28 ms·

Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?

• FunnyBadger 4y ago
  There's a mathematical model for this. It doesn't require 50% leaving to destroy a company. First you have Price's Law - half the people actually doing work rises with the square root of the total employee count. It's a variant of Pareto law. So as you grown bigger, the critical path of viable operation depends on fewer and fewer people per capita. That group is also the group who first to see problems and least likely to put up with BS so they are the first to leave when things go downhill. The bigger the organization, the fewer people who need to leave to destroy it. This is one of several dynamics that assure a role of startups and entrepreneurs because large companies can never be safe or stable or eternal. Related to this: most startups last no more than 5 years but large corporations seldom live beyond 20-25 years. The handful of corporations that do are super rare and mostly living on borrowed time. Usually the only thing keeping larger companies around beyond 20-25 is one or a few very charismatic leaders/executives - as soon as they go, it comes crashing down. Hewlett-Packard is a classic example of this.
  • mdcds 4y ago
    > First you have Price's Law - half the people actually doing work rises with the square root of the total employee count. It's a variant of Pareto law. So as you grown bigger, the critical path of viable operation depends on fewer and fewer people per capita. Huh, interesting point. Natural conclusion is that as companies grow, they become more and more fragile to core people leaving.
• hollywood_court 4y ago
  The wedding photographer/videographer business I discussed in another thread last week. All his employees quit and he went under. I've personally been involved with more than one general contractor going under. When I was a young carpenter, I followed my best friend from job to job and contractor to contractor. When he walked off a job, the rest of us followed. He and I and a group of Dominicans (from Dominica not the DR) put more than one GC out of business because we'd walk and then we'd tell everyone we knew that they shouldn't work for said GC. When I became older and my friend moved away, I took his place. It was so satisfying leaving a job and then receiving a phone call from the client a few days/week later asking me and the crew to come back and finish with promises that the GC would be out of the picture. It's incredibly difficult to find skilled tradesman in the Caribbean that will show up sober each day and perform quality work. We always had the long end of the stick.
  • pvillano 4y ago
    I wonder what can be generalized from this experience to empower workers in other industries. My guess is that the tradesmen you worked with have negotiating power because they can find another GC. That relies on there being many competing companies. That can only happen in industries with low start-up costs and small economies of scale. Railway operation has huge start-up costs and large economies of scale. I think a long term solution depends on the nationalization of track or at least the separation of train and track ownership, with track operators required to provide nondiscriminatory access. Not gonna happen but one can dream. Again, all guesses, but I'd like to hear what someone more knowledgeable has to say
  • nmarinov 4y ago
    Link to the wedding business comment - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32740708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32740708
    • raverbashing 4y ago
      lol that's a delightful story Sounds like the archetype of "being a manager means being angry at people. business knowledge optional"
      • bufferoverflow 4y ago
        It also sounds like an untrue story. You can find photo/video editors all over the internet. As a photographer I'm spammed by the Chinese ones every week. Looking at their portfolios, they aren't even bad (though I don't know how real their portfolios are).
  • robinsoh 4y ago
    > It's incredibly difficult to find skilled tradesman in the Caribbean that will show up sober each day and perform quality work. There's a lot to unpack in that sentence. Care to elaborate?
    • 4y ago
• MikeF_323 4y ago
  Borland. I worked there up until the mid 90s and then was recruited by Microsoft. They picked off all the great talent leaving barely any competent engineers left. I alongside a ton of other engineers were wined and dined and given a hell of an offer we couldn't refuse. It was insane, I should write a book honestly. I miss those days, it was the wild west of tech.
  • aninteger 4y ago
    I'm curious if non-competes were a thing at this period of time. I'm not sure if something like this could happen today (although I'm sure it still happens).
    • kube-system 4y ago
      Non-competes have been a thing for centuries, but California banned them in 1872.
      • swyx 4y ago
        which is awfully convenient that amzn and microsoft (and uber?) are based in washington state where this doesnt apply
    • klyrs 4y ago
      Noncompetes are pretty toothless, even illegal in several jurisdictions. Even then, a company with money and clout to poach talent like that can also stand up for you if your failing ex-employer chooses to lash out.
      • n0tth3dro1ds 4y ago
        >Noncompetes are pretty toothless Not true. They’re illegal in California, but in other US states where they are legal they can be quite toothful. I have seen several ex-employees of my prior company get sued and lose. It became a silent doctrine to just leave a two year gap on your public LinkedIn after working there. If you put anything in that period (the length of the non-compete), you were at risk of the CTO suing you for fun if he thought any of the scope your prior work overlapped with your new role. Fun stuff.
• bergenty 4y ago
  Probably not, you can always get a mix of less qualified people/contractors over the short term and build back up.
