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Ask HN: Who is firing?

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Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?

#381

Post by wlesieutre »

existencebox wrote: post #281
Ashwinning wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any proof?

Star Citizen's developer, Cloud Imperium Games, was pretty forward about getting a blazing deal on a bunch of churned out crytek engine devs a few (weeks/months) back; I recall hearing a lot of discussion on their subreddit/forums/chat about the issues at crytek that lead to this migration, so the parents statements certainly don't disagree with other facts that I trust.

Two weeks ago. Here's the comment from Sean Tracy regarding an old procedural city generation demo at Crytek:

> We had plans at Crytek back when Marco and a team of guys worked on this (and now we are looking to hire some guys from that old team ;) "spoiler alert" ).

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/57wlln/marco_c...

The CIG Frankfurt office (Foundry 42 Germany) is already staffed by a bunch of former Cryengine devs who left Crytek 2-ish years ago amidst rumblings of people not getting paid.

There's also Amazon Lumberyard, which is effectively Amazon giving away Cryengine (or an offshoot of it) for free with ties to Twitch and their cloud infrastructure. That launch came across as a "we badly need money from someone" partnership on Crytek's part, you won't find their name anywhere on Lumberyard.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/02/09/amazon-lumberyar...

Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?

#382

Post by a3n »

pennaMan wrote: post #265
a3n wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would like to find (or create) a service where we can talk about the real dirt at companies. I'd be waiting for the wikileaks dumps of that service, followed by firings. Data wants to be naked and exposed.

Why would such a service hold leak worthy data?

Actually wikileaks was an unthought player. More likely (if at all) someone who sells data or just likes to watch things burn. It was a bit knee jerk on my part, as I've become much more reluctant to spread my data footprint. If the data isn't there, it can't be stolen.

Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?

#383

Post by JamesBarney »

beachy wrote: post #368
JamesBarney wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most companies will answer two questions "When did Joe work here, and is Joe eligible for rehire?" This is why it's important for him to figure out if he was terminated-with-cause or not. If this was the case then he is not eligible for rehire and when a company does a background check Joe will run into this issue.

Do you have any evidence about that? We are in the HR software field and in my experience being"eligible for rehire" is not a binary fact, and even if it was it might not be at the fingertips of the person giving the reference.

This was my understanding talking to a couple of friends who were in H.R. They said their company's policy was to only let them answer these two questions. And they implied that this was similar for several other companies they worked for.

So what I'm drawing this conclusion from is definitely anecdotal.

Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?

#384

Post by rshaban »

1474295912 wrote: post #303
1474295912 wrote: post #96

VisualMeta GmbH in Berlin. They're a 'start-up' backed by Axel Springer, Berlin. They fired about 60-70 people recently, some of them on their first day of work. Most of their devs come from non-existent countries (China/Eritrea/Pakistan etc) and they're paid abysmally (€32-34k). It's a surprise that this news wasn't covered at all in Berlin start-up press.

Edit: I meant "Non-EU" countries, not non-existent.

A helpful clarification :)

Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?

#385

Post by jrnichols »

slgeorge wrote: post #324
mgkimsal wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

It may not happen, but many companies believe it could happen. Consequently, they say next to nothing about ex-employees - only the dates of employment. If you're the company being asked for the reference there is no upside in you saying that Joe was fired - why would you want to help another company, and why would you want to risk (however infinitesimal) a law suit. This is commonly defined by policy, simply ask the…

I've worked for places that will not say anything about you at all. Nothing. They refuse to even say if you worked there or not, instead referring you to a service they use called The Work Number or something like that.

It's really frustrating to try to look for a job when your potential employer really has a limited way of checking your references.

Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?

