57 ms·

Ask HN: Who Is Firing?

• skunkpocalypse 6y ago
  Who's firing? Me. You're fired.
• reubensutton 6y ago
  I’ve been checking layoffs.fyi every day and it is incredibly bleak
  • imdsm 6y ago
    https://layoffs.fyi/ https://layoffs.fyi/ for the lazy
  • PaulRobinson 6y ago
    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.
    • dustincoates 6y ago
      Things might be different now in ways that now have a different impact, but if you want to feel better, there's evidence that the Great Depression did not cause an increase in people dying[1]. > Population health did not decline and indeed generally improved during the 4 years of the Great Depression, 1930–1933, with mortality decreasing for almost all ages, and life expectancy increasing by several years in males, females, whites, and nonwhites. (Although, significantly, it does note that suicides increased, and another study found no increase in life expectancy, but no real change outside of suicides and car accidents.[2]) 1: https://www.pnas.org/content/106/41/17290 https://www.pnas.org/content/106/41/17290 2: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110324202055.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110324202055.h...
      • fock 6y ago
        and the thing about suicides is, that the rates are really low compared to everything else... (even the flu... - at least in non-gun countries). I think this is mainly fearmongering by the upper 0.1% seeing that now they might have to bear the "risk" they are always claiming to shoulder when taking in enormous returns on their capital... (e.g. in Germany currently most car-companies (BMW and VW are both largely family-owned) still pay their dividends, while their employees are getting unemployment benefits from the state...). In the end history tells us, that people generally seem to prefer to stay alive however low the odds are. If this has significantly changed in the last 50 years, maybe we should think about what has changed that – I seriously doubt that a "let's go back to business" is the right approach in that case.
    • ekianjo 6y ago
      > "For every 1% unemployment goes up [in the USA], 40,000 people die". I have seen that line too, but I wonder how substantiated this is? Is there any data to support it?
      • primitivesuave 6y ago
        There is the coping hypothesis, that coping with unemployment causes unhealthy behavior and death [1] and the latent sickness hypothesis [2], that unhealthy behavior is a cause of both unemployment and death. Anecdotally it makes sense - if you are an alcoholic or drug addict you are likely to lose your job as well as die as a result of your behavior - but the actual number of people who die is ostensibly hard to measure. 1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3070776/#R41 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3070776/#R41 2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3070776/#R65 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3070776/#R65
        • tr33house 6y ago
          I'm guessing there'll be a lesser need to cope this time around since a lot of people will know a lot of other people who are unemployed. All of a sudden being unemployed might be the new normal and we'll all help each other cope
    • westoncb 6y ago
      > 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).
      • xupybd 6y ago
        That depends how many companies survive the six months. The good thing is it should reset things to a boom time in 5 to 10 years.
      • petercooper 6y ago
        Even if it's transient, I think you'll see a lot of companies use this situation as an excuse to clear the decks of what they perceive to be bad hires or underperforming employees that they'd otherwise let limp on in good times.
      • Scarblac 6y ago
        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 6y ago
          > And not all of them show full immunity. Where did you get that number? This seems more like propaganda than scientific claim.
    • barry-cotter 6y ago
      > Assessing the short term health impact of the Great Recession in the European Union: a cross-country panel analysis > Results > Overall, during the recent recession, an increase of one percentage point in the standardised unemployment rate has been associated with a statistically significant decrease in the following mortality rates: all-cause-mortality (3.4%), cardiovascular diseases (3.7%), cirrhosis- and chronic liver disease-related mortality (9.2%), motor vehicle accident-related mortality (11.5%), parasitic infection-related mortality (4.1%), but an increase in the suicide rate (34.1%). In general, the effects were more marked in countries with lower levels of social protection, compared to those with higher levels. Conclusions > An increase in the unemployment rate during the Great Recession has had a beneficial health effect on average across EU countries, except for suicide mortality. Social protection expenditures appear to help countries “smooth” the health response to a recession, limiting health damage but also forgoing potential health gains that could otherwise result. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0091743514001224 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009174351...
