5 ms·

There's always some related piece of news about the way the company went about the layoffs. This one seems especially reaching. Really, a meeting invite?!

qqssccfftt 6y ago
Just FYI, you're shadowbanned.
- hckr_news 6y ago
  What does this mean?
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    It means their comments show up as [dead] until they’re vouched by others.
    - SilasX 6y ago
      Thanks. I keep [dead] comments turned on and I thought that one was pretty reasonable so I was going to vouch for it but wasn't sure if there was some context I was missing. Your comment provides it.
      - qqssccfftt 6y ago
        [dead] by itself is a shadowban. [flagged] [dead] is not.
        verall 6y ago
        Comments can be downvoted to death without being flagged. [dead] by itself does not imply its a shadowban. It's super easy to tell though, because if someone is banned, you can look at their history and see all their posts besides a few that get vouched are dead.
        saagarjha 6y ago
        Note that [dead] itself is not necessarily a shadowban: an unpopular comment will show up like that too. To figure out if the user is shadownbanned you want to go to their profile and check if the account is new or has multiple [dead] but reasonable-looking comments.
    - mrfredward 6y ago
      It's really comforting to hear this explained. In the past, when I saw a username with several reasonable comments showing as dead, I was worried it was the work of bots or some conspiracy flagging things unfairly. I'm glad that's not the case.
- xapata 6y ago
  There's usually a pretty good reason for that. Notifying the person starts the process over.
  - qqssccfftt 6y ago
    I like to undermine the regime.
  - elliekelly 6y ago
    I was once shadow banned because I had submitted a link incorrectly (switched the link & the title which apparently many bots do). I emailed dang and he sorted it out in a matter of minutes. In my experience the mods are super responsive and more than willing to look into things & hear you out. If this person cares enough to reach out about it they should have the opportunity. And if they’ve been shadow banned for a good reason I imagine they would be told as much.
Uehreka 6y ago
If I found out that a bunch of my coworkers had been laid off in a video meeting, I’d be bummed because they got laid off, but I’d understand that companies have to make hard decisions sometimes. If I learned that the accidentally visible filename of the PowerPoint in that meeting was “EjectorSeat.pptx”, I’d be some combination of angry and alarmed about management’s attitude. That would be a definite “update my resume and call up some former colleagues for lunch” kind of moment at the very least. I think people reasonably expect that when a company makes a serious decision that affects hundreds of people’s livelihoods, that they effect a pretty somber tone.
- monetaryvirus 6y ago
  According to SlateStarCodex, Triplebyte (YC '15) ignored the stay-at-home warnings about the virus and had employees come in to the office to get their notice of layoffs: https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/19/coronalinks-3-19-20/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/19/coronalinks-3-19-20/
  - skosch 6y ago
    He (mostly) retracted this a week later: "Last links post I included tech company Triplebyte in the shame list for refusing to let employees switch to work-from-home, then firing them. A representative of Triplebyte contacted me and asked me to explain their perspective, which is that they took the pandemic seriously and went all-remote around the same time as everyone else. The reluctance to let employees switch to work-from-home applied only to a few employees in early March, before the scale of the crisis was widely appreciated, and they say that they would have tried to make accommodations if they had understood the seriousness of the requests. They had been planning the downsizing for a while, it was really unlucky that it ended up in the middle of a pandemic, and they tried to make it as painless as possible by offering good severance pay, etc. I’m relaying their statement because I’m realizing it was probably unfair of me to single them out in particular – my hearing a lot about this was downstream of my having a lot of friends who work(ed) for Triplebyte, and my having a lot of friends who work(ed) for Triplebyte was downstream of them being a great company doing important work which all my friends wanted to work for. I continue to generally respect them and their vision (see here for more), and you don’t need to give them any more grief over it than they’re already getting."
tomp 6y ago
What else do you propose during a "lockdown" "shelter-in-place" situation? IMO it's only the name of the meeting that is (potentially) the problem.
- elliekelly 6y ago
  A phone call? Ending the employment relationship isn’t all too different from ending a romantic relationship. How would you feel if your significant other called and dumped you? Not good. How would you feel if your SO notified you of your new relationship status via text? Probably worse. Now how would you feel if your SO sent a mass text message dumping you and several other people at once? Probably a lot worse. Sometimes difficult decisions have to be made but a one-on-one conversation with the person is always preferable to a (mass) notification, in my opinion.
  - zamadatix 6y ago
    Not when it's 22% of the company. After about 30 minutes in EVERYONE is aware people are getting calls about losing their job and spend their day hearing a trickle of rumors on who just got the call and wondering if their phone is going to be the one to ring next. I've yet to see something like this go down better than making it clear up front (e.g. mass meeting) and come out all at once then having the managers follow up after.
  - SilasX 6y ago
    If my SO had elected to break up with me while she had a super-contagious disease with high mortality rate that could be transferred to me by being in her presence, I would definitely prefer that she do it by phone or vidchat, yes! As the parent (tomp) noted, the risk profile is basically that with the SIP situation, so this is an exception to the general rule.

