61–70 of 219 posts
Layoffs are going to suck regardless, but this is one of the best severance packages I've seen in this wave: * 15 weeks base pay + 1 week per year of employment * 6 months COBRA + $300 mental health * no 1-yr cliff, options can be exercised thru next year * you can keep all your equipment
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What would you prefer that they say instead? "I made no wrong decisions, I have no regrets leaving all of you unemployed."?
"I'll be resigning when [the board/leadership] finds a replacement." I always get massive push back when I suggest this, but it's the only remedy that makes sense. If you have to layoff 15% of the workforce when the growth was under your command, and you want to take responsibility, then step down. Own your mistake.
Apollo should cease to exist. It is a terrible product and basically designed for being a DDOS attack vector. Never design things like this. They are on the opposite track to the entire web industry.
Can you expand on this? Is this a generic criticism of GraphQL? Apollo server? Client? And what do you mean by opposite track? I really like GraphQL but agree that it‘s not trivial to implement well. I also think it recently became a bit less relevant for web applications (React server components come to mind) but it‘s still very useful for some web apps, mobile apps and generally for designing nice APIs.
I have no idea what Apollo Graph QL is, but it was interesting to search by URL and see the progression of related HN titles and their engagement. 2018 July. Apollo server 2 released woo! (mostly ignored) 2019 Feb. We switched away from Slack woo! . . . (Some PRs everybody ignored) 2019 June. We got a $22M investment woo! . . . (Many PRs everybody ignored) 2022 Dec. Oops, we are laying of lots of people...
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Crazy. Usually it's just "Pay stops today, benefits at the end of the month. Hand in your badge - off you go."
No it's not. Severance is extremely common, while this package is quite generous.
Why are software companies still grappling with the mythical man month? You'd think by now we'd have learned our lesson. More hands /= more productivity, at least on a linear scale
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not an expert, but my understanding is it depends on how the severance is paid off. If the company keeps you on payroll and pays you weekly, then you cannot collect unemployment. If the company gives you a lump sum then you may be able to. If a condition of the severance is that you sign a document saying you are quitting instead of being fired, then you cannot collect unemployment. My understanding comes from recent…
If a condition of the severance is that you sign a document saying you are quitting instead of being fired, then you cannot collect unemployment. This is false. If a company makes you sign a statement that you are quitting instead of being fired as a condition of getting severance, they are committing unemployment insurance fraud and are subject to civil and criminal sanction in most states. (The point of trying to m…
Is there a reason why these big layoffs are done just before thanksgiving, Christmas etc?
It's near the end of the quarter and holidays tends to be less productive time for employees with many taking extra time off anyway. Even with the very generous severance is still makes sense to announce these layoffs before some of the least productive times. Also personally, I think I'd rather know about being laid off before going into the new year.
I have no idea what Apollo Graph QL is, but it was interesting to search by URL and see the progression of related HN titles and their engagement. 2018 July. Apollo server 2 released woo! (mostly ignored) 2019 Feb. We switched away from Slack woo! . . . (Some PRs everybody ignored) 2019 June. We got a $22M investment woo! . . . (Many PRs everybody ignored) 2022 Dec. Oops, we are laying of lots of people...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No it's not. Severance is extremely common, while this package is quite generous.
Severance is definitely not common in startups. They'll usually burn the cash right up until the very last investor says 'no more' and then call it quits. They might have one more pay period (or two) in the bank.