      • indecisive_user 6y ago
        > An increase in the unemployment rate during the Great Recession has had a beneficial health effect on average across EU countries. Many animals live longer in captivity than in the wild. Restricting your caloric intake as much as possible will prolong your lifespan. There's more to health than just how long you live.
      • forgotmylogin2 6y ago
        That seems pretty disingenuous given that the Great Depression was the lynchpin for World War 2 which directly resulted in the deaths of 75 million people.
        • crowbahr 6y ago
          That's a cherry picking fallacy and unrelated to the effects of the Great Recession. We do not live in a 1930s world of belligerent alliances itching for a chance to bloody someone up. Wars between the big powers are now economic and political. Nobody wants nuclear annihilation.
    • chx 6y ago
      https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28772108 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28772108 > Did the Great Recession affect mortality rates in the metropolitan United States? Effects on mortality by age, gender and cause of death. > Our finding that all-cause mortality decreased during the Great Recession is consistent with previous studies. And yes some specific mortality like cancer did increase because of the broken -- profit based -- health care system. But otherwise, no.
      • Nasrudith 6y ago
        Of course ironically prosperity can be more dangerous dirtectly as risky "vices" like extreme sports and fast cars are expensive. The Kennedies tend to die doing activities restricted to or done far more often by the privledged. Extreme sports may technically have a long term boost on life expextancy (from fitness) but short term would make a spike in accident deaths. I guess money is sort of the same way - better outcomes from affording healthcare but the temptation to take risks results in more immediate deaths.
    • wlll 6y ago
      Although I enjoyed the film I found this article more interesting as a story, and more useful as a soource of information too: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2010/04/wall-street-excerpt-201004 https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2010/04/wall-street-excerpt-...
    • protomyth 6y ago
      Given that peopled art forced to stay at home with families, I am a little worried that other negative statistics are going to rise. I expect we will see an increase in divorces and abuses of various types. A lot of people need, but are not getting personal space.
    • reissbaker 6y ago
      I don't think this is dot-com-crash bad yet, if you mean that tech workers specifically are in dire straits. The major Bay Area employers like Google, FB, Apple, Netflix, Amazon, etc haven't had layoffs; it's mostly small startups. Some of the large companies are even outperforming currently (Amazon and Netflix are at all-time highs). But if you mean dot-com-crash bad in terms of the economy in general crashing, oh man are you right. This is an economic free-fall for most of America.
    • raghava 6y ago
      > This is looking 2001-dot-com-crash bad, but much, much faster. "fail fast; fail often" seems ominously dark for the circumstance.
    • mpweiher 6y ago
      Mortality declined not just during the Great Recession, but also during the Great Depression. https://www.pnas.org/content/106/41/17290 https://www.pnas.org/content/106/41/17290
    • fma 6y ago
      Meanwhile the Nasdaq is roaring back from a bottom...Someone is making a lot of money on the crash and the government printing press. It ain't me.
      • thorwasdfasdf 6y ago
        It's pretty common, i heard realvision say traders make most of their money when crashes happen.
      • jawns 6y ago
        You may be interested in the short-squeeze hypothesis, which suggests the current rally was triggered by technical factors and will soon peak and evaporate.
  • FridgeSeal 6y ago
    And as far as I can tell that’s America only, nevermind Europe and Australia...
    • ajdlinux 6y ago
      Or non-Western countries! And the list is just startups, too - they're obviously more vulnerable in many ways to financial shocks than large companies, but large corporate layoffs are going to be where the big numbers are.
    • riffraff 6y ago
      Australia apparently saw a minor rise in employment[0] for now. https://www.msn.com/en-us/finance/markets/australia-unexpectedly-adds-jobs-unemployment-edges-up-to-52-25/ar-BB12GV7c https://www.msn.com/en-us/finance/markets/australia-unexpect...
