I'll hasard a guess as to why it happened:
-The failure of the documentation (which failed for various reasons)
-VCs who want their return on their precious dollars.
Stack Overflow reducing headcount by 20%
141–150 of 209 posts
Re: Stack Overflow reducing headcount by 20%
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
Depends on country too. In EU our work laws regulate how your employee may be laid off. My country (poland) says that employee has to be notified about termination: - week ahead if he or she was employed for less than month - month ahead if he or she was employed for less than three years - three months ahead if he or she was employed for more than three years This goes both ways however, as employee has to notify hi…
I’m quite surprised to hear one must give their employer notice. Doesn’t Poland or the EU have laws against forced labor? In the US, for example, all employment by private corporations is “at will.” Anyone can quit at a moments notice, for any or no reason at all. For the sake of one’s colleagues and reputation it is widely considered good practice to give no less than 2 weeks notice, though this is merely custom.
Living in the UK, my last job required three months notice to leave on paper. In reality they accepted a month which is standard enough.
Re: Stack Overflow reducing headcount by 20%
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sure they make TONS of money from ad revenue. Probably they tried to generate other revenue streams but it just didn't work out and hence the layoff. Here's a crazy idea: what if Stackoverflow developed a search engine for developers? Usually I get to Stackoverflow posts through Google but perhaps Stackoverflow can provide a better experience by doing code specific web crawling.
Inherent conflict here - programmers don't click on ads, fullstop. I can't imagine a group I'd want to advertise to less.
To be fair, all the ads on SO are vetted (I think they did a blog post about it) to be relevant to the target audience, so it's always about tech.
Re: Stack Overflow reducing headcount by 20%
#144I remember reaching out to them a bunch of years ago (2012 or so) in order to ask them to host a stack overflow sub-site for our product (from a sizeable company). We were willing to pay quite a lot (because they had the premier UX for this kind of thing), but they weren't at all interested. They just told us to try to grow things "organically", because they had decided to focus 100% on open stuff. We weren't really…
Maybe the Channels are what's you're after? Granted it's not out yet, but it seems a good fit for your use case.
Re: Stack Overflow reducing headcount by 20%
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
Depends on country too. In EU our work laws regulate how your employee may be laid off. My country (poland) says that employee has to be notified about termination: - week ahead if he or she was employed for less than month - month ahead if he or she was employed for less than three years - three months ahead if he or she was employed for more than three years This goes both ways however, as employee has to notify hi…
I’m quite surprised to hear one must give their employer notice. Doesn’t Poland or the EU have laws against forced labor? In the US, for example, all employment by private corporations is “at will.” Anyone can quit at a moments notice, for any or no reason at all. For the sake of one’s colleagues and reputation it is widely considered good practice to give no less than 2 weeks notice, though this is merely custom.
All Europe operates in a similar way, the difference is only the notice period, which is shorter (few weeks) in some countries like UK or Netherlands, and longer (~3 months+ once you've worked for a while) in other countries like France.
Of course many companies find that it's not flexible enough for them, so they abuse the system and illegally hire low qualified workforce as "independent contractors" on civil contracts instead of work contracts. Search for "zero hour contracts" for UK, but it's rampant also in Poland, Italy and other countries where unions are not strong and employees' rights guaranteed by law are not enforced.
Re: Stack Overflow reducing headcount by 20%
#146Good. In the past year they have become very preachy about exact which political opinions the tech community is allowed to have, and how they are to express them. My limit was the "Time to take a stand incident" when Joel effectively dictated that the developer community of StackOverflow must agree with the statement. > Carving up the world into ... nations ... is both morally repugnant and frankly stupid The follow…
I'm happy that I was too busy at the time doing an handover to see that. Seeing the CEO get a pass on all the "Be-Nice" rules and use his site as a political platform...
