
Ask HN: Who Is Firing? - justforfunhere
Times are bleak.
======
anonymousci
CircleCI.

Last week during covid crisis, all while announcing a $100m Series E round of
financing, they let some employees go and did not offer any severance.

Disorganized management, and with some teams, passive-aggressive management
style.

Would not recommend joining...

~~~
sbt
How would you characterize the quality of CircleCI? I've spent quite a few
hours trying to work out mysterious bugs in a build process that runs fine
locally. This morning the web ui was full of 'client error' messages.

~~~
jmchuster
We've seen great results since switching from Circle to Buildkite, not the
least of which is cost, but you have to be willing to do a little bit of your
own IT work.

~~~
sylvinus
I second Buildkite, one of the best choices we made at my previous company.

~~~
sundvor
Buildkite is awesome. Thirded. Love the clear UI, yaml based dynamic pipelines
and ease of integration.

Coupled with Terraform for us.

------
aivatra
FIRST FACTORY (company link:
[https://firstfactory.com/](https://firstfactory.com/))

Hello fellow HN readers. Here's the short version of the story:

So I was working at X SF startup company (with a subsidiary office in Costa
Rica) and decided to give it a try at First Factory, an outsourcing shop based
in NY and Costa Rica, they handed me a contract (March 5th, 2020) to start
working with them effective March 30th, 2020.

So I quit my job and was ready to jump on board. Then on March 25th, 2020 I
get a call (the lady pretty much laughably telling me all this) stating that
they were in financial trouble and couldn't onboard me at all, and the
contract was voided.

I know this happens, but you get a feeling of how shocked I was hearing this.
I couldn't believe my ears. And now I'm unemployed pretty much. I've applied
to a few positions through "Who's Hiring" at HN tough, let's see how it goes
-_-

~~~
WrtCdEvrydy
Contact your former employer... and see if they want you back. Tell them the
new place isn't as fun as you thought.

~~~
battery_cowboy
No, you should tell them the truth.

------
sciurus
My previous two employers, Lonely Planet and Eventbrite.

[https://www.protocol.com/eventbrite-major-layoffs-
coronaviru...](https://www.protocol.com/eventbrite-major-layoffs-coronavirus-
events)

[https://www.booksandpublishing.com.au/articles/2020/04/09/14...](https://www.booksandpublishing.com.au/articles/2020/04/09/149112/redundancies-
expected-as-lonely-planet-reduces-global-publishing-operations-melbourne-
office-to-close-almost-entirely/)

~~~
bluetwo
Love Lonely Planet!

~~~
hlmencken
Read the room.

~~~
bluetwo
Poster said they worked there, not that they just got fired from there. Read
the post.

------
danesparza
God this brings back memories of fuckedcompany.com

Right after September 11th, that site got very popular among engineers like me
-- seeing (on a daily basis) which company bloodbath was next.

It was kind of fun, until it was our company.

~~~
McMini
What did the site show?

~~~
wpietri
In form, it was a pretty simple discussion site. But it had a lot of insider
info and an enormous amount of snark, and it really captured the spirit of the
popping of Bubble 1.0 (and the post 9/11 downturn).

I remember one where a CEO made a big deal about the tech staff working
through the holidays to finish vital new products. And then the CEO went on
vacation to Hawai'i, leaving the nerds to grind it out. The memo and vacaction
leaked to Fucked Company, where comments were spirited, and I think it
eventually caused a big to-do.

~~~
jansan
I remember a suggestion to place all startups in a death pool which they were
only allowed to leave if they managed not to buy any Aeron chairs (those were
all the rage at that time) after one year in business. I loved that idea.

~~~
jboy55
My company was featured in a story on Herman Miller, where we spent more on
Chairs then we had in revenue for the entire 24 months of our existence.

~~~
StillBored
The other side of this, is the company I worked for about that time, purchased
the entire set of office furniture from a defunct company to setup our office
when we moved. Turns out we didn't need it all, and sold a lot of it. At the
end of the year, the majority of our profit was the furniture hussle.

~~~
Animats
At the end of the first dot-com boom, there was a place in San Jose called
Consolidated Office Supply which bought the furniture of failed dot-coms. They
had a warehouse which covered an entire city block, full of used furniture.
Looked like the warehouse from Raiders of the Lost Ark.

I bought furniture there for something I was starting up. Very cheap, and they
delivered.

------
dandanio
Groupon - 2800 jobs (44% of workforce) -
[https://www.chicagobusiness.com/john-pletz-
technology/groupo...](https://www.chicagobusiness.com/john-pletz-
technology/groupon-cutting-2800-jobs)

~~~
missedthecue
How can they possibly employ 6400 people.

~~~
ElCapitanMarkla
I didn’t realise they were still around, I thought they went under years
ago...