      • aetherspawn 6y ago
        Our government basically hasn't shut down our economy. To quote, "all jobs are essential services".
        • ratww 6y ago
          This is good news, considering they've apparently been also able to reduce the number of new confirmed cases [1]. [1] https://aatishb.com/covidtrends/ https://aatishb.com/covidtrends/
          • akdor1154 6y ago
            Yep. social gatherings / hospitality industry / gyms etc are banned, and anyone who can work from home is doing so, but you still can leave your house for "essential reasons", e.g. exercise, buying takeaway lunch every day. many retail stores and public transport are still functioning. I think it's our - low density - government actually listening to scientists and reacting quickly and non-ideologically.
  • andrewSC 6y ago
    What I don't quite understand is why startups who either just received funding or companies who were doing reasonably well decide to do mass layoffs during economic downturns? I mean they provide $reasons but I have a hard time taking them at face value.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • rio517 6y ago
      Keep in mind: - A lot if them are not profitable. - They don't know how long this will last. - Many planned on growing into profitability over n months and expected they could raise more money if needed. - Now, there is no growth for many and contractions. - Investment money is drying up - they might not have 2 years at their current burn rate to get to profitable status. In the end, it can be about survival. Their pre coronavirus burn rates are not sustainable. Of course, for some, it is also a continent way to shed staff who appear to be underperforming, freeze raises, and ask more of their employees.
    • gumby 6y ago
      If you just raised 18 months of cash you might find it prudent today to cut burn by 30% to turn that into 24 months of runway.
    • bostik 6y ago
      The money might not be in the bank. For many (even unicornish) startups the funding is released in tranches, usually tied to certain performance metrics. With drastically reduced revenue, new customer flow all dried up, and even marketing result graphs simulating nosedives, there aren't that many milestones you could hit. If [enough] performance milestones are missed, company's next batch of on-paper funding pot may not be released.
    • Nasrudith 6y ago
      Non-essential demand has been down and even those who are essential suffer from a logistical hellscape. Unless you are involved with COVID mitigation directly now is not the time to attempt growth. Even those which service those stuck at home have to suffer from the rest of the economy collapsing. Advertising rates are in the toliet because they can't do much good to bring in sales.
  • omk 6y ago
    Are they seriously listing down emails and mobile numbers of the people layed off? Is there no privacy concern here or am I missing the bigger picture?
    • chungus 6y ago
      I don't really understand that either. My best guess is potential employers can contact them directly? Still I would put a layer in between, i.e. LinkedIn.
    • dddbbb 6y ago
      Are those not submitted by the people themselves to aid in their job search?
  • akeck 6y ago
    layoffs.fyi is an email harvester's dream...
    • seph-reed 6y ago
      I'm not seeing it. Where's the leak?
      • akeck 6y ago
        Click on the spreadsheets
        • seph-reed 6y ago
          Lol. Thanks.
  • nunez 6y ago
    Didn't know this site existed. Thanks!
• disposable38291 6y ago
  Dixa sacked 31 people (25% of staff). They closed a $36M series B in February.
  • kshatrea 6y ago
    When was this? I know someone there but haven’t spoken to them recently.
    • disposable33311 6y ago
      It was announced to the rest of the company at the townhall yesterday.
  • DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      No, the $14M series A was February 2019.
      • DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
        vouched for this comment, you're correct, sorry I bungled the date and thanks for correcting
• anonymousci 6y ago
  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...
  • Zenst 6y ago
    Looks like their chatbot needs to sanitize input - "All set! I've sent an email confirmation to sales@circleci.com." that will be interesting.
    • croon 6y ago
      Thanks for the great idea! I have a fairly rare surname, but have {surname} at gmail, so I get a lot of "spam" from companies that sign me up before verifying if the user inputting my email is the person owning the email. In the most egregious/spammy cases I'm gonna find some higher-up emails and sign them up for their own services in hopes that the practice will stop. TL;DR: email confirmation or get egged.
