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Ask HN: Who has been laid off?

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Re: Ask HN: Who has been laid off?

#311

Post by Schwolop »

gwbas1c wrote: post #79

My job of 9 years ended the last day of February. My plan was to take two weeks off and start looking for another job mid-March. I've been ready to change jobs, but I find job searches while I have a job frustrating. Each opportunity is a huge investment in time. Honestly, I find it easier to search for a job when I can give it my full and undivided attention. To make a long story short, I dropped a hint that I was r…

Even though it's not tangible, I just wanted to offer you a ray of hope - if you'd pitched that set of priorities to me at the right time, I would want to give you an interview barely glancing at a resume. The attitude of wanting to solve hard problems and wanting to learn new things too (in my limited experience) leads to the best developers and designers.

Re: Ask HN: Who has been laid off?

#312

Post by mgold55 »

Strange time 4 me here. Worked for 5 and half years and was getting the "Reduction in force" thingy with 24 other IT folks out there for a major healthcare insurer. I was looking for a job since Dec-2019 anyway.

At least I was fully paid to the end of March and now getting some form of supplemental $$$ till end of June. Then freakin' reality will hit as I will paying out for Cobra. This Covid issue is introducing the raw side of business, loyalty, connections, solitude and just watching bad news all day.

So, my advice is treat yourself better and be kind to yourself, your family and true friends.

Re: Ask HN: Who has been laid off?

#313

Post by dguaraglia »

nojvek wrote: post #287
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

us, founders, were the ones making the least already I don't think people realise how common this is.

> us, founders, were the ones making the least already. Sure, but founders also have magnitudes more equity than any employees. It sucks for a founder of a company that isn’t profitable or has great growth but for a decent run company the equity is far more valuable than the salary. Like Steve Jobs taking a $1/year salary and still being one of the richest folks on the planet. As a founder you can still up your salar…

Of course in usual times, taking the lower salary in exchange for the increase in stock is perfectly acceptable bet. Stock is only an advantage if your company survives.

In times like this, it could be a strain on your bottom line (depending on how much your day-to-day living costs are), as well as a higher risk because chances of your company going under are much higher.

> As a founder you can still up your salary to a sustainable level and let your employees go. Employees don’t have that option.

Hm... yeah, one could play that game for a couple months, but eventually you'll run out of money no matter what.

Re: Ask HN: Who has been laid off?

#314

Post by dguaraglia »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #301
nojvek wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> us, founders, were the ones making the least already. Sure, but founders also have magnitudes more equity than any employees. It sucks for a founder of a company that isn’t profitable or has great growth but for a decent run company the equity is far more valuable than the salary. Like Steve Jobs taking a $1/year salary and still being one of the richest folks on the planet. As a founder you can still up your salar…

People like Jobs are outliers, for every one of them there are thousands where the reality is quite different.

This. Of course it's very different to take a $1 salary when you are already wealthy, the company you are a CEO of is already worth billions and you are getting paid in financial instruments that are worth actual money.

For most startup founders, including myself, that's not the case. I'm not complaining, I'm sure we are ourselves in a much better position that the average American who is getting squeezed by this crisis, but there's definitely a huge gap between my company and Apple, LOL.

Re: Ask HN: Who has been laid off?

#315

Post by pdimitar »

I didn't get laid off due to the pandemic. But I've got a very generous notice at the end of January that I have until 30th of April to find a new job (I was told they have to reduce costs and can only guess it's due to investor pressure).

I started looking actively for a job somewhere at the start of February and had several very promising leads and eventually, at the start of March, several pre-offer stages of the interviewing process with several companies.

And then the whole thing happened. Some companies told me they are freezing hiring, others didn't say anything, and my best lead had to leave me hanging even though it was clear (signs that I read during our real-life meetings) he wanted to hire me for two separate projects and a full-time job.

I waited for about 3 weeks, thinking to wait out the initial panic. But it became increasingly clear that is not going to die out anytime soon.

I wrote a very short intro of my profile (with a link to a CV) here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22752249

Not sure I will have enough savings to last me several months so not going to rely on that and will be looking to start a new job -- or consulting -- as early as possible.

Stay strong, people.

Re: Ask HN: Who has been laid off?

#316

Post by pdimitar »

kamarg wrote: post #202
Yeroc wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, in an economic environment like this a union won't help you. We're seeing many public services staff that are unionized laid off (in Canada) and I'm sure this is happening around the world. By the end of this it's quite likely this will look similar to the Great Depression.

