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Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?

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Re: Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?

#211

Post by throwawy0932832 »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #194
zomgbbq wrote: post #25

Atari in 1983 went from the leader in video game production to completely imploding. In 1979, four of their best programmers left after demanding equity in the sales and were refused. Their CEO Ray Kassar famously said, "You’re no more important to those projects than the person on the assembly line who put them together. You’re a dime a dozen. You’re not unique. Anybody can do ­a ­cartridge.". They left and formed A…

Gaming abounds with stories like this. A friend of mine went to work for a small game studio in Oklahoma that'd gotten some acclaim for their quake mod pack. They took that momentum and started on their own novel IP as a quake licensee. They made a ahem mildly successful game named Medal of Honor. Some time down the road, the owner of the studio didn't want to share the wealth. As a result the top programmers, design…

I suppose that explains why they felt so eerily similar and shared same engine.

Re: Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?

#212

Post by mk89 »

deckard1 wrote: post #197
senko wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their CEO Ray Kassar famously said, "You’re no more important to those projects than the person on the assembly line who put them together. You’re a dime a dozen. You’re not unique. Anybody can do ­a ­cartridge.". Imagine any software company CEO nowadays saying that out loud, no matter what they privately thought.

today they have their scrum masters whisper it in our ears at the daily stand up

Ahaha this just made my day :)

Re: Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?

#213

Post by almostarockstar »

Relevant story based on your example:

During the early days of the covid lockdowns, before nursing home staff or residents were vaccinated, many staff quit en masse to work as covid test center staff. The hours were better. The job was less complex and less demanding. The pay was comparable.

Then when the remaining staff began to contract covid, they were down to a few core people working continuously to provide care. Many recently (and not so recently) retired nurses returned to work until they could figure things out.

There isn't much to learn about enterprise staffing here except that when the chips are down, people who are truly devoted to their jobs will go to extraordinary lengths to make sure it gets done.

I feel it's a pity these people are often (in my country) poorly compensated for the incredible effort they make.

Re: Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?

#214

Post by siscia »

gfxgirl wrote: post #210
zomgbbq wrote: post #25

Atari in 1983 went from the leader in video game production to completely imploding. In 1979, four of their best programmers left after demanding equity in the sales and were refused. Their CEO Ray Kassar famously said, "You’re no more important to those projects than the person on the assembly line who put them together. You’re a dime a dozen. You’re not unique. Anybody can do ­a ­cartridge.". They left and formed A…

I agree 100% with much of the sentiment here that creators deserve respect and a cut of the spoils At the same time, it really depends.... I'm pretty confident that there are very few engineers at FAANG that can't be replaced. I'd also expect there are very few engineers at Epic, Activision, Blizzard, Naughty Dog, Sony, Rockstar, Ubisoft, Valve, etc... that can't be replaced. Sure, if 30%-70% of the team left on any…

I see stories like this a few times.

But oftentimes management ask if the project will be completed at all. And yes, the project will be completed.

But the real question to ask is often:

Will it be completed on time? On budget? With the same quality level?

And this is a complete different story.

Re: Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?

#215

Post by cynusx »

Being on the hiring side of the engineering job market you do see the occasional companies imploding when their entire technical staff departs.

When it happens to post series-A companies it's usually just a team that leaves such as what happened when Bumble recruited the entire Barcelona-based engineering office of another company.

Re: Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?

#216

Post by denimnerd42 »

Not shut down but my company is one of the top 3 largest in its sector, but it's third place. It has failed to transition to modern IT practices over and over again. Important ICs generating millions in value keep leaving because IT at this company is so frustrating to work in. There has been so much turnover few projects can deliver on any sort of timely basis. The stock just is going to continue to get hammered as the effectiveness of the organization just slips and slips. It spends something like 2x on IT as its competitors and gets less for it. There's tens of thousands of IT employees so it's difficult to get a full read on things but within company wide slack it's clear things are not going well.

Re: Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?

#217

Post by wongarsu »

morelisp wrote: post #200
pjmlp wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are also illegal in most European countries.

They're not illegal in Germany, but the legal requirements are so onerous (50% salary paid for the duration of the non-compete) nobody does it. I believe it's similar in France.

They can be done in Germany if they are very limited in scope, basically if they don't make it harder to find your next job. But it's a fine line, and if a court decides you stepped over the line it's as you described. Nobody sane would put it in a standard contract below C-level.

Re: Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?

#218

Post by davidkuennen »

Aloha wrote: post #88
tomblomfield wrote: post #41

Famously, the Traitorous Eight left Shockley to found Fairchild Semiconductor. This was essentially the origin story of Silicon Valley. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traitorous_eight https://www.amazon.co.uk/Power-Law-Venture-Capital-Disruptio...

Shockley inadvertently by being an asshole created more wealth for more people possibly than any other single person.

"At the time of his death, he was estranged from most of his friends and family, except his second wife, the former Emmy Lanning (1913–2007). His children reportedly learned of his death by reading his obituary in the newspaper."

Well, that says a lot.

Re: Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?

#219

Post by pryelluw »

jamestimmins wrote: post #169
pryelluw wrote: post #140

I once worked for a small but very profitable tech company. The owner pretty much had to sit back and rake in the money. He was, however, a huge asshole and alcoholic. Wasn’t able to let it function without him. Went from a couple of million dollars profit to closed when I quit. He couldn’t find other devs. Tried to outsource it but just failed. I quit because he tried to treat me like shit. Like he treated his other…

Now that the company is gone, have you considered using your experience to build a similar product in that space?

Yes, but it’s not what I want to do with my life. The journey is the destination.

Re: Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?

#220

Post by sofixa »

morelisp wrote: post #200
pjmlp wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are also illegal in most European countries.

They're not illegal in Germany, but the legal requirements are so onerous (50% salary paid for the duration of the non-compete) nobody does it. I believe it's similar in France.

Yep,same in France, and they have to be geographically limited.
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