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Figure out who's leaving the company: dump, diff, repeat

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Re: Figure out who's leaving the company: dump, diff, repeat

#61

Post by at-fates-hands »

jedberg wrote: post #9

Layoffs in the WFH era are weird. Back in the day you had a pretty good idea of who got laid off because you saw them walking out the door with a box of their stuff. You could go up to them and say, "hey let's meet at $local_watering_hole and hang out". You could swap contact info if you didn't already have it. You could get closure. Now, one day a bunch of people just stop replying to email. You have a to wait a whi…

I work at a large corporation. Most of the people have transitioned to WFH now.

At least five times I can say I had no idea someone had been laid off or sacked until weeks later. I just assumed they were on PTO or something, and then in the middle of a meeting, I'd say something like, "Yeah, where's James been, I haven't seen him online for a few weeks now." Then the manager would chime in and say they got laid off or let go several weeks ago and they were waiting to announce it to everybody.

Twice my director had a meeting with the team and forgot to include myself and two other devs to announce someone had been let go - which is scary AF when we're all on Teams wondering why they just randomly left us off the meeting, which then made us all paranoid AF for a few weeks.

The whole process with laying people off or people getting sacked has just been handled in such a ham handed way, it doesn't inspire confidence at all, and people are constantly looking over their shoulder when a team loses people and have to pick up the slack immediately.

Re: Figure out who's leaving the company: dump, diff, repeat

#63

Post by brunooliv »

I find this super weird and almost borderline invasion of privacy? I mean, a job is your professional life and you’re there to work, not go directly make friends or stalk people… I mean sure I’ve made a few people whom I’d call friends in previous jobs and current one too and I’d like to believe that we’d have enough confidence in the friendship to tell each other about quitting. But seeing that potential info about anyone feels very weird…

Re: Figure out who's leaving the company: dump, diff, repeat

#64

Post by heads »

So negative! Where I work this tool is called “new-hires”. It uses a restricted read-only API key to our third-party people tool. It was given to me by our People Director. Sometimes there are lines beginning with - but the tool is named for the lines beginning with +.

new-hires is built on top of the “people” python module / cli in our monorepo. That tool is so much more useful than just a way of diffing the org chart. Who is in what team, where are they, are they working today, is it time to celebrate their anniversary, etc. It also follows what I coin the “ZFS litmus test” for good CLI tools by providing -pH for parseable, headerless output.

Treasure such places indeed.

Re: Figure out who's leaving the company: dump, diff, repeat

#65

Post by Unfrozen0688 »

lmz wrote: post #57
Unfrozen0688 wrote: post #50

Not a WFH thing. This is a USA thing!! Edit: OP said "Layoffs in the WFH era are weird" Yes they are, but people here don't suddenly go offline quite as weird is what I was trying to get at. Here in Sweden if you are FTE there is usually a 1-3 month layoff period (upppsägningstid) where you work and get paid still. At the end of the period you leave. People usually email the team and even the entire company with "hey…

But if the company is worried about access can't it just pay the employee the 1-3 months without allowing them to work, even in Sweden?

I am unsure actually as I am not an employer. I am sure it is possible but probably for sensitive jobs like military or something.

Some links if you want to google translate https://www.unionen.se/rad-och-stod/uppsagningstider-om-din-...

There is "duty of loyalty" where you can get sued for leaks etc https://www.unionen.se/rad-och-stod/om-lojalitetsplikt-och-l...

Re: Figure out who's leaving the company: dump, diff, repeat

#66

Post by at-fates-hands »

kristopolous wrote: post #60
jedberg wrote: post #9

Layoffs in the WFH era are weird. Back in the day you had a pretty good idea of who got laid off because you saw them walking out the door with a box of their stuff. You could go up to them and say, "hey let's meet at $local_watering_hole and hang out". You could swap contact info if you didn't already have it. You could get closure. Now, one day a bunch of people just stop replying to email. You have a to wait a whi…

The lockout always struck me as dumb and I didn't do it as a manager. If I trusted them for the 3 years they worked for me, I can trust them for another week or two. Tie up loose ends, take your time. We're all adults here. I understand that under the worst circumstances bad things can happen but that's always the case.