#386

Post by dredmorbius »

driverdan wrote: post #269
dredmorbius wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The newspaper / print media industry generally is doing abysmally poorly. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/28/business/media/buyouts-wal... Submitted yesterday, didn't go anywhere: https://news.ycombinator.co/item?id=12834583 I've been picking up newspapers and magazines and been quietly horrified at how thin they are. I'm no fan of advertising, but I know it's how they pay the bills, and there are no ads there. The Ch…

> The newspaper / print media industry generally is doing abysmally poorly. They're not doing well but I wouldn't use the term abysmal. Print media is still declining but a lot of publishers are offsetting much of that loss with online revenue.

I'd love to see your sources on that, because everything I've seen says otherwise.

From 2013, but I'm not finding anything more recent:

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/03/this-is-...

"In 2012, newspapers lost $16 in print ads for every $1 earned in digital ads." A trend that's getting worse -- it had been 10:1 in 2011, according to Pew Research.

Similarly, also 2013:

http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2013/newspapers-stabilizing-b...

And 2014: http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/04/28/decline_of_ne...

The latter shows a plot of ads revenues from 1950 forward, showing it falling of a cliff in 2005. Online hasn't made a whit of a difference.

Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?

#387

Post by Ashwinning »

germanthrowaway wrote: post #264
Ashwinning wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any proof?

no proof that would not make it so that peoples' future is not ruined. they all depend on not pissing off the wrong people in order to get the money they are owed. reality is that no one within crytek trusts the management since they have lied for several months about what is going on. i heard that a sister studio in bulgaria no longer has management because of the disconnection in the company.

Man, they burnt through that $50M from Amazon pretty fast.

Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?

#388

Post by pvaldes »

rootlocus wrote: post #138
ewjordan wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firing gets rid of the worst. Hiring, at least in theory, pulls in the best. Healthy companies at scale and size equilibrium should be doing both at roughly the same rate, averaged over time.

> Hiring, at least in theory, pulls in the best. If you're firing "the worst", that means at some point, you hired them. Not to mention "the best" is a very vague term. How do you quantify quality? What pool of people are you selecting "the best" from? How many of them are "the best"? The first two? The first ten?

> If you're firing "the worst", that means at some point, you hired them

... or that working in your company causes a serious damage and suck out all the talent of the people before to let it go totally burnt.

Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?

#389

Post by timv »

JSeymourATL wrote: post #333
andy wrote: post #234

I was fired from Wickr.com a few months after their layoffs. I was fired from Wickr a few months ago. The given reason was they considered me not a Senior Android Developer and that was my title - I asked too many questions apparently. My manager indicated that if my title had been Android Developer there probably would not have been a problem. I don't care about titles really. I was hired in 2014 as a contractor for…

> Personally, I would prefer to be laid off vs fired... That's a distinction with very little difference. You got pushed out. Creating a poor employee performance review is standard corporate cover for incompetent managers. Besides, who do you want on the team? Cheerfully loyal minions or the guy who gripes about overtime? Use the Group Restructure/Company Lay-offs as your cover story for leaving and move-on.

That is definitely the approach I would use.

Something like:

"The company went through a series of restructures and down-sizing, and I got caught up in that. They mostly kept the junior staff and a lot of the senior developers were let go."

Re: Ask HN: Who is firing?

#390

Post by vertex-four »

tbrownaw wrote: post #326
vertex-four wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pro-employee laws are not good for employees in the success case - that you're a top 10% worker in a field that is growing and has lots of demand. The thing is, if you think about the failure case - you're a disposable cog in a field that's stagnating - there's issues which need to be solved, unless you're a staunch libertarian with a belief that people who are unable to find work should die. Nobody wants to pay for…

The alternative to making it impossible to fire people, is to make getting fired less of a big deal. Instead of adding friction to the employment market, implement a decent social safety net that includes provisions for voc ed / retraining. Instead of focusing solely on prevention, work on mitigation. To much prevention can make everything grind to a halt.

> Instead of adding friction to the employment market, implement a decent social safety net that includes provisions for voc ed / retraining.

Sure, except that nobody wants to do that for some abstract reason of "fairness", so the problem needs to be mitigated another way.

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