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GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices

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Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices

#531

Post by jjeaff »

laurels-marts wrote: post #519
simplicio wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but that works both ways. Employees are often reluctant to leave jobs where they have a lot of personal relationships, or if getting a new job would entail moving to a new city/state/country, even if jumping ship would entail a sizable payraise or other improvement in working conditions. In an industry where remote work is the norm and changing jobs doesn't even require changing offices, people are much less l…

>Employees are often reluctant to leave jobs where they have a lot of personal relationships That sounds like having a life. I guess the alternative is to isolate yourself to a point where you don't have any personal relationships. No hard choices then.

Or, just do some socializing outside of work.

Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices

#532

Post by red-iron-pine »

seydor wrote: post #526
rossdavidh wrote: post #420

Closing all offices, I have to say, makes it way easier to do more layoffs. Having been through layoffs in semiconductor manufacturing in the 90's, when you had to, you know, get the people from work and take them to a place and all that, it involved paying a lot of money for extra security and such. With no offices, it's a lot easier, and you never have to meet the person face to face. Five years from now, I think w…

Online employees OTOH are easier to organize, unionize, make a fuss when having massive layoffs etc. Hard for companies to hide their digital footprints as well

disagree. if you're remote then i can find someone else on the other coast, in georgia or alabama, or india, who will do your job, usually cheaper.

if you're high-end FAANG tier talent, different story, but most of us are replaceable. that means most of you reading this -- and all of the recent layoffs just underscore that.

Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices

#533

Post by ecshafer »

bhouston wrote: post #90
peoplearepeople wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

vscode would be dropped like a stone

Not until there is a viable alternative. But with the integration of Github Co-Pilot, they can now make subscription fees from all of those users of VSCode.

I don't understand why anyone would use VSCode, now.

Between Intellij, Vim, Emacs, Sublime Text there are at least 4 better Editors / IDE for any given language.

Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices

#534

Post by SantalBlush »

1-more wrote: post #269
throwaway2214 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor

then nothing can ever be malice. This razor sucks.

>This razor sucks.

This razor does suck, and it's overused.

Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices

#535

Post by killingtime74 »

rossdavidh wrote: post #420

Closing all offices, I have to say, makes it way easier to do more layoffs. Having been through layoffs in semiconductor manufacturing in the 90's, when you had to, you know, get the people from work and take them to a place and all that, it involved paying a lot of money for extra security and such. With no offices, it's a lot easier, and you never have to meet the person face to face. Five years from now, I think w…

As you said in your example having to say it to your face is not really a barrier to firing anyway. We are virtual servers to them, no matter rank or position.

Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices

#536

Post by ss48 »

brundolf wrote: post #430
geuis wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, you can't have it both ways. People on HN are always talking badly about companies that don't allow work from home, or require at least a couple days in the office. Then a company says it's going entirely remote (not including the layoff context) and people shit on that. Which is it? As for the layoffs, I don't have anything to add to that. There a Microsoft decision.

There are different people on this website and they can have different opinions about things

If people were the same, there would be not as much discussion on this forum.

Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices

#537

Post by thinkharderbro »

geuis wrote: post #428
rossdavidh wrote: post #420

Closing all offices, I have to say, makes it way easier to do more layoffs. Having been through layoffs in semiconductor manufacturing in the 90's, when you had to, you know, get the people from work and take them to a place and all that, it involved paying a lot of money for extra security and such. With no offices, it's a lot easier, and you never have to meet the person face to face. Five years from now, I think w…

Look, you can't have it both ways. People on HN are always talking badly about companies that don't allow work from home, or require at least a couple days in the office. Then a company says it's going entirely remote (not including the layoff context) and people shit on that. Which is it? As for the layoffs, I don't have anything to add to that. There a Microsoft decision.

why can't it be both ways? neither of those things is absolutes. you can have shitty companies that want to treat employees like temporary resources and may use remote work to streamline the facilitation of that. you can also have companies that treat employees well and don't see the need to force them into the office unnecessarily. both can happen. we don't have to think about things singularly.

Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices

#538

Post by ProfessorLayton »

dntrkv wrote: post #443
splatzone wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the kind of needless extravagance that makes people cynical about the tech industry

That's not really extravagant. I'm assuming it's just a meeting/work room with an oval office theme. It's a very cheap imitation of the oval office. They would have had to buy a lot of the same furniture pieces either way. They just had some fun with it.

I was at their offices back then too. They had and entire section of the office for printing custom t-shirts and an animation room — yes an actual room for 2D animation with the backlit light boxes for paper animation. Also a fully decked out broadcasting room for streaming.

They also had grab-and-go apple products on the walls, like mice, keyboards etc. (Memory is foggy on if they had bigger ticket apple products too).

Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices

#539

Post by red-iron-pine »

ecshafer wrote: post #498
chadash wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is needed is something like WeWork for large office gatherings. Something between a WeWork and a hotel conference center. The former is not really made for big meetings. The latter is either very expensive, too large or too small. You need a space for 10-200 people to meet and collaborate... not a conference center.

Almost every hotel has some kind of conference center. You can absolutely rent a conference center for 10 people for a week in any city in america.

and big conference centers are often highly booked and expensive; random hotels are often very cheap and easy to pull together with a couple of weeks notice. quality varies, but shop around.

source: wrangled a few impromptu "conferences" at a local hotel near data centers.

Re: GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices

#540

Post by pkrotich »

dcchambers wrote: post #215
softwaredoug wrote: post #201

I really liked Shopify's remote model of not closing offices, but turning them into "ports" for teams in major cities to get together throughout the year for planning, team building, and retreats. You had an official place to get together, enjoy the perks of tech company offices, but with the intention of deep short bursts of interaction rather than focused work.

We have done the same at Zendesk. We've reduced our office footprint but have kept our hubs open with large enough offices open for the occasional large on-site and for easier team collaborations, as well as space for anyone that prefers to work in an office environment. I like the model, but I question long term economic viability of owning that much office space with mostly low utilization and only occasional spike…

This is where co-working space (WeWork?) would work well. I just signed a 3 months contract for my team to meet at co-working place as needed to kickstart a project which in person meeting is important.
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