus. There's almost no one left in the org who was part of the original company at this poin…
Except management who were made Partners I assume? Every time this happens, the good ones leave immediately, the ones looking at career progression stay for 2-3 years, and the shit ones stay for good, as they ultimately fail upwards into management if they don't get fired long enough.
Re: Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?
#436Earlier quoted context omitted.
What an interesting story. It made me look up how medal of honor started. Could you clarify a few things? I don't think the story adds up. Wikipedia has the followin information. Medal of Honor was made by DreamWorks interactive. [..] Filmmaker Steven Spielberg Spielberg founded DreamWorks Interactive in 1995. [1] And: Danger Close Games (formerly DreamWorks Interactive LLC and EA Los Angeles) was an American video g…
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…
Then, you'll be reprimanded for pointing it out, asking you to "not do that here."
I wish moderation would curtail this obnoxious behavior, because I see HN as a place where experts can detail their experience, and over the years I see more and more amateur butt in or sealioning behavior take place, and people I know have left over it.
Re: Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?
#437Earlier quoted context omitted.
My lawyer advised me not to reveal my handicap during any interview process. it really is about the skillset. It becomes a bonus for the company if HR finds out, but not necessarily for the line management. Problem is Google does not segregate such sensitive info (race, sex, handicap) between the hiring team and its HR. Google, however, elected not to use email and I am unwilling to reveal the real reason for me call…
I see, it seems like choosing to not reveal your handicap during the interview process is a major challenge to getting the accommodations you want during the hiring process. Also not sure how google HR could firewall obvious disability from the hiring team if they are at all involved in the interview.
Of course, I am unwilling to find out because my priorities lies elsewhere but if and when I learn of the next Deaf applicant that got turned away because of lack of direct call support, then my priority of my legal team will change.
Federal law says accommodation must be made … after the hire. No need to tip your hand earlier.
Re: Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?
#438Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was a British project management firm and it was the first and only time I ever experienced anything like that. It wouldn't be the most ideal situation for me, but they seem eager and happy to be there. I don't believe it should be compared to slavery since they chose to be there and they were paid well for their time. I don't imagine there was any other way to house that many individuals on Antigua. There certain…
> It was a British project management firm and it was the first and only time I ever experienced anything like that. It wouldn't be the most ideal situation for me, but they seem eager and happy to be there. What was the name of the project management firm? I am curious how you determined that they seemed eager and happy to be there. > I don't believe it should be compared to slavery since they chose to be there and…
I determined they were happy and eager because I spent each evening with them eating and watching soccer. I was down there during Christmas, and Liat airlines happened to go on strike so I was stranded there for 3 additional days. They made me feel very welcomed. I would spend the evening with them and then walk the ~2 miles back to the small house that was rented for me.
I don't know how much all of them were paid, but the framers were making a weekly salary of $750 IIRC (or so they claimed) and that was beyond a decent wage 15 years ago. Especially considering all of their expenses were paid. I flew down there on my own with all of my personal tools, did most of the work to secure a temp work visa on my own, and I only pulled in about $1250 per week back then for work that required quite a bit more skill than rough framing.
Re: Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?
#439Earlier quoted context omitted.
It works well enough that the unvaccinated are grossly over-represented in the ICUs and in the death stats. You have to be particularly math illiterate to not recognize that the vaccine does, in fact, work.
For elderly people, sure. For younger? Not so much. It's not helping them very much. I'm not saying it's nothing, but it's not necessary to require it to work as a nurse. The worst part, of course, is the short time that it works. I've seen places where if you got vaccinated 2 years ago, you are golden. Had covid a month ago? A pariah. That is not based on good science, that's just obedience.
> Almost All Teens in ICU With COVID Were Unvaccinated: Study
https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/2022011...
> Third of teens hospitalized for COVID-19 need ICU care; CDC chief urges youth to get vaccinated
https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/public-health/third-of...
> Throughout the periods of Delta and Omicron predominance, hospitalization rates remained lower among fully vaccinated adolescents aged 12–17 years than among unvaccinated adolescents.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7107e4.htm
> COVID-19 vaccines for kids: What you need to know
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/i...
> Over the past month, half of the children admitted to Advocate Aurora hospitals with COVID-19 were under the age of 5 years old … 25 percent of pediatric COVID-19 patients at Advocate hospitals are requiring care in the intensive care unit … “And I would say almost 100 percent of our patients in the ICU are unvaccinated”
https://news.yahoo.com/25-pediatric-covid-patients-icu-18403...
Shame on you.
Re: Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?
#440Earlier quoted context omitted.
Noncompetes are pretty toothless, even illegal in several jurisdictions. Even then, a company with money and clout to poach talent like that can also stand up for you if your failing ex-employer chooses to lash out.
>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…
> Not true.
Sure, if you delete the "in several jurisdictions". But when you read the entire sentence, then what I said is correct.