~~~
schwartzworld
still big in certain industries. only a fool would pay full price for laser
hair removal

------
sambroner
Seems like many companies within the startup world. Layoffs.fyi says more than
250 companies and more than 24,000 people.

Their tracker, [https://layoffs.fyi/tracker/](https://layoffs.fyi/tracker/),
has reasonably well corroborated data, although it's surely incomplete.

------
kmlx
a quote i remembered from twitter: "This is the best time to get rid of
employees".

a startup based in London just fired 10% of their workforce. all were given
two options: government's furlough scheme where the state pays 80% of the
salary, or outright dismissal. interestingly, half chose to quit.

~~~
sleepychu
For a bit of context, at London startup the furlough scheme is very unlikely
to be 80% of their salary because it is capped at 30k per year pre-tax/80% of
your salary whichever is lower.

That said, I'm surprised half of people turned down 2k/month to job hunt.

~~~
6nf
If they take the dismissal they get paid out immediately and they can
immediately start getting government unemployment benefits. I think?

~~~
YawningAngel
You don't get government unemployment benefits in the UK if you have >16k in
savings (i.e. most programmers, presumably)

~~~
shubb
London developers do not get paid well vs cost of living. I interviewed for a
city based senior data engineer role at a large insurer and was supprised that
they choked at 45K basic not much package.

Generally uk dev pay is very bad compared to US or even other Europe.

Contract work used to be basically the only way to make good money but this
has now been nobbled. Not a good city to work in.

As a result permie developers generally don't have a huge amount of a savings.

~~~
fennecfoxen
I was able to get Senior at £74k in London. Nothing to sneeze at in principle,
save for the London cost of living.

Moved to New York following Brexit, now making literally twice that. (Paying
twice that for housing, too, but my housing is more like 15 minutes from work
instead of 60 and I have a real subway option instead of putting up with
Southern Rail and the strikes.)

------
lukax
In some companies it feels like they are firing the people that they could not
easily get rid of otherwise - cutting of the bottom 25% of staff (based on low
performance reviews or personal grudges).

~~~
bsanr2
Statistically-speaking, this will disproportionately effect women and
minorities (low performance reviews !necessarily= low performance when
implicit bias is present, which again, statistically-speaking, it is).
Certainly these times suck for everyone, but there go the careers of black,
brown, and female millennials with yet another black mark on their CVs before
they've hit their 40s.

~~~
mardifoufs
I'm sorry but I (as a minority myself) genuinely feel a little bit insulted by
your assumption that minorities score worst in performance test. There's no
basis for that belief, a part from your personal biases and they are
shockingly regressive even if well intentioned. Are you yourself a minority?

~~~
bsanr2
I included the parenthetical to make it clear that what you're asserting was
not my intended meaning.

I am a gay black man.

~~~
mardifoufs
Okay thanks for the clarification, but still if anything I find the tech
sector to be one of the industry with the least amount of racial prejudice
even in promotions. I totally understand that personal experiences can be
different and are still valid, but I think the data tells us that there isn't
any widespread systemic racism in tech. The proportion of people of color in C
level exec/higher management levels is huge and the efforts made to increase
diversity have been intense. I just don't see how that could happen if lower
performance reviews were generally biased against us.

~~~
bsanr2
That is inaccurate to the point of straining good faith.

~~~
wing-_-nuts
His point is accurate if you include asians as a minority group. I suspect
you're talking specifically about black people.

~~~
dragonwriter
> His point is accurate if you include asians as a minority group.

No, it's not. Even if they were favored, one racial minority group being
favored and others being disfavored doesn't balance out to “no racism”, it's
even more racism than the latter being disfavored alone. And even if there is
no evidence of racism in either direction affecting Asians, that doesn't
negate racism affecting other groups.

At _best_ it might be accurate of you _only_ look at Asians.

~~~
mardifoufs
What about the much higher numbers of indians (especially in C level executive
positions) in tech? Or Arabs? Transgenders? Neurodivergents? Iranians?
Muslims?

What's the line here? At what point would tech not be racist? I really don't
see your point here. There is a lot of evidence pointing to a really diverse,
generally progressive industry with, if anything, a higher over representation
(compared to the population) of multiple minority groups, different gender
identities and a much more inclusivity conscious mindset than probably any
other industry. We have no data that really points to the opposite conclusion.
Again, at what point would you not say that those are all exceptions?

