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Laying off George

zeldman.com

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Re: Laying off George

#41

Post by dmh2000 »

nostrademons wrote: post #34
potatolicious wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In states with at-will employment your job can be terminated - by either side - with no notice (hence no obligation for severance), with some exceptions against illegal discrimination (e.g. being fired because you're black). Most companies will offer you some sort of severance - or at least won't ask for their signing bonus/relocation/etc back, but that's out of goodwill, not legal obligation.

Self interest as well. Lots of companies want you to sign additional agreements on the way out (don't trash the computers, don't bad-mouth the company, etc.) and you have no reason to sign these if they don't give you something in return.

just what I was going to say. it his blog he mentioned they were faxing out some 'agreement' for him to sign. My immediate reaction was 'why the fuck would he sign anything?'.

Re: Laying off George

#42

Post by mst »

teehee wrote: post #8
mattmaroon wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And even if it weren't much more technically complex than that, which I'm sure it is, a product is much more than the sum of the technologies behind it. One of the most ubiquitous inventions I've seen develop in my lifetime is luggage on wheels. The technology is trivial (it's a combination of two simple things that have existed for centuries) but somehow it didn't get invented until the late '80s/early '90s. Now you…

Good point. Better yet, try a suit case with 4 wheels (mine is a Samsonite). I like it so much I would volunteer as a spokesman.

I prefer the "only take carry-on luggage" approach.

This does require being able to travel quite light though - most of my trips are 1 week or less at a conference so I only take clothes, laptop and assorted chargers.

Re: Laying off George

#43

Post by whatusername »

nostrademons wrote: post #36
mynameishere wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why people are defending flickr. There are lots of equivilent websites, and have been long before it ever existed. I stand by my comment: It's fundamentally lame. If I was a CS professor, I would have sophmores make a clone of it for a 2-week project. Just because it's the most popular in its class doesn't mean it transcends the extreme simplicity of said class. Frankly, I don't even like it. Whose aesthetic…

Missing the point. Sites that have been technologically equivalent or better than Flickr have been around since the first dot-com boom. The genius of Flickr was in building a community around it. It's really easy for technophiles to say "Oh, I could build that in a week", and usually they can. The problem is, nobody will use it. Building a community is really fricking hard - it's the sort of task where everyone says…

But they've lost everyone but the photographers to facebook.

The combination of the news feed and tagging people in photos (and having them show up in the news feed!) is facebooks secret sauce

Re: Laying off George

#44

Post by gruseom »

noonespecial wrote: post #40
gruseom wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That explains the crying, etc. I can see this got downmodded into oblivion, yet I don't think it's so far from the mark. I noticed some cognitive dissonance in myself while reading the original post under the assumption that George was a he. It dissipated when I figured out she's a she. Such a clear little "experiment" doesn't come along very often so I think it's worth paying attention to.

I knew a French guy in High School named 'Michelle'. He was like a walking sociology experiment. It was highly enlightening.

I'm assuming you mean "Michel" and it was at an English-speaking school?

Re: Laying off George

#45

Post by mynameishere »

joshu wrote: post #39
mynameishere wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why people are defending flickr. There are lots of equivilent websites, and have been long before it ever existed. I stand by my comment: It's fundamentally lame. If I was a CS professor, I would have sophmores make a clone of it for a 2-week project. Just because it's the most popular in its class doesn't mean it transcends the extreme simplicity of said class. Frankly, I don't even like it. Whose aesthetic…

What does cloning some website have to do with computer science?

What does cloning some website have to do with computer science?

Two upmods. Hmm. At least two other people think your question a good one. Okay. (EDIT: Three now)

Well, websites are closely associated with many of the topics in computer science. There are, for instance, programming languages, algorithms, data structures, etc, involved in producing a website, no matter the actual content of the website. Likewise, many computer science professors have classes with names like "Software Engineering" which have large-scale projects similar to real-life projects.

Hope I cleared up the confusion.

