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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 o

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."
- monetaryvirus 6y ago
  I was referring to this part: >The rumor is that it had planned the downsizing for a while, wanted the employees to be in the office to hear about it in person, and didn’t care how much risk it had to expose the soon-to-be-ex-employees to in order to make it happen. i.e. making them come in to the office for the layoff notice, after it was known the public needs to social-distance and minimize gatherings. That part is still bad, and it's not retracted, nor does Triplebyte dispute making them come in to the office to be informed of the layoffs. In any case, it would be nice if he updated the original post with a link to the retraction, otherwise people won't see any unringing of the bell when they go back to that link.

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."

monetaryvirus 6y ago
I was referring to this part: >The rumor is that it had planned the downsizing for a while, wanted the employees to be in the office to hear about it in person, and didn’t care how much risk it had to expose the soon-to-be-ex-employees to in order to make it happen. i.e. making them come in to the office for the layoff notice, after it was known the public needs to social-distance and minimize gatherings. That part is still bad, and it's not retracted, nor does Triplebyte dispute making them come in to the office to be informed of the layoffs. In any case, it would be nice if he updated the original post with a link to the retraction, otherwise people won't see any unringing of the bell when they go back to that link.