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Figure out who's leaving the company: dump, diff, repeat

rachelbythebay.com

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Re: Figure out who's leaving the company: dump, diff, repeat

#101
post #86
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen a company during WFH let a laid off employee (who asked) keep their access for an hour, to post a goodbye message. It's not good practice for all situations -- you need some trust, despite the stressful situation, when people tend to show character and weaknesses -- but in this case, it worked out. The departing employee posted a message of encouragement to the remaining people. Kind words and contact info…

You can get nearly the same result with less trust: let the employee draft a goodbye message and have the boss (or so) forward that to the other employees.

Good idea. Though I think the fact that they trusted the departing person, and the departing person delivered -- if it plays out that way -- is much more positive message than effectively implying that the company didn't trust the person.

The company letting a manager relay a message, with any censoring, is certainly better than the person having no way to get their contact info to people, and they might also say something nice for morale.

Re: Figure out who's leaving the company: dump, diff, repeat

#102
post #86
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen a company during WFH let a laid off employee (who asked) keep their access for an hour, to post a goodbye message. It's not good practice for all situations -- you need some trust, despite the stressful situation, when people tend to show character and weaknesses -- but in this case, it worked out. The departing employee posted a message of encouragement to the remaining people. Kind words and contact info…

You can get nearly the same result with less trust: let the employee draft a goodbye message and have the boss (or so) forward that to the other employees.

> A man moves from East Germany to Siberia, where he knows his letters will be censored. He establishes a code with his friends: anything written in blue ink is honest and true; anything written in red ink is false and only there to get the truth past the censors. A month goes by and the man’s friends receive a letter written in blue ink: “Everything is wonderful here. Stores are full of good food. Movie theaters show good films from the West. Apartments are large and luxurious. The only thing you cannot buy is red ink." [1]

[1] https://www.guernicamag.com/tomas-hachard-the-red-ink/

Re: Figure out who's leaving the company: dump, diff, repeat

#103
post #9

Layoffs in the WFH era are weird. Back in the day you had a pretty good idea of who got laid off because you saw them walking out the door with a box of their stuff. You could go up to them and say, "hey let's meet at $local_watering_hole and hang out". You could swap contact info if you didn't already have it. You could get closure. Now, one day a bunch of people just stop replying to email. You have a to wait a whi…

Watching people’s accounts go into deactivated status in Slack with no goodbye is sad. The most toxic boss I ever worked for would request access to former employee’s Slack accounts under the guise of looking for data to transition their job. Their accounts would periodically go green when he logged in as them. Spooky to see ex-coworker accounts go green and know the boss is scouring their private messages. I know co…

Fortunately in Europe what the said boss did is illegal and this can end with a criminal prosecution.

Re: Figure out who's leaving the company: dump, diff, repeat

#104
post #11

If you're going to run something like this, I thoroughly recommend using Git for it. You can have your cron do something like this: curl https://internal.corp/employees.txt > employees.txt git add employees.txt git commit -m "Automated: $(date -u)" || exit 0 The || exit 0 should ensure no errors even if there is nothing to commit Now you have a commit history of every change made to that source of information - just…

I've been seriously considering using Git for all sorts of oft-changing-but-rarely-majorly data. Lists of books in my bookshelves. The other problem is that I sorta want transactional-database features on top of these things. Git does this well. I also want fast indexing on parts. Git does not do this well. I am considering writing a "standard" for the dumping of sqlite to git, so that I can just delegate this out; A…

Would fossil fit this bill?

Somewhat git-compatible, based on sqlite3.

