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Xsolla fires 150 employees using analysis of chat and email activity

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Re: Xsolla fires 150 employees using analysis of chat and email activity

#81

Post by trhway »

A bit of Russian color. The CEO FB posts in Russian:

- the 1st, sounding great in Russian, yet hard to translate, is "work energetically like f&cking or f&ck off"

- the 2nd is "looking for a great PR professional in Russia"

https://vc.ru/hr/277765-glava-xsolla-obyasnil-massovye-uvoln...

While without directly offensive words, not like the FB posts above, his message firing the people is still written in a very insulting disrespectful tone. "Write me a long letter". Russian term is "izdevka". The message is written with a lot of mistypes and Russian language mistakes. It doesn't look to me like it was written in a rational and/or sober state.

Some points from https://app2top.ru/industry/xsolla-ob-yasnila-uvol-neniya-za...

- slowdown of growth is the reason for layoffs, and thus decision to cut 10% of salary budget

- primarily firing rank-and-file, not management

- time spend in git/IDE wasn't considered in the evaluating employee efficiency

- most layoffs in Perm is because salaries there are lower than in US

I get a feeling that he is losing it, like he probably got teared a new one by the investors or something like this, got drunk and got that epiphany ... The metrics collection was probably going for some time, and finally they found a use for them.

Re: Xsolla fires 150 employees using analysis of chat and email activity

#82

Post by irjustin »

We're having a field day with this one!

I know it's rare relatively speaking, but between this, Blizzard and others, it seems insane how disconnected a CEO is from their company.

While short sighted, thankfully this doesn't represent the norm of companies.

Re: Xsolla fires 150 employees using analysis of chat and email activity

#83

Post by ari__ »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #27
sokoloff wrote: post #3

Want to bet that there was a round of human review applied after the algorithm ran where, at a minimum, employees judged to be high-performing (or otherwise favored) were saved even though they were initially flagged by the AI/data analysis?

I mean, that’s better than no second, human round, no?

I believe the implication there was that low-performers favored by upper management (for reasons like nepotism) were kept as opposed to productive employees whose performance is not reflected in "tick the box" KPIs.

Re: Xsolla fires 150 employees using analysis of chat and email activity

#84

Post by dasil003 »

MattGaiser wrote: post #44
sokoloff wrote: post #3

Want to bet that there was a round of human review applied after the algorithm ran where, at a minimum, employees judged to be high-performing (or otherwise favored) were saved even though they were initially flagged by the AI/data analysis?

That would require management to be a lot more critical of metrics presented to them than I have ever seen.

I'm sorry you've only ever worked for incompetent management. I assure you that is not universally the case.

Re: Xsolla fires 150 employees using analysis of chat and email activity

#85

Post by planet-and-halo »

MathYouF wrote: post #40
hashkb wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flip side: engineers who curry favor without delivering value can't hide it quite as easily. Those who do their jobs without sucking up have a chance for recognition.

It's pretty cynical to view the person who is helping others get unstuck as "currying favor". In every place I've worked, the person who has helped me get unstuck has always been one of the most productive and talented members of the team. If they weren't, why would I need their help?

A guy at my job is a gamer and describes it as "buffing the group." Just as in a game, the healer could be the team MVP, but if you measure DPS you are never going to realize it.

Re: Xsolla fires 150 employees using analysis of chat and email activity

#86

Post by x0x0 »

sokoloff wrote: post #3

Want to bet that there was a round of human review applied after the algorithm ran where, at a minimum, employees judged to be high-performing (or otherwise favored) were saved even though they were initially flagged by the AI/data analysis?

I'd bet your right. This is close to a termination for cause. If someone fired my reports for cause (rather than a we need to lower burn layoff) without my signoff, I'd be right out the door with them.

