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Apollo Layoffs

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Re: Apollo Layoffs

#151
post #93
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "$300 mental health" seems odd - for any kind of counseling/therapy/etc sessions this is a drop in the bucket in terms of cost. It will easily cost 10x to work with a mental health professional (and insurance companies sadly pay a very small amount of it). So why add this to an otherwise reasonable package?

$300 is incredibly reasonable since it's more than $0.

It’s like one private pay visit at a really good clinic. They can then help guide you somewhere that’s covered by insurance. Mental health is full of quackery so best start at a top notch place

Re: Apollo Layoffs

#152
post #72

Layoffs are going to suck regardless, but this is one of the best severance packages I've seen in this wave: * 15 weeks base pay + 1 week per year of employment * 6 months COBRA + $300 mental health * no 1-yr cliff, options can be exercised thru next year * you can keep all your equipment

The "$300 mental health" seems odd - for any kind of counseling/therapy/etc sessions this is a drop in the bucket in terms of cost. It will easily cost 10x to work with a mental health professional (and insurance companies sadly pay a very small amount of it). So why add this to an otherwise reasonable package?

It’s an amount that likely covers the first visit. People that have struggled in the past will already know the benefits and the service. People newly disaffected will be reluctant to “just go” so the 300 bucks takes that off the table. If/when they go and decide it’s a value add to their circumstances then it will be prioritized and paid for.

I see it as a coupon to try it out.

Re: Apollo Layoffs

#153
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crazy. Usually it's just "Pay stops today, benefits at the end of the month. Hand in your badge - off you go."

No it's not. Severance is extremely common, while this package is quite generous.

This kind of package is very rare. It's uncommon to get any kind of severance without tenure and many companies have been laying off w/no severance what-so-ever in my area regardless of tenure. They pay through the current week, expect you to return all equipment, and f right off.

Re: Apollo Layoffs

#154
post #101

I have pretty limited experience with graphql. Why is apollos offering interesting to people? A hosted graphql proxy? You still need to write your own servers(but theres a ton of good libraries in multiple languages for this?) Architecturally it seems to be adding a massive hop to requests made, but its not clear to me what the benefit is?

In addition to the other comments, their APM platform is built specifically for graphql so it includes things like query performance on the field level. Existing tools don’t always play nicely since a graphql server is usually just one endpoint and doesn’t use normal status codes.

They also provide libraries for both the client and server so they can tell you what versions of your client are using specific data.

Re: Apollo Layoffs

#155
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "$300 mental health" seems odd - for any kind of counseling/therapy/etc sessions this is a drop in the bucket in terms of cost. It will easily cost 10x to work with a mental health professional (and insurance companies sadly pay a very small amount of it). So why add this to an otherwise reasonable package?

It’s an amount that likely covers the first visit. People that have struggled in the past will already know the benefits and the service. People newly disaffected will be reluctant to “just go” so the 300 bucks takes that off the table. If/when they go and decide it’s a value add to their circumstances then it will be prioritized and paid for. I see it as a coupon to try it out.

Fair point, I read this more under the light of paying for an ongoing therapist relationship to deal with a challenging situation (which as noted in another comment, $300 as a one time payment doesn't do much if you have weekly sessions with an out of network provider).

I agree it might help someone make a decision to try out therapy and see whether its a good idea for them.

Re: Apollo Layoffs

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why use GraphQL? There is tRPC now.

tRPC is for a single team working on Typescript frontend to Typescript backend (that's niche). If you have native mobile clients (different lang) or different teams that need to agree on a contract (GraphQL schema), GraphQL is the recommendation, even from ardent tRPC supporters.

Yeah maybe. It's a leaky abstraction where the real magic happens in the RPCs in the "resolvers"

Re: Apollo Layoffs

#157
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Employers are by dollar amount the biggest actual thieves by far in the US. Business owners ought to generally receive more scorn and critical evaluation than common property thieves who represent a thin fragment, if we really care about theft

Why don't you go start a business and become one of these rich employers you speak of? If taking such risks wasn't rewarded accordingly, then I don't think people would be nearly as eager to start a business.

[deleted]

Re: Apollo Layoffs

#158
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Employers are by dollar amount the biggest actual thieves by far in the US. Business owners ought to generally receive more scorn and critical evaluation than common property thieves who represent a thin fragment, if we really care about theft

Why don't you go start a business and become one of these rich employers you speak of? If taking such risks wasn't rewarded accordingly, then I don't think people would be nearly as eager to start a business.

Respond to "stealing is bad" with "then why don't you become a thief if it's so easy?!?" is very strange.

Re: Apollo Layoffs

#159
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're talking about Brooks's law, that's a pretty specific observation that doesn't seem like it applies here. It's very specifically about adding workers to a project that is already behind schedule. It doesn't certainly doesn't mean anything as broad as "a company cannot do more things by increasing its employee count."

I’m fairly certain that even without them all working on the same thing, 2.5x more employees will never be 2.5x faster.

Sometimes it's less, sure.

Sometimes it's more! You have nine projects you want to do. A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H. You have 2 developers. You hire 3 more. One of the new hires has more familiarity with what projects E and G needs than anyone on the existing team had. One of them is slower than the average of the existing devs. One of them is MUCH faster. The five of them complete those nine projects in three months (15 total people months, with boosts from one of the new dev's skills and the other's increased speed) when it may have taken 9 otherwise (18 total people months).

But I've seen a lot of companies not be quite that smart in their hiring...

(The faster scenario I've outlined above also potentially bites you in the butt if you don't have enough more valuable projects lined up behind that first set...)

Re: Apollo Layoffs

#160
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Employers are by dollar amount the biggest actual thieves by far in the US. Business owners ought to generally receive more scorn and critical evaluation than common property thieves who represent a thin fragment, if we really care about theft

Why don't you go start a business and become one of these rich employers you speak of? If taking such risks wasn't rewarded accordingly, then I don't think people would be nearly as eager to start a business.

Hi I don't have power to downvote, so please accept my comment in place: irrelevant.
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