
Ask HN: Who is firing? - wellworld
The startup I work at will soon be undergoing an exodus of staff due to a failure in leadership and management by the founders. Really painful, sad, situation for all involved.<p>So, I figure if we&#x27;re allowed to talk about who is hiring, why not the other way around? At the very least, we can get a pulse on those companies which smells like roses on the outside, and reek of something more earthy on the inside.
======
Keverw
Twitter is firing the people who worked on Vine.
[http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2016/10/27/twitter-
strong-q3...](http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2016/10/27/twitter-
strong-q3-fires-employees-shutters-vine/)

Really love how you are doing the opposite for this thread. I guess It helps
people get prospective on both sides :)

~~~
desdiv
I did a double-take when I saw Twitter posting[0] in the Who's Hiring thread.

What's the rationale here? Why are they firing and hiring at the same time?

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12851502](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12851502)

~~~
kokon
Because having a mass layoff is an easy way to reduce non productive people.
Otherwise you have to go through a complicated process for each individual,
with a higher risk to be sued.

~~~
walshemj
How come in a right to work regimen like the states how is it hard? you can
just say "we have decided to cut back marketing head count by 20%"

~~~
CapitalistCartr
Exactly. That's a layoff, not firing.

~~~
analog31
There are some nuances to the terminology. Companies avoid the term "layoff"
because it implies that people might be re-hired once the slowdown is over.
Growing up near Detroit, I remember layoffs where the status of the laid off
workers was specified in the union contract. I have not heard of this kind of
layoff in recent times, outside of unionized companies.

Laypeople like me usually reserve "firing" for people who are fired "with
cause." When companies fire people "at will," they often use words like
"reduction in force."

Perhaps a better way of thinking about it is the consequences of being fired.
If you are fired "at will," then you are entitled to things like unemployment
compensation, COBRA benefits, etc. If you are fired "with cause," then you
lose those benefits.

If an employee is a klunker, they will often wait for business to slow down,
fire them "at will," and pay the benefits, to avoid potentially getting sued
for false termination.

------
andy
I was fired from Wickr.com a few months after their layoffs.

I was fired from Wickr a few months ago. The given reason was they considered
me not a Senior Android Developer and that was my title - I asked too many
questions apparently. My manager indicated that if my title had been Android
Developer there probably would not have been a problem. I don't care about
titles really. I was hired in 2014 as a contractor for 3 months, and then they
converted me to a salaried employee. I'm currently searching for a job. I'm
finding it challenging to find my next job I think due to disclosing that I
was fired from Wickr after a performance review and me being there 2 years
doesn't help. The interesting thing is the performance review was held in
December 2015, a few months after some layoffs where I was not affected but
coworkers were. Another interesting thing is Wickr HR person told us that
during the performance review to not expect any surprises. However, this
underperformance was a complete surprise to me. I had never been notified.
Personally, I would prefer to be laid off vs fired, even if it means a few
months less of salary. It was very easy for me to obtain the job at Wickr. I
wasn't asked hardly any technical questions and just did a phone screen, never
met in person. One thing is I liked being a contractor at Wickr because I was
paid for hours worked. The CTO was very insistent about us working overtime,
meaning nights and weekends. I complained to him about this overtime
requirement without getting paid in an email about a month before my
performance review. The reason I emailed was because we were just in a scrum
meeting where management was asking us for feedback on how the sprint went.

~~~
JamesBarney
First question is are you sure you were fired with cause and not laid off?

If you're sure it's the first you might want to consult a lawyer. Usually a
company needs a pretty strong paper trail and a lot of evidence of you
screwing up royally before they can fire with cause.

~~~
scolson
Obviously, they should consult a lawyer, but I want to clarify this point,
because the parent comment can be very misleading.

If you have a specific employment contract, all bets are off and only your
lawyer and the courts can really determine what is/is not a permissible
dismissal.

Assuming no contract, "cause" needs vary by state, so you can't just trust the
parent message. In At-Will states, most of the time, you can be fired for any
reason (except protected reasons) at any time including "asking too many
questions", "asking the wrong questions", "not asking enough questions", or
"he/she looked at me funny and I was in a bad mood." All are perfectly valid
reasons for an on-the-spot dismissal in an At-Will state.

Now where it gets trickier is filing for unemployment. This can be harder to
navigate than simple At-Will rules. In my state, all of the following will be
docked against the employer for unemployment compensation:

* Just felt like firing someone

* Asks too many/not enough questions

* Constant quality issues

* Couldn't actually code and in a developer role

In all of the above, it is expected that the employer either should have
figured it out before hiring, or should train/retrain to address the
situation.

If an employer fires you for a policy violation, then unemployment will not be
charged back to the employer (and likely the employee is not "unemployment
eligible"). Usually this involves a longer paper trail with multiple meetings
and "official" written notice of a policy violation in your company file
before being terminated. Generally, this is a CYA thing for the employer so
you cannot claim "you didn't know."

Protip: If there is a bs policy that everyone violates, you can still be fired
for-cause for violating it. Chances are if this happens, someone really
doesn't like you and they want a good reason to get you out.

But in all cases in an At-Will state, you are still out of a job.

(PS: You notice I do not name my state. Since this is an already tricky
situation, assume my state is fictitious, and the rules and experiences are
equally made up. Ask your lawyer or the equivalent of your state's
(un)employment department/commission/branch for how things apply in your
state.)

