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This article doesn’t capture the flavour of what happened here. Here is the letter sent to staff. You received this email because my big data team analyzed yo

This article doesn’t capture the flavour of what happened here. Here is the letter sent to staff. You received this email because my big data team analyzed your activities in Jira, Confluence, Gmail, chats, documents, dashboards and tagged you as unengaged and unproductive employees. In other words, you were not always present at the workplace when you worked remotely. Many of you might be shocked, but I truly believe that Xsolla is not for you. Nadia and her care team partnered with seven leading HR agencies, as we will help you find a good place, where you will earn more and work even less. Sasha will help you get a recommendation, including the one from myself. And Natalia will read you your rights. Once again, thank you for your contribution. If you want to stay in contact with me, please write me a long letter about all your observations, injustice, and gratitude.

cupcake-unicorn 5y ago
From the interview and this letter the CEO sounds like a really scary and entitled person. Stuff like this isn't just bad for business but when you see this kind of instability and recklessness in the leadership the company often fails down the line.
- bobiny 5y ago
  I gathered that he finds his business special and lucrative, especially by his native city standards. I think he presumes that even a "bad" employee at his company will find a nice spot in a more ordinary one.
- bodge5000 5y ago
  He struck me as the kind of people who makes management errors, sees the company suffer for them, and blames anyone and everyone but himself for it, usually for extremely vague reasons like "not working hard enough"
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
iamcreasy 5y ago
Is there any study on what could be the false positive rate for models of this kind?
- Hamuko 5y ago
  Or rather, how many productive employees are scared of being labeled unproductive and given the quick boot in the next round?
malwarebytess 5y ago
Who wrote that. The CEO? Sounds downright sociopathic.
jfk13 5y ago
I hadn't heard of the company before, but now I'll know to steer well clear of it, should the occasion ever arise -- thanks.
- hosh 5y ago
  I have implemented payments using their platform. Even before hearing about this, I would not use them again.
  - cblconfederate 5y ago
    what are the alternatives to use for their niche (merchant of record for game micro-transactions) ?
    - hosh 5y ago
      I don’t know of one. And maybe that was why Xsolla saw 40% growth until recently. But you can only go so long without fixing problems with your product before people stop using it. I am also coming from the perspective of someone who has implemented Stripe in a SAAS application. I can see why Xsolla will appeal to game shops, but compared to what I can do with Stripe, I wouldn’t use Xsolla. From a general strategic analysis approach though, based on my experience working with Xsolla: - if you already have a good customer service and know your users and fans, you do not want to depend on someone else’s customer support team. They won’t engage with your users the way you will, and now your customer service have to work through Xsolla customer service - if you need to customize the skin and experience of the payment flow, you cannot have someone else be the merchant of record - if your team already has competencies in writing web apps and operating infrastructure, you can do a better job than Xsolla at implementing virtual currencies, item shops - if the people paying for the games, virtual currencies, and items are not the gamers themselves, then the many payment integrations that Xsolla offers do not matter as much - if you are mainly operating in a few countries, then the international payment integrations Xsolla offers are not really much of an advantage
narag 5y ago
"Sasha will help you get a recommendation, including the one from myself." Once this letter is public, not sure how valuable that recommendation will be.
- bobiny 5y ago
  I wonder what would the body of this recommendation be? "Worked poorly by our standards, but maybe will be more enthusiastic in your company. Otherwise great dude (AI-rated at 78% "great" and 87% "dude")"
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
I worked at a company where the CEO shared a chart of the top 10 most active people in company Slack, implying praise for the most active Slack participants. Everyone got the message that more lines in Slack == more visibility with CEO. From then on, Slack became unusable because people were basically spamming Slack to keep their stats high. It got to the point where people weren’t even typing full sentences, but instead sending a few words in every line or just posting multiple lines of emojis in response to everything.
- vorpalhex 5y ago
  1. Write bot to send slack messages. Maybe a mix of random HN articles, non-detailed responses, and DMs to another bot. 2. Go do your real work. Or slack off. Whatever.
formerly_proven 5y ago
Ministry of Work: Being productive is unproductive.
ergocoder 5y ago
The last sentence sounds sarcastic and really really bad.
loloquwowndueo 5y ago
Busy != productive. This measures busyness and not productivity. I wonder if the analysis can be trivially tricked by using a bot to post random crap using those services' APIs.
- Gibbon1 5y ago
  I'm always going, step away from the computer and think about what the fuck you are doing.
sam_lowry_ 5y ago
You omitted a dozen mistakes he made in the original text, and at least as many negligences like downcase and misuse of commas.

