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Xsolla fires 150 employees using analysis of chat and email activity

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Re: Xsolla fires 150 employees using analysis of chat and email activity

#121

Post by trhway »

D-Coder wrote: post #90
derwiki wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everything about their employees is monitored and tracked, down to individual finger and eye movements, to prevent waste and track performance. All emails that are sent out include an estimate of how long they should take to read. Go to fast, you get scolded for not paying attention. Go too slow, you get scolded for inefficiency. Get it just right? You get scolded for being a smartass. —- Snowcrash

Communist logic: Three prisoners in communist East Germany were talking about their crimes. 1: "I always got to work five minutes early. They convicted me of spying." 2: "I always got to work five minutes late. They convicted me of sabotage." 3: "I always got to work exactly on time. They convicted me of owning a Western watch."

In USSR it was a planned economy as everybody knows. Producing less than planned amount was bad - from possibility of it being treated as sabotage in Stalin times to not getting bonus and being openly shamed in later times. Producing more than planned amount was good - bonus and "honour roll". Produce much more than planned amount, especially several times in a row - your planned amount will be adjusted upward, and not only yours, the colleagues in similar jobs/situations would get their plans adjusted up too. So the art was to produce just a bit more, enough to get bonus and honours, yet not trigger the adjustment up.

Re: Xsolla fires 150 employees using analysis of chat and email activity

#122

Post by Arech »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #115

The translation of the letter has lost some of its undertones, which betray some psychological disorders of the author. For example, "... If you want to stay in contact with me, please write me a long letter..." should be better translated as "... If you want to remain my acquaintance , please write me a long letter..." (source: I'm russian)

Absolutely. Original wording is so bad that those fired should actually be happy to stop dealing with such...person. (and note: that is forgetting that the reason to fire was a score of some unknown ML-model, not a real performance on the workplace; which is by itself a great reason to flee from such an employer)

Re: Xsolla fires 150 employees using analysis of chat and email activity

#123

Post by distances »

_tom_ wrote: post #73
2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve worked with a guy who made lots of small commits with the same commit text. You’d look at a pull request with 30 very minor changes possibly in many places with the same message.

I guess I should stop squashing my commits when I merge!

Or rather, create team policy to require squashing. I greatly favor this over a million "fix" commits that may or may not compile when you're bisecting.

Re: Xsolla fires 150 employees using analysis of chat and email activity

#124

Post by astura »

a012 wrote: post #54

This reminds me some people who open Jira tickets for every tiny things, then have fixes for these tickets.

Eh, are you allowed to just change code without opening a ticket? Every job I worked at every commit had to be against a ticket.

Re: Xsolla fires 150 employees using analysis of chat and email activity

#125

Post by rasz »

xpe wrote: post #75
matheusmoreira wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds great, honestly. Sounds like his employees are working more for less pay. I know he's insulting his employees but still pretty awesome if he actually found a better position for his people. Who doesn't want to make more and work less? I wish I could make money while doing nothing.

> It sounds great, honestly. Sounds like his employees are working more for less pay. I know he's insulting his employees but still pretty awesome if he actually found a better position for his people. You believe the CEO's claims? I bet he has a bridge he'll see you too...

self driving bridge no less

Re: Xsolla fires 150 employees using analysis of chat and email activity

#126

Post by bmn__ »

duxup wrote: post #58

>Nadia and her care team partnered with seven leading HR agencies, as we will help you find a good place, where you will earn more and work even less. Earn more and work less? That's weird. Those poor folks who still work for him will be working more and earning less than those he fired.

Your sarcasm detector is broken/not calibrated for Russian.

Re: Xsolla fires 150 employees using analysis of chat and email activity

#127

Post by ben-gy »

planet-and-halo wrote: post #92
6nf wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My employer went this route. Gamified all the developers' output. I quit on the spot and I was not alone. We will see how it turns out but I still believe that gamifying everything is a bad idea. There's no way to align the incentives with company profits using stupid metrics.

The problem with "gamifying" work is well-known to anyone who actually studies human motivation. Any exercise of control, and especially anything that makes people focus on their performance rather than the actual task they are doing, is bound to decrease motivation and quality. When kids worry about the test and their grade, they learn less. When professional athletes start worrying about the score instead of trusti…

IMHO, yes and no - I think it’s important to look at both; collective outcomes (net output), and cultural response to threats. I’m Australian and a 100% believer this concept of creating metrics for developers is complete trash and is more a reflection on an inability of leadership to manage and scale a quality engineering culture.

That said, I have worked across APAC and I can see that this metric-driven, fear-based approach can work very effectively to achieve short term gains when applied in some cultures - particularly those where the gap between the haves and the have nots is relatively large.

It is extremely unfortunate that is the case. That said, whilst it is, it perpetuates (not blaming anyone, just is a factual observation) the confidence for sub-par leadership to impose/experiment with such methods.

Re: Xsolla fires 150 employees using analysis of chat and email activity

#128

Post by sjg007 »

skeeter2020 wrote: post #88
dxf wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Long ago, he joined a company fresh out of college that pretty much measured dev productivity with number of lines written. He quickly realized that it was a red-flag, but jumping ship so soon was going to be hard to explain on a resume. Sorry to hijack your comment, but I would like to say: There are many, many good reasons why someone would want to quit a job after only a short period of time at a company (harassm…

It's still a red flag that needs to be explained. Unfortunately most employees will assume they did not leave voluntarily. The OP's reticence to jump is understandable

“I made a mistake.” Easy. “Not a good fit”.

Nobody expects someone to get married after a couple dates.

Re: Xsolla fires 150 employees using analysis of chat and email activity

#129

Post by duxup »

bmn__ wrote: post #126
duxup wrote: post #58

>Nadia and her care team partnered with seven leading HR agencies, as we will help you find a good place, where you will earn more and work even less. Earn more and work less? That's weird. Those poor folks who still work for him will be working more and earning less than those he fired.

Your sarcasm detector is broken/not calibrated for Russian.

That kinda 'sarcasm' for folks you just laid off is pretty harsh ... you sure that's sarcasm?

Re: Xsolla fires 150 employees using analysis of chat and email activity

#130

Post by ben-gy »

a012 wrote: post #54

This reminds me some people who open Jira tickets for every tiny things, then have fixes for these tickets.

Uh yeah… that’s how it’s supposed to happen. Every code change should have a ticket/issue, a bit branch, and a pull request attached - no matter how small.

What’s not supposed to happen is have those analysed to be used as some dumb proxy for productivity/output.

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