I worked at a large web dev company and for years they had this attitude.

Then one designer put in his two weeks and spent the majority of the time downloading all the site files for all of the sites the company had built over the two years he was there. We're talking hundreds of static sites where he took the all the design docs and static HTML/CSS/JS files one would need to recreate them somewhere else.

Instead of going after the guy legally, they passed and then instituted the same policy. You put in your two weeks? Nah, you're out the moment you hit send on that email. Manager alerts security, who then come over to your desk. You get your jacket and whatever you walked in with and get walked out. The one designer totally ruined the company from ever letting someone stay for their two weeks.

Re: Figure out who's leaving the company: dump, diff, repeat

#67

Post by shermantanktop »

I’ve done this multiple times, and have two instances running right now which have been active for years. One is simple and watches a smaller org:

ldapsearch … > new; diff old new > updates; mail … (On phone, pseudo code, definitely wrong)

The other is perhaps more interesting. I built a tool for a tool for a population of specialists in a large company. The tool requires ldap data synced in, and I capture the diffs. That sampling approach provides surprising insights into what’s active/hot/declining, even when the total size of the company would making tracking every employee change quite difficult.

Re: Figure out who's leaving the company: dump, diff, repeat

#68

Post by 4hg4ufxhy »

lmz wrote: post #57
Unfrozen0688 wrote: post #50

Not a WFH thing. This is a USA thing!! Edit: OP said "Layoffs in the WFH era are weird" Yes they are, but people here don't suddenly go offline quite as weird is what I was trying to get at. Here in Sweden if you are FTE there is usually a 1-3 month layoff period (upppsägningstid) where you work and get paid still. At the end of the period you leave. People usually email the team and even the entire company with "hey…

But if the company is worried about access can't it just pay the employee the 1-3 months without allowing them to work, even in Sweden?

Yes, at least in Finland the penalty for not adhering to the notice periods is full pay during that time. But I never heard of it happening.

Re: Figure out who's leaving the company: dump, diff, repeat

#69

Post by kristopolous »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #66
kristopolous wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lockout always struck me as dumb and I didn't do it as a manager. If I trusted them for the 3 years they worked for me, I can trust them for another week or two. Tie up loose ends, take your time. We're all adults here. I understand that under the worst circumstances bad things can happen but that's always the case.

I worked at a large web dev company and for years they had this attitude. Then one designer put in his two weeks and spent the majority of the time downloading all the site files for all of the sites the company had built over the two years he was there. We're talking hundreds of static sites where he took the all the design docs and static HTML/CSS/JS files one would need to recreate them somewhere else. Instead of…

Anyone could have done that at any time. The two weeks isn't magic.

It could have been unannounced and they just stop showing up.

You either trust your people or you don't. If you don't, get rid of them and lock them out. If you do and you still have to let them go then don't worry about it.

People are far too inhuman in professional relationships and I strongly dislike that tendency. You likely spend as much time with your colleagues as your spouse, make it a real connection.

Re: Figure out who's leaving the company: dump, diff, repeat

#70

Post by jedberg »

petesergeant wrote: post #49
jedberg wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At Amazon, when someone was laid off their Slack still worked for the 60 day WARN period. It was actually a problem because you would Slack them and get mad that they didn't reply. The only way to know for sure was to ask their manager, but you didn't want to do that because if they weren't laid off you didn't want to throw them under the bus!

> their Slack still worked for the 60 day WARN period So weird companies can’t just pay that out as severance

That's effectively how it ends up, except with a slight advantage to the company. They cut you off and tell you that you don't have to work anymore, but in the off chance you get a job within 60 days, they don't have to keep paying you. They can also preserve their cashflow by not paying you up front.

But since you technically have to be "on the books", if something like Slack is tied to your status in the company directory, it's easier to just leave it.

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