  • davedx 6y ago
    Crazy. They're advertising quite a lot on LinkedIn at the moment too. :(
    • Tade0 6y ago
      I wouldn't be surprised if this was a method of rotating staff to reduce salary spending.
      • lewisj489 6y ago
        The Met Police (London, UK) love to do this
      • jhayward 6y ago
        You mean kind of a chaos monkey, but for people?
• mr_gibbins 6y ago
  I wish there was some kind of list for the UK. Our news services are shockingly bad.
  • jacobush 6y ago
    What do you mean, everybody is happy Mr Prime Minister is out and about, and you have page 3 still? All peachy then.
  • barbegal 6y ago
    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.
    • 9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
      Keeping the scheme is also going to blow a massive hole in the budget. That said, Brexit will likely give them more room to fire up the pound printing presses to paper over the gap.
    • nicholassmith 6y ago
      > 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.
      • 6y ago
• lukax 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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.
    • botwriter 6y ago
      errrgh stop racebaiting.
    • me_me_me 6y ago
      Having not worked in USA, I always wonder how valid such comments are. Never really felt such thing being anything but odd ball case in Europe.
      • rusticpenn 6y ago
        Depends on where you work in Europe. There is definetly a glass cieling for minorities in companies like VW.
        • me_me_me 6y ago
          I am not sure if it glass ceiling exists for minorities or simply for people who are not 'playing the game' or not fully participate in it.
    • fooker 6y ago
      When you claim to be speaking statistically, shouldn't you also cite some statistics?
• inglor 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    What's a sales engineer? Is it just a higher ranked sales person?
    • acruns 6y ago
      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.
      • catchmilk 6y ago
        So.. not an engineer.
        • nemo44x 6y ago
          Yeah generally not directly anymore. Many come from a software engineer background though and find the sales side of things interesting. The money can be better than a Dev at a company that is doing well too. Some places call them Solution Architects too which IMO is a better name as they work with customers to help them see how their company solutions can be integrated and made useful.
        • voodooranger 6y ago
          the ones that i know are former engineers. they also have excellent verbal skills and seem to be the smartest people in the room. may or may not be the best coders — i don’t know — but they are very impressive in person.
        • squiggleblaz 6y ago
• sgt 6y ago
  You're fired!
  • TLightful 6y ago
    Fired by hackernews would be novel.
    • Tade0 6y ago
      Given that nowadays it's common for current and former employers(I know you're reading this, Wiktor) to track our social media presence I wouldn't be surprised if that already happened. I mean, firing via e.g. Twitter is a thing.
      • InvOfSmallC 6y ago
        Hi Wiktor!
        • TLightful 6y ago
          Ensign authorization code nine five Wiktor Wiktor two. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeekblLkx4g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeekblLkx4g
• sciurus 6y ago
  My previous two employers, Lonely Planet and Eventbrite. https://www.protocol.com/eventbrite-major-layoffs-coronavirus-events https://www.protocol.com/eventbrite-major-layoffs-coronaviru... 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/ https://www.booksandpublishing.com.au/articles/2020/04/09/14...
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  • bluetwo 6y ago
    Love Lonely Planet!
    • hlmencken 6y ago
      Read the room.
      • bluetwo 6y ago
        Poster said they worked there, not that they just got fired from there. Read the post.
• sambroner 6y ago
  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.
• tobych 6y ago
  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".
  • clarry 6y ago
    I've considered creating this exact thread multiple times because it rhymes with the regular "Who is hiring?" threads. I think it's fine.
    • dang 6y ago
      It's also a bit of a tradition. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=comments%3E10%20%22who%20is%20firing%22&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... We've been penalizing these threads but I'm kind of changing my mind about that (other than that we don't want them very often because repetition is not good for the front page). Unfortunately they tend to devolve into junk, so there's more of a moderation burden. Edit: this thread ended up making a poor case for having threads like this on HN. Most of it was off topic, and a lot of it went into low-quality rage and even outright flamewar.