Re: Stack Overflow reducing headcount by 20%
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
Depends on country too. In EU our work laws regulate how your employee may be laid off. My country (poland) says that employee has to be notified about termination: - week ahead if he or she was employed for less than month - month ahead if he or she was employed for less than three years - three months ahead if he or she was employed for more than three years This goes both ways however, as employee has to notify hi…
I’m quite surprised to hear one must give their employer notice. Doesn’t Poland or the EU have laws against forced labor? In the US, for example, all employment by private corporations is “at will.” Anyone can quit at a moments notice, for any or no reason at all. For the sake of one’s colleagues and reputation it is widely considered good practice to give no less than 2 weeks notice, though this is merely custom.
It's not "forced labour", it's just a contractual term. You certainly _can_ quit on zero notice but you've breached contract and it will cost you.
If you look closely at US startups you'll usually find the founders and senior staff are on "notice required" contracts of several months.
Re: Stack Overflow reducing headcount by 20%
#148How many people work at StackOverflow? Seeing this post also made me realize I have no clue how the company makes money.
I'm sure they make TONS of money from ad revenue. Probably they tried to generate other revenue streams but it just didn't work out and hence the layoff. Here's a crazy idea: what if Stackoverflow developed a search engine for developers? Usually I get to Stackoverflow posts through Google but perhaps Stackoverflow can provide a better experience by doing code specific web crawling.
I find their ads are way to expensive to trial. Minimum $500 spend for selve serve and minimum $5000 if you want to talk to their representatives. Most other sites allow you to dabble.
Re: Stack Overflow reducing headcount by 20%
#149Why would you fire people on such a short notice? No need to hand over things? No interest in providing at least some time to look for a new job? EDIT: To clarify that a bit, I am interested in what the upsides are except for possibly saving some money. An orderly shutdown usually seems preferable to me over quickly killing the process, for both sides.
This probably depends a lot on the industry but my mom works at a grocery store and the reason they give short notices (as short as allowed by law) is because of the work moral. In Germany, there is no such thing as sick days, you can take off as long as you need if you are sick and have a doctors notice (which is mostly free or very inexpensive because of public healthcare). Most of the time someone is laid off, this person will suddenly become sick for most of their remaining time. When they come to work, they often procrastinate a lot more and get little to no work done. This means, once they have been given notice, they barely work and the employer can do very little. They cannot get fired (because they already are) and have to keep paying them for that duration. The same also often happens when the employee gives notice.
While the employer can take legal action and sue them, proving that someone is sick is rather difficult (and frowned upon by most judges). There are many cases where my mother's employer could have easily proven that (because witnesses same him partying or there are even pictures online where he partied on that day) but it is generally not worth it because a trail is more expensive then paying one month's pay and also not worth the time and overhead.
Not everyone takes work very seriously, unfortunately, which makes the process suck for everybody. When my mother's boss has an opportunity to fire them eithout notice (because they are late or caught steeling), he generally does that, which is super unfair for the employees who would have worked until their very last.
Re: Stack Overflow reducing headcount by 20%
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
Usually you will get at least a 4 week notice in Germany and this increases to up to 7 months when you worked for more than 20 years for the company. That you get fired effective immediately usually only happen if you really fucked something up.
"Layoff" and "firing" are separate concepts here. The central example of a true layoff is a trade work shortage: the layoff happens with very little notice, because it reflects the volatile nature of the demand for the trade. If there's suddenly, unexpectedly nothing for anyone to do, then there's suddenly, unexpectedly no benefit in paying anyone to come in for the day to do it. Does that kind of situation still con…
.. but there isn't suddenly, unexpectly, no need for the employees to pay their rent, mortgages and bills.
When I was made redundant a decade ago in the UK I got:
- week's "consultation period" during which the ranking process for who would be made redundant was explained
- pay in lieu of month's notice
- (optional on behalf of the employer) three month's pay for signing away my right to sue for wrongful dismissal
The only situation in which employees can really lose out is if the company goes bankrupt in which case they are at risk of losing their last paycheque.