
“I, along with almost all of Disney Imagineering, am furloughed without pay” - fortran77
https://twitter.com/lemonodor/status/1247979904118882304
======
fnord123
Off topic: I used to love lemondoor's blog when I was into lisp.

~~~
jjwiseman
Thank you! I'm glad people enjoyed it.

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mroche
Ah that really sucks. Hopefully they got the same email from A&A the rest of
us at other Disney subsidiaries received, meaning they'd still have their
healthcare benefits covered and Disney will be handling employee/company
premiums.

Huge shoutout to the Imagineering team, their work is incredible!

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MrGilbert
Looks like the original tweet got deleted, but archive.org got us covered:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20200409030935/https://twitter.c...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200409030935/https://twitter.com/lemonodor/status/1247979904118882304)

~~~
cinbun8
That link is dead too. Does archive.org update its archive based on deleted
content?

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MrGilbert
Mhm... I don't think so, that would be counter-intuitive.

I guess someone wants to get rid of this tweet thoroughly.

~~~
yencabulator
I want to guess that someone begins with a D and rhymes with Sidney.

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moonchild
[https://web.archive.org/web/20200409030935/https:/twitter.co...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200409030935/https:/twitter.com/lemonodor/status/1247979904118882304)

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l1n
As with all HN submissions, this is archived over at archive.is:
[http://archive.is/https:/twitter.com/lemonodor/status/124797...](http://archive.is/https:/twitter.com/lemonodor/status/1247979904118882304)

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electro_blah
The tweet has been removed.

~~~
dang
Probably that implies he doesn't want a big thread about it here either, so
I've buried this one. If it were a discussion worth keeping, that might be a
hard call, but it's mostly wretched.

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ta1234567890
The link is not working anymore. Seems like the tweet has been removed.

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RickJWagner
"This Tweet is Unavailable". Hmmm, somebody got to them.

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downerending
From a pure cut-throat capitalist perspective, this seems like a stupid move.
Teams like this are not easy to replace, and Disney has plenty of money.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Maybe Disney too got overrun by MBAs, and their optimization horizon shortened
to "until next quarter"?

~~~
labster
More like their money printer, ESPN, ran out of ink. Theme parks shuttered,
movie shoots scrubbed. Theatrical releases delayed to next year. Disney+ is
doing great but that’s like saying the orchestra makes great iceberg
accompaniment.

They are freaked out and making any decision they can to stop the cash burn,
if it’s a good idea or not.

~~~
a012
For the size of Disney empire, they'd have more than enough cash to survive as
a whole for months instead of cutting pay to [sic] Imagineering R&D
department.

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malux85
Disney's net income in 2019 was 11.05 billion U.S. dollars, marking one of the
highest figures to date.

~~~
hkai
Does it mean you have to distribute it to employees?

It seems to me that even if Disney earns 100 times that, their employees
should not get more than the market rate.

~~~
nodesocket
Agreed, if it causes the company to have severe financial distress or even
possibly go bankrupt, hard decisions such as these have to be made. If the
company goes under lots more jobs and wealth is lost.

~~~
trophycase
Ah yes. Hard decisions about whether the new CEO will wipe his ass with that
11 billion, or use it as fuel for his fireplace. Decisions, decisions.

~~~
dang
Could you please stop posting in the flamewar style to HN? You've been doing
it repeatedly, and we ban accounts that do that because it kills the spirit of
curious conversation, which this site exists for.

If you wouldn't mind taking a look at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
and using HN in the intended spirit, we'd appreciate it. It's understandable
that temperatures rise and pots boil over, but we all need to control
ourselves in those areas, or else we end up ruining this place.

~~~
mcphage
> we all need to control ourselves in those areas, or else we end up ruining
> this place.

So you don’t think attitudes like what trophycase was responding to, ruins
this site? I’ve known more programmers leave this site because of ugly
attitudes worded civilly and so left unchecked, than because of responses like
the one you’re complaining about. I think you’re threatening to ban the wrong
people.

~~~
dang
> _So you don’t think attitudes like what trophycase was responding to, ruins
> this site?_

That doesn't follow, and I'd be careful about drawing such conclusions. It's
difficult to reply meaningfully to general statements like those in your
comment here, because they can actually be referring to a wide range of
different things. I'd really need to see specific links.

In the case of the comment trophycase was responding to
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22820206](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22820206)),
the fact that it was heavily downvoted already indicates a kind of community
moderation, signalling that there's something objectionable about the post.
The fact that I didn't reply with additional censure doesn't mean I somehow
like the post or agree with it. It was a low-information comment with an
ideological slant. But HN gets a huge number of those, from all ideological
sides. If we were going to try to moderate all of them, first of all we
couldn't because we'd be spending all our time doing nothing else, and second
it would generate a massive backlash from users who don't agree that such
comments clear the threshold for public scolding.