  • baxter001 6y ago
    Someone's got a great deal of solidarity I see,
    • tobych 6y ago
      Solidarity with people being laid-off, yes. I was laid-off recently. Not fired. I did nothing wrong.
  • petercooper 6y ago
• Austin_Conlon 6y ago
  Ask HN: Who is looking to be fired?
  • mothsonasloth 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      Mandatory exercise? How does that work?
      • mothsonasloth 6y ago
        In the UK you are only allowed out once a day for 1 hour maximum
        • alimbada 6y ago
          That doesn't make it mandatory. :) Your original phrasing is incorrect hence the confusion by the other persons' comment. It would be more accurate to call it a restriction.
        • loriverkutya 6y ago
          Thats not true, if you want to run 4 hours, you are allowed: "one form of exercise a day, for example a run, walk, or cycle - alone or with members of your household" Source: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-outbreak-faqs-what-you-can-and-cant-do/coronavirus-outbreak-faqs-what-you-can-and-cant-do https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-outbr...
        • gimboland 6y ago
          That's not true. Here's the relevant law: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2020/350/contents/made http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2020/350/contents/made Here's the relevant section of that law: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2020/350/regulation/6/made http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2020/350/regulation/6/mad... Here's the relevant text of that section: > to take exercise either alone or with other members of their household; There is nothing in that law that restricts either the number of times you can do that or the amount of time you can spend doing that. There _has_ been guidance issued by various people in government and law enforcement agencies, but that is exactly what it is: guidance. According to the law, you are free to take exercise either alone or with other members of their household, and the law doesn't care how often you do that or for how long. (Caveat: that's the "England" version of the law; Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own versions; see e.g. http://www.legislation.gov.uk/id?title=Health+Protection+%28Coronavirus%29+Regulations+2020 http://www.legislation.gov.uk/id?title=Health+Protection+%28... )
• AheadOfTime295 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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.
• kmlx 6y ago
  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.
  • alinde 6y ago
    Do you have an idea if they chose to quit because they expect finding new jobs is easy right now, or any other aspect?
    • damidekronik 6y ago
      It's definitely not easy, more candidates on the market -> higher competiton. As a side note, furlough only covers up to a certain salary level (2500 pounds I think).
      • Rastonbury 6y ago
        Demand side decrease as well
    • wickerman 6y ago
      I don't know about other sides of IT, but as a data engineer in London I'm getting daily messages from recruiters offering contract/permanent positions. All the big companies are also hiring. So if you have a certain level of seniority I can imagine it's easier to land a new job now.
      • growlist 6y ago
        Yeah there's loads of work around from what I've seen.
  • sleepychu 6y ago
    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.
• kosmotaur 6y ago
  Equal Experts UK replaced me with a cheaper offshore contractor
• elric 6y ago
  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.
• throwaway9002 6y ago
  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-30m-bonus-lmqf9fb2z https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/playtech-plan-to-pay-boss...
  • Torn 6y ago
    Corporate looting on the cusp of a recession. Classy
  • t0mas88 6y ago
    Well... That's an overhyped media headline. In reality it is a stock based compensation over the next 5 years, based on performance of the stock price, capped at a maximum of 30 million. So it was already very unlikely he was going to get 30m (= 6 per year) pre-crisis. And given the current stock market he is probably going to get nothing for the coming two years or longer.
    • toyg 6y ago
      > based on performance of the stock price, Lulz, classic case of bad incentive: I bet revenues for online gambling are way up at the moment, now that more and more people are forced to stay home and be fundamentally unsupervised all day. But because stock markets are drying up across the board, stellar profits might well not get reflected in stock prices. Just another reason for not basing exec compensation on stock prices.