~~~
camgunz
> At what point would tech not be racist?

When it's demographically representative.

~~~
JBSay
Does your circle of friends exactly match the general population demographics?
No? You're a racist!

See how absurd your expectations are?

~~~
camgunz
While that's a false comparison (there aren't lots of people trying to support
their families by becoming my friend), bubbles are very real. Communities tend
to be racially segregated and that leads to prejudice and discrimination.

Please be a little more receptive to stuff like this. Racism and sexism are
social ills that affect the majority of people. It's worth your time to having
a passing understanding of the major concepts.

------
jyriand
Estonian startup Starship Technologies(robot delivery service) has laid off
lot of people. How many is unclear. As I understand they try to stay afloat by
using their robots for pizza deliveries now.

[https://news.err.ee/1070009/starship-technologies-makes-
redu...](https://news.err.ee/1070009/starship-technologies-makes-redundancies-
to-streamline-service)

~~~
fest
Interesting, as I surely thought they will be one of the companies benefiting
the lockdown.

~~~
jyriand
I think it's because most of their fleet of robots was focused on serving
campuses.

~~~
Nasrudith
That sounds consistent - before the radioactive mutant black swan of Covid
they would make the most sense to serve as lowest risk of robot mugging and
would need less battery endurance which is expensive and when done wrong
attracts headlines as your bots catch fire in the streets - regardless of who
is at fault there is no way to not look incredibly incompetent when your
product immolates like that.

------
reubensutton
I’ve been checking layoffs.fyi every day and it is incredibly bleak

~~~
PaulRobinson
This is looking 2001-dot-com-crash bad, but much, much faster.

It's worth remembering there are plenty of companies not laying people off,
and "normal" will return eventually.

That said, I was watching The Big Short yesterday, and a line that I had noted
before haunted me even more: "For every 1% unemployment goes up [in the USA],
40,000 people die".

Stay safe, stay positive.

~~~
westoncb
> This is looking 2001-dot-com-crash bad, but much, much faster.

Also probably much more transient, no?

Is there a reason to think this trend would continue beyond say... six months?
(or whenever quarantine measures are mostly relaxed).

~~~
Scarblac
The Netherlands tested for antibodies in blood donor serum last week,
preliminary result is that 3% of people have them. And not all of them show
full immunity.

If we relax quarantine measures, the virus just comes back immediately. This
is going to stay with us for years.

~~~
0xFFC
> And not all of them show full immunity.

Where did you get that number? This seems more like propaganda than scientific
claim.

------
protonmail
ProtonMail is hiring. A lot:
[https://careers.protonmail.com/](https://careers.protonmail.com/)

~~~
nikisweeting
Please tell me you're hiring bloom filter / client-side JS search experts.
We're on the verge of moving our whole company off ProtonMail because search
is unusable.

~~~
ebcode
Search is unusable on ProtonMail because they can't decrypt your emails to
search through them. I've raised this issue with them and they responded that
the (current) solution is to use a local mail client to download all your
emails and search them using your client.

~~~
nikisweeting
Hence "client-side". a-la Elasticlunr.js

------
ngngngng
Several Utah startups have had layoffs due to COVID, not sure about the
numbers for most of these though.

Rainfocus

Domo: 10% of workforce

Vivint Smart Home

HireVue

Divvy employees have been told that layoffs are inevitable.

No whispers yet of layoffs at the two Ycombinator startups in the state (Weave
and Podium)

~~~
nobleach
Add Nav to that list.

------
dsfargeg
Babylon Health furloughed 140 people. I think they're using this as an excuse
to re-structure their organisation. The tagline is that they are furloughing
5% of staff.

They've used it as an opportunity to make 30% of their mobile engineers
redundant, as well as push many senior engineers on higher salaries towards
the exit

~~~
esel2k
So also here healthtech startup letting people go?! Why? I thought you guys
would get more business in these times?!

~~~
rk06
That's a false statement.

My sister is a doctor. She told me that she is getting less patients, as only
those are very serious, are coming.

Plus transport system is down, so only ambulance can be used for transporting
patients to and from hospital. So this puts a limit to hospital's income
source.