~~~
JamesBarney
I think you are confusing termination in an at will state with "termination-
with-cause" which means that you cannot collect unemployment, and cannot be
rehired by the same firm.(or maybe I'm wrong)

When someone asks if you've been fired by a previous company usually they are
asking about the second. They will call the previous company and ask if you
are eligible for rehire.

~~~
scolson
No, not confusing it. Your original message was WRT paper trail, which is not
required in all cases.

To your message here, fired means something very specific. Though fired can be
for cause or no cause. And the reason of cause matters for unemployment.

Laid off means something else.

So really, there are four categories from an unemployment standpoint:

1\. Fired - policy violation

2\. Fired - "incompetent" (note: in the eyes of the employer)

3\. Fired - no cause

4\. Laid off

Both 1 and 2 are bad for new job prospects. 3 is hit and miss from a job
prospect perspective, but still generally negative. 4 has no impact.

For unemployment in my state, 2, 3, and 4 will all let you collect (and bills
back to the company who terminated the working relationship) where #1 makes
you unemployment ineligible.

Circling back to your original message about paper trail, #1 is the only one
that companies essentially always keep (or should keep) the paper trail for in
my state, because it is the only one that is needed to to defend the company
in an unemployment hearing if it ever gets there. For the other categories,
there may or may not be a paper trail, and it certainly isn't required.

~~~
JamesBarney
Do most companies when contacted by future prospective employers disclose
which of these 4 was the reason for termination?

~~~
scolson
Depends on who is asking, what they ask, and for what reason. Though it is
generally avoided.

If it is a simple reference check (never minding why a terminating company
would be listed as a ref...) then as little information as possible would be
given; possibly as small as "so and so no longer works here and that is the
limit of what we can disclose with them" in order to avoid a bad reference
lawsuit.

If it is an employment verification firm, depending on how rigorous the
verification, it may come up by direct questioning and this should be expected
by all parties.

Some companies do have strict policies about not disclosing some/all details.
I am aware of a few firms, that wether good or bad, have policies against
providing any reference, similarly, to avoid any potential lawsuit.

Now, when it comes to unemployment, if an ex-employee files a claim, the
gloves will very likely come off. If the company can avoid a claim being made
against their account, that is the difference of a lot of money on a recurring
basis. So in this sense, reason very much matters.

------
throw1988_9121
The company where I work has been going through problems and for the past few
months people keep being let go. After 4 months of watching an average of 2
people loose their jobs per month, I had the idea to register
dayssincelastlayoff.com. My idea was to have a 'X Days Since Last Injury' kind
of image on the site that would just show this stat for various companies. My
thinking was that knowing how frequently a company was letting go of it's
employees might be a good metric to figure out if the management knows what
they are doing. And my experience (written below) leads me to believe that a
company laying off a small number of employees but doing it frequently is
worse than a company that just does one huge round of layoffs.

This is the first time I've been part of a company that's going through a
round of layoffs, and I understand that there are business decisions that lead
to this. But the way I've seen it happen here is that instead of one massive
round of layoffs (which they had as well. Fired around 8 people at the same
time when the down sizing started) the management here kept firing 1 or 2
people at a time every month. From a morale perspective, this felt worse than
loosing a bunch of people at once. Because this way, everybody keeps thinking
if they are next. Has anyone else seen this happen, and did the company
survive after this? Because what's happening at my work is that now,
_everybody_ has started looking for new jobs, because of the uncertainty.

The layoffs have stopped since the last month, so I lost interest in the idea.
But just to throw it out there, could something like this ever be useful? If
yes I might do something useful with the domain.

~~~
hinkley
Pretty much my experience. Once one useful person gets laid off, everyone
can't help but think they're the next useful person to get laid off.

And in small groups it feels personal. So now you're playing CYA instead of
taking the good kinds of risks with big payoffs.

~~~
throw1988_9121
In your opinion what hurts morale more? One big round of layoff, or multiple
smaller rounds?

I've only seen the later happen, and personally I think I'd prefer the first
one. If you know that after that large layoff round the rest of the company is
safe, I'd venture that might be better for the morale of the remaining
employees.

~~~
mountaineer22
I worked at a place, where I was not laid off, but my friend was, on his
birthday.

For me, this was a real eye-opener.

It would not have been a big deal for HR to wait another day, and then lay him
off.

Another employee, also laid off, 2 days after moving out of his aunt's house
and had put a deposit down on an apartment and DSL connection.

I think I left a month later right before the company imploded.

~~~
nannal
>but my friend was, on his birthday.

I've had this happen

good 20th.

~~~
rpazyaquian
I've had it happen too. Granted, it was kind of a bullshit zeroth job where it
happened and the company folded a month later, but it still sucked. I almost
brought in cupcakes to share with the company...

