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Eight hundred employees resign after WhiteHat Jr asks them to work from office
- Imnimo 4y agoI know this has nothing to do with the story, but I cannot get over how close this company name is to Weenie Hut Junior.
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- davidgerard 4y agocheap reblog of https://inc42.com/buzz/exclusive-over-800-whitehat-jr-employees-resign-as-edtech-giant-asks-to-report-to-office/ https://inc42.com/buzz/exclusive-over-800-whitehat-jr-employ...
- ipnon 4y agoYou will never see an "Office Space" type movie for remote workers.
- krasin 4y agoI would not be so sure. Companies go great lengths to control remote workers and protect their information, so it's probably only a matter of time when working from VR will be required at least from some of them. And then it's Office Space v2.
- 1123581321 4y agoI’ve been performing gangland style murders of my own printers for decades.
- acheron 4y agoDamn it feels good to be a gangsta
- mattkevan 4y agoHa, I showed that scene just yesterday to my Epson that announced it wasn’t going to print anymore. Hopefully it took the hint and is thinking very hard about the consequences of its refusal to work properly.
- MiddleEndian 4y agoWhen I was but a young student, I smashed my printer with a sledgehammer and recorded it. This was before I had seen Office Space, I was just tired of its shit.
- conradfr 4y agoI guess there was the Mythic Quest Quarantine episode.
- egberts1 4y agobut of course, how else are they going to do a layoff on an extremely short notice without all the legalese and laws of layoff.
- ftyhbhyjnjk 4y ago
- bin_bash 4y agoWhiteHat Jr is a coding school in India
- drieddust 4y agoWatch their AD on YouTube and you will know. They are selling dreams to unsuspecting parents. As per then kid can learn scratch and become an engineer at Google it fly a rocket to the moon.
- matt_heimer 4y agoThey hired remote workers regardless of location and decided to give everyone a month to starting working from an office?
- geocrasher 4y ago“This was a well-planned and managed layoff that WhiteHat Jr did,” a former employee remarked. Indeed. Vicious, but well played.
- unethical_ban 4y agoYep. One month to relocate cities? This isn't merely "drive 15 minutes to the office".
- nanidin 4y agoYep, time to reconsider the resignations as constructive dismissal via the legal system.
- hedora 4y agoNote that, if they lay you off, you're entitled to unemployment, etc. It's probably better to refuse to resign and also refuse to move. That way, you get whatever severance benefits you are due. If you are at the company, or just resigned because of this unreasonable policy change, I highly suggest you use your local bar association's referral service (or some other means) to schedule an inexpensive consult with a labor attorney.
- epgui 4y agoIn Canada I think this could be a “constructive dismissal”. I believe this may be a general common-law thing, but IANAL.
- throwawayboise 4y agoWould refusing to move be cause for termination? That's not a layoff, perhaps, at least in the eyes of the unemployment regulations?
- humanistbot 4y agoYes
- searchableguy 4y agoThis is likely a general layoff. Edtech bubble in India has bursted. Many edtech are going through huge layoffs.
- gkoberger 4y agoI think this title/article is a bit misleading. 1/ The company was hemorrhaging money and wanted resignations (if I'm understanding "INR CR" correctly, they lost $218,102,508 USD last year??) 2/ This was India, so the stock image feels a bit misleading 3/ It happened two months ago, not recently 4/ It wasn't just coming back to the office; it was relocating people to offices who hadn't worked there before 5/ They even forced people who worked near an office go to OTHER offices in other cities Here's the original source, which is much better (and includes details on revenue and expenses): https://inc42.com/buzz/exclusive-over-800-whitehat-jr-employees-resign-as-edtech-giant-asks-to-report-to-office/ https://inc42.com/buzz/exclusive-over-800-whitehat-jr-employ... This isn't a case of workers preferring WFH over the office; it's a sneaky layoff.
- searchableguy 4y ago> The company was hemorrhaging money and wanted resignations Unrelated, it's amazing how edtech startups have been beaten by traditional coaching institutions. Not only those institutions are profitable but they are beating growth numbers consistently.
- prewett 4y agoI've never understood why tech people think computers are going to improve education. Education is a human activity, you cannot replace a human with a computer. At best a computer is going to be like a book v2, plus multiple choice problem sets / test. Learning from a book is hardly going to be more effective than a teacher who can adjust on the fly to the students.
- __B_B__ 4y agoIt's the logical conclusion derived from the conceptualization of humans as programmable machines and education as their programming. After one accepts that belief, the issue merely becomes one of economy. Managing costs.