cupcake-unicorn 5y ago

From the interview and this letter the CEO sounds like a really scary and entitled person. Stuff like this isn't just bad for business but when you see this kind of instability and recklessness in the leadership the company often fails down the line.

bobiny 5y ago
I gathered that he finds his business special and lucrative, especially by his native city standards. I think he presumes that even a "bad" employee at his company will find a nice spot in a more ordinary one.
bodge5000 5y ago
He struck me as the kind of people who makes management errors, sees the company suffer for them, and blames anyone and everyone but himself for it, usually for extremely vague reasons like "not working hard enough"
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

iamcreasy 5y ago

Is there any study on what could be the false positive rate for models of this kind?

Hamuko 5y ago
Or rather, how many productive employees are scared of being labeled unproductive and given the quick boot in the next round?

malwarebytess 5y ago

Who wrote that. The CEO? Sounds downright sociopathic.

jfk13 5y ago

I hadn't heard of the company before, but now I'll know to steer well clear of it, should the occasion ever arise -- thanks.

hosh 5y ago
I have implemented payments using their platform. Even before hearing about this, I would not use them again.
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  what are the alternatives to use for their niche (merchant of record for game micro-transactions) ?
  - hosh 5y ago
    I don’t know of one. And maybe that was why Xsolla saw 40% growth until recently. But you can only go so long without fixing problems with your product before people stop using it. I am also coming from the perspective of someone who has implemented Stripe in a SAAS application. I can see why Xsolla will appeal to game shops, but compared to what I can do with Stripe, I wouldn’t use Xsolla. From a general strategic analysis approach though, based on my experience working with Xsolla: - if you already have a good customer service and know your users and fans, you do not want to depend on someone else’s customer support team. They won’t engage with your users the way you will, and now your customer service have to work through Xsolla customer service - if you need to customize the skin and experience of the payment flow, you cannot have someone else be the merchant of record - if your team already has competencies in writing web apps and operating infrastructure, you can do a better job than Xsolla at implementing virtual currencies, item shops - if the people paying for the games, virtual currencies, and items are not the gamers themselves, then the many payment integrations that Xsolla offers do not matter as much - if you are mainly operating in a few countries, then the international payment integrations Xsolla offers are not really much of an advantage

narag 5y ago

"Sasha will help you get a recommendation, including the one from myself." Once this letter is public, not sure how valuable that recommendation will be.

bobiny 5y ago
I wonder what would the body of this recommendation be? "Worked poorly by our standards, but maybe will be more enthusiastic in your company. Otherwise great dude (AI-rated at 78% "great" and 87% "dude")"

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

I worked at a company where the CEO shared a chart of the top 10 most active people in company Slack, implying praise for the most active Slack participants. Everyone got the message that more lines in Slack == more visibility with CEO. From then on, Slack became unusable because people were basically spamming Slack to keep their stats high. It got to the point where people weren’t even typing full sentences, but instead sending a few words in every line or just posting multiple lines of emojis in response to everything.

vorpalhex 5y ago
1. Write bot to send slack messages. Maybe a mix of random HN articles, non-detailed responses, and DMs to another bot. 2. Go do your real work. Or slack off. Whatever.

formerly_proven 5y ago

Ministry of Work: Being productive is unproductive.

ergocoder 5y ago

The last sentence sounds sarcastic and really really bad.

loloquwowndueo 5y ago

Busy != productive. This measures busyness and not productivity. I wonder if the analysis can be trivially tricked by using a bot to post random crap using those services' APIs.

Gibbon1 5y ago
I'm always going, step away from the computer and think about what the fuck you are doing.

sam_lowry_ 5y ago

You omitted a dozen mistakes he made in the original text, and at least as many negligences like downcase and misuse of commas.