Re: Figure out who's leaving the company: dump, diff, repeat

#105
post #83
post #9

Layoffs in the WFH era are weird. Back in the day you had a pretty good idea of who got laid off because you saw them walking out the door with a box of their stuff. You could go up to them and say, "hey let's meet at $local_watering_hole and hang out". You could swap contact info if you didn't already have it. You could get closure. Now, one day a bunch of people just stop replying to email. You have a to wait a whi…

I've seen a company during WFH let a laid off employee (who asked) keep their access for an hour, to post a goodbye message. It's not good practice for all situations -- you need some trust, despite the stressful situation, when people tend to show character and weaknesses -- but in this case, it worked out. The departing employee posted a message of encouragement to the remaining people. Kind words and contact info…

Surprisingly enough, as toxic as Amazon is, after I got Amazoned and made my choice to “leave Amazon and get a nice severance” instead of “try to work through the PIP and still get fired and only get a third of the severance amount”, they let me stay for a week to finish up a customer project. I worked in Professional Services.

I told them that I really wanted to finish the work for a customer (large state organization) because I liked the customer. They let me stay for a week.

Of course that was bullshit, I took the time to have back channel communications with the customer to see if they would hire me as an independent consultant after I left and to start interviewing.

I’m sure they would have. But I gor a full time offer less than two weeks later.

Re: Figure out who's leaving the company: dump, diff, repeat

#106
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been seriously considering using Git for all sorts of oft-changing-but-rarely-majorly data. Lists of books in my bookshelves. The other problem is that I sorta want transactional-database features on top of these things. Git does this well. I also want fast indexing on parts. Git does not do this well. I am considering writing a "standard" for the dumping of sqlite to git, so that I can just delegate this out; A…

Maybe this https://github.com/dolthub/dolt

Dolt is really close and yet just doesn't feel right; I don't want to "commit" between transactions, I want every transaction to be a commit.

Re: Figure out who's leaving the company: dump, diff, repeat

#107

Not a WFH thing. This is a USA thing!! Edit: OP said "Layoffs in the WFH era are weird" Yes they are, but people here don't suddenly go offline quite as weird is what I was trying to get at. Here in Sweden if you are FTE there is usually a 1-3 month layoff period (upppsägningstid) where you work and get paid still. At the end of the period you leave. People usually email the team and even the entire company with "hey…

When Europeans quit their jobs, they're often required to stay on for 1-3 months, as well, and many if not most employers actually hold employees to that when they get new jobs. In the US you can leave same day, and it's considered rude but meh; 2 weeks is almost always fine unless you're super senior.

We also make 2-3x what you do for exactly the same work, sometimes up to 5-10x in tech.

There are tradeoffs, but in my experience European workers are more likely to wish that they could come to the US to work than vice versa. When contracting in Europe I've had clauses written into my contracts on multiple occasions that forbid me from disclosing my rate even to the people managing my work, because I was making more in one month than they (as senior project leads) did in a year...

Re: Figure out who's leaving the company: dump, diff, repeat

#108
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if the company is worried about access can't it just pay the employee the 1-3 months without allowing them to work, even in Sweden?

I work with identities. I've worked in Spain, France and uk. 99% of lay off are agreed and there is no need for account termination, my current company let's you have your account open 30 days after your last day, so you can move data out to your next company.

Sorry, move data out ?

Can you expand on exactly what this means, as I imagine most companies would not want their data moved out to another company.

Re: Figure out who's leaving the company: dump, diff, repeat

#109
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watching people’s accounts go into deactivated status in Slack with no goodbye is sad. The most toxic boss I ever worked for would request access to former employee’s Slack accounts under the guise of looking for data to transition their job. Their accounts would periodically go green when he logged in as them. Spooky to see ex-coworker accounts go green and know the boss is scouring their private messages. I know co…

Fortunately in Europe what the said boss did is illegal and this can end with a criminal prosecution.

What? First, Europe isn't a single country and there are large difference between legal systems.

Second, what you said is just plain wrong in at least one. In France (which is known for strict worker protections) the employer can go through any employee's mailbox or files on their work computer/account provided 1. that the messages/files in question aren't clearly marked as personal 2. that the conditions for the access are laid down in advance with proper notice. When an employee is let go, they need to be given time to empty their mailboxes etc of private correspondence or files. https://www.cnil.fr/fr/lacces-la-messagerie-dun-salarie-en-s...

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