It wouldn't stop all the layoffs but that isn't the goal. The goal would be to give employees a vote when decisions are made on how to deal with the economic fallout instead of being the passive victims of whatever decision is arrived upon by upper management and the board. Instead of instantly laying off as many people as possible, the union could have brought other proposals to the table to try and help both the co…

> 400+ of your coworkers were let go over Zoom via a two minute prerecorded message.

That's harsh and cold. Wow.

Re: Ask HN: Who has been laid off?

#317

Post by pdimitar »

lb1lf wrote: post #277
klunger wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I live in Oslo. Ouch, that is really rough. I hope your severance was enough to carry you through until you can find something new. My partner is in petro-adjacent company* and they have a full hiring freeze. We are wondering when the layoffs are coming. Good luck. *technically, they have an industry agnostic service, but something like 90% of their customers are oil companies, so...

-Thank you; unless this corona thing paralyse anything and everything for the rest of the year or more, I expect to land on my feet (and, should the current state of affairs continue for that long, I suspect the lack of a paycheck is not going to be the biggest of my worries!) I hope we'll see a partial return to normal-ish after Easter - at least to the extent that the companies I've been in touch with start plannin…

> I hope we'll see a partial return to normal-ish after Easter - at least to the extent that the companies I've been in touch with start planning for the months and years ahead, rather than just trying to figure out how to survive until something resembling normalcy returns.

This is how it feels in Bulgaria as well. We are no longer an exclusively outsourcing destination; we have quite a few very adequate tech companies and people's salaries in the area are steadily, if at glacial pace, growing.

I feel that currently a lot of people are needlessly panicking and this has a snowballing effect BUT eventually people will realise they still have customers they have to serve if they want to receive the next invoices and will thus realise they need the tech workers.

I am in a similar situation like yours, albeit slightly worse -- I can ride my savings up until the end of June I reckon, and I hope the economy starts swinging back by then.

Best of luck and stay strong.

Re: Ask HN: Who has been laid off?

#318

Post by heyshtor »

I am a linguist in the UK, and our team is on a month's notice period due to a cost cut.

I am looking natural language understanding / natural language generation and analytics tasks but can also do other things from voice technology pipeline (ASR, TTS, voice QA) as well as QA and technical support for webtech projects. https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariya-heyshtor-164a35157/

Re: Ask HN: Who has been laid off?

#319

Post by gwbas1c »

Schwolop wrote: post #311
gwbas1c wrote: post #79

My job of 9 years ended the last day of February. My plan was to take two weeks off and start looking for another job mid-March. I've been ready to change jobs, but I find job searches while I have a job frustrating. Each opportunity is a huge investment in time. Honestly, I find it easier to search for a job when I can give it my full and undivided attention. To make a long story short, I dropped a hint that I was r…

Even though it's not tangible, I just wanted to offer you a ray of hope - if you'd pitched that set of priorities to me at the right time, I would want to give you an interview barely glancing at a resume. The attitude of wanting to solve hard problems and wanting to learn new things too (in my limited experience) leads to the best developers and designers.

Thanks, I appreciate that. (BTW, my LinkedIn is pretty close to my resume.)

The most important thing is: Don't Panic!

What I generally observe in software is that it's super-hard to hire. Now a lot of companies that had difficult-to-fill openings will realize it's now or never: If you can't find someone to fill the role in this economy, you probably have unrealistic expectations. Otherwise, you're going to have plenty of great people walking through your door.

I think that hiring will pick up faster than we anticipate. Pay might be a little less than we want, but it'll be back by the beginning of 2022.

Re: Ask HN: Who has been laid off?

#320

Post by pdimitar »

PixelPaul wrote: post #307

I am still employed luckily. But I am keen to try help out any developers. I was going to start a new project in nodejs Adonisjs and Vuejs but I might see about hiring someone to do it for me instead. Only problem is I won’t be able to afford a full time developer at normal rates. Maybe $5,000 AUD and I think it will take about 3 - 4 months works. Would anyone be interested? I understand if not as it’s not a great de…

I definitely would have taken you up on your offer if I wasn't a hardcore backender. But hey, it might be a good opportunity go get back to some frontend work because I was meaning to re-learn parts of it. Or maybe we could go with Phoenix LiveView which is basically making the server act as if what you're seeing is happening on the browser?

In any case, my email is in my profile. What is your project about?

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