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My money was on Cloudflare to have hired them wholesale. Regardless, congratulations to everyone involved! This deal has got me thinking... whether a right way

My money was on Cloudflare to have hired them wholesale. Regardless, congratulations to everyone involved! This deal has got me thinking... whether a right way to "lay-off" a supremely talented bunch is to actually see if other companies are willing to offer them jobs? Kind of how player transfers happen in Football (soccer). Either the team goes to the newer company wholesale or you help find your engineers suitable roles elsewhere. One might argue there's no advantage to the company laying-off people, but they could save on the severance package, and frankly, two companies entering an understanding like this bodes well on other levels where someone could probably explore a "cross-company" job change with blessings of the employers on both sides of the table. Of course, things like salary negotiations take a hit for the candidate especially, but internal transfers to different teams / location in bigger companies already work this way. May be year-end reviews and code can be shared on a need-to-know basis between the companies with employee consent. In particular, such arrangements between smaller / crash-strapped companies and bigger / well-funded companies might work out for the good. Then again, you never want the bigger company to start poaching wholesale from the smaller one. May be there's a balance in here somewhere that can be worked out given enough time and data.

ocdtrekkie 6y ago
With the sports example... the company "laying off a team" may actually be able to expect a payment in exchange for facilitating the transfer of their well-assembled, functional team to another company. It's entirely possible that wouldn't actually be a bad outcome for everyone involved: - Source company which is financially strained gets some income in addition to reduced salary expenses. - Destination company saves on paying other recruiting costs and acquires a pre-assembled team. They're essentially buying a working unit instead of having to build their own. - Employees avoid the uncertainty of being dropped in the middle of the process (or summarily laid off), assuming the right protections were in place in the agreement.
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  - IP disputes are settled in advance; workers can take conpany IP with them
temp667 6y ago
This is the acquihire model. You don't actually have to do the acquihire. A company could just offer folks jobs directly (CA frowns on companies working to block employee mobility given employers can also fire folks with basically no notice). But it smooths things to wrap it up in an acquihire. Startups often get offers like this. Wasn't there a recent case on HN where google or apple after the company rejected the aquihire just offered the positions to staff directly? I think they got sued?
- ignoramous 6y ago
  Acquihire was not quite what I was getting at...but more along the lines of companies cooperating to facilitate quasi-free movement of their employees under appropriate conditions especially when it benefits all or the majority of the stakeholders involved, even when it is a single lone employee.
OJFord 6y ago
Well that sort of happens in organisations large enough to have 'reorganisations' - which is effectively 'selling' teams (or parts of them) to internal 'buyers', or not finding a 'buyer' and letting them go.
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
In my experience, acqui-hires benefit the company far more than the employees who get moved to a different company. The first time I was acquihired, my compensation actually decreased because they kept my base salary and rewrote the bonus structure such that it was impossible to hit previous payouts. Meanwhile, my prior company received a large payment for the transfer of our team. Ironically, the new company was paying new hires much more. I would have been better off quitting and getting re-hired. It's better if the employees can negotiate their own way into a different company or companies. No sense in letting the previous company try to cash in on the team on their way out.
- tpxl 6y ago
  In my opinion, the acquihire you went through was poorly implemented, and the pay reduction disrespectful.
  - saghm 6y ago
    I think their more general point still stands, though; why would you expect a company trying to "sell" their employees to negotiate in the employees' best interests rather than that of the company itself?
    - maffydub 6y ago
      I wouldn't... but I would expect the company trying to "buy" the employees to act at least partly in their interests - otherwise the new employees will soon become ex-employees!
    - toyg 6y ago
      That’s why in football there are 3 parties to a transfer deal: the two clubs and the player’s agent. In a regular company trying to sell a whole chunk of workers, that should probably be a union. Which is indeed what happens in many European countries when this sort of thing happens.
    - nurettin 6y ago
      The even more general point is, why would the owners even care about the company rather than themselves?
qgrgergfqgfev 6y ago
I don't think cloudflare does WASM @ edge no?
- detaro 6y ago
  They do. Their Workers product supports JS and WASM (but they seem to be less active when it comes to spec development around it etc)
madrox 6y ago
There's a lot of various anti-compete reasons why this doesn't happen. In most cases, the people most interested in hiring these people are competitors. I love the idea in theory, but in practice it's way too easy for companies to abuse in ways that are anti-employee.
phs318u 6y ago
This actually happened to me and 11 other colleagues back in 2002. I was working for a mid-tier IT consultancy and a bunch of us were working at a utility on a long-term program. Having delivered the initial version of this core system, and still hanging around doing a lot more dev work (many more features and fixes), the utility turned around and did a deal with the consultancy for a dozen of us to "go native", presumably with a suitable financial compensation as well as the promise of a level of continued engagement beyond our transfer. The surreal part came when the CEO of the consultancy and the CIO and CFO of the utility took the dozen of us out to dinner at a very upmarket restaurant. There were multiple times that night when a few of us felt like chattel. I almost felt like I should be baring my teeth so the new owner could check me out. Very weird, but it was a win-win and I stayed at the utility 7 years doing some really interesting work. EDITED TO ADD: I should point out that our salaries went up, but for the utility that was still cheaper than the T&M rates they were paying.
_pmf_ 6y ago
Same.
rossmohax 6y ago
> This deal has got me thinking... whether a right way to "lay-off" a supremely talented bunch is to actually see if other companies are willing to offer them jobs? Kind of how player transfers happen in Football (soccer). That's how Gitlab sold Gitter recently.
vagrantJin 6y ago
Haha. If employment was operated like transfers it would be quite interesting.
anhldbk 6y ago
> One might argue there's no advantage to the company laying-off people, but they could save on the severance package, and frankly, two companies entering an understanding like this bodes well on other levels where someone could probably explore a "cross-company" job change with blessings of the employers on both sides of the table. I really like your idea. It should be one of management ethics: caring for staffs even if you have to say goodbye.