- Tepix 4y agoApps have greatly improved my language learning, spaced repetition has been a key for learning vocabulary and it's something that computers are very good at. Also apps like tandem have made it free, quick and easy to find someone online to practice with.
- vishnugupta 4y agoSchools are reopening this week in India. These online coaching classes saw big growth last two years but now I expect a massive subscriber churn.
- rossdavidh 4y agoThis seems like a massively important bit of context which was missing from the article, thanks for telling us this! The article is clickbaity, given that I learned more context from your HN comment than their whole page of text.
- ushakov 4y agowhat is the reason for churn?
- vishnugupta 4y agoOnline classes from schools in India didn’t engage kids beyond 2-3 hrs. That left a big time void which were filled by these online coaching classes. But now with physical schools starting kids will be busy for a good 6-7 hrs after which (and home work, playtime) they will hardly have time for online coaching classes. Parents would soon realize this, if not already, and discontinue subscriptions.
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- ldjkfkdsjnv 4y agoI think in the future, forced working from the office will be considered barbaric, and a direct form of control over the employees life. Similar to feudalism, peasants, or other patterns of worker owner relationships, forced office work for a middling wage simply isn't worth it.
- tyrfing 4y agoThe next step is obviously employer-provided XR systems that allow control regardless of your physical location. Just think of the potential for analytics based on things like gaze metrics!
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- 29athrowaway 4y agoIt is already barbaric today. A waste of time and resources. Fuel, road infrastructure, vehicles, parking space. All for what? so that people can waste their productivity in an open plan office, which is objectively the most distracting type of office plan ever devised, even worse than its predecessor, cubicles. And when it's flu season, prepare to bring the flu home and make your entire family sick, because seeing people face to face from a close distance, including their nostrils and mouth from where pathogens come out, is a fantastic idea during a flu season. In fact, it is such a great idea, that we should do an all-hands meeting and bring all employees into the same space, all next to each other, so that we can maximize the odds of the flu spreading from person to person. It is also great for companies, because helping people succeed based on superficial traits like their appearance or voice parameters instead of their productivity is definitively in the best interest of a company. That definitively helps companies succeed considering the customer doesn't care about how your employees look.
- deadalus 4y agoCame across this article about Whitehat Jr, its hilarious : https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/who-wolf-gupta-story-behind-whitehat-jr-s-fictional-prize-student-138382 https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/who-wolf-gupta-story-b... They created a fictional character 'WOLF GUPTA' to promote their brand.
- kburman 4y agoCreating a fictional character is not a bad thing but what they did is the claim that it is a real story with a success story that he got a job offer from Google and package in crores(INR) all being a kid. Ran this ad nationwide on all media and mislead many parents who already have FOMO. When asked about this kid wolf Gupta they sent a full legal team to threaten anyone who raises questions mass reporting bad reviews as a task from their employees. And when it got out of hand they acknowledged that it was all a lie and continued misleadig parents like nothing bad in it.
- s09dfhks 4y agoReminds me of the fictional highschool prodigy musician "Ling Ling" that the "Ling Ling 40hrs" subreddit created
- simonh 4y agoWas anyone ever threatened with legal action for saying Ling Ling was a fictional character?
- ClumsyPilot 4y agoIf I pulled that kind of shit in my job, I'd be fired or in jail. Surely this is fraud?
- ghoomketu 4y agoFor some background history whitehat jr has been accused of running misleading ads and shady marketing and also sueuing individuals for millions of dollars to keep their mouth shut. To get more context please google "pradeep poonia whitehat" and you will get all the gory details, whatsapp chats, etc.
- breitling 4y agoHaven't heard from Pradeep in a while. Do you know how all those cases progressed?
- amitheonlyone 4y agoLast news I saw was that Whitehat Jr withdrew their case
- mbostleman 4y agoAh the ever elusive causation shell game.
- samstave 4y agoUhm.... if you call yourself "whitehat jr"... I auto dont trust you.
- CoastalCoder 4y agoMy brain keeps parsing that as a mashup of "Whitecastle" and "Carls, Jr."
- PragmaticPulp 4y agoYes, there's far more to this story. This isn't your typical story of employees going remote for COVID and then being asked to return. There's a lot more wrapped up in this, including failure to adjust salaries and employees who can't relocate on short notice: > One of the employees who resigned told the website that a month’s time was not enough for relocation. “Some have kids, some have aged and sick parents, while others have other responsibilities. It is not right to call back employees in such a short period of time,” the former WhiteHat Jr employee said. > Another employee said salaries also factored in the decision to not return to the office. At the time of hiring, employees were told about their job location – WhiteHat Jr has offices in Gurugram, Mumbai and Bengaluru. However, after working from home for two years, employees believed that their salaries should be revised to reflect the cost of living in expensive cities. This looks like more of an engineered layoff from a company that is already in a death spiral: > “This was a well-planned and managed layoff that WhiteHat Jr did,” a former employee remarked.
- zerop 4y agoWhite hat is actually grey.
- mc4ndr3 4y agoIf education can work online, why not the makers of online education? Sounds like a company that doesn't believe in their own product.
- happy-go-lucky 4y agoSeems like a classic example of fly-by-night companies barely staying afloat on the highly dubious claims they make about their products or services. They don't value their customers. They say they do, but they just want their money.
- sonicggg 4y agoCan someone enlighten me? Why would they resign instead forcing the employer to fire them? Like by not going to work or just doing a shitty job. If you quit, you're giving up on severance or unemployment insurance benefits.
- searchableguy 4y agoI can't speak for the company in question but corporate culture can be very toxic here. They might have stopped remiting salary or threatened some other action if they do not resign themselves.
- saagarjha 4y agoWhat action can they threaten that's worse than just firing the employees?
- vmurthy 4y agoThey can refuse to give what is called a "relieving letter". That's a letter to future employers telling that this person left on good terms and his/her experience is genuine. It's a bloody effective weapon unfortunately :(
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- searchableguy 4y ago
- SmartestUnknown 4y agoGod! I hope both WhiteHat Jr. and their parent company Byju's crash and burn. They are crap companies which make poor and gullible parents enroll their kids in one of their programs for extortionate amount of money. If the parents cannot afford to pay all at once, they give a "loan" to the parents and collect a part of it each month even if the kids aren't satisfied with the education that is being provided. Note that none of the kids in India use these apps as the only way to study. They attend regular schools and use these apps as an additional source. Byju's employs 1000s of people whose only job is to go visit as many houses as they can and trick the parents into subscribing for their services by falsely claiming that the only way their kids can succeed is when their education is supplemented by these apps. Many innocent people who want to do all they can to make their kids' lives better fall into the trap and then keep paying the "loan" amount back which could be a substantial part of their monthly income. Meta and Disney invested a lot of money into these companies and they use it to bully anyone who tries to bring these issues up by shutting down their YouTube channels and filing defamation law suits [1,2]. The entire online education industry is unregulated and resort to shitty antics to extort money. I don't understand why these companies need to exist when we have other free and amazing resources online like Khan Academy which teach all topics to all ages of people. [1] https://thepost.co.in/news/633/whitehat-jr-lawsuit-pradeep-poonia-interview-and-unethical-tactics/ https://thepost.co.in/news/633/whitehat-jr-lawsuit-pradeep-p... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/india/search?q=pradeep+poonia&restrict_sr=on&include_over_18=on https://www.reddit.com/r/india/search?q=pradeep+poonia&restr...
- rmbyrro 4y agoUnfortunately, that's the reality of many industries and countless organizations. I too wish this didn't exist. But I'm learning to replace wishful thinking with something better. In this case, I think reality is providing a valuable learning opportunity to those parents: that they should verify everything before taking as truth, and only believe as an anticipation of goodwill only during the period necessary for verification (to avoid ending up pessimistic or cynic, for instance). While there are still people that didn't learn and apply these lessons well, there will always be Byju's out there...
- 4y ago
- SrslyJosh 4y ago> As the Covid situation has improved LOL, sure.
- nikolay 4y agoI have not worked at an office in the past 10 years. Can't believe some people prefer to work in the old way. Okay, I get it's convenient to spend most of the day pretending that you work - coming at 9AM and going into the kitchen to make coffee and breakfast, than getting a 2-hour lunch, having a proof on your calendar that you worked for 1 hour, when the meeting ended after 20 minutes, and people stayed there talking about anythign but work. Even if people are distracted during WFH, the waste is still much less and there are less excuses compared to WFO.
- analog31 4y agoWell, working in a lab is one reason. I develop technology for scientific measurement equipment. I did OK during the lockdown by moving one of my experiments to a spare room in my basement, but whether that can work or not depends a lot on what facilities are needed for a specific project. Sure I spend some time goofing off like you describe, but my work is neither measured nor paid by the hour.
- dubswithus 4y agoIs this going to impact operations?