~~~
esel2k
But what about telehealth?

~~~
rabidonrails
you don't need to go to _your_ doctor for a telehealth appointment. Many
insurers are recommending particular telehealth solutions that they have
contracted with which means that the normal doctor you _would_ have gone to
see is seeing less people.

------
AheadOfTime295
Stats of last week layoffs at Lightbend (Akka, Scala) right after 25MM funding
round

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22854494](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22854494)

~~~
josheche
Lightbend WAS a vendor to a lot of companies that were affected by COVID-19
related layoffs. Some of these companies like Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings
are part of industries that are virtually nonexistent right now. Some of those
companies are also based in Europe like SwissCom and UniCredit. The shutdown
of our borders has made it difficult to maintain the same roles they were
originally contracted to fill, resulting in cancelled contracts. Not as much
fishy as it is obvious to me that lost/cancelled contracts equals less money
to pay employees. Less money === less jobs.

------
onychomys
Hospitals are having a surprisingly tough time of things. I work for a very
famous hospital in a small town in the American midwest, and we've (our IT
department, that is) laid off all our contractors and the rest of us have
mandatory furloughs coming up too. They're doing everything they can to not
let us go, but some of us will probably end up getting sacked. And this is
maybe the richest and most well-connected hospital in the entire world! Turns
out that when you cancel all elective procedures (not only non-essential
surgeries, but things like allergy testing and pediatric audiology work etc.),
you can very quickly go from a billion dollars in the black (last year) to an
estimated billion dollars in the red (this year). Just brutal.

~~~
catacombs
For-profit hospitals are a stain on the American healthcare system.

I worked for one of these facilities years ago, and elective surgery was the
only thing the administrators cared about.

~~~
areyousure
Just out of curiosity, is your comment about "for-profit hospitals" a non
sequitur?

Your parent comment refers to the Mayo Clinic, which is neither "for-profit"
nor "a stain on the American healthcare system".

~~~
sudosysgen
The existence of for-profit healthcare is reasonably why hospitals have to
shut departments in the middle of a pandemic to handle balance sheets. If for-
profit healthcare didn't exist, I really don't see how the total amount of
money going into a hospital would decrease right now.

~~~
bitcurious
You are conflating “for profit” with private. Most good hospitals are non
profit, but private institutions.

To help you understand how this could decrease revenue - my annual checkup is
postponed by 6 months. This is true for everyone who had an annual checkup
scheduled.

~~~
sudosysgen
I agree. but the existence of for-profit healthcare is largely why the US is
the only country without public healthcare.

~~~
opo
This is a common misconception about health care. Most countries have a mix of
private/public funding a mix of private/public run health care. Canada is
almost all non-profit charity hospitals, but other OECD countries use for
profit hospitals. For example:

>...The study, released Tuesday, compared the universal health-care systems of
Australia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland, and
looked at the presence of for-profit hospitals and for-profit health-care
insurers in each of these countries. ... The study found that for-profit
health-care insurers and for-profit hospitals are found in all six countries.
This is in contrast to Canada, where similar for-profit insurance is not
allowed, and where only a small number of private, for-profit hospitals exist.

[https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/for-profit-care-can-exist-
in-a...](https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/for-profit-care-can-exist-in-a-
universal-health-care-system-fraser-institute-study-1.2672098)

~~~
sudosysgen
Sure, but in all of those countries health care insurers are incredibly
tightly controlled and the state is still by far the biggest insurer. Which is
why the state can and will fund hospitals directly after this crisis.

~~~
opo
>Sure, but in all of those countries health care insurers are incredibly
tightly controlled...

Insurance companies in the US are also "incredibly tightly controlled".
Regulations even specify amounts that can be spent on patient care,
administration etc. Health insurers are the only segment of the health care
sector in the US where profits are directly limited.

>Which is why the state can and will fund hospitals directly after this
crisis.

I don't think that has anything to do with it.

~~~
sudosysgen
It does have a lot to do with it, as it directly nullifies the issue the OP
was talking about.

When I mean incredibly tightly controlled, I mean effectively price controls,
and very stringent ones at that, and all of them have the state as the main
insurer anyways, while AFAIK the US does not insure anyone directly.

~~~
opo
>...AFAIK the US does not insure anyone directly

The government provides health insurance to many people. 44 million people are
insured by Medicare. 74 million people are insured by Medicaid. Over 1 million
veterans get their health care provided by the government run VA medical
system.