  • mdcds 4y ago
    OP here I think you are right, but only under assumptions that the market for talent is liquid (ei it's relatively easy to hire). Counter example: What if you are running an AI company that is trying to solve self-driving and top 3-4 researchers quit? I'd argue that you don't really have a company at that point.
    • dagw 4y ago
      What if you are running an AI company that is trying to solve self-driving and top 3-4 researchers quit? Worked at a company where something like that happened (although a different field). The company simply pivoted to a different but related area, hired new people experienced in that field and kept going in a new direction.
• vsskanth 4y ago
  There was a very recent case where an emergency trauma center had to shut down because all the nurses left for another hospital for better working conditions. It’s also common in rehab centers. You can’t take Medicare patients without a minimum staff count. If too many nurses leave, patients can’t be accepted and you end up bleeding. Basically any job that primarily requires human capital.
  • fhsm 4y ago
    Have a link? Alway interested in these examples. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/24/us/thedacare-lawsuit-wisconsin.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/24/us/thedacare-lawsuit-wisc... ^ is the only recent one in acute care I’ve heard of but it doesn’t really fit your other details (limited service line, multiple role groups, ambiguity around actual impact).
  • ethbr0 4y ago
    That's a lot of hospitals in the US and Canada right now. Turns out if you cut nurses' compensation and retirement match during the pandemic, ask them to work overtime due to understaffing, and then don't restore benefits or give them raises to match inflation after... they walk. Who knew?
    • hollywood_court 4y ago
      I could not imagine being a nurse or a teacher in the US right now. I wish they realized that they have the leverage and can go on strike. I imagine that's difficult for many of them as they most certainly need the income. A rock and a hard place. I always smile when I read about a nurse or teacher switching to a completely different career field and finding themselves more content.
      • mud_dauber 4y ago
        My wife (ER/ICU nursing) walked away from a 25 yr career. She ended up in the kitchen of an upscale grocery store - still working with her hands for 1/3 the salary. (Granted, we could withstand the financial hit.) She would still come home bone-tired after being on her feet for a shift - but much more interested in the work. Not having to deal with the public was another big benefit -the epidemic turned too many people into **holes.
• agentwiggles 4y ago
  I won't say shut down exactly, but I used to work for a small consultancy that was acquired by a huge corporate consulting firm (which made the news a year or two ago for a large contract they'd failed miserably on). Within a year or so of the acquisition there was a trickle of departures that eventually turned into a mass exodus. There's almost no one left in the org who was part of the original company at this point. So it goes. Many good engineers and companies spun out of that original one, and found greener pastures and new opportunities. Still, at the time, it felt like a massive waste of a group of truly talented people, to try to corporate-ize them and scare them all off in the process.
  • Mandatum 4y ago
    Except management who were made Partners I assume? Every time this happens, the good ones leave immediately, the ones looking at career progression stay for 2-3 years, and the shit ones stay for good, as they ultimately fail upwards into management if they don't get fired long enough.
    • agentwiggles 4y ago
      Pretty much nailed it!
• yardie 4y ago
  Printing press. The pressman that operated the largest press quit, fired, no showed, or whatever. Margins are already thin so losing just 1 press can be pretty devastating. A pressman, even a trained one, has to be trained since each machine is build to order. It’s not something you can post a job in Indeed and have a new employee after a week.
  • pessimizer 4y ago
    I've seen this happen, and the company end up in serious danger (and they still were down a pressman and flailing last time I heard.) Somehow the fact that everything is depending on pressmen doesn't affect the way management pays or treats them, though.
    • pvillano 4y ago
      some people just can't see the value in other human beings, even when it's literally dollar value
  • UncleEntity 4y ago
    A long time ago I was being trained on working a massive printing press for the local newspaper, quite the complex machine. Then they found out I was leaving for university in a month and weren’t too happy with having wasted time on someone who wasn’t sticking around. Even the simple stuff needs constant attention so they didn’t end up with a major paper jam and having all the ad stuffers and delivery drivers sitting around waiting.
• strathmeyer 4y ago
  I worked for a startup company where they stopped paying employees, management quit and offered to buy the company, owner refused, then everyone else quit. Like most stories like this it's a company you've never heard of and everyone moved on.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• aintmeit 4y ago
  Watching companies, like the ones you're thinking of, react the way you describe reminds me of listening to recovering alcoholics throwing their lives away. But it's too little, too late. Something has got to give, and you pray to God everyone keeps their lips shut and noses clean. Because if you think about, the situation is kind of a ticking time bomb! Hahaha.
• hackingthenews 4y ago
  I am curious about companies who survived/flourished despite seemingly key employees quitting or employees quitting en masse.