ocdtrekkie 6y ago

With the sports example... the company "laying off a team" may actually be able to expect a payment in exchange for facilitating the transfer of their well-assembled, functional team to another company. It's entirely possible that wouldn't actually be a bad outcome for everyone involved: - Source company which is financially strained gets some income in addition to reduced salary expenses. - Destination company saves on paying other recruiting costs and acquires a pre-assembled team. They're essentially buying a working unit instead of having to build their own. - Employees avoid the uncertainty of being dropped in the middle of the process (or summarily laid off), assuming the right protections were in place in the agreement.

srtjstjsj 6y ago
- IP disputes are settled in advance; workers can take conpany IP with them

temp667 6y ago

This is the acquihire model. You don't actually have to do the acquihire. A company could just offer folks jobs directly (CA frowns on companies working to block employee mobility given employers can also fire folks with basically no notice). But it smooths things to wrap it up in an acquihire. Startups often get offers like this. Wasn't there a recent case on HN where google or apple after the company rejected the aquihire just offered the positions to staff directly? I think they got sued?

ignoramous 6y ago
Acquihire was not quite what I was getting at...but more along the lines of companies cooperating to facilitate quasi-free movement of their employees under appropriate conditions especially when it benefits all or the majority of the stakeholders involved, even when it is a single lone employee.

OJFord 6y ago

Well that sort of happens in organisations large enough to have 'reorganisations' - which is effectively 'selling' teams (or parts of them) to internal 'buyers', or not finding a 'buyer' and letting them go.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

In my experience, acqui-hires benefit the company far more than the employees who get moved to a different company. The first time I was acquihired, my compensation actually decreased because they kept my base salary and rewrote the bonus structure such that it was impossible to hit previous payouts. Meanwhile, my prior company received a large payment for the transfer of our team. Ironically, the new company was paying new hires much more. I would have been better off quitting and getting re-hired. It's better if the employees can negotiate their own way into a different company or companies. No sense in letting the previous company try to cash in on the team on their way out.

tpxl 6y ago
In my opinion, the acquihire you went through was poorly implemented, and the pay reduction disrespectful.
- saghm 6y ago
  I think their more general point still stands, though; why would you expect a company trying to "sell" their employees to negotiate in the employees' best interests rather than that of the company itself?
  - maffydub 6y ago
    I wouldn't... but I would expect the company trying to "buy" the employees to act at least partly in their interests - otherwise the new employees will soon become ex-employees!
  - toyg 6y ago
    That’s why in football there are 3 parties to a transfer deal: the two clubs and the player’s agent. In a regular company trying to sell a whole chunk of workers, that should probably be a union. Which is indeed what happens in many European countries when this sort of thing happens.
  - nurettin 6y ago
    The even more general point is, why would the owners even care about the company rather than themselves?

qgrgergfqgfev 6y ago

I don't think cloudflare does WASM @ edge no?

detaro 6y ago
They do. Their Workers product supports JS and WASM (but they seem to be less active when it comes to spec development around it etc)

madrox 6y ago

There's a lot of various anti-compete reasons why this doesn't happen. In most cases, the people most interested in hiring these people are competitors. I love the idea in theory, but in practice it's way too easy for companies to abuse in ways that are anti-employee.

phs318u 6y ago

This actually happened to me and 11 other colleagues back in 2002. I was working for a mid-tier IT consultancy and a bunch of us were working at a utility on a long-term program. Having delivered the initial version of this core system, and still hanging around doing a lot more dev work (many more features and fixes), the utility turned around and did a deal with the consultancy for a dozen of us to "go native", presumably with a suitable financial compensation as well as the promise of a level of continued engagement beyond our transfer. The surreal part came when the CEO of the consultancy and the CIO and CFO of the utility took the dozen of us out to dinner at a very upmarket restaurant. There were multiple times that night when a few of us felt like chattel. I almost felt like I should be baring my teeth so the new owner could check me out. Very weird, but it was a win-win and I stayed at the utility 7 years doing some really interesting work. EDITED TO ADD: I should point out that our salaries went up, but for the utility that was still cheaper than the T&M rates they were paying.

_pmf_ 6y ago

Same.

rossmohax 6y ago

> This deal has got me thinking... whether a right way to "lay-off" a supremely talented bunch is to actually see if other companies are willing to offer them jobs? Kind of how player transfers happen in Football (soccer). That's how Gitlab sold Gitter recently.

vagrantJin 6y ago

Haha. If employment was operated like transfers it would be quite interesting.

anhldbk 6y ago

> One might argue there's no advantage to the company laying-off people, but they could save on the severance package, and frankly, two companies entering an understanding like this bodes well on other levels where someone could probably explore a "cross-company" job change with blessings of the employers on both sides of the table. I really like your idea. It should be one of management ethics: caring for staffs even if you have to say goodbye.