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Goodbye Auth0

joshcanhelp.com

61–70 of 281 posts

Re: Goodbye Auth0

#61
post #52

Do a lot of companies actually fire people via email? That seems very cold! Most of the companies I've worked for they will call you into a meeting with your boss and HR and then have security walk you out after gathering your things. Not ideal, but at least has a human element. If this person was remote then it could at least be done via phone.

Once I got laid off via 1:1 call. Once I got laid off via a mass call with HR, they canned my entire department at once (300+ people). Once I got laid off via bulk bcc'd email because I was on vacation and missed the last-minute mass call with HR.

This has never happened to me, but I am absolutely 100% positive some companies just shut your access off, send you an email to an account you can't log into any more, and move on without a second thought.

Re: Goodbye Auth0

#62
post #36

This bit at the end: > and learned an enormous amount about what it means to build and run a people-first company Seems at odds with this bit at the beginning: > And then it happened, I got the email. Slack didn't work. My laptop restarted and came back with accounts missing. It really, actually happened. And even though the writing seemed to be on the wall, I was still caught a bit off guard. This industry (not spec…

It has nothing to do with being "people-first" or not. Leaving terminated employees with access to sensitive systems is poor security practice.

You trusted them with that access yesterday, and they are not being fired for cause (eg. stealing company secrets), so why don't you trust them today?

This sort of thing only really happens in US companies (see lots of other comments in this thread on this), and maybe that should be a clue this isn't "security practice".

Re: Goodbye Auth0

#63
post #4

I don’t get it why the US company layoff culture is so different from what I’m familiar with, the European one. What are they afraid of that people need to be locked out? That one brings a gun to work? Here you get laid off, get a notice, are expected to continue working for a while (but depending on your work ethic you’ll take it easy), consume your remaining PTO, complain to your coworkers about what happened durin…

Not sure which part of Europe you are referencing, but from the layoffs I've seen and heard of (DACH) the procedure was always to lock the person out immediately after the layoff call/meeting. If that's good or bad is rather subjective, personally I would rather walk out the door right after. One might have enough time to send their farewells, but that's about it - you are still getting payed until the end of the not…

> you often also have to sign an NDA

you don't have to, that they arm wrest you, sure, but you don't have to do anything

Re: Goodbye Auth0

#64
post #4

I don’t get it why the US company layoff culture is so different from what I’m familiar with, the European one. What are they afraid of that people need to be locked out? That one brings a gun to work? Here you get laid off, get a notice, are expected to continue working for a while (but depending on your work ethic you’ll take it easy), consume your remaining PTO, complain to your coworkers about what happened durin…

In some parts of Europe, it is very common to do “mutual termination”, since you cannot easily fire someone just on a whim. If you use the “redundancy” excuse, companies are usually prohibited from hiring again on the same position for 6 months. If you want to fire someone and not face this, there’s a very detailed process of what you have to do, before you can justify termination (documented first warning to the employee, steps they need to take to improve, second warning, proof that they didn’t so what was asked of them, etc).

Virtually no one goes through this, and they opt for mutual termination, and generally a person can negotiate a severance package for their signature (I have seen examples of people negotiating almost a year’s salary as severance), and they are out immediately.

But this is also a scare tactic and people get caught by surprise and sign anything, sometimes without any severance. During this past year, as mass layoffs were happening in waves, people got more informed about this and were smarter in negotiating their exits.

Re: Goodbye Auth0

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has nothing to do with being "people-first" or not. Leaving terminated employees with access to sensitive systems is poor security practice.

You trusted them with that access yesterday, and they are not being fired for cause (eg. stealing company secrets), so why don't you trust them today? This sort of thing only really happens in US companies (see lots of other comments in this thread on this), and maybe that should be a clue this isn't "security practice".

Fired employees are much more likely to do something malicious, either by sabotaging systems or stealing proprietary data. The incentives are totally different.