• thrill 4y ago
  A company I was hired into during a big hiring spree to prepare it for going public wasn't very generous to the systems engineering team once the IPO happened (but hoo boy, those sales guys were racking up some money). Anyway, of the roughly two dozen SE and DB team, I know of only single person remaining a mere three years later (he's simply paid too well to desire to leave). Said company's stock price is less than one-tenth of what it was when we all started leaving, in my case because someone doubled my salary to do so, but for others it was similar good incentives versus nothing but more excess work if we'd remained. I wouldn't be surprised to see a competitor buy them just to acquire their customer base and acqui-fire the current team.
• spywaregorilla 4y ago
  Look for examples with organized strikes to get a sense of what that's like.
  • UncleEntity 4y ago
    Hostess is a specific example where the union refused to budge and they shut down the whole company.
• zomgbbq 4y ago
  Atari in 1983 went from the leader in video game production to completely imploding. In 1979, four of their best programmers left after demanding equity in the sales and were refused. Their CEO Ray Kassar famously said, "You’re no more important to those projects than the person on the assembly line who put them together. You’re a dime a dozen. You’re not unique. Anybody can do ­a ­cartridge.". They left and formed Activision which led to a sequence of failures by Atari until they finally died unable to compete with the likes of Intellivision, Colecovision, and Commodore.
  • readme 4y ago
    the irony is that the CEO probably does less work than the assembly line worker
    • stavros 4y ago
      I don't know if it's less work, but certainly the assembly worker definitely delivers more value. Only one of the two killed the company.
      • squeaky-clean 4y ago
        That kind of demonstrates the importance and value of a good CEO though. A couple dumb decisions by an assembly worker won't kill a company. A few bad decisions by a CEO can.
        • Gigachad 4y ago
          I think most job salaries can be linked directly to how much of a difference the employee can make. A complete dud at McDonalds in the kitchen might cost a few thousand on average but the further you go up, the greater the damage or benefit potential gets.
          • JadeNB 4y ago
            > I think most job salaries can be linked directly to how much of a difference the employee can make. I think that the world's, or at least the US's, teachers are a glaring counterexample.
• heavyset_go 4y ago
  Seen this happen with some small businesses. Irresponsible owners overleveraged themselves into situations where folding or bankruptcy were the only options once they couldn't afford their liabilities. There are a lot of companies that go under if for some reason their revenues dip for a long enough time.
  • aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
    > if for some reason their revenues dip for a long enough time. Like COVID! Unfortunately, strong and scummy/"well-connected" businesses were both rewarded during this period — for different reasons.
• jonahbenton 4y ago
  Almost never happens that way. If a business has customers, it is ALWAYS possible to find monkeys to staff it, no disrespect to monkeys. Of course, in these cases, the monkeys are often incompetent in the context of operating the business, so customers leave (or die). And THEN the business shuts down. Many businesses will indeed complain about not being able to find monkeys to staff the business. What they mean is that they are unable to find monkeys who will work for peanuts when other businesses are paying monkeys in bananas, or something they like more than peanuts.
  • armatav 4y ago
    This guy is pretty much correct - businesses are the value-generation machines, usually there will be someone, somewhere with the skillset to maintain its operation over time for the business owner. And usually they are paid little.
• tomblomfield 4y ago
  Famously, the Traitorous Eight left Shockley to found Fairchild Semiconductor. This was essentially the origin story of Silicon Valley. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traitorous_eight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traitorous_eight https://www.amazon.co.uk/Power-Law-Venture-Capital-Disruption/dp/0241356520/ https://www.amazon.co.uk/Power-Law-Venture-Capital-Disruptio...
  • Aloha 4y ago
    Shockley inadvertently by being an asshole created more wealth for more people possibly than any other single person.
    • justinjlynn 4y ago
      Shockley deserves as much credit for the creation of that wealth as the wind deserves credit for an amazing photograph of a beautiful summer sky.
      • Aloha 4y ago
        How do you figure? He invented several kinds of semiconductors he assembled the team that went on to found an entire industry. Much of that wealth could have been held onto by him, had he been less of an ass. People didn't leave over equity, or pay, they left because he was an asshole. Without him being a jackass, his company might have invented the things later invented at Fairchild.
        • __alexs 4y ago
          Are you suggesting he was intentionally an ass to drive people away so that they could create something even greater? That truly is some 4D chess business.
          • borski 4y ago
            You can get credit for mistakes all the time. Go speed past a cop, even by accident (distracted), collect your ticket and your credit for making the roadways a bit more hazardous and your police station a bit more wealthy. He didn’t have to intend for them to leave to get credit for being the asshole that made them leave. :)
• jzig 4y ago
  You heard it here first - The Johns Hopkins Hospital. They would never admit their problems due to the culture, but I predict a devastating and irreversible brain drain in the next two years.
  • reciprocity 4y ago
    Could you please elaborate further?
    • lvspiff 4y ago
      not OP but work in healthcare. The culture of leadership in healthcare is frustrating. It's very political with everyone having their own agendas and fiefdoms. Cap it off with ever changing Govt regulations and you end up with a never ending cycle of audits, crazy ideas, