Ask HN: Where are laid off employees gathering?

Post by JohnFen » Mon, Feb 20, 2023, 6:21 PM UTC

harshalizee wrote: post #43

throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #14

It just occurred to me that so many people were laid off, we could start the world's largest software co-op (and arguably one of the largest tech orgs, period). We could build software products that every industry needs, that every worker owns a part of and can vote on org-wide decisions. Literally everyone you need was laid off... Tech people, business people, marketing, sales, etc. We just need a forum and some vol…

I always thought having a "guild" like Hollywood does or something similar would be a great boon to empower tech workers. Of course, it wouldn't be 1:1 mapping, but a collective tech union-like open institution would go far in leveraging against hostile employers. CEOs get golden parachutes on signing. It's time tech workers start demanding what their exit package looks like in case of layoffs/reductions against thei…

Post by JohnFen » Mon, Feb 20, 2023, 6:22 PM UTC

sahila wrote: post #44

asim wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always surmised that this was the only way to compete with Google and others. Even if you had 10k engineers, heck 1000 engineers who did it, it would be a formidable force. But actually doing it. That's the hard part.

The number of engineers isn’t the limiting factor competing against google, it’s the innovation/talent. While most engineers even at google aren’t working on hard problems, there’s a few who’re solving distributed computing/gfs/page rank/etc and those individuals are definitely not being laid off. The others use their tools to solve business problems.

Post by brodouevencode » Mon, Feb 20, 2023, 6:23 PM UTC

harshalizee wrote: post #43

throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #14

It just occurred to me that so many people were laid off, we could start the world's largest software co-op (and arguably one of the largest tech orgs, period). We could build software products that every industry needs, that every worker owns a part of and can vote on org-wide decisions. Literally everyone you need was laid off... Tech people, business people, marketing, sales, etc. We just need a forum and some vol…

I always thought having a "guild" like Hollywood does or something similar would be a great boon to empower tech workers. Of course, it wouldn't be 1:1 mapping, but a collective tech union-like open institution would go far in leveraging against hostile employers. CEOs get golden parachutes on signing. It's time tech workers start demanding what their exit package looks like in case of layoffs/reductions against thei…

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Feb 20, 2023, 6:28 PM UTC

flat-pluto wrote: post #4

Blind[1] is a decent community to get a glimpse into what employees truly feel about employers, get referrals and overall tech career advice. It can get rather toxic and troll-ey at times, but you can filter that out to focus on the useful stuff. [1] - https://www.teamblind.com/

Post by Vibgyor5 » Mon, Feb 20, 2023, 6:31 PM UTC