qqssccfftt 6y ago

Just FYI, you're shadowbanned.

hckr_news 6y ago
What does this mean?
- saagarjha 6y ago
  It means their comments show up as [dead] until they’re vouched by others.
  - SilasX 6y ago
    Thanks. I keep [dead] comments turned on and I thought that one was pretty reasonable so I was going to vouch for it but wasn't sure if there was some context I was missing. Your comment provides it.
    - qqssccfftt 6y ago
      [dead] by itself is a shadowban. [flagged] [dead] is not.
      - verall 6y ago
        Comments can be downvoted to death without being flagged. [dead] by itself does not imply its a shadowban. It's super easy to tell though, because if someone is banned, you can look at their history and see all their posts besides a few that get vouched are dead.
      - saagarjha 6y ago
        Note that [dead] itself is not necessarily a shadowban: an unpopular comment will show up like that too. To figure out if the user is shadownbanned you want to go to their profile and check if the account is new or has multiple [dead] but reasonable-looking comments.
  - mrfredward 6y ago
    It's really comforting to hear this explained. In the past, when I saw a username with several reasonable comments showing as dead, I was worried it was the work of bots or some conspiracy flagging things unfairly. I'm glad that's not the case.
xapata 6y ago
There's usually a pretty good reason for that. Notifying the person starts the process over.
- qqssccfftt 6y ago
  I like to undermine the regime.
- elliekelly 6y ago
  I was once shadow banned because I had submitted a link incorrectly (switched the link & the title which apparently many bots do). I emailed dang and he sorted it out in a matter of minutes. In my experience the mods are super responsive and more than willing to look into things & hear you out. If this person cares enough to reach out about it they should have the opportunity. And if they’ve been shadow banned for a good reason I imagine they would be told as much.

Uehreka 6y ago

If I found out that a bunch of my coworkers had been laid off in a video meeting, I’d be bummed because they got laid off, but I’d understand that companies have to make hard decisions sometimes. If I learned that the accidentally visible filename of the PowerPoint in that meeting was “EjectorSeat.pptx”, I’d be some combination of angry and alarmed about management’s attitude. That would be a definite “update my resume and call up some former colleagues for lunch” kind of moment at the very least. I think people reasonably expect that when a company makes a serious decision that affects hundreds of people’s livelihoods, that they effect a pretty somber tone.

monetaryvirus 6y ago
According to SlateStarCodex, Triplebyte (YC '15) ignored the stay-at-home warnings about the virus and had employees come in to the office to get their notice of layoffs: https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/19/coronalinks-3-19-20/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/19/coronalinks-3-19-20/
- skosch 6y ago
  He (mostly) retracted this a week later: "Last links post I included tech company Triplebyte in the shame list for refusing to let employees switch to work-from-home, then firing them. A representative of Triplebyte contacted me and asked me to explain their perspective, which is that they took the pandemic seriously and went all-remote around the same time as everyone else. The reluctance to let employees switch to work-from-home applied only to a few employees in early March, before the scale of the crisis was widely appreciated, and they say that they would have tried to make accommodations if they had understood the seriousness of the requests. They had been planning the downsizing for a while, it was really unlucky that it ended up in the middle of a pandemic, and they tried to make it as painless as possible by offering good severance pay, etc. I’m relaying their statement because I’m realizing it was probably unfair of me to single them out in particular – my hearing a lot about this was downstream of my having a lot of friends who work(ed) for Triplebyte, and my having a lot of friends who work(ed) for Triplebyte was downstream of them being a great company doing important work which all my friends wanted to work for. I continue to generally respect them and their vision (see here for more), and you don’t need to give them any more grief over it than they’re already getting."

tomp 6y ago

What else do you propose during a "lockdown" "shelter-in-place" situation? IMO it's only the name of the meeting that is (potentially) the problem.

elliekelly 6y ago
A phone call? Ending the employment relationship isn’t all too different from ending a romantic relationship. How would you feel if your significant other called and dumped you? Not good. How would you feel if your SO notified you of your new relationship status via text? Probably worse. Now how would you feel if your SO sent a mass text message dumping you and several other people at once? Probably a lot worse. Sometimes difficult decisions have to be made but a one-on-one conversation with the person is always preferable to a (mass) notification, in my opinion.
- zamadatix 6y ago
  Not when it's 22% of the company. After about 30 minutes in EVERYONE is aware people are getting calls about losing their job and spend their day hearing a trickle of rumors on who just got the call and wondering if their phone is going to be the one to ring next. I've yet to see something like this go down better than making it clear up front (e.g. mass meeting) and come out all at once then having the managers follow up after.
- SilasX 6y ago
  If my SO had elected to break up with me while she had a super-contagious disease with high mortality rate that could be transferred to me by being in her presence, I would definitely prefer that she do it by phone or vidchat, yes! As the parent (tomp) noted, the risk profile is basically that with the SIP situation, so this is an exception to the general rule.