------
chrissnell
Back in the first dotcom bubble, we had FuckedCompany.com. It tracked these
sorts of things on a daily basis.

~~~
malbs
Ahh FuckedCompany.com

I remember when I sat in an interview for a position at marchFIRST in
Melbourne, Australia. And when it came time in the interview for them to ask
"Have you got any questions for us?"

"Yeah, look this is kind of awkward, but I've seen marchFIRST mentioned quite
a number of times on this website called fuckedcompany.com... Is that
indicative of any issues I should be aware about?"

"Oh, don't worry about that, thats just our american parent company"

"Oh great"

So I accepted the offer, worked off-site for 3 months, and then marchFIRST
went chapter 11.

Should have paid more attention to that damned website.

~~~
nwenzel
I worked at marchFirst back in the day. Even had the chance to meet Bob
Bernard. That experience shaped how I run the company I co-founded 3 years
ago. M1's number one problem was a culture of spending money without any
thought of a return. Which was probably really odd for folks on the Whitman
Hart side of the merger. It really was a merger of two opposite cultures.

~~~
feverishaaron
This extended back to USWeb/CKS. I might still have a shirt bragging about a
$300M quarter (Though if you looked at the financials,we had something like a
$50M loss).

It was like the Tres Comma club, but tackier.

------
debunn
The Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan (OTPP) in Toronto, Ontario, Canada is
currently laying off over 100+ (union, management and contractor) IT folks
from the Enterprise Technology Solutions (IT operations) and Testing teams.
All of the affected positions are being transferred to Tata Consultancy
Services (TCS - India based offshoring service company), with those who are
affected being mandated to knowledge transfer with TCS up to the January 31,
2017 termination date.

While there have been internal assurances that no other teams are going to be
outsourced in the near future, I wouldn't recommend applying for any IT based
roles at OTPP.

Full disclosure - I currently work for, and am affected by this outsourcing.

(edit - adding article for those interested in details)
[http://www.benefitscanada.com/news/ontario-teachers-to-
outso...](http://www.benefitscanada.com/news/ontario-teachers-to-
outsource-108-it-positions-86124)

~~~
eswat
This reminds me of the RBC debacle a few years ago, where they abused the
Temporary Foreign Worker Program to replace capable, salaried Canadian IT
workers with offshore services.

That stint hurt not just those workers but other companies that were trying to
hire the best in the world, only for the feds to deny visas due to one bad
apple spoiling the bunch.

[http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/news/rbc-temporary-foreign-
work...](http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/news/rbc-temporary-foreign-workers/)

~~~
debunn
Yes - we've discussed amongst ourselves (those affected) about what RBC did,
and how they were lambasted in the media for abusing the visas. In our
particular case, TCS seems to already have a number of local assets they're
involving, with most of the work to be sourced by India based teams. I'm sure
OTPP is trying to avoid similar negative press in regards to abusing visas,
but I've been surprised how little coverage this news is getting in general (a
pension plan funded by local Ontario union based teachers firing local union
based employees for offshore assets.)

~~~
phrotoma
I worked at RBC during that time and can add a bit of context. Rumour was the
CIO at the time (Morteza Mahjour) had staked his job on reducing operating
costs of the tech services & operations division by bringing in an offshore
firm called iGate. I wasn't laid off but plenty folks I know were and I left
anyway.

The cost savings plan turned out to be a bust, projects ran over budget or
never got off the ground at all and Morteza left. Apparently the new guy is
turning things around. Some old colleagues have gone back after being offered
hefty raises.

Edit: also, does the teachers union know this is happening? Isn't that
retirement fund worth a fortune?

~~~
debunn
Yes - the Ontario Teachers Federation (the parent body that manages the
different Ontario teachers' unions) was made aware of the outsourcing shortly
after it was announced in July. They questioned Ron Mock (OTPP's CEO) shortly
afterwards, and voted to have OTPP reverse the decision:

[https://twitter.com/oectagovernor/status/768170531468095492](https://twitter.com/oectagovernor/status/768170531468095492)

Sadly, this has resulted in no visible changes to the decision.

The OTPP fund is currently at $171.4 billion (all figures in Canadian dollars)
as of December 2015, with $13.2 billion in surplus funding as of January 1,
2015. Makes you wonder why they'd go through this kind of cost cutting,
doesn't it?

~~~
phrotoma
Wow! I have a few friends who teach in Ontario, will be interested to hear
their thoughts. Thanks for the background info.

------
frogstomp19
Not technically "firing" I suppose but all of the dev org in Atlanta and SF,
including myself, were laid off at athenahealth last week. Something like 120
people. Sucks.

~~~
kristianp
What's the difference between being fired and laid off?

~~~
tehwalrus
In the UK, "getting fired" or "getting the sack" means you were incompetent
(or commited misconduct) and are sent home. For incompentance, they can only
do this after a "performance review" (they have to give you 3 months to
improve, I think).

"Laid off" is called being "made redundant". The company can do this much more
easily to a bunch of people, but it generally has to pay them ~6 months salary
and _can 't_ hire new people at the same time, for the same job(s).

Any employer being more aggressive than this will probably be taken to an
employment tribunal.

