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Bird lays off hundreds via Zoom call
- whateveracct 7y agoThose at the top refuse to stare the consequences of their actions in the eye. A tale as old as time. If you take on a leadership position, don't be a coward like this. Even if the layoff is due to things beyond your control.
- nerfhammer 7y agothere isn't really a good way to lay off remote workers
- freehunter 7y agoThat's an important point. As much as I'd like my manager to look me in the eye as they tell me I'm laid off, I'd be super pissed if they flew me to San Francisco just to lay me off then left me stewing the whole flight home.
- macintux 7y ago...especially right now.
- Johnyma22 7y agoI disagree. The same rules apply to taking remote workers on. Slow and gradual onboarding with care and nurture to take them on. Careful individually planned offboarding to help them transition. It's hard to do and doesn't positively impact bottom line initially but it avoids resentment in the vertical(market) which is super important for long term growth.
- paranoidrobot 7y ago> Careful individually planned offboarding to help them transition. This doesn't work when you need to make large changes to an org. I've seen first hand how different styles of this work. When it's done 'carefully and individually', and keeps happening over days (because that's what it takes) - everyone else in the company starts wondering if they're impacted, and it becomes this slow-moving horror show. Another person gets tapped on the shoulder, called into a room and let go. Meanwhile the business expects things to continue as normal, but it doesn't and even normal meetings become a source of anxiety. While it's never pleasant to be told you're being let go - at least if you can do it in larger groups and get it over and done with as soon as possible you reduce the level of anxiety and uncertainty. Not to say that a pre-recorded video, voice mail or text message is the way to go, but still.
- yibg 7y agoI agree. For large layoffs, do it quickly and in one shot. Managers can then follow up with individuals over time if time and schedules allow.
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- wpietri 7y agoThere's no good way to lay anybody off. But there are worse and better ways. A one-on-one video call is much more respectful and humane than playing a recording.
- benatkin 7y agoThis guarantees that a large percentage of people are going to learn about it through other employees rather than from their managers though.
- Nextgrid 7y agoWhat potential problems could this cause?
- bathtub365 7y agoMaybe a disgruntled employee takes down your database or copies confidential info onto their personal computer
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- wpietri 7y agoYour notion is that nobody who has ever been laid off had a idea it was coming? And you want to build your security with that foundation?
- bathtub365 7y agoNo.
- wpietri 7y agoIn that case I don't think your previous comment makes much sense.
- 0x202020 7y agoI was really appreciative of the way the first company I worked for handled my departure. Things were changing at the company so I was looking to leave anyway but then they decided to change their structure and I was given a few options in person (lived ~2000 miles from main office) all of which were mutually beneficial from my point of view. A) stay on and help integrate an external team for up to 16 weeks (reduced hours, freedom to interview and apply elsewhere) B) stay on and wrap up the current sprint and tidy up some documentation for up to 8 weeks C) finish out the week and receive 6 weeks separation pay. All options also allowed me to keep insurance until I found a new position as well as keep my company provided tech. It really made me appreciate the people at the company overall, minus the person who was making the changes (which has since been canned and some of the engineering efforts at the company have stalled which is sad)
- ryanSrich 7y agoHow so? I worked at an all remote company. We were remote from the day of founding. Everyone I hired I hired remotely, without ever meeting in person. In the two instances I had to let people go I did it remotely. The same way I hired them, the same way I’ve had people quit.
- Nextgrid 7y agoCould it be that nobody in their right mind would take a leadership position at this trainwreck of a company (when they can probably find a much better one), so the only ones left are the cowards?
- tuesday20 7y agoMaybe. But there are way too many companies and leaders like this. They expect two week notice when an employee leaves, but have no problem firing people at 5 pm on Friday via email/text whatever.
- kevindong 7y agoTechCrunch has a lot more details: https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/27/bird-lays-off-about-30-of-workforce-amid-covid-19-pandemic/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/27/bird-lays-off-about-30-of-... > According to a source, Bird’s balance sheet is strong but it needed to reduce burn in order to extend its runway into 2021. I would not describe a ~9 month runway as "strong".
- paxys 7y agoWell compared to all the companies that claim they cannot last through the lockdown it is.
- gumby 7y agoFor the first couple of years of my first bootstrapped company I tried to keep “cash in the bank” in excess of 3 months. Everybody knew. The one time (after the first six months of transient jitter) it dipped down close to two months everybody knew, and nobody quit (headcount at that point was about 60). So 9 months seems pretty good. Though perhaps they are/were on the “don’t worry about the burn we can always get more” plan. In that case 9 months does sound perilous....though perhaps many people who couldn’t make car payments will become customers?