Re: Xsolla fires 150 employees using analysis of chat and email activity

#87

Post by bgro »

TimSchumann wrote: post #7

Reminds me of a story I heard from a friend. Some consulting firm came in to the company and decided, based on number of commits (or some such metric), that one particular engineer was the lowest performing engineer on the team. So, management fired them. Turns out that engineer was the one who everyone side-channeled with to get help when blocked. They were the one who knew the system best and were enabling everyone…

I was the go-to on almost every team at my last job when there was a hotfix, major risk change, security fix, etc. I knew the whole system pretty well and knew how to find and match up our awful logging to actual code and find the flaw far faster than anybody. I'd develop and test a fix and quietly discuss with that team's tech lead about risk vs reward concerns to see if they agree or want to discuss changes, then I'd get a pull request out there.

The management / executive team would always hear about major crisis hotfixes, then immediately see my name on the high visibility pull request. Thus, they think I personally must have been the cause of the problem. Somehow I was on every team and responsible for every feature, every hotfix, and the poor work every team developed that irritated clients. (Funny how I was never responsible for the positive things, though.)

Then there'd be companywide meeting / email to cover what happened with a screenshot with my name by a hotfix with comments like "Let's not have to do things like this going forward." "Some of us have to actually work for a living, and heh I don't know about you guys but _I_ don't appreciate having to panic review things like THIS!"

Re: Xsolla fires 150 employees using analysis of chat and email activity

#88

Post by skeeter2020 »

dxf wrote: post #77
908B64B197 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of someone. Long ago, he joined a company fresh out of college that pretty much measured dev productivity with number of lines written. He quickly realized that it was a red-flag, but jumping ship so soon was going to be hard to explain on a resume. So he basically started writing code in two stages using a codegen tool: something high level not under source control that would generate extremely verbose co…

>Long ago, he joined a company fresh out of college that pretty much measured dev productivity with number of lines written. He quickly realized that it was a red-flag, but jumping ship so soon was going to be hard to explain on a resume. Sorry to hijack your comment, but I would like to say: There are many, many good reasons why someone would want to quit a job after only a short period of time at a company (harassm…

It's still a red flag that needs to be explained. Unfortunately most employees will assume they did not leave voluntarily. The OP's reticence to jump is understandable

Re: Xsolla fires 150 employees using analysis of chat and email activity

#89

Post by katbyte »

dxf wrote: post #77
908B64B197 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of someone. Long ago, he joined a company fresh out of college that pretty much measured dev productivity with number of lines written. He quickly realized that it was a red-flag, but jumping ship so soon was going to be hard to explain on a resume. So he basically started writing code in two stages using a codegen tool: something high level not under source control that would generate extremely verbose co…

>Long ago, he joined a company fresh out of college that pretty much measured dev productivity with number of lines written. He quickly realized that it was a red-flag, but jumping ship so soon was going to be hard to explain on a resume. Sorry to hijack your comment, but I would like to say: There are many, many good reasons why someone would want to quit a job after only a short period of time at a company (harassm…

Couple quick departures is alright, but I recently interviewed someone who was like 10 jobs in 8 years…

Re: Xsolla fires 150 employees using analysis of chat and email activity

#90

Post by D-Coder »

derwiki wrote: post #14
lpd1 wrote: post #6

"You received this email because my big data team analyzed your activities in Jira, Confluence, Gmail, chats, documents, dashboards and tagged you as unengaged and unproductive employees. In other words, you were not always present at the workplace when you worked remotely." Sweet. Maybe we are hitting the day when all of your code commits, all communication, location in the building, telecommute meetings, etc. etc.…

> Everything about their employees is monitored and tracked, down to individual finger and eye movements, to prevent waste and track performance. All emails that are sent out include an estimate of how long they should take to read. Go to fast, you get scolded for not paying attention. Go too slow, you get scolded for inefficiency. Get it just right? You get scolded for being a smartass. —- Snowcrash

Communist logic:

Three prisoners in communist East Germany were talking about their crimes.

1: "I always got to work five minutes early. They convicted me of spying."

2: "I always got to work five minutes late. They convicted me of sabotage."

3: "I always got to work exactly on time. They convicted me of owning a Western watch."

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