In the States, I've heard you guys use the terms synonymously, but it always
sounded a little weird. Your employment law is awful for employees though, by
comparison.

~~~
dfraser992
You forgot about being 'sent to Coventry' \- i.e. the company doesn't want to
pay you redundancy, and can't fire you for incompetence, so you get ignored,
not given any work, get put in a useless role, etc until you wise up and
quit/find another job. British passive aggressiveness at its finest!

Being American. I would have had no problem with being fired aka 'you're now
surplus' and it would have been far more helpful (i.e. get it over with) vs.
letting me twist in the wind for a few months... or even have a hard talk with
me to see if I might be useful elsewhere in the company because I was bored
etc.

But the procedure they used to downsize the workforce earlier that year before
that was cruel - straight out of the Victorian era...

~~~
tehwalrus
I've heard that that practise (what a name!) Is relatively common in Japan:
I've never heard of it in the UK before.

I have heard of "gardening leave" though: where you're left on full salary but
kept out of the building for your notice period, to stop you passing up to
date market info to your new company. (It's the only legal way I know of in
the UK to implement a non-compete clause.)

~~~
zelos
I love the fact that no one seems to know why we say "sent to Coventry" as
well.

~~~
cwilkes
Probably related to Coventry being "ignored" in WWII by British officials so
that German wouldn't catch on that the enigma machine was broken.

[http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-11486219](http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-11486219)

~~~
7Z7
The phrase is much older than that..

>Grose's The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue - 1811:

>>To send one to Coventry; a punishment inflicted by officers of the army on
such of their brethren as are testy, or have been guilty of improper
behaviour, not worthy the cognizance of a court martial. The person sent to
Coventry is considered as absent; no one must speak to or answer any question
he asks, except relative to duty, under penalty of being also sent to the same
place. On a proper submission, the penitent is recalled, and welcomed by the
mess, as just returned from a journey to Coventry.[0]

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Send_to_Coventry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Send_to_Coventry)

~~~
roninb
Wow, I wonder how effective time-out was on infantrymen of the early 19th
century and how often it was enforced. It seems like an analog to solitary
confinement while still forcing you to be a contributing member of your armed
forces.

------
stevetursi
Hertz laid off nearly the entirety of their rank and file IT staff earlier
this year. [https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/02/13/1630244/hertz-is-
pu...](https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/02/13/1630244/hertz-is-pulling-a-
disney)

In order to receive our severance, we were forced to train our IBM
replacements, who were in India. Hertz's strategy of IBM and Austerity is the
new SMT's solution for a balance sheet that's in shambles, yet they have
rewarded themselves by increasing executive compensation 35% over the prior
year, including a $6 million bonus to the CIO.
[http://insiders.morningstar.com/trading/executive-
compensati...](http://insiders.morningstar.com/trading/executive-
compensation.action?t=HTZ)

I personally landed in an Alphabet company, received a giant raise, and now I
get to work on really amazing stuff, so I'm doing fine. But to this day I'm
sad to think how our once-amazing Hertz team, staffed with really smart
people, led by the best boss I ever had, and were really driving the
innovation at Hertz, was just thrown away like yesterday's garbage.

~~~
rybosome
The failing business and laid off workers combined with executive compensation
increases/bonuses is very much an example of why Sanders and Trump are so
popular, and why candidates like them (or more extreme) will come out of the
woodwork in 4 years.

~~~
Curnee
I find it hard to believe Trump wouldn't, or hasn't, done exactly as Hertz has
done. This seems like an all too common stratagem for upper echelons within a
business to convince shareholders that the books are healing.

~~~
cookiecaper
Trump does this kind of thing because he believes it's necessary to compete.
For example, he makes neckties in China/Mexico/wherever because that's the
only way one can do so profitably.

Trump is the epitome of "Don't hate the player, hate the game". While Trump
has played the game as necessary in the business world, Trump claims he is
running for office so that he can change policies such that offshoring
American jobs is no longer economically feasible, and such that companies that
do this will face punishment.

Though it seems counter-intuitive, Trump and Sanders are striking the same
chord, just from different directions. There is a surprising amount of
crossover support from Sanders to Trump, especially as evidence of DNC
corruption against Sanders in the primary process continues to mount.

~~~
mywittyname
Tangential discussion: but change comes from within. There are _plenty_ of
companies out there who figured out a way to make a profit operating against
industry norms, like making their clothes in the US -- Raleigh Denim comes to
mind.

Trump could absolutely have (hired someone to) figure out a way to make a
profit on artisanal ties. He was just too concerned with maximizing personal
gain to care.

~~~
cookiecaper
Yeah, I probably shouldn't have said the _ONLY_ way to make money is by
exporting manufacturing. But the _usual_ way for sure.

Trump is about making it so that business _as usual_ favors the American
worker -- it shouldn't require special boutique retailers who are only ever
going to be able to compete in a niche market for hyper-aware consumers.

------
pathompong
Thomson Reuters is.
[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-01/thomson-
re...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-01/thomson-reuters-
earnings-top-estimates-on-growth-in-americas)

~~~
dredmorbius
The newspaper / print media industry generally is doing abysmally poorly.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/28/business/media/buyouts-
wal...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/28/business/media/buyouts-wall-street-
journal-bad-news-for-newspapers.html)

Submitted yesterday, didn't go anywhere:
[https://news.ycombinator.co/item?id=12834583](https://news.ycombinator.co/item?id=12834583)

I've been picking up newspapers and magazines and been quietly horrified at
how thin they are. I'm no fan of advertising, but I know it's how they pay the
bills, _and there are no ads there._

The _Chicago Tribune_ is trying to keep their "news hole" at no more than 50%,
and AFAICT, are failing. Even with the Cubs at the World Series (and the Trib
pimping that for all its worth), the sports section has virtually no
advertising. Most noticeable is the lack of classic retail: beer, wine,
alcohol, automobiles, consumer electronics (a periodic Fry's ad excepted),
clothing (with a few exceptions), etc. Some home services (windows, siding,
etc.), and occasional furniture. But overall, terrifically thin.

