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

The Layoff

xeiaso.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 175 posts

Re: The Layoff

#151

Post by mgkimsal »

akudha wrote: post #84
vasco wrote: post #13

"We won't share a list of the affected employees because some of them might not want the information to be public" was the biggest bullshit I've heard recently - no fiction needed. Discovering that people you worked with for years have been laid off only because you randomly notice their slack is deactivated has to be one of 2024s gifts to humanity.

2024? It happened to me in 2020, right after Covid. I was unable to reach a colleague, thought he was sick (not unusual, he had health issues often). Until the “standup” rolled around and we were told he was laid off. Apparently he himself found out after most of his logins were shut off. Corporate world is as gutless as it is soulless

I found out I was let go around 3:15 on a Thursday because the person sitting across from me emailed me something, then told me it just bounced back as 'undeliverable'. 3 minutes later someone showed up with a box and gave me 5 minutes to pack my things. This was 1999. Corporate world has been gutless/soulless for a long time ;)

Re: The Layoff

#152

Post by erhaetherth »

Spooky23 wrote: post #60
vasco wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We did the same informally with Slack, but it's a great tip :) There's even some automations around leadership calendar meeting titles+invitees that I might or not have heard about. If leadership wants to play games people can play games back.

If the politics internally are nutty enough you can do alot with this sort of skullduggery… It only works if it’s secret or the folks are oblivious. I worked at a place where this sort of thing was done. It became practice to setup fake meetings or conduct real meetings with vague titles as a misdirection. The other scenario is if you let consultants inside the firewall. Big 5 guys always gather intel on org charts a…

Vague titles are bad news 99% of the time.

I say 99 not 100 because a certain VP in my org chart likes to schedule meetings called "News and updates" which is actually very innocent. Maybe he's playing the long con.

Re: The Layoff

#153

Post by resolutebat »

erhaetherth wrote: post #152
Spooky23 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the politics internally are nutty enough you can do alot with this sort of skullduggery… It only works if it’s secret or the folks are oblivious. I worked at a place where this sort of thing was done. It became practice to setup fake meetings or conduct real meetings with vague titles as a misdirection. The other scenario is if you let consultants inside the firewall. Big 5 guys always gather intel on org charts a…

Vague titles are bad news 99% of the time. I say 99 not 100 because a certain VP in my org chart likes to schedule meetings called "News and updates" which is actually very innocent. Maybe he's playing the long con.

There's nothing worse than an unscheduled meeting with HR called "Sync" appearing in your calendar at short notice.

Re: The Layoff

#154

Post by pokerface_86 »

midasuni wrote: post #33

About a decade ago I was doing a lot of travel for work - 140 plus flights a year over 6 continents level. I remember watching a film, “Up in the Air”, about a guy who was contest flying from airport to airport to lay people off because the boss was too much of a wimp to do it himself. I guess even his job isn’t safe from AI. Sure some will manage to hack with prompt injection attacks, and potentially get compensatio…

[dead]

Re: The Layoff

#155

Post by p_l »

xena wrote: post #94
p_l wrote: post #52

Interestingly, the story fails to load on Chrome 121, actually removing DOM nodes with the story... Worked fine in Firefox though.

That is strange. I'll investigate. What browser extensions do you use?

Seems to be somehow connected to loading an image that fails to load - just replicate it in chrome 121 on Android, which obviously has no extensions.

https://usercontent.irccloud-cdn.com/file/zQfJpquv/100000698...

Some more context - Chrome seems to get stuck getting contents of "hero image" of bay bridge, which is invisible (height=0) in Firefox, and somehow everything after said image's tag gets removed from DOM.

Looking at chrome debugger, it seems both the AVIF file and inter.css fail to load, stuck in "pending" state.

Re: The Layoff

#156

Post by qingcharles »

Arbortheus wrote: post #35
vasco wrote: post #13

"We won't share a list of the affected employees because some of them might not want the information to be public" was the biggest bullshit I've heard recently - no fiction needed. Discovering that people you worked with for years have been laid off only because you randomly notice their slack is deactivated has to be one of 2024s gifts to humanity.

Someone at my work created a secret bot that scrapes the outlook contacts list and diffs it from the previous day, each day. This way we get daily updates whenever a new person is onboarded or offboarded. As employees we now have more clarity about the state of layoffs and hiring decisions that most of the management team does. I suggest doing the same within your org if you can.

At one unnamed startup I worked at, one of the sysadmins would just read the CEO's email and let us know o_O

I remember one email he sent me, paraphrasing: "You know that tech demo you gave the C-Suite last week for that really cool thing you invented in your off-time? Yeah, well they are having their lawyers figure out if your employment contract means that they own it already."

Re: The Layoff

#157

Post by BandButcher »

treprinum wrote: post #39
gmerc wrote: post #2

Maybe 6 months ahead of it's time. Maybe.

TopTal already had gigs like the one described in this story a few months ago. Also a gig to automate debt collection.

Oh really, yikes. i thought about creating a toptal account for work but never got around to it. Doubt I'd be comfortable working on a proj like that

Re: The Layoff

#158

Post by frfl »

cupofjoakim wrote: post #19

As a guy who surfed the unemployment wave twice the last year, this was a fun read, albeit sad.

That's rough, twice in a bad year. How was the job hunt experience for you, did you end up finding a second position yet?

Re: The Layoff

#159

Post by xena »

p_l wrote: post #155
xena wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is strange. I'll investigate. What browser extensions do you use?

Seems to be somehow connected to loading an image that fails to load - just replicate it in chrome 121 on Android, which obviously has no extensions. https://usercontent.irccloud-cdn.com/file/zQfJpquv/100000698... Some more context - Chrome seems to get stuck getting contents of "hero image" of bay bridge, which is invisible (height=0) in Firefox, and somehow everything after said image's tag gets removed from DOM. L…

What does the last line of https://cdn.xeiaso.net/cgi-cdn/wtf say?

Re: The Layoff

#160

Post by p_l »

xena wrote: post #159
p_l wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to be somehow connected to loading an image that fails to load - just replicate it in chrome 121 on Android, which obviously has no extensions. https://usercontent.irccloud-cdn.com/file/zQfJpquv/100000698... Some more context - Chrome seems to get stuck getting contents of "hero image" of bay bridge, which is invisible (height=0) in Firefox, and somehow everything after said image's tag gets removed from DOM. L…

What does the last line of https://cdn.xeiaso.net/cgi-cdn/wtf say?

I am XeDN fra (instance ID 4d89706f61e778) running /nix/store/l4wc41rg57ajwmcci3gvxs605z891zka-xedn-20240210195656/bin/xedn

Connected using ipv6

Post reply on HN