      • gcoleman 6y ago
        It depends on the type of gambling. Sports based gambling has basically disappeared. Bingo/slots/casual games are up in general I think.
        • toyg 6y ago
          Good point - I was thinking card games really, and it's true that most sports betting is currently frozen - although there are reports that minor leagues (which are still running in some countries) are being heavily targeted by desperated punters and gambling orgs.
• gigatexal 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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.
    • doctorwhat 6y ago
      Americans are amazing like that. "Free healthcare? That's communism!!!"
      • neuronic 6y ago
        Can we stop calling this free healthcare? It's not free. It's just vastly better organized in a way that (largely) protects consumers from capitalism where it doesn't belong.
    • GarrisonPrime 6y ago
      Argentina and Germany are hardly in rosy positions at the moment. “I like free money” is hardly a good argument to support statements like “it just makes sense”.
      • bryanrasmussen 6y ago
        what country is in a rosy position at the moment? and what is that country's worker's rights position?
      • NicoJuicy 6y ago
• lighthouse1 6y ago
  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/
• simonkafan 6y ago
  Bird, just in case you haven't seen (heard) it: https://youtu.be/wxTYKCOnRe4 https://youtu.be/wxTYKCOnRe4
  • WhyNotHugo 6y ago
    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.
• roadbeats 6y ago
  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.
  • vrinstan 6y ago
    The news here in Romania say that there are 1M fired. I don't believe that, smells like fake news. However I don't see how small firms will survive a two month pause. We will surely have lots of people fired but they won't make the news because they did not work at Google ;)
  • emerongi 6y ago
    If you're basing this view off of HN, then remember that HN generally has a high percentage of users from US/SV/VC scene.
  • bnt 6y ago
    Berlin is pretty nuts, lots of firing going on.
    • bsmth 6y ago
      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.
    • rusticpenn 6y ago
      Without options for short-term work?
    • roadbeats 6y ago
      I live in Berlin as well and can't see any news in my circle, also the https://layoffs.fyi/tracker/ https://layoffs.fyi/tracker/ doesn't show any.
  • mardifoufs 6y ago
    Why would it be? Europe is getting hit a lot harder and its economy is quickly collapsing. European banks were also weaker and less stress resistant than their US's counterparts so their ability to lend isn't a strong. Same thing for the EU corporations themselves, who are usually more in debt and have less access to non-bank financing (ie public bonds markets). So I'd be really surprised if we saw more lay offs in the US at the end of this
• Raed667 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    You probably meant "Astek Group"? they aren't that small actually
    • Raed667 6y ago
      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-cote-dazur-licencie-une-quinzaine-de-salaries-en-pleine-pandemie-de-coronavirus-495756 https://www.nicematin.com/economie/ce-groupe-base-sur-la-cot...
• danesparza 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    What did the site show?
    • nemo44x 6y ago
      Companies that were fucked, as their name documents. Got their start in the heyday of the .com crash as domino after domino fell and many companies were exposed for the unviable company’s they were. The site took great joy in documenting (mocking) companies that were once tall and proud and quickly collapsed.
      • DonHopkins 6y ago
        I always wondered if fuckedcompany.com had back-door access to the Internet Confessional database.
        • nemo44x 6y ago
          I think they just allowed anonymous posts. Different era where they were actually sort of reliable. I think they got sued a lot which forced them to shut down. In the end Fucked Company was fucked, too.
    • judy2k 6y ago
      It allowed employees to leak when their company was laying off employees. There was a sister site called luckedcompany.com which allowed employees to leak when their company got investment (IIRC)
    • wpietri 6y ago
      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.
• ariadnavc 6y ago
  hola
• onychomys 6y ago
  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.
  • PopeDotNinja 6y ago
    This is kind of depressing.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • 6nf 6y ago
    Same thing is happening in Australian hospitals, dentists, etc etc. All elective procedures are banned to keep the hospitals empty so suddenly a lot of income is gone. Everything is closing down.