Time Magazine as of September was similarly famished-looking.

Reminds me of running into a friend you'd not seen for a while, with a fatal
disease. It's a visual shock.

~~~
eghad
Sorry to dump on your aside, but the media arm isn't affected. The
Finance/Risk news (for financial clients) division is the one being downsized,
and they were profitable.

The parent mentions it, but here's the brief from their outlet:
[http://www.reuters.com/article/us-thomsonreuters-results-
idU...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-thomsonreuters-results-
idUSKBN12W3PE)

~~~
dredmorbius
Hey, accurate info is good info, I appreciate that.

Which does though raise the question of how it is newswires (Reuters, UPI, AP)
are succeeding where direct media outlets aren't. Or is it just that the pain
is there but less than (in T/R's case) the finance/risk arm?

~~~
garysieling
The two big TR business units are legal and financial, and both industries pay
for access to information when it helps their businesses.

I worked on some of the legal products, and customers were much more sensitive
to completeness and accuracy of information they could obtain than the average
person with a newspaper. Even with "free" news products people would also pay
for alerts.

------
1474295912
VisualMeta GmbH in Berlin. They're a 'start-up' backed by Axel Springer,
Berlin.

They fired about 60-70 people recently, some of them on their first day of
work. Most of their devs come from non-existent countries
(China/Eritrea/Pakistan etc) and they're paid abysmally (€32-34k).

It's a surprise that this news wasn't covered at all in Berlin start-up press.

~~~
Raed667
34k € is a bad salary in Germany? Because I think it is an average 1st salary
in France (or the companies I've been talking to are also planning to get me
__paid abysmally __)

~~~
hocuspocus
Social contributions are a much bigger part of your gross salary in Germany.
34k would be ~28k in France.

My company hires new grads around 50k and I guess decent startups who make
people relocate across continents should pay at least 45k.

~~~
user5994461
Damn. That's more than I got when I started in London. Should have picked
Berlin instead.

~~~
throwawayReply
When it comes to software development, London (and the UK) certainly seem to
have a low pay culture.

~~~
user5994461
Can you make 6 figures in Berlin? (In London, it's doable)

I hope you're not saying "low pay" because you compare to the USA. The Europe
and the USA are not in the same league, they shouldnt be compared.

~~~
hocuspocus
100k+ is definitely possible in Germany but hard in Berlin itself, even for a
principal engineer.

I'd say you need be be at least Manager/Director/VP of engineering, depending
on the size of the company.

------
scarythoughts
My friend and his entire data engineering department were laid off from
Imgur.com in August. About 10 people of 70 out so.

~~~
dkns
I wonder if this has anything to do with reddit implementing their own image
hosting service.

~~~
d23
That came around before August.

~~~
wyldfire
But it might take some months before that change to reddit reverberates into
imgur visitor metrics and on into advertising revenue.

~~~
d23
Ah whoops, I thought something else was being implied.

------
brettbivens
Great thread idea. To echo the thoughts of others in this thread, it is nice
to see conversation and transparency around this difficult topic.

Personally have been on both sides of the layoff table and have seen it
handled different ways. In some cases, have seen transparency throughout the
company failure process with founders and investors working tirelessly to help
people land on their feet. In others, have seen deception, founders locking
themselves in their office or staying away entirely. Then, little more than a
"Dear John" letter telling people it is over.

As you can expect, the general outcomes - from perception of the founders and
investors to future collaboration and working relationships between laid off
employees - have been significantly better in the former scenario.

Quick plug - I'm on the team at a VC firm out of Chicago and am always looking
at new ways to help companies we work with find and retain great people. Have
been looking into ways we can work with founders of sputtering companies (both
in our portfolio and outside) and the employees that are impacted by the
failure of those companies.

Overall goal being to...

1\. help hiring companies find great, available people 2\. help laid off
employees get back on their feet and find great roles 3\. help CEOs of failed
companies do right by the folks who

If you are a CEO that is contemplating layoffs or have had to do them in the
past... or if you're someone that has been laid off, I'd love to connect -
brett.bivens [at] gmail.com.

Or, feel free to just reply here!

------
questionr
There's the official WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification)
report...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_Adjustment_and_Retraini...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_Adjustment_and_Retraining_Notification_Act)

[http://www.edd.ca.gov/jobs_and_training/Layoff_Services_WARN...](http://www.edd.ca.gov/jobs_and_training/Layoff_Services_WARN.htm)

[http://www.edd.ca.gov/jobs_and_training/warn/WARN-Report-
for...](http://www.edd.ca.gov/jobs_and_training/warn/WARN-Report-
for-7-1-2015-to-06-30-2016.pdf)

------
mkteer
My friend's company Iron.io laid off ~20 employees in SF (almost the entire
company). Apparently their series A round brought in 12 million just a year
ago.