- freepor 7y agoWell it's strong until it's not. Tons of businesses run on 1-month commercial paper and other stuff that they just plan to roll over and roll over until one day things change and they're completely fucked.
- tsss 7y ago9 months of runway with 0 income is a lot, especially for a company that size.
- generalpf 7y agoIn the email he says “end on 2021” which is 21 months.
- edanm 7y ago
- benatkin 7y agoMaybe it was heavily rehearsed rather than prerecorded https://twitter.com/coryweinberg/status/1243685748957564928?s=19 https://twitter.com/coryweinberg/status/1243685748957564928?... Edit: more: https://twitter.com/coryweinberg/status/1243685675137781762?s=19 https://twitter.com/coryweinberg/status/1243685675137781762?...
- JansjoFromIkea 7y agoKinda think that they couldn't put a face to it (specifically the CEO) is way worse than it being (possibly) prerecorded
- dang 7y agoOk, since the point is disputed, I guess we'll take the prerecorded message out of the title above.
- 0x8BADF00D 7y agoIt’s fine, the government has incentivized not working. Why work when the government will pay everything for you, and you can’t get evicted.
- save_ferris 7y ago3.3 million people just lost their jobs in this first month of quarantine, with unknown millions more to come. You think they’re all just lazy?
- 0x8BADF00D 7y agoI didn’t say that at all. I said that due to recent policy decisions, the government has incentivized workers not to work. In a normal free market economy, when people get laid off, their labor is reallocated to a different sector in the economy. Now there’s no reason to look for another job, if your rent is guaranteed and the government checks come in every month for four months on top of unemployment.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- save_ferris 7y ago> In a normal free market economy What exactly leads you to believe that we’re currently in a situation for the free market to prevail while millions of Americans can’t leave their houses and the infection rate of COVID continues to double every three days? The last time we saw labor contraction like this was during the Great Depression, when millions starved and the economy took years to recover. What are people supposed to do when there are no jobs for them and they can’t leave the house? If there’s no work to be done for the next three months and no income coming in, what do these millions of workers do, starve?
- 0x8BADF00D 7y ago> The last time we saw labor contraction like this was during the Great Depression, when millions starved and the economy took years to recover. What are people supposed to do when there are no jobs for them and they can’t leave the house? What do you think they did in the Great Depression? WW2? They didn’t sit there and wait for the government to bail them out. They saved for a rainy day. The US govt borrowed money from the citizens to fight WW2. But thanks to QE infinity, the government has disincentivized and fucked over savers as well. Big surprise, anytime the government gets involved they fuck it up.
- nostromo 7y agoThere are many major American companies that will be bankrupt in a few months if quarantine continues. No business projects revenue dropping by almost 100% overnight.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- cycrutchfield 7y agoEspecially because a lot of those major American companies have spent the past decade loading up on debt and buying back their shares at historically high prices.
- Alex3917 7y agoIsn't a stock buyback exactly the same as paying a dividend, but taxed at a lower rate? I don't see why these companies are being demonized, the government should just let them go bankrupt and let the public buy their assets for pennies on the dollar.
- untog 7y ago> I don't see why these companies are being demonized, the government should just let them go bankrupt Well, they’re being demonised because they’re pushing heavily for a government bailout that will avoid them going bankrupt.
- twblalock 7y agoThey only need the bailout from the government because the government forced businesses to shut down. How exactly is that the business's fault?
- StanislavPetrov 7y agoThey are being demonized because the government isn't letting them go bankrupt or letting the public buy up their assets. Instead the government is rewarding their greed and poor business practices by bailing them out and letting them keep all of the money they made.
- Nextgrid 7y agoOne good result of the Coronavirus pandemic is its cleansing effect on unprofitable and unsustainable garbage like this company.
- diob 7y agoNot sure if it will really cleanse us of companies like this. We've been through terrible depressions before, and sociopath companies seem to always make a comeback. Based on other countries, it looks like the real way to cleanse us of these companies would involve moving our country towards more progressive policies.
- Apocryphon 7y agoWill investors also do the right thing and not subsidize these types of startups?
- diob 7y agoInvestors have traditionally not taken this sort of thing into account, focusing only on the profits. Although, I have read articles saying new generations refuse to invest in certain sectors, such as the military industrial complex (companies like Lockheed Martin). So perhaps it'll change over time. See https://www.upworthy.com/millennials-are-making-money-by-investing-in-the-future https://www.upworthy.com/millennials-are-making-money-by-inv... for an example of one of the articles. Getting a lot of downvotes by people on my above comment, but oddly enough no one wants to engage and say why they disagree. I feel like this platform would work better if people could only upvote. It would force them to comment / explain their own position if they really disagree with folks. Flagging should of course still exist though.
