
Ask HN: How does a tech person work well in a fire-all-developers style company? - corp_confusion
Recently Travis CI was acquired by Idera, and it&#x27;s been followed by widespread firing of developers. (Same thing happened with Sencha, same company.) The model is a large company that takes loans led by private equity, acquires companies, fires all developers, replaces them with outsourced development claiming they are &#x27;investing&#x27; in the product. This is not only Idera; other companies do the same. HN discussion here: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=18978251<p>Let&#x27;s suppose you&#x27;re one of the few remaining after this has occurred. You&#x27;re a tech-literate manager, or one of the few developers left. How do you work effectively? If you wanted to change business strategy to persuade the value of developers knowledgeable in the product area, how would you? How do you respond when sales slow after seeing the results of outsourced development? How do you communicate with that kind of corporate leadership? How can you rescue the product that you&#x27;ve spent so much time on and love?
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ocdtrekkie
Why are you trying to "rescue the product"? It's not your product. And whoever
owned "your" product didn't value it nearly as much as you do, since they sold
it to Idera.

The ship has sailed, it's time to move on.

~~~
corp_confusion
Why? Because you're invested in it. Or you feel a responsibility to the users,
some kind of ethical sense for your fellow developers. Or maybe just wanting
to do the best in your job in the new company.

We all have things we love, or responsibilities we feel.

~~~
strangattractor
Sounds like your in a cult not a company. NPR had a piece the other day about
how companies are having trouble retaining people. They are offering added
incentives like paying student loans. Why do they have this problem? Because
they have spent so many years laying off people to increase profits they now
have to spent more money to retain people that no longer trust them to provide
steady employment and move on to other employers every 2 years. If you really
value those things find a company that values them also. You will be happier.
[https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/national-public-
radio/how-i...](https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/national-public-radio/how-i-
built-this/e/patagonia-yvon-chouinard-48508362)

~~~
corp_confusion
> Sounds like your in a cult not a company

I don't think that's fair at all. Idera acquires developer tools companies,
and the tools are used by many developers - people here on HN. Let's suppose
you built a tool used worldwide by your peers: would you just shake your head
and go "yep, don't care"?

Have you read the tweets by the departing Sencha devs? They were desolate.

~~~
zerohp
Tools come and go. Companies come and go. Developers will find new ways to
work. The world keeps turning.

Yep, don't care.

~~~
corp_confusion
“Don’t care” is not something to live your life by. You should care about your
fellow developers and peers, and if you spent years of your life building
respected technology, it is natural to care about it.

The answers on this thread (along the lines of ‘don’t care, give up’) shock
me. I see HN as an audience of passionate, tech-loving people - people who
would not want to be in the position described in this question and people
potentially with the passion and drive to do something about it.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
It's not about not caring, it's about realizing being the one person who cares
in a company who doesn't isn't helping anyone, and that you could better apply
your time and skills to one that does.

If there are a lot of people in need of medical attention, the compassionate
doctor stops working on the dead one, and saves those she can. We're all
trying to tell you your patient is dead. You loved your patient, but it's too
late, and now it's time to move onto another.

------
sloaken
From the land of 'Been there, done that'

2 choices: 1) Wake up, find a new job, before you get laid off too. 2) Wake
up, find a job working on their product, before you get laid off too.

I worked for a company that had about 3000 employees. We were bought by a
competitor. Layoffs came often as they tried, with some success, to convert
our customers to their product. But many liked ours better. Eventually to kill
our product and force acceptance of theirs, they laid off all the developers.
The only ones not laid off were the cool aid drinkers who switched.

Myself, I was taken out when it went from 200 people to 100. The next year
they closed our place. It put my career back a good 5 years.

Smart people left early on their own, not laid off, and found much better
jobs.

All the while as we were being squeezed the place kept getting more and more
depressing.

Another friend was in a company he loved on a product he loved. The parent
company just outright killed the project. He and a few others quit and started
working on the project. He worked another job to feed his family. He works 60
to 100 hours a week. Has recently found out the others are screwing him and if
it takes off he gets nothing.

Moral of the stories: do not fall in love with a project so much that you
cannot walk away.

2nd moral, get it in writing.

------
twunde
If you want to stay, you are going to have to learn to speak the language of
business. When you propose something, you will need to give estimates on how
this will affect business metrics. In particular you'll want to focus on how
this project either increases revenue or decreases costs. Additionally make
sure that you network with your new management company. Essentially, you need
to look for executive sponsors who will step in and say _I need this person._
Particular effective ones tend to be Marketing/Sales or Finance.

At the end of the day, an acquirer is making an investment and hoping to make
a profit on that investment. If you can help the company make money and do it
more effectively than an outsourced partner you are likely to stay. You will
need to put on your business hat and talk and walk the business walk to be
successful.

~~~
corp_confusion
Excellent advice.