Re: Laying off George

#46

Post by mynameishere »

nostrademons wrote: post #36
mynameishere wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why people are defending flickr. There are lots of equivilent websites, and have been long before it ever existed. I stand by my comment: It's fundamentally lame. If I was a CS professor, I would have sophmores make a clone of it for a 2-week project. Just because it's the most popular in its class doesn't mean it transcends the extreme simplicity of said class. Frankly, I don't even like it. Whose aesthetic…

Missing the point. Sites that have been technologically equivalent or better than Flickr have been around since the first dot-com boom. The genius of Flickr was in building a community around it. It's really easy for technophiles to say "Oh, I could build that in a week", and usually they can. The problem is, nobody will use it. Building a community is really fricking hard - it's the sort of task where everyone says…

I'm keeping my comments related only to the technical side of it. Obviously, flickr is a great business success for many other reasons.

Re: Laying off George

#47

Post by michaelneale »

gruseom wrote: post #44
noonespecial wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I knew a French guy in High School named 'Michelle'. He was like a walking sociology experiment. It was highly enlightening.

I'm assuming you mean "Michel" and it was at an English-speaking school?

Hey I am a bit sensitive about my name being "Michelle" in french - or at least pronounced that way ;)

Re: Laying off George

#48

Post by sh1mmer »

#1 I work for Yahoo #2 I wasn't laid off #3 this is 100% my opinion not the company and I have no insight into Flickr policy or strategy

I think the lay-offs are really hard for the people involved however you do them. I think Yahoo could have done better by not keeping people hanging for 3 months.

That said has it occurred to people that it was Flickr Commons rather than George that was seen as an unnecessary cost. Commons is awesome, but it doesn't seem to be something that is going to make money for Flickr/Yahoo.

In terms of the way that George was laid off, how do you lay off someone thousands of miles away? Is there a good way? I doubt it. The script seems insensitive but Yahoo has easily enough revenue to make it an easy target for HR based lawsuits. The script is there to protect the company from people that might exploit a more human process.

There has been a bunch of bad press today about our layoffs it really feels sucky to people, and I get that. I know other people who left and I know Yahoo has given them an amazing package. Since then they have been talking to a lot of companies about a range of roles. I think a lot of those people may come out with a couple of extra months pay because they were laid off. It won't remove the struggle and emotional stress that losing you job has but I hope it somewhat soothes the pain.

I personally find it upsetting that people keep attacking the company for doing what was in the best interests of it's shareholders. I struggle to think of people I know at Yahoo that aren't smart and working hard to make good products.

Maybe not every decision that has been made has been perfect, and maybe there is a more bureaucracy than I'd like but every commentator is a genius in hindsight. I, like Michael Arrington, know that Hitler probably shouldn't have invaded Russia in Winter and that maybe we should have bought Google when we had the chance.

I guess what I'm saying is I expected HN to be a place where people look a little deeper and think a little bit more. I wish you'd do that for us before you continue to throw your stones.

Re: Laying off George

#49

Post by mattmaroon »

mst wrote: post #42
teehee wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point. Better yet, try a suit case with 4 wheels (mine is a Samsonite). I like it so much I would volunteer as a spokesman.

I prefer the "only take carry-on luggage" approach. This does require being able to travel quite light though - most of my trips are 1 week or less at a conference so I only take clothes, laptop and assorted chargers.

Me too, but even my carry-on has wheels.

Re: Laying off George

#50

Post by gaius »

whatusername wrote: post #43
nostrademons wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Missing the point. Sites that have been technologically equivalent or better than Flickr have been around since the first dot-com boom. The genius of Flickr was in building a community around it. It's really easy for technophiles to say "Oh, I could build that in a week", and usually they can. The problem is, nobody will use it. Building a community is really fricking hard - it's the sort of task where everyone says…

But they've lost everyone but the photographers to facebook. The combination of the news feed and tagging people in photos (and having them show up in the news feed!) is facebooks secret sauce

Flickr occupies a weird space between photo.net (which is almost all photographers) and Facebook (people who take photos of each other). It may be great for photo-hosting, but no-one wants that in a vaccuum.
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