- jamestimmins 7y agoPerhaps, but it will also clear out potentially strong companies that still require substantial investment to get to market simply because they're early in their lifecycle. You can tell a well made building vs a poorly made building by what's still standing after an earthquake. But no building is built to withstand an atomic blast.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- dalacv 7y agoah, i’m reminded of an old comedy classic https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bVBYaTwMtmY https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bVBYaTwMtmY
- aloukissas 7y agoNobody's surprised
- ramphastidae 7y agoBird as a company needs to fail as soon as possible. Their scooters have totally overrun my community — they are strewn like trash on every corner. I sympathize and wish all the best to its employees, however.
- athenot 7y agoI'm surprized they haven't ended up in dumpsters.
- anigbrowl 7y agoNo need to be wasteful, explore the exciting world of scooter hacking with a clear conscience. https://hackaday.com/2018/12/07/liberating-birds-for-a-cheap-electric-scooter/ https://hackaday.com/2018/12/07/liberating-birds-for-a-cheap...
- mr_toad 7y agoUnlike cars. You never see cars parked all over the place.
- seanhunter 7y agoParked being the operative word. You don't see abandoned cars littering the pavement/sidewalks, left lying around in parks etc. (at least not in most neighbourhoods). I'm no fan of cars but the idea that a company can just dump junk like this all over public spaces as an intrinsic part of its business model is bizarre to me.
- lmm 7y agoDumping cars in public spaces shouldn't be allowed either.
- hc91 7y agoWow this is bad at a totally different level - it is a new league og messed up. These companies - and more importantly the human garbage at the upper / top level of management of these companies - need to be remembered and when the global situation will return to normal they will need to be given the treatment that they deserve. BEING FIRED VIA A PRE-RECORDED MERSSAGE DURING THE WORST GLOBAL CRISIS SINCE THE SECOND WORLD WAR! - talk about being kicked when you are down, huh?
- hc91 7y agolegit question to the people downvoting this ^^ comment - what the actual f___ is wrong with you?
- tomhoward 7y agoThe comments seem to break several of the guidelines [1]: Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That destroys the curiosity this site exists for. Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, put asterisks around it and it will get italicized. Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. == We know that terribly unfair and cruel things are happening to people, but enraged comments with implied threats of retribution don't do anything to right the wrong. Let's try to be the change we want to see in the world. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dillondoyle 7y agoI wondered if the scooter only companies would be better off than ride sharing companies with small scooter revenue. Anec-data: one of my relatives brokered a post lockdown lease in a large _redacted_ city for one of the two large ride sharing companies. It was for scooter storage.
- sudoaza 7y agoMarket was already on the brink, COVID is going to be the excuse for many companies that are over the head with debt/investors money and still are running losses.
- chirau 7y agoWasn't this company already facing of running out of cash and other financial issues before COVID? I feel that, like many other companies, Bird is gonna use this pandemic as an excuse, when they had other big problems to deal with already
- Rebelgecko 7y agoIsn't that business as usual for Unicorns? Lyft and Uber are the same way
- ornornor 7y agoHow is it a company that rents scooter needed 1,387 employees?!? I’m pretty sure this 30% figure also doesn’t take into account their legions of gig workers recharging the scooters.
- akmarinov 7y agoUsually companies just hire on people at that stage to show growth, so that they’ll get more money. Look at AirBnb - they don’t need thousands to operate their business, but they have them and they continue to hire
- ornornor 7y agoI wonder what they do all day. Sounds like it might be the ultimate retirement plan: get paid 150+k and not do much all day because there just isn’t that much work to go around.
- Erikun 7y agoProbably not, at least not if the generalized version of Parkinson’s law holds. The demand upon a resource tends to expand to match the supply of the resource (If the price is zero).
- wilde 7y agoPossibly, but in my experience the less real work there is the more politics and thought leadership tends to crop up.
- ForHackernews 7y agoAirBnB at least seems to keep churning out loads and loads of perhaps marginally-useful open source software https://airbnb.io/projects/ https://airbnb.io/projects/ Maybe those engineers keep busy with these hobby projects, and then that makes for good PR to recruit more devs?
- xenospn 7y agoTPS reports, probably.
- DeonPenny 7y agoBut they pulled all the birds off the street. Why wouldn't you at least put them back everyone around riding lyft bikes. Does this have anything to do with the virus.
- elwell 7y agoSomething similar happened this time of last year: https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/14/bird-lays-off-up-to-5-of-workforce/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/14/bird-lays-off-up-to-5-of-w...