  • Mountain_Skies 6y ago
    IT security in hospitals is already lacking in general. Cutting all this staff is going to expose them to even worse situations. Obviously they can't make money they don't have magically appear but these layoffs will end up making things even worse.
  • crazycapitlists 6y ago
    I mean your first problem there is having a capitalist healthcare system. It's absolutely insane the way the US funds its medical care. Hopefully you guys will see some improvements there in the next few years, and maybe even universal healthcare like an actual civilized society.
• jyriand 6y ago
  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-redundancies-to-streamline-service https://news.err.ee/1070009/starship-technologies-makes-redu...
  • fest 6y ago
    Interesting, as I surely thought they will be one of the companies benefiting the lockdown.
    • jyriand 6y ago
      I think it's because most of their fleet of robots was focused on serving campuses.
      • Nasrudith 6y ago
        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.
    • yasinaydin 6y ago
      Probably most of the people they fired were "robot operators", who were paid ~3 euros/hour (~550/month), while their executives and high-levels make 5k to 10k a month net. Robot operators' jobs are to manually test or drive these robots. - All salaries are net, after taxes - Estonian average salary is 1000 euros/month
      • fest 6y ago
        I've heard that their executives/PMs are top notch, so 5-10k month net might be on the high side, but not outrageous IMO (assuming the Estonian job market is a bit more expensive than Latvian, which I'm familiar with).
• kokizzu 6y ago
  https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1U13Ef3EnJnMzuElElAJPbWiNBKutQuB7ldQED4C8L_Y/edit#gid=2108431686 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1U13Ef3EnJnMzuElElAJP...
• MangoCoffee 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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.
• MaxwellM 6y ago
  Checkout this airtable tracker https://layoffs.fyi/tracker/ https://layoffs.fyi/tracker/
  • yitchelle 6y ago
    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?
• dsfargeg 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    So also here healthtech startup letting people go?! Why? I thought you guys would get more business in these times?!
    • eightysixfour 6y ago
      Not unless they directly impact COVID work. Hospitals are laying people off and asking people to take pay cuts.
    • rk06 6y ago
      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 6y ago
        But what about telehealth?
        • rabidonrails 6y ago
          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.
  • killvenom 6y ago
• d99kris 6y ago
  https://www.thelayoff.com/ https://www.thelayoff.com/ can give some hints, but it's a lot of speculations and rumors.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• protonmail 6y ago
  ProtonMail is hiring. A lot: https://careers.protonmail.com/ https://careers.protonmail.com/
  • rdegges 6y ago
    Great product, too. If I was looking for work this would be a top pick!
  • milquetoastaf 6y ago
    Are you open to remote work?
  • nikisweeting 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      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 6y ago
        Hence "client-side". a-la Elasticlunr.js
• dandanio 6y ago
  Groupon - 2800 jobs (44% of workforce) - https://www.chicagobusiness.com/john-pletz-technology/groupon-cutting-2800-jobs https://www.chicagobusiness.com/john-pletz-technology/groupo...
  • missedthecue 6y ago
    How can they possibly employ 6400 people.
    • ElCapitanMarkla 6y ago
      I didn’t realise they were still around, I thought they went under years ago...
      • schwartzworld 6y ago
        still big in certain industries. only a fool would pay full price for laser hair removal
• john0990 6y ago
  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.
• Slam7min 6y ago
  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.
• elymar 6y ago
  Universities across the US (mine included) are furloughing employees.
• fulldecent2 6y ago
  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.
• dznodes 6y ago
  Is there a website that shows which companies take government bailouts but still do layoffs.
  • DangerousPie 6y ago
    At least the PPP program is conditional on them not doing layoffs, isn't it?
    • Nasrudith 6y ago
      For it to be a defacto grant instead of a loan I believe. Far softer in conditions essentially.