~~~
threeseed
It's a shame because Iron.io has truly fantastic offerings.

Better than anything from any of the major cloud providers. The only problem
is that it's hard to beat having your entire platform in the one place.
Especially for billing, security etc.

~~~
patstar
We had some pretty bad issues with them earlier this year. Queues would
randomly change from push to pull, service outages, etc. Seems to have
stabilized for the most part, but we aren't using them much now.

------
germanthrowaway
There is a big german gamecompany that hasn't paid 300+ employees in 4 months
so they are bleeding employees instead of firing them.

~~~
throwaway2942
Is there any more info you can provide? I dont want to sound combative, just
curious because I have a lot of friends there and I havent heard anything.

Is this happening for all employees? Do you think Crytek is holding on for
robinson?

I actually literally just got an offer a few weeks ago, this changes a lot. I
know crytek had trouble before, but Im suprised these struggles are
translating to the FFM studio.

~~~
germanthrowaway
it applies to everyone and some are worse off than others. we have had emails
sent to us from the bosses saying that we should not talk with people from the
other studios but of course there is nothing that makes this impossible.

under no circumstance should you take work at crytek. the reason for all of
this is that the company as a whole has not had positive books for a long time
and they did not look for money early enough. this means that they are now in
a panic.

~~~
throwaway2942
Intresting, Im suprised this hasnt gotten any coverage or attention really.
This is the first time Ive heard of it, but it correlates with a recent change
in attitute with some of my contacts there. Some outright dont respond to
messages, others reply with "Things are fine" etc...

Do you anticipate this getting more coverage in the comming days/weeks? When
was the last missed paycheck if I may ask?

Thanks again. Your doing good work informing people.

~~~
germanthrowaway
the reason for the coverage being low is that no one is saying anything and
information on glassdoor is being ignored by most people anyway.

full disclosure: i am from the sofia office but i think that this is dangerous
to say because we are fewer than the germans. in the sofia office we have not
been paid for two months now and before that we had to wait two months for
salaries, so it makes a total of 4 months of waiting. i can confirm that the
frankfurt office also has not received money but i am not able to say exactly
what their situation is. 2 or 3 months.

i dont think this will get coverage because i will not provide any evidence
that will make it clear who i am. if someone can tell me how to prove this
without being in danger with crytek i will do what i can.

~~~
throwaway2942
Generally the best way to do this is to post an email regarding NDA, payments,
whatever sent to a large group and block out the "To" but keep the sender and
as much of the content as possible.

Up to you if you post it publicly, I couldnt see the harm there but
alternatively you could email it from a disposable email to a gaming news
site. They are very careful with their sources and can help. They have
experience breaking stories like this. You should get a reply in less than 2h
from most press sites for a story like this.

------
williswee
WSJ is too [http://www.politico.com/media/story/2016/11/wall-street-
jour...](http://www.politico.com/media/story/2016/11/wall-street-journal-
feels-the-pain-004838)

------
keyle
This is less useful than the hiring one but more entertaining and gives us a
chance to boost morale of the people actually hurt. Good thread imho.

~~~
shashwat986
It can be useful if companies are doing it in a backhanded manner, and trying
to hide the state of affairs from its own employees. Kinda why fuckedcompany
became so popular

------
workerIbe
I'm the 3rd Architect to be lucky to work with our VP of Product in the last 6
months, the other 2 no longer work here, he seems to end up pissed off
Everytime we meet, we'll see...

~~~
maverick_iceman
Which company?

~~~
hactually
I wouldn't recommend he answer that. VP's are a lot easier to identify than a
TL or similar

------
diamondo25
The company I worked (Treatwell) for has lost a lot of good developers since
the acquirement from the london based company Wahanda. 2 months ago they
basically fired eveyone tech related in the Amsterdam office. Its a shame, I
guess thats normal when you acquire a company for $38M[0] and figuring out
everything is double.

[0] [https://techcrunch.com/2015/06/05/european-salon-booking-
sit...](https://techcrunch.com/2015/06/05/european-salon-booking-site-wahanda-
buys-dutch-rival-treatwell-for-38m/)

------
johnnyfaehell
From the sounds of it Kisura GmbH in Berlin is currently tanking. They're
making payroll late, not paying suppliers, etc. They don't need to fire anyone
because everyone is quitting.

~~~
expertentipp
Looking at their footer - backed by the EU funds for regional development... I
have yet so see a successful web project backed by the EU funds. They seem to
care about PDF and Word reports more than about any of the software the
company creates.

------
Animats
Is it time to start holding Pink Slip Parties [1] again?

[1] [http://sfgirl.com/index_last.html](http://sfgirl.com/index_last.html)

~~~
CalChris
I went to one of those. It was hilarious.

~~~
walshemj
Back in the day I went to first Tuesday and those with badges for VC/Investors
got swamped.

