Stack Overflow reducing headcount by 20% • Hacker News Board

Re: Stack Overflow reducing headcount by 20%

#201

Post by ATsch » Fri, Nov 03, 2017, 9:11 PM UTC

sklivvz1971 wrote: post #173

Ralfp wrote: post #43

Earlier 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…

All that stuff doesn't really matter... If you have 3 months notice, it only means they'll come up to you and offer you to pay you those three months and you don't have to show up at all. And you sign a contract that prevents you from suing. Most worker rights, in the end, become a matter of how much money they'll pay you to leave if they want you to leave. Yes, one could--theoretically--fight back and not accept the…

Well, where is the disadvantage here? As far as I can tell, instant layoffs are bad because you without any income at short notice. If you have three months where you still receive pay to search for a new job, you have gained a lot of security.

Besides, I doubt Poland has arbitration clauses, so the workers would be free to sue. It would not be pleasant to stay in that job either way as you correctly pointed out though.

Re: Stack Overflow reducing headcount by 20%

#202

Post by humanrebar » Fri, Nov 03, 2017, 9:16 PM UTC

fjsolwmv wrote: post #187

humanrebar wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a pretty effective union busting tool and has contributed to the decline of organized labor as a political force. I think it's fair to say teachers have the right to be teachers without joining a teachers' union. I don't think enforcing that right "contributes to the decline" of unions. Organizational models should be able to handle that sort of freedom to choose. To me, the question is why unions don't innova…

Same reason that people who live in the US don't have the freedom to choose whether they want to be governed by the US government. Social contract

But on a more concrete level, union fees go to campaigning, lobbying, and donations to candidates the union members may not support.

I don't think it's part of an American social contract that you would be forced to tangibly support candidates who have (by some accounts) immoral positions on abortion or immigration (to pick to polarizing issues).

Re: Stack Overflow reducing headcount by 20%

#203

Post by mathattack » Sat, Nov 04, 2017, 3:14 AM UTC

danbruc wrote: post #15

Why 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.

The short notice is if the work is going away. It's an independent decision from how well they'll treat people going away. My most recent fund was similar - once they decided someone should go, they preferred to pull the trigger very quickly even if the severance was generous. (There's a toll on the org for having people stick around with negative attitude)

Re: Stack Overflow reducing headcount by 20%

#204

Post by sklivvz1971 » Sat, Nov 04, 2017, 4:33 PM UTC

ATsch wrote: post #201

sklivvz1971 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All that stuff doesn't really matter... If you have 3 months notice, it only means they'll come up to you and offer you to pay you those three months and you don't have to show up at all. And you sign a contract that prevents you from suing. Most worker rights, in the end, become a matter of how much money they'll pay you to leave if they want you to leave. Yes, one could--theoretically--fight back and not accept the…

Well, where is the disadvantage here? As far as I can tell, instant layoffs are bad because you without any income at short notice. If you have three months where you still receive pay to search for a new job, you have gained a lot of security. Besides, I doubt Poland has arbitration clauses, so the workers would be free to sue. It would not be pleasant to stay in that job either way as you correctly pointed out thou…

The disadvantage is morale. It's much easier for the company to regain momentum if the chord is cut cleanly and swiftly.

That said, I'm not sure if it's true or effective, but having worked at Stack Overflow for years I'm pretty sure this was done to spare overall misery.

Re: Stack Overflow reducing headcount by 20%

#205

Post by sklivvz1971 » Sat, Nov 04, 2017, 4:40 PM UTC

holydude wrote: post #95

I would advise people to stop comparing US workers rights to their countries. Just because you think your country gives you extra leverage and protection it does not mean it is a universally applicable law

A large portion of the laid off workers were from the EU, under EU law.

