In post-soviet russia, correlation IS causation, apparently…
Xsolla fires 150 employees using analysis of chat and email activity
131–140 of 154 posts
Re: Xsolla fires 150 employees using analysis of chat and email activity
#132The letter is so unprofessional it makes me question the validity of the decision making more than I otherwise would. An email dripping with sarcasm has no purpose here except to make the CEO feel tickled inside, it's masturbatory.
Also - what’s the deal with exactly 150 employees being laid off - clearly not trying to identify problematic employees, but instead finding an excuse/methodology to lay off a specific quantity of workforce.
Re: Xsolla fires 150 employees using analysis of chat and email activity
#133A bit of Russian color. The CEO FB posts in Russian: - the 1st, sounding great in Russian, yet hard to translate, is "work energetically like f&cking or f&ck off" - the 2nd is "looking for a great PR professional in Russia" https://vc.ru/hr/277765-glava-xsolla-obyasnil-massovye-uvoln... While without directly offensive words, not like the FB posts above, his message firing the people is still written in a very insult…
>- the 1st, sounding great in Russian, yet hard to translate, is "work energetically like f&cking or f&ck off"
it is a simple "work your ass out or walk your ass out" without the unnecessary slavic macho-bravade of foul words.
Re: Xsolla fires 150 employees using analysis of chat and email activity
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Couldn't agree more. In the short term it can be very effective. It's much like taking steroids, it will work temporarily but can easily spiral and impose a long-term cost.
Re: Xsolla fires 150 employees using analysis of chat and email activity
#135Busyness is not productivity. But organizations have a history of using metrics that measure 'busyness' when they say they are measuring productivity. Things like how often you are seen at the water cooler or chatting with a co-worker, how quickly you respond to communications, how quickly can you be reached, any time, anywhere, whenever someone wants to reach you. https://maxfrenzel.medium.com/in-praise-of-deep-work…
I hope remote work fixes this by getting rid of the bs.
Pretty sure that this story is about exactly the opposite.
Re: Xsolla fires 150 employees using analysis of chat and email activity
#136Busyness is not productivity. But organizations have a history of using metrics that measure 'busyness' when they say they are measuring productivity. Things like how often you are seen at the water cooler or chatting with a co-worker, how quickly you respond to communications, how quickly can you be reached, any time, anywhere, whenever someone wants to reach you. https://maxfrenzel.medium.com/in-praise-of-deep-work…
The best part is how many places expect you to be both constantly busy and also constantly immediately available.
> constantly busy and also constantly immediately available
It sort of makes sense when you realize that "busy", in that context, just refers to the kind of busywork that can be interrupted without loss.
Re: Xsolla fires 150 employees using analysis of chat and email activity
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suspect this will be an unpopular opinion here, but I think that if you set the thresholds conservatively enough, a tool like this could be useful in identifying people who are not contributing. Where I work there are searchable tool invocation logs and there have been cases where someone is only compiling code one or twice a month, who not too long after I discovered this made an exit. If you're enough sigmas belo…
Funny, where I work, someone saying "I haven't 'prod accessed' in 3 weeks" is a humble-brag about being so important that they are only writing design docs and doing high level reviews.
Tell me you work at Google without telling me you work at Google.meme?
Re: Xsolla fires 150 employees using analysis of chat and email activity
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
Funny, where I work, someone saying "I haven't 'prod accessed' in 3 weeks" is a humble-brag about being so important that they are only writing design docs and doing high level reviews.
Tell me you work at Google without telling me you work at Google.meme?
Job Title: Inefficient protobuf copier
Re: Xsolla fires 150 employees using analysis of chat and email activity
#139A bit of Russian color. The CEO FB posts in Russian: - the 1st, sounding great in Russian, yet hard to translate, is "work energetically like f&cking or f&ck off" - the 2nd is "looking for a great PR professional in Russia" https://vc.ru/hr/277765-glava-xsolla-obyasnil-massovye-uvoln... While without directly offensive words, not like the FB posts above, his message firing the people is still written in a very insult…
>- the 1st, sounding great in Russian, yet hard to translate, is "work energetically like f&cking or f&ck off" it is a simple "work your ass out or walk your ass out" without the unnecessary slavic macho-bravade of foul words.
thanks, it is definitely good translation, and i'll add it to my English.
In this case I intentionally tried (and looks like i succeeded :) to deliver the "slavic macho-bravade of foul words" (well put, you definitely have a way with words) as expressed by the CEO as it is a directly related to that harsh firing and very illustrative of the CEO part of the picture.
Re: Xsolla fires 150 employees using analysis of chat and email activity
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suspect this will be an unpopular opinion here, but I think that if you set the thresholds conservatively enough, a tool like this could be useful in identifying people who are not contributing. Where I work there are searchable tool invocation logs and there have been cases where someone is only compiling code one or twice a month, who not too long after I discovered this made an exit. If you're enough sigmas belo…
I think the problem is this can only work once before you set off a ton of system gaming.
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