As I pointed out, most countries have a mix of private/public funding a mix of
private/public run health care. Lots of people seem to be under the
misconception that universal health care coverage is only possible in a
Canadian or UK type health care system.

------
dznodes
Is there a website that shows which companies take government bailouts but
still do layoffs.

~~~
DangerousPie
At least the PPP program is conditional on them not doing layoffs, isn't it?

~~~
Nasrudith
For it to be a defacto grant instead of a loan I believe. Far softer in
conditions essentially.

------
roadbeats
Can we say that the layoffs are mostly happening in US ? I can't see that
trend in Europe, correct me if I'm wrong.

~~~
bnt
Berlin is pretty nuts, lots of firing going on.

~~~
bsmth
Are you able to mention who or what kind of companies? I could guess mobility
/ scooter sharing off the bat, but have not heard from many being let go.

------
gjmacd
Not naming the company, but I know of a startup that's got a round of $10M
(not much but enough) who just applied for relief because their burn rate is
$200K+ a month. They have no customers, have been in the red for 2 years and
have been slowly building their product out -- like most early funded startups
-- they are building potential without revenue (yet).

Their theory is, get some free money and treat it like 6 months of salary to
help and take it as a "gift".

When I cited that they "weren't directly affected by this and could keep going
until this COVID thing ended and it wouldn't matter to them." The person I
know who's involved at the exec level said, "It's free money, when you get a
free bag of money, you don't turn away on that..."

I wanted to throw up.

~~~
londons_explore
This is the government's fault for not attaching more strings to the money.

It should have been a loan at favourable interest rates with a fixed term.

~~~
drsooch
I created an Account just for this thread.

I spent time working as a Credit Analyst for an Economic Development Firm (AKA
we made SBA 504 loans). I would like to note I am no longer in the industry,
however I do have contacts still. I've spent some time on the phone discussing
the program with current lenders.

The SBA does not just hand out money with no strings attached. The actual 504
loan program (general small business loans) have strict requirements that are
adhered too. There are size constraints, business type constraints etc. and
(some of) these constraints extend to the PPP. I can't say for certain but it
is entirely possible this firm doesn't qualify.

As for the PPP, I believe the max loan amount is 2.5x monthly payroll. I can
imagine that 200M burn rate is not purely salary. But safe to say they can
apply for a maximum 500M. Is that an exorbitant amount of money for a firm
with no revenue? Probably.

But in talks with those in the industry, the main concern is Construction
Companies. In the markets I'm in, construction is still underway, so these
companies are applying for PPP while still maintaining a constant revenue
stream. They are essentially getting free employees for 2.5 months, while
still being relatively unaffected. That will most likely change if the economy
enters a larger downturn as construction is usually the first to go.

~~~
LeoTinnitus
I worked in the commercial department of a state financial institution and I
loathed SBA loans. They were such a pain. Everybody hated them. Lenders,
processors, underwriters...but not the VP!

I mean I get but ffs why? Let the big companies do it. They're just a hassle.

~~~
drsooch
They're a hassle, but less risk for the primary lender. We worked with
primarily smaller Banks, it makes sense for a small bank to work with the
program.

~~~
LeoTinnitus
Yeah but most small banks don't have any understanding of what it all
requires. It's not like an inhouse loan where if the borrower misses a payment
they just show up on a report. You gotta jump though hoops and notify tons of
stuff to the SBA about it. Not to mention everything needing to be perfect.

------
zingar
Prodigy Finance laid off or furloughed 30% of staff in Cape Town, London and
New York. an investor pulled out of the next round AFTER signing a terms sheet
and completing due diligence. The company had been hiring for growth, setting
up a new management structure etc even on the same day as the layoffs.
Management appears to be above board and genuinely upset over this (and cuts
are at all levels, execs took pay cuts), the investors are scum in my eyes.

------
ruairidhwm
I just got laid off from a small startup because of COVID. Incredibly bleak
given that they were a great company but nobody saw a situation where pretty
much our entire market disappeared overnight with low chances of it returning
in the near future.

It isn't much fun but that's the way of these things. Got to stay positive and
will be checking the HN "Who's Hiring" threads.

------
simonkafan
Bird, just in case you haven't seen (heard) it:
[https://youtu.be/wxTYKCOnRe4](https://youtu.be/wxTYKCOnRe4)

~~~
WhyNotHugo
Wow, it's also so cold to just read a script emotionlessly when communicating
something so sensitive, rather than at least trying to be in the moment with
these people.