Re: Stack Overflow reducing headcount by 20%

#206

Post by skinnymuch » Sat, Nov 04, 2017, 6:57 PM UTC

trowawee wrote: post #185

skinnymuch wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People can claim all they want about wanting The Deck sort of stuff. But at the end of the day, those ads are still blocked most of the time. Possibly out of laziness to completely whitelist it, but the end result is the same. The ads are blocked like any other. I don't feel as optimistic that people blocking ads even want The Deck sort of ads. But without a study I'm okay not being sure.

Yeah, that's what I was trying to get across. I think the revealed preferences of most people using adblockers is that, while they say they would be ok with unobtrusive ads, they really don't want any ads at all. And to be honest, that's not a ludicrous view, because I've found that even on sites that have ostensibly "unobtrusive ads", all it takes is one bad actor and one slip-up in the ad network's verification pro…

Maybe, but a lot of sites only use Carbon/Deck or Adsense and some of those click bait native ad networks. I'm not sure if any of the click bait native ad networks have ever done too much with the issues you listed. I personally believe it's a bit too privileged to say no to Adsense like ads and native ads. You're likely to ever get a virus from them. At worst they are mildly annoying. That's all.

I find the one bad actor excuse to be just that. Another rationale or excuse.

So yeah I think the people just don't want any ads at all. Just like if I showed people how to block Spotify ads on their desktop and on how to do it on rooted android or iPhones, many people would stop paying Spotify. I don't tell my friends about these things for moral reasons, but it's just adding on to the point. People by and large will go with what's convenient. A simple app that can block Spotify ads will do for them. While jailbreaking would be too inconvenient.

Re: Stack Overflow reducing headcount by 20%

#207

Post by BrandoElFollito » Sat, Nov 04, 2017, 9:31 PM UTC

JBlue42 wrote: post #114

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same in France and the majority of EU countries.

Three months seems like way too long to know you're being laid off but I guess maybe the purpose is that it gives you time to find new work? In the US, it's just assumed that the ex-employee will be as malicious as possible and so it's best to get rid of them fast as possible.

This is supposed to protect both the employee and the employer.

The employee to give him some time to find a new job (he is entitled to some days off during these 3 months to interview).

The employer to (at least theoretically) force the employee to still work to prepare a handover, docs, etc.

What happens in practice depends on the case : these 3 months may be shortened via a mutual agreement, the employer may force the employee not to come to work (but still pay him) and other arrangements are possible.

Re: Stack Overflow reducing headcount by 20%

#208

Post by legostormtroopr » Sun, Nov 05, 2017, 7:25 AM UTC

buzzcut wrote: post #195

legostormtroopr wrote: post #126

Good. 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…

Whatever your political views, the ellipses in the quote are deeply misleading, and in fact make his quote seem to say something Joel emphatically did not say. Here is the full quote: >It’s impossible not to see the parallel: the only way to build a successful world today is to allow the contributions of everyone. Carving up the world into us vs. them, building walls, and demonizing religions, nations, and refugees i…

That doesn't make it better in my opinion. The politics of nations, strong border controls and vetting for refugees are nuanced there are pros and cons to all angles in that debate.

Whereas, Joel dictated that if you supported "carving up the world" you were against the sprit of Stack Overflow, no matter how that might impact you as a non-American.

Re: Stack Overflow reducing headcount by 20%

#209

Post by rwenderlich » Mon, Nov 06, 2017, 10:57 PM UTC

mianos wrote: post #76

I tried to hire through them recently. It was a joke of a process. More like the way uaed cars are sold. Don't contact us, we'll contact you. No price displayed, we negotiate that depending on how much you can afford. The sign up system simply didn't work, saying I had already signed up but then the next button simply didn't work. They did get back to me a week later. This completely change my view. I went from wanti…

I had the exact same experience recently. I was credit-card-in-hand ready to pay $500+ for a job posting on their site, but there was no way to do so. Then when they finally called me back, they gave me this story of how they were "didn't want to be thought of as a job postings site as they were far more than that" and said the only thing they would sell is subscriptions of multiple job postings a year. I ended up posting on some competing sites - I'm surprised they're willing to lose out on willing customers like this!