I managed to nervously pitched to one guy and thought "he looks familiar"
looked down and saw his name badge was a single word "rothschild" :-)

He looked like Nathan Rothschild
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Mayer_Rothschild](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Mayer_Rothschild))
who was the UK's banker during the Napoleonic wars

------
kesor
Plenty of HPE employees are going home unemployed these days.
[https://www.thelayoff.com/hp-enterprise](https://www.thelayoff.com/hp-
enterprise)

------
jason_wang
Before posting, double check your severance agreement. It's common to have a
non-disparagement (no bad mouthing) clause in it.

~~~
loeg
Can true statements be disparagement?

~~~
noescape
This is a really good question. It seems a non-disparagement clause waives
one's right to the first amendment.

[http://www.jaburgwilk.com/news-publications/what-is-a-non-
di...](http://www.jaburgwilk.com/news-publications/what-is-a-non-
disparagement-clause-and-why-you-may-not-want-to-sign-one)

Is this right?

~~~
JBlue42
Whenever I had to sign one after a lay-off I checked with lawyer friends
first. They are not really enforceable.

~~~
noescape
Can you explain what you mean by "really enforceable"? Does it mean that they
often don't get enforced, but _are_ legally binding -- or does it mean they're
illegal?

If they're legally binding then that's still bad.

------
carsongross
We need to resurrect fuckedcompany.com.

Maybe throw it on 4chan?

[http://boards.4chan.org/fuckedcompany/](http://boards.4chan.org/fuckedcompany/)

~~~
jmcgough
[https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckedcompany/](https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckedcompany/)

------
jennisNo
Acorns is not firing people, but has already lost ~15 top performers due to
poor executive leadership

~~~
anon2020
The same is happening to Funding Circle in the UK. The company is still
profitable, but a lot of devs are leaving because of certain decisions.

~~~
iLemming
Do you mean decision of becoming Clojure-centric? That was probably the best
thing that could happen. Can't say about UK but in the US office we are
interviewing for engineering positions almost every day.

------
Melbalot
So I heard through the grapevine about a company in Melbourne Aus making a
'virtual personal assistant'. CEO is an ex fortune 500 bigshot that jetsets
across the world with their daughter (also senior management at the company)
burning cash like there's no tomorrow, while giving the illusion that business
deals are 'just about to come through'.

The smart ones have been leaving consistently through the company's history,
and recently they had a layoff of around half their staff.

From the sounds of it, almost sounds like a shell company - half baked product
that no-one uses, and they've managed to convince investors out of millions in
cash.

To me seems just like the dotcom crash all over again - crazy that investors
aren't on top of this shit, where's the due diligence / sense checking at?

~~~
flukus
I think I applied to them about 6 months ago. I was rejected for "not doing
TDD" because I checked in my tests and code at the same time.

------
lawnchair
This is great. Please do this every month. Very useful.

------
lardissone
Gravity4 laid off a large number of remote contract employees back in March,
and also paid less than the total of the owed money. No reasons provided.
Anyway you shouldn't expect much of the company of that guy with that criminal
record.

------
sdoering
Here in Germany. Jimdo (something like SquareSpace) is laying of (I believe)
up to 25% of it's staff.

~~~
phoet
that is correct, they even created a website (with a competitor) for some of
the people that were let go:
[http://j-quit.weebly.com/](http://j-quit.weebly.com/)

~~~
sdoering
Thanks for the link. We made an effort to communicate that we are hiring into
the ranks of people jimdo let go (or people who want to leave)[1].

[1]:
[https://www.facebook.com/SinnerSchrader/photos/a.49429155213...](https://www.facebook.com/SinnerSchrader/photos/a.494291552139.272849.358531227139/10154694003457140/?type=3&theater)

------
innodb1
cognizant is firing people in US, top level cleanup

~~~
mavelikara
At what level?

~~~
curiousgal
The top.

~~~
Naritai
Not sure what else mavelikara was expecting :)

~~~
mavelikara
I was expecting titles of people who were let go.

------
nyccentralpark2
Marvell Semiconductors will be shutting down quite a few businesses. Quite a
lot of top level management replaced already

------
nailer
YPlan just fired a bunch of people and 'sold' to TimeOut for TimeOut group
stock. I'd expect more to go.

------
cema
Parametric Technology ([http://www.ptc.com/](http://www.ptc.com/)) has had a
series of layoffs. They are trying to turn the business around, clumsily it
seems. Never having been associated with the company myself, I will let others
talk. Well known in Boston area.

------
anon12369
Shopstyle in SF just laid off 20 staffers between dev and product.

~~~
theow
I heard that was directly due to development team deciding to rewrite their
site in "the angular" because it was quote: "like Haskell but better"

Blew a huge hole in their search engine rankings.

~~~
celticninja
How did rewriting the site in another language affect their ranking?

~~~
thomas88
Angular is a javascript framework rendered on the client and javascript is not
yet 100% supported by the crawlers at search engines (but it's getting
better).

------
soulnothing
At one of the bigger cable companies. My contract was recently terminated, I
was told end of September it would end by December 30th.

Luckily I knew this was coming, as my project wasn't feasible. Oddily enough
this is my second contract with the company. Same thing happened the first
time around. On to greener pastures I hope.