(The difference between that and " _Ah yes. Hard decisions about whether the
new CEO will wipe his ass with that 11 billion, or use it as fuel for his
fireplace. Decisions, decisions._ " is pretty stark. Note also that I was
responding to a repeated pattern.)

I'm by no means happy about such comments on HN, but there are limits, much
harder limits than people assume, to what moderation power can achieve.
Usually when people demand more from moderation, what they seem to want is for
us to ban anyone who supports an ideology they disagree with. That's not an
option for HN (even though we get accused of doing it all the time). It would
kill the community, and I don't see what good that would do anyone.

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yoloClin
I'm from a country with public health care, so this comes as an interesting
shock - would employees immediately lose health benefits if made redundant /
fired etc?

Seems to incentivize getting rid of people when they need healthcare the most
(eg "I have cancer" -> "Look, we're going to have to let you go, your
performance the past few months hasn't been up to scratch"). I assume there'd
be a bunch of health related after-effects to jobloss too, particularly around
mental well-being.

~~~
myblake
So yeah people totally lose their health care when they lose their job.
Typically it runs through the month and then you’re on your own. You can by
law keep buying the same plan at full price (employers typically pay between
50-80 and sometimes up to 100% of the premium).

However, when you get sick that rate doesn’t go up, so there’s no incentive
from your employers standpoint to fire you when sick. Because of the “losing
coverage” part it’s still extra shitty when they double up (cancer plus being
fired sounds pretty awful).

Obamacare notably created markets for folks not receiving health insurance
through work to purchase it directly (in addition to subsidies for low to
middle income folks to do so, and several regulatory changes around other
parts of the system), but that basic system wasn’t fundamentally altered and
has been more or less how the US has done things since world war 2.

Fun bonus fact, employer based insurance was first offered as a workaround for
world war 2 era wage controls.

~~~
kaonwarb
Large employers typically self-insure, including a large majority of companies
with over 500 employees [1]. You might see, say, Blue Cross on your card, but
they’re just administering - the actual payments to doctors, etc. are in fact
coming from your company. Sometimes the company will still show a percentage
of “premium” that they are covering; it’s not a real premium in that case,
just a percentage of the average care covered per employee.

This means there could be a strictly financial incentive to dismiss a sick
employee. This is of course entirely illegal if that were the purpose. [1]
[https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-
topics/benefits/pa...](https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-
topics/benefits/pages/self-insurance-aca.aspx)

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marta_morena_23
Wow, that's some testament to employee morale. The company you work for
effectively fires you because things don't go so rosy for a month and all you
want is to go back lol. The company can really be lucky to have you and I
guess you can be lucky to have such a great work that you actually want to go
back after they pull off a stunt like this (which is essentially a punch in
the face).

Unfortunately for many people, because things like this just show companies
that they can (even) treat high-tech employees like disposable items and get
away with it. The right reaction would be to make sure that no one in your
division EVER goes back to this company and prevents everyone in their close
circle to start working there, unless they pay some really nice and big
severance package.

I wonder if this is more related to "game development". This isn't game
development but it is kinda related. Perhaps people just think differently
there and the normal employer - employee separation of concerns just goes out
of the window. An employer collects HUGE profits from your work in the IT
sector, no matter your level. You, as an employee, sacrifice these profits for
convenience, essentially. Now they take your convenience away and you still
want to work there. It's kinda baffling to me. And the game industry always
spat on engineers, probably because too many people "want" to do it.

~~~
dang
We asked you to stop posting in the flamewar style to HN. Since your last
three comments are this one, "So what? Did you ever look at a production
codebase?", and "Right, so you would rather die than risk germ infection?", it
seems clear that you don't mean to use HN as intended, which is to say for
curious conversation.

Therefore I've banned the account. If that ever changes, you're welcome to
email us at hn@ycombinator.com and let us know. In the meantime, please stop
creating accounts to break HN's rules with.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

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alkonaut
Furloughed without pay? Isn’t that a breach of the contract by the employer?

~~~
blast
That would depend on the contract would it not?

~~~
alkonaut
Absolutely. But even if such contracts were possible, wouldn’t people avoid
signing contracts that allow the employer to simply stop paying?

My contract has a 3 month notice so unless I agree to anything else, I’d be
paid 3 months regardless of whether the business is able to operate at all.

But I suppose that if my contract didn’t have that and I instead had a signing
bonus or some other comp that gave me a few months of security then that would
be equivalent.

~~~
itsdrewmiller
It's uncommon in the US to have a set duration employment contract - almost
every state allows either side to terminate employment for almost any reason.
Those represented by unions usually do have a collective bargaining agreement
that puts more restrictions around when and how employers can terminate
employees, but union membership in the US is low.