Re: Goodbye Auth0

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the US no notice is legally required. Required or allowed? So in the US you can't give notice?

If you’re asking about resigning as an employee, it seems to work the same way: legally speaking, you could just stop showing up from one day to the next. I imagine most of the time people will have the courtesy of giving 1-2 weeks notice if possible.

It's not just courtesy. For many local companies, the business owners will know each other and will let other business owners know if someone quits without notice, and so it's harder to get hired after that if you don't give notice.

That said, sometimes the company will decide that they'd rather you just go, and they'll tell you not to bother giving notice and you can leave immediately. Someone in another comment said that was because of bad blood, but it's also because of risk and it's unlikely that a person will be very productive during a short notice period.

When there's a tricky hand-off, though, the company might ask for and incentivize a longer notice period, too... So nothing's written in stone.

Re: Goodbye Auth0

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has nothing to do with being "people-first" or not. Leaving terminated employees with access to sensitive systems is poor security practice.

You trusted them with that access yesterday, and they are not being fired for cause (eg. stealing company secrets), so why don't you trust them today? This sort of thing only really happens in US companies (see lots of other comments in this thread on this), and maybe that should be a clue this isn't "security practice".

> so why don't you trust them today

Because they heard about being laid off this morning and who knows what goes through the mind of a laid off person.

Re: Goodbye Auth0

#68
post #4

I don’t get it why the US company layoff culture is so different from what I’m familiar with, the European one. What are they afraid of that people need to be locked out? That one brings a gun to work? Here you get laid off, get a notice, are expected to continue working for a while (but depending on your work ethic you’ll take it easy), consume your remaining PTO, complain to your coworkers about what happened durin…

This is not the "European culture", which I am not sure exists as one on this issue. I have seen many times people be quickly "locked out" when being laid off. A term for this in the UK is "garden leave" because you're still paid but you're told not to work or come to the office anymore. As the case may be this makes sense in order to avoid any issues (from bad blood in the office to actively malicious actions) and,…

I've seen the 'bad blood' issue happen at a place I formerly worked at, that I refer to as 'MegaBank' (which isn't short of the truth). One was developer that seemingly left on good terms, but sneakily deleted a load of prod data as he was 'clearing down his inbox', and another that smashed up an office. Which was why, after the latter, the 'reduction in force' meetings were conducted on a separate floor with security guards.

Re: Goodbye Auth0

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Join. A. Union. https://utaw.tech/join/ also good. Think of it as having an employment lawyer on retainer for £8 a month. Well worth the money.

Unfortunately like student unions they don't keep the focus on their actual remit and delving into irrelevant politics: https://palestine.utaw.tech/advocate/

Not irrelevant at all, military technology is a large part of the UK's tech sector, and arms exports to countries with poor human rights records are in the billions.

Re: Goodbye Auth0

#70
post #5

Auth0 truly did an amazing job on hiring for culture, being transparent and living their values. The pre-acquisition Glassdoor reviews were astounding and back this up. For myself, working at auth0 was truly life altering. It was the first time I was in a long standing multi-national environment. It was the first time I was deeply exposed to other cultures and ways of living. As a side effect of working at Auth0, Thi…

Word choice can help your thinking. We all receive different struggles and decide how to respond.

The way you describe your 'luck', I read as "random good fortune" tinged with some guilt for being a 'have' when there are so many 'have-not's.

I prefer 'blessed', and not in the corny #blessed way, to describe my condition. To me, I was given much because so much is expected of me by God, by universe and by my higher self.

The extent to which I am blessed is a component of my calling to improve the total human condition.

If you lean in to that way of thinking, you obligate yourself and that can be as heavy a burden as you choose to make it. That choice and the freedom to decide how to fulfill that obligation are a part of the blessing.

To naval gaze and feel guilt is natural but fruitless stinkin' thinkin'. Motivating oneself with gratitude and humbling oneself by giving glory are ways to power through guilt.

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