~~~
SamUK96
Isn't constructive dismissal supposed to protect you from being put on a
failing project/team just so they can fire you?

~~~
soulnothing
I worked as a W2 contractor, and in turn expect no rights. I also learned my
lesson the first pass. I asked for something more challenging, because I had
nothing on my agile board for 3 months. I in turn was given notice.

It's a dance I've unfortunately gotten used too. Join the project sounds fun.
Project was not scoped, it's pared back. Then my contract is rescinded.

While I talked to my contracting firm, they gave me other roles. They were
tech support, customer service, etc. variety.

------
shivaodin
Appdynamics is laying off people, sometimes by the dozen.

------
eladrin201
I was let go two weeks ago from a small downtown, Austin dev shop. I was let
go because they couldn't afford to keep me on anymore. I could see the decline
in the company as it was happening so it wasn't a huge surprise. Still sucks.
Now I'm scrambling to get my tech stack up to date and find new work.

------
Anonimaus
Mattermark has had so much turnover that they took the team page down.

[https://web.archive.org/web/20160903075336/https://mattermar...](https://web.archive.org/web/20160903075336/https://mattermark.com/team/)

------
serenova001
Serenova (prev known as LiveOps Cloud) closes their Bay Area and Auckland (New
Zealand) offices later this month after running them down for the last year.

Positions moved to Austin, Fredrickton (Canada) and outsourced. By coincidence
the CTO lives in Fredrickton and the CEO lives in Austin.

------
warcher
Ah yes, the "startup you work at".

Well, I'm probably full for the moment, but a startup that I know is bleeding
some in my neck of the woods is MasteryConnect. Chop chop chop. Domo is not
looking good, but they probably have money to survive for a bit.

~~~
josep2
I interviewed at MasteryConnect 2 years ago and their business model seemed
doomed.

~~~
warcher
Yeah, I don't really get it either. Know a couple people laid off from there.
They'd hired a bunch of kids from a coding bootcamp, and there was a serious
bloodbath amongst them. An interesting case study-- seems like it shook out
that there were definitely bootcamp grads that could hack it, but without the
four year college filter they needed to do a big cull. Some of the campers are
in and will stay in, most will wash out in a downturn. Same as it ever was, I
suppose.

------
partiallogic
9 months into my first developer gig and the company is taking a change of
direction which involves making half the office redundant. I've opted for VR
as it feels like staying would just be delaying the inevitable.

------
singingfish
my ex employer got rid of me in order to spend more $ on aws burning cpu
cycles instead. Would like to hire juniors in spades though mind you.

~~~
0xmohit

      in order to spend more $ on aws burning cpu cycles instead
    

Maybe he was long on AMZN and desperately wanted the stock to move up.

~~~
falsedan
Who isn't?

------
throwawaythrow1
I'm really surprised this hasn't hit the UK news, but the government
department that regulates welfare (the DWP) just discovered a £350 Million
deficit that is proactively not being acknowledged by the leadership team.
Despite maybe 1000+ people losing their job. Granted, a lot of these job
losses probably affect contractors and suppliers (IBM, Accenture, CapGemini)
more than anyone. But the general perception is that the department is a
sinking ship trying to shed weight as fast and as ruthlessly as possible. Many
of these people were given only an hour or two notice.

They will no doubt get more money in April but many projects (100s) have been
"paused" and I really doubt that the Subject Matter Experts will have the
appetite to return to a department that screwed up their budget to such a huge
degree.

------
Blackthorn
Why don't you start? No name in your post.

------
7f60009e
Lugg is firing people.

------
cyberferret
When I read this, all I could picture was the scene in HBO's 'Silicon Valley'
where Gavin Belson sacks his entire Nucleus team, then later inadvertently
hires them all back again when he acquires EndFrame, and doesn't realise that
he is talking to the _same_ people in the _same_ room about the _same_
product.

~~~
jnsaff2
argh, spoilers :(

~~~
cyberferret
Oh, drat - I'm sorry. I had assumed most HN readers would have seen the series
already - it was on a while back, wasn't it? (We only just saw it in
Australia, which is usually an indication that is has been on in the US about
a year ago?!?)

~~~
kj01a
Your spoiler is from the newest season. So, not quite a year, and if they're
anything like me, they've been putting off watching the new stuff until they
can binge watch the whole thing.

~~~
StavrosK
I wish I had done that, waiting is frustrating. However, I agree, that doesn't
really spoil anything, it's not like there's suspense there.

------
pknerd
This should be a monthly thread.

~~~
atom_enger
Yeah seems like something we should track along with hiring. Great thing to
know about if you're on the market.

~~~
stephengillie
What about the number of throwaway accounts that might necessitate? It would
be better to have a more anonymous means to announce that your employer is
firing.

~~~
jacalata
Well, hopefully the site is written well enough to scale the users database if
necessary.

~~~
boulos
Besides, this would only be X00 per month at best (it's rare that any post,
get much more than a few hundred comments) and quite likely tens on average.
There are certainly more than 100 new HN accounts per month. I second the
motion ;).

------
ronilan
Seems like a lot of bay area companies are "firing on all cylinders" but Tesla
is clearly not.

~~~
kainolophobia
Does this mean Tesla is hiring or firing?

~~~
jrockway
They prefer the terms "charging" and "discharging".

------
known
Heads I Win; Tails You Lose;

