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Ask HN: Who is firing?
291–300 of 454 posts
Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?
#292My friend's company Iron.io laid off ~20 employees in SF (almost the entire company). Apparently their series A round brought in 12 million just a year ago.
It's a shame because Iron.io has truly fantastic offerings. Better than anything from any of the major cloud providers. The only problem is that it's hard to beat having your entire platform in the one place. Especially for billing, security etc.
We had some pretty bad issues with them earlier this year. Queues would randomly change from push to pull, service outages, etc. Seems to have stabilized for the most part, but we aren't using them much now.
Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
First question is are you sure you were fired with cause and not laid off? If you're sure it's the first you might want to consult a lawyer. Usually a company needs a pretty strong paper trail and a lot of evidence of you screwing up royally before they can fire with cause.
Obviously, they should consult a lawyer, but I want to clarify this point, because the parent comment can be very misleading. If you have a specific employment contract, all bets are off and only your lawyer and the courts can really determine what is/is not a permissible dismissal. Assuming no contract, "cause" needs vary by state, so you can't just trust the parent message. In At-Will states, most of the time, you…
And if you have a specific employment contract (and you're in an at-will state), take a close look at it since it likely includes an arbitration clause.
So going to a lawyer & the courts might make you feel like you're going to get a resolution, but likely you aren't going to get very far.
Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?
#294The Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan (OTPP) in Toronto, Ontario, Canada is currently laying off over 100+ (union, management and contractor) IT folks from the Enterprise Technology Solutions (IT operations) and Testing teams. All of the affected positions are being transferred to Tata Consultancy Services (TCS - India based offshoring service company), with those who are affected being mandated to knowledge transfer wi…
This reminds me of the RBC debacle a few years ago, where they abused the Temporary Foreign Worker Program to replace capable, salaried Canadian IT workers with offshore services. That stint hurt not just those workers but other companies that were trying to hire the best in the world, only for the feds to deny visas due to one bad apple spoiling the bunch. http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/news/rbc-temporary-foreign-work…
Yes - we've discussed amongst ourselves (those affected) about what RBC did, and how they were lambasted in the media for abusing the visas. In our particular case, TCS seems to already have a number of local assets they're involving, with most of the work to be sourced by India based teams. I'm sure OTPP is trying to avoid similar negative press in regards to abusing visas, but I've been surprised how little coverage this news is getting in general (a pension plan funded by local Ontario union based teachers firing local union based employees for offshore assets.)
Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, drat - I'm sorry. I had assumed most HN readers would have seen the series already - it was on a while back, wasn't it? (We only just saw it in Australia, which is usually an indication that is has been on in the US about a year ago?!?)
Your spoiler is from the newest season. So, not quite a year, and if they're anything like me, they've been putting off watching the new stuff until they can binge watch the whole thing.
I wish I had done that, waiting is frustrating. However, I agree, that doesn't really spoil anything, it's not like there's suspense there.
Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?
#296Back in the first dotcom bubble, we had FuckedCompany.com. It tracked these sorts of things on a daily basis.
There is also glassdoor.com but it's not specially geared towards layoffs. But you can get a decent idea of how well a company does.
Glassdoor can be (and is) easily tainted by submitting fake positive reviews. They have a policy of not letting employers remove negative reviews, but that doesn't stop the company from flooding with "it's a fast-paced work environment, so some people clearly can't handle the heat in the kitchen" style "positive reviews" to reframe the legitimate negative ones.
So, it can sometimes be difficult to get a proper read on signal. However, it seems to be among the best data source out there.
Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would honestly refrain from telling people you were fired in that case, and simply state you were laid off. I would then begin to infer that something fishy was going on internally and that you're probably better off not being involved with the company anymore. It really sounds to me like management didn't know how to deal with the situation and a "performance review" was simply their scapegoat, and not the reality…
Agreed. If your former employer is smart, they won't say much beyond "yes, that person worked here" when contacted by any company that is looking to hire you. If they say anything that directly results in you being denied a job, it opens them up to lawsuits. (at least that's my understanding)
> If they say anything that directly results in you being denied a job, it opens them up to lawsuits.
This is the received wisdom, but not sure it happens. It might be something that happens at high levels, but it's uncommon for most people to even get a rejection letter or email in the first place, this notion of companies badmouthing you then them telling you that's why you were not hired is just... weird.
Someone would have to call/email your former company, they'd have to put something in writing (or recording) that specifically was negative about you, the company you are applying to would then need to keep a record of that, and then tell you why you weren't hired was because of that negative information.
Has that ever happened to anyone?
It feels to me like the 'lawsuits!' excuse is mostly a smokescreen to cover people being lazy, rude or incompetent at their job of actually managing a hiring process.
Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I'm understanding this correctly, does this mean no company can recover from a situation where they had to let go of people?
The companies may survive, departments may survive. They'll need time to recover, rebuild, find new confidence and morale. But... in the short-term, once cuts start they don't stop. It's always too little too late. The big cuts are indicative of how bad things already are, the small cuts are indicative of how bag things are yet to get (but it is coming down the line and aimed at you). Once the axe starts swinging, be…
That's not _necessarily_ true. I've worked at a company that expanded far too fast, and laid off a sizeable number of people. They then got some serious focus on the areas that they could do well, made good money and grew more sustainably. By the time I left they were substantially bigger than they had been, sustainably profitable and had been acquired.
On the other hand, I've also been places where the cuts just kept on coming.
Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?
#299Twitter is firing the people who worked on Vine. http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2016/10/27/twitter-strong-q3... Really love how you are doing the opposite for this thread. I guess It helps people get prospective on both sides :)
Thanks! I'm really tempted to post about the suffering, near-fraud and deceit in my company, but I figure it'll be all over the news soon.
Nothing to do with taxis is it? Sounds a bit like a formerly popular search engine?
Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?
#300The Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan (OTPP) in Toronto, Ontario, Canada is currently laying off over 100+ (union, management and contractor) IT folks from the Enterprise Technology Solutions (IT operations) and Testing teams. All of the affected positions are being transferred to Tata Consultancy Services (TCS - India based offshoring service company), with those who are affected being mandated to knowledge transfer wi…
We should do something to get those people in front of Toronto startups. Mind posting about this in the StartupNorth group on Facebook? https://www.facebook.com/groups/startupnorth/