• ff317 6y ago
  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-foundation-will-close-san-francisco-office-and-encourage-remote-work-for-march-2020-amidst-covid-19-concerns/ https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2020/03/06/wikimedia-fo... Come help us bring free knowledge to the world!
  • nscalf 6y ago
    This is entirely off topic given the question was the exact opposite of this, keep it to the "Who is hiring" thread.
• 0x8BADF00D 6y ago
  That is pretty ridiculous. When I was laid off, I was given 2 months of full salary upfront. Of course, CA raped me on the taxes, but that's a discussion for another time.
  • Kungfuturtle 6y ago
    You should not use that term in that manner.
    • 0x8BADF00D 6y ago
      https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.120831/page/n613/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.120831/page/n6... As you can see on that page, here is a definition of the word rape: 1. trans. to take (a thing) by force. In my usage, I was using it as the state government of CA, taking (part of) my severance by force. I don't see any issue with the usage.
      • danharaj 6y ago
        > I don't see any issue with the usage. You refuse to see any issue with the usage.
        • 0x8BADF00D 6y ago
          You are being quite niggardly in your interpretation of my comment. The guidelines state: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." You oughtn't to be a niggard when interpreting comments. Otherwise you might see something that isn't there.
          • dang 6y ago
            That's an important guideline, but not having flamewars takes precedence, the same way that not burning a house down takes precedence over heating it. Maybe you didn't mean to start a flamewar but you're definitely feeding it, so please stop. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
• gjmacd 6y ago
  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.
  • bluetwo 6y ago
    And that's why the fund ran out of cash within a week.
  • londons_explore 6y ago
    In an exchange between a government and a company, it's all a matter of policy and law. "We can survive without it so give it to someone more in need" isn't the way it's done, nor should it be in a capitalist society.
    • lostcolony 6y ago
      You just made a very compelling argument for more socialism.
      • Nasrudith 6y ago
        Compelling to the right sets of prejudices who have their own telology with preordained conclusions but ultimately a minutae of the whole picture akin to hyperfocusing on the obscure set "deaths caused by wearing a seatbelt" vs the far larger set "deaths prevented by them". It is more an arguement for doing your goddamned homework as a government. Companies are essentially a function to find corner cases within what is written or not written. That sort of "creativity" is what they do. Using it as an arguement against it is like saying we should never have kept and domesticated cats or dogs because they can't be trusted to not to grab the Thanksgiving turkey when your back is turned.
• ngngngng 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    Add Nav to that list.
• aivatra 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    Contact your former employer... and see if they want you back. Tell them the new place isn't as fun as you thought.
    • mrtweetyhack 6y ago
      Or just tell them the truth
    • battery_cowboy 6y ago
      No, you should tell them the truth.
  • daguar 6y ago
    I'm really sorry to hear that. It's unclear to me if you're in Costa Rica, but heads up if you're in the US your situation likely qualifies you for the new unemployment benefits (Pandemic Unemployment Assistance.)
  • toomuchtodo 6y ago
    You qualify for unemployment FYI, in case you weren’t aware.
  • 6y ago
• anonycowgirl 6y ago
  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 6y ago
  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 6y ago
  MDLIVE, a company in the Telemedicine space. https://www.mdlive.com https://www.mdlive.com They started today and will continue tomorrow.
• hey12345 6y ago
  ababababa
• bignipplesjulie 6y ago
  YC: Firing 1 individual. @dang Reason: For forcing his narrative and stifling free speech on HN, and for working out of his mom's basement wearing panties.
• BigN1pplesRuth 6y ago
  Xignite. It's coming tomorrow. 5 - 10. Incl French Boss.
• zingar 6y ago
  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 6y ago
  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.
• annon923 6y ago
  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.
• hateevileagles 6y ago
  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 6y ago
  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.
• luikore 6y ago
  Aminoapps fired all employees and is handing the app to an outsourcing company to scavenge the remaining user values.
• Suzehr 6y ago
  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.