Do you have resources on how to learn USA C-level and board-level corporate
speak? And how to learn American corporate financing to understand their
revenue reports and expectations?

~~~
Nilef
Check out ProductHunt, it has a few "MBA in a day/week/month" sort of apps and
sites which will help

~~~
corp_confusion
Thanks! I will check it out.

------
Waterluvian
The least worst move is to get out. If that's not an acceptable answer, then
your question is basically, "how do I become an expert deck chair arranger on
my sinking ship?"

~~~
corp_confusion
I get what you say. But are you also saying it is not possible to communicate
with that style management team, and not possible to educate them about the
effects of lost institutional knowledge, etc?

I feel it must be possible. The question is how. How do you survive well in
such an environment?

~~~
thedevindevops
Do you really think a fire-all-developers style management team is interested
in being educated by someone in your position?

~~~
AnimalMuppet
s/interested/capable/

They have no love of the product. They have no love of or loyalty to
customers. They have one target, to make money, and they have their system for
doing it.

The _only_ chance you have of changing them is showing them that they can make
more money doing it differently. And, because they have their system that they
think works, they're not likely to listen even to that.

------
rafiki6
Honestly, I think the best career advice I've learned is to not be idealistic
or over invest in a product or company. At the end of the day you're hired
labor unless you own the company. You can go join a competitor who is working
on a similar product. It's so easy to get wrapped up in your own hype about
how great the product you're working on is. Not saying it's not a great
product loved by customers, but by doing this you miss the completely
transactional nature of yours and your employers relationship.

------
bdcravens
> How can you rescue the product that you've spent so much time on and love?

Start a company, get a few hundred million (or a billion+) of dollars
together, and buy it.

> How do you communicate with that kind of corporate leadership?

At the end of the day in any situation, you have to learn to speak their
language, which is informed by their values. These questions always boil down
to "X doesn't have my values, how do I change that?" If you can't make your
values align with theirs, the ship has sailed.

------
kdmedev
I'll leave the company and will stop using any product or service owned by
Idera. But I don't think you would do that given your situation.

If I were you I would find out who the key decision makers are of the company.
What they are like and how they do things. Befriend them and lobby hard. Not
thank it would do much if you are not already well connected. God pointy-
headed bosses are worst.

Anyway, thanks for the heads up. Not that its going to affect me much as I use
CircleCI and not TravisCI.

------
wespiser_2018
Idera has a pretty simple goal you can work towards: make the company as
profitable as possible. You might not like this goal as much as purely serving
the target audience, but in the long run, the example positive example of
Travis CL turning into a sustainable profit will lead to further investment in
the sector. This behavour will probably be incentivized by bonuses, and any
stock you had most likely just had a liquidity event, so you stand to benefit.

------
qualsiasi
The company I work for has been acquired by the same equity firm as Idera.
This happened recently (it's public news, so I'm not giving away any secret).
What should I expect, given I have a responsibility role and in my country you
can't easily fire an employee (in my case, I can be fired only if I misbehave
severely or the company goes bankrupt)?

~~~
quotz
What country is this? You can only fire an employee if he misbehaves or
company goes bankrupt ? Wtf? What if the employee is a bad fit? What if they
trying to replace with soemeone better????

~~~
qualsiasi
Italy. Factually it is like that, the law was meant to protect against unfair
dismissal but over the years it has become quite clear that if you work all
the time you're meant to, and you don't intentionally harm the company (or its
business) you're very unlikely to be fired. And if you are, you can sue the
company and AFAIK most of the times (I have no direct experience though) you
are likely to win.

This law has been modified and partially canceled in 2014-2015, but people
that has been hired before that date still benefits of this law.

EDIT: Look at third page (numbered 70), second column half way, to get a
better explanation.
[https://preserve.lehigh.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=http...](https://preserve.lehigh.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1008&context=perspectives-v21)

------
ed_elliott_asc
The only realistic answer is to leave and go somewhere else or start your own
thing.

You won’t change the attitude of the company, they won’t bring development
back in house - even if you had the best argument in the world the investors
would block it.

From the comments it looks like you are desperate to stay, if that is right
then you have a choice either accept it for what it is or leave.

The only way you could make genuine changes that you are looking to make is if
you were part of the investment crew.

We have all seen this played out time and time again, either there will be no
more updates or it will slowly turn to shit - if you stick it out and your
name is “mr product” you will be associated with that shit, if the product is
good today then run.

------
andrewf
You already know how this is going to end. How long do you wish to remain
personally involved?

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charlesdm
You don't. You stay and get paid well, or you leave.

Work is a business transaction. That's all it is. You're overinvested.

------
quickthrower2
This is a no brainer. Run!

To make this more substantive: unless your dream is managing remote offshore
teams (maybe it is?) who all lack the institutional knowledge of how the
product works (so expect a lot of time teaching and rejecting code reviews),
then I reckon your career would be better served by another company.

------
mbrodersen
Quit. ASAP.

