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Prisma laying off 28% staff

prisma.io

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Re: Prisma laying off 28% staff

#111

Post by ljm »

orra wrote: post #66
OJFord wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not at all uncommon in restructuring to be both (doing a lot of) hiring & firing - the current filled roles are out of whack with where you want to be, and not things you can transition people between because the skills/qualifications are different or whatever. E.g. if Microsoft decided to sunset its incredible GitHub journey, it would probably find itself with too many web developers. If it got out of Xboxes, t…

Of course developers can be transitioned to do other types of development. Occam's Razor says: or the companies just want to rehire new people at lower pay.

Depends on the laws in your country. In the UK for example, if you make a position redundant and then immediately rehire for it, the laid off employee can take you to an employment tribunal for unfair dismissal, as the redundancy wasn’t genuine.

Given that redundancy is a more complicated legal process it’s unlikely you’d use it for this purpose.

Re: Prisma laying off 28% staff

#112

Post by nemo44x »

ljm wrote: post #106
nemo44x wrote: post #53

Is the word “impact” the latest way of saying “fired” without saying it? We are seeing that particular word in nearly every note regarding these types of action. Why this word and why is everyone using it? It’s not only CEOs and HR but on LinkedIn I see many people referring to themselves as “impacted” and open to word, etc. Is there a word for this type of memetic term suddenly being used everywhere as a substitute…

Being fired means you were terminated but the position is still needed. It’ll be hired for again. Being made redundant means the position itself is no longer required, so you’re let go because your job isn’t there any more. Depending on the law in your country or jurisdiction this will also mean you can’t hire for that position again for some time. There are more legal protections for the latter and businesses can’t…

Right I get that. The question is why this particular word that everyone is suddenly using and no one did before?

Re: Prisma laying off 28% staff

#113

Post by sofixa »

Raed667 wrote: post #94
rightbyte wrote: post #26

So I read their website and to my understanding, they make a DB interface layer, and have 100+ staff? How is this not a company of like 10 people.

I keep asking the same question about Vercel and no one wants to give an answer.

A company like Vercel needs significant infrastructure and the people associated with it, as well as supporting admin (HR, lawyers, accountants), proper customer support (for 24/7 coverage so that can be quite a lot of people), UI/UX people, documentation/education people, etc. etc. Of course also sales and account managers, presales engineers.

Just because you think you can make their product in a weekend all on your own doesn't mean that to get to where they are a ton of people aren't needed.

Re: Prisma laying off 28% staff

#114

Post by f6v »

mk89 wrote: post #54

Yesterday I stumbled upon this: https://news.stanford.edu/2022/12/05/explains-recent-tech-la... Interesting read if you're recently reading about a lot of "layoffs".

I don’t dismiss the idea, but that’s just an opinion of one guy. Coming from Stanford doesn’t turn opinion into a fact.

Re: Prisma laying off 28% staff

#115

Post by nemo44x »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #93
nemo44x wrote: post #53

Is the word “impact” the latest way of saying “fired” without saying it? We are seeing that particular word in nearly every note regarding these types of action. Why this word and why is everyone using it? It’s not only CEOs and HR but on LinkedIn I see many people referring to themselves as “impacted” and open to word, etc. Is there a word for this type of memetic term suddenly being used everywhere as a substitute…

Being laid off and being fired is not the same and this has legal consequences.

The question I asked is why is the word “impacted” suddenly being used everywhere when it never has been for these types events before. It’s so pervasive that you and another commentator just assumed it’s typically used (it never has been until recently) and you overlooked the actual question and decides to explain an obvious thing.

Re: Prisma laying off 28% staff

#120

Post by KyeRussell »

I don’t want to be another HN commenter saying I could build Prisma in a weekend, because I can’t. I couldn’t build Prisma in a year, in five years, in large part because I’m not smart enough.

But bloody hell, VC backing and that many employees? I happened to recently give Prisma a whirl, and even for my simple toy project, the holes in the client functionality do not feel consistent with my understanding of what that many people can do, even taking to account a large percentage of non-eng roles.

The JS ecosystem seems particularly tolerant of VC funded for-profit efforts (try saying that five times fast) holding this sort of prominence. Who remembers all the drama at npm before Microsoft bought it? The whole thing puts me into a deeply cynical, judgemental headspace. The JS ecosystem feels way more enamoured with branding, celebrity, and money, than what I am personally used to. I’m no old-timer either by any measure. There’s certainly more effort put into marketing to developers, and there’s much less of a sense of collaborative goodwill because everyone wants their piece. Either money, or this new higher standard of tech micro-celebrity.

Say what you want about the massive shortcomings of the previous generation/s of tech culture but at least we had a pretty good run of not letting this happen.

I’m too tired and worn out to have this sort of boom and bust cycle so directly implicate tooling that can have so many points of interaction with something I’m building.

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