------
Raed667
Astek Group* (a french consulting firm) laid off around 5% of its sophia-
antipolis office (~15 out of 300), which put them in conflict with the
government that has put funds to help people maintain 84% of their salaries if
they work part-time (furlough?).

~~~
DyslexicAtheist
You probably meant "Astek Group"? they aren't that small actually

~~~
Raed667
Yes ! That was a typo, they're not small at all. But they have been doing
sketchy things with contractors for a long time.

If you want to read more about the recent layoffs here is a link in French [0]
(unfortunately behind an ad paywall)

[0] [https://www.nicematin.com/economie/ce-groupe-base-sur-la-
cot...](https://www.nicematin.com/economie/ce-groupe-base-sur-la-cote-dazur-
licencie-une-quinzaine-de-salaries-en-pleine-pandemie-de-coronavirus-495756)

------
lighthouse1
Pusher let go of a lot of staff in it's "product focus" \-
[https://blog.pusher.com/narrowing-our-product-
focus/](https://blog.pusher.com/narrowing-our-product-focus/)

------
Suzehr
We are hiring guys, I hope it's ok to post here. We are looking for Frontend
developer at the moment Mid- Senior level. Company is stech.com if you want to
check it out. Link to where you submit your application if looking for a job
is [https://www.stech.com/careers](https://www.stech.com/careers) my email is
Suze@stech.com

the role is full remote at the moment, but otherwise when this covid situation
is over, it is based in an office near Liverpool street station.

------
john0990
Arcus FI ([https://www.arcusfi.com/](https://www.arcusfi.com/)) a fintech just
laid off our NYC office and a bunch of people in our office of Mexico City
without offer any severance (they owned me commissions). Furthermore, the last
6 months around 15 people quit because the founders’s behaviour (no
professionalism, no strategy and pathologic liars about the money raised, with
the customers, the investors and the employees). One co-worker told me they
threated one employee from Mexico to break his leg if he leaves. Really bad
company.

------
disposable38291
Dixa sacked 31 people (25% of staff). They closed a $36M series B in February.

~~~
DyslexicAtheist
edit: comment below is correct, this was 2019 (leaving original comment intact
for transparency):

____

also a $14M Series A the same month:
[https://twitter.com/voipsipguruPB/status/1094042447070613504](https://twitter.com/voipsipguruPB/status/1094042447070613504)

~~~
disposable33311
No, the $14M series A was February 2019.

~~~
DyslexicAtheist
vouched for this comment, you're correct, sorry I bungled the date and thanks
for correcting

------
elric
It's not all bad. We've just wrapped up our first two completely remote hires.
A full time project manager and a part time HR assistant. It's been an
interesting experience for a small-but-growing (30ppl) company, especially
because we had a very strong focus on physical presence before.

Remote interviews were an interesting challenge. Remote paperwork went
somewhat smoother than expected. Introducing the new hires to the rest of the
team is something we need to get better at.

------
inglor
From an anonymous employee I know: SimilarWeb fired 10% of their workforce -
mostly sales engineers and sales people they recently hired and cancelled
their holiday bonuses.

~~~
squiggleblaz
What's a sales engineer? Is it just a higher ranked sales person?

~~~
acruns
They are the technical person on the sales team. They do demo's, field
technical questions, might do a POC with a potential customer, so on. They
also get a commission but they traditionally have a standard salary as well
instead of the sales rep where their salary might be 60% or more commission
only.

------
kosmotaur
Equal Experts UK replaced me with a cheaper offshore contractor

------
Slam7min
I work for a large city government (10K employees), most of our non-first
responders were just furloughed ranging from full-layoff (1K), 10% pay (1.5K),
80% pay (3K), 95% pay (100), and 100% (5.5K). I fall into the 80% category.

It works out great for me because I now qualify for state & federal
unemployment benefits that will allow me to net more than I'm actually making
at least through 7/31 while working only 4 days a week.

------
kokizzu
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1U13Ef3EnJnMzuElElAJP...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1U13Ef3EnJnMzuElElAJPbWiNBKutQuB7ldQED4C8L_Y/edit#gid=2108431686)

------
mr_gibbins
I wish there was some kind of list for the UK. Our news services are
shockingly bad.

~~~
barbegal
Although lots of UK companies won't be making any redundancies until the
Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme ends. It's much easier to put UK workers on
the 80% pay furlough scheme than firing them. As soon as that money dries up
expect companies to make lots of mass redundancies. It's going to be
interesting to see the UK government's exit strategy from this crisis,
immediately terminating the scheme before the economy has recovered will
result in a huge increase in unemployment but keeping the scheme means
productivity won't recover as people able to work productively are sat at home
doing nothing.

~~~
nicholassmith
> but keeping the scheme means productivity won't recover as people able to
> work productively are sat at home doing nothing.

Productivity will recover when businesses can use resources productively. It's
either keep the scheme running until quarantine measures are reduced enough to
allow businesses to start ramping back up and productivity increases again, or
remove the scheme and push people to unemployment which is worse for
productivity. If the government is daft enough to stop the scheme before the
quarantine measures are reduced we're in for a shit-show of a decade.

~~~
barbegal
This depends on which is worse for productivity: unemployment or furlough. I
think in some cases furlough is worse for productivity as workers that could
be working for another employer and have in-demand skills are sitting idle. In
a free-market devoid of minimum wages and government packages, wages would be
going down massively but fewer people would be doing nothing.

------
d99kris
[https://www.thelayoff.com/](https://www.thelayoff.com/) can give some hints,
but it's a lot of speculations and rumors.

------
MaxwellM
Checkout this airtable tracker
[https://layoffs.fyi/tracker/](https://layoffs.fyi/tracker/)

~~~
yitchelle
That's an interesting and depressing read. I also noticed that layoffs.fyi has
listed the names and contact details for the folks who got laid off. Do you
know if this opted-in by them?

------
hateevileagles
EagleView ([https://www.eagleview.com/](https://www.eagleview.com/)) Last
week. Laid off 85. Guess they wanted the $125M they won in IP lawsuit (they
think they own roof photogrammetry) to go to exec bonuses rather than keeping
the team employed. Let me know if you need a good Computer Vision engineer.

------
yourBestBet
Epam Systems

(Mexico) They have been firing people systematically in the last months. They
don't have any new projects and they keep hiring more people just to fire them
a few months later.

Top management sends global emails saying they want to keep all the employees,
but locally they are firing people.

Ironically, to this day, no local managers have been fired.

on the good side: full law compensation is offered.

------
annon923
Laserfiche (Long Beach, CA) Several people, at random it seems, over the past
four weeks. No severance or medical. Management can't seem to decide on what
direction to go and thinks start with fresh hires post COVID.

------
ff317
This post needs some positivity!

The Wikimedia Foundation is still hiring many of the same positions we were
before all of this. You can see the currently-open positions at:
[https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/jobs/](https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/jobs/)

They've been an outstanding employer during these difficult times, as
announced publicly on our blog:
[https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2020/03/06/wikimedia-
fo...](https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2020/03/06/wikimedia-foundation-
will-close-san-francisco-office-and-encourage-remote-work-for-
march-2020-amidst-covid-19-concerns/)

Come help us bring free knowledge to the world!

~~~
nscalf
This is entirely off topic given the question was the exact opposite of this,
keep it to the "Who is hiring" thread.

------
MangoCoffee
Is it me or the traditional software vendor like Microsoft or Oracle is going
to come out stronger than ever after the pandemic is over? all the layoffs
seem to be in the none critical and nice to have category.

~~~
dpflan
It’s not just you. Larger companies with cash reserves, stronger
financial/accounting practices and leadership, and services and products that
people can continue to use during this situation can weather the storm. Public
companies become more predictable business with forecasting. Of course this
situation is hard to forecast/imagine.

------
anonycowgirl
Wiivv Wearables (Vancouver) has furloughed half their staff.

They have encouraged us to find new employment because there is no guarantee
they will hire us back. I believe this to avoid paying us severance.

------
ragest69
Not naming the company, but I know of a startup that's got a round of $10M
(not much but enough) who just applied for relief because their burn rate is
$200K+ a month.

------
ancestraldev
MDLIVE, a company in the Telemedicine space.

[https://www.mdlive.com](https://www.mdlive.com)

They started today and will continue tomorrow.

------
luikore
Aminoapps fired all employees and is handing the app to an outsourcing company
to scavenge the remaining user values.

------
elymar
Universities across the US (mine included) are furloughing employees.

------
gigatexal
No severance?!

I, as an expat, am absolutely grateful and have changed my tune on the
“European welfare state” trope to “this just makes sense”. I got let go from a
Berlin based fintech and got 3 months pay plus a small severance. They did
this likely because funding fell apart during the pandemic but it could have
also been to cull people that they didn’t need but they did do right by us.

~~~
WhyNotHugo
Surprisingly, severance is also mandatory in Argentina and many other "under
development" countries.

I'm absolutely amazed at how people in the US are so against severance being
mandatory.

~~~
kofejnik
interesting... what if mandatory severance and other (supposedly) nice things
are the reason those countries are underdeveloped?

~~~
fakedang
I wouldn't mind a stance which promotes human welfare over economic growth.

~~~
brigandish
Since economic growth tends to go hand in hand with better access to health
services and greater social freedom, it does.

I always enjoy Hans Rosling going through the stats, if you’ve time it’s well
worth it [https://youtu.be/FACK2knC08E](https://youtu.be/FACK2knC08E)

------
throwaway9002
Playtech in London isn't firing but cut all employee salaries by 10% across
the board.

The CEO just awarded himself a 30mil bonus:
[https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/playtech-plan-to-pay-
boss...](https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/playtech-plan-to-pay-
boss-30m-bonus-lmqf9fb2z)

~~~
WhyNotHugo
Wow, I didn't think any developed country allowed employers to legally cut an
employees salary.

~~~
rusticpenn
That is standard in Germany. For a period of upto 12 months during
emergencies, employees contracts can be reduced to x% (for x % hours), the
govt will cover the remaining money (upto 60% of net salary). Its called
shotrt-term work or kurzarbeit.

~~~
catwell
That also exists in France (and is currently used extensively) but it's very
different from reducing salaries.

------
tobych
Can someone please change the title of this - just as with other similar posts
- to use "laid-off" instead of "fired"? Regardless of how loose some may be
with language, there's a clear distinction between these terms.

For example, my home state's Employment Security Department:
[https://esd.wa.gov/unemployment/laid-off-or-
fired](https://esd.wa.gov/unemployment/laid-off-or-fired)

Given that there are non-US readers here, maybe there's another pair of
phrases that Hacker News could use as standard in this situation. I know in
the UK, "made redundant" is used instead of "laid-off".

~~~
ivanche
This is just grammatical nitpicking. People are not working in company X any
more against their will. One can call it "removing", "laying off",
"dismissing", "number cutting" or whatever corporate BS speak says is correct
these days, but reality is that they're fired.

~~~
rags2riches
So what should we call it when someone loses their job due to their own
misconduct rather than budgets or whatever?

~~~
squiggleblaz
Usually "receiving a golden handshake"

------
Austin_Conlon
Ask HN: Who is looking to be fired?

~~~
mothsonasloth
Not looking to be fired but this whole working from home business is getting
me down (been WFH for 6 weeks now).

Video calls with friends and co-workers doesn't cut it, plus the 1 hour
mandatory exercise.

I'd rather change jobs and be outside chopping wood or something that is
"productive".

~~~
elric
Mandatory exercise? How does that work?

~~~
mothsonasloth
In the UK you are only allowed out once a day for 1 hour maximum

~~~
chipaca
I've seen nothing about a "1 hour maximum" rule; where are you getting that
from?

~~~
tomduncalf
It's not in law, but it was advised by Michael Gove[1]: "I would have thought
for most people a walk of up to an hour, a run of 30 minutes or a cycle ride
of between that, depending on their level of fitness, is appropriate."

I guess ultimately it's up to the individual - the longer you exercise for and
the greater the area you cover, I guess the higher the risk of you spreading
the virus if you have it or getting it is. But I think the government are
crediting people with some common sense here, e.g. if you are in the middle of
nowhere and don't see another person, you can probably justify exercising for
longer to yourself more easily than in a crowded city.

FWIW, I've been doing about 30 mins cycling outside most week days in London,
around an hour (sometimes 90 minutes) at the weekend. Would love to go further
or more times a day, but feels like we have to do our bit to help, while also
staying sane, personally I feel comfortable with this level.

[1] random link from Google,
[https://www.runnersworld.com/uk/news/a31973975/coronavirus-u...](https://www.runnersworld.com/uk/news/a31973975/coronavirus-
uk-exercise-rules/)

------
fulldecent2
Pacific Medical Training is hiring. And now is a time where more people are
available for remote work, and that's what we want.

\- Medical author / reviewer \- Front-end designer + sales copy expert \-
Phone sales

Hiring worldwide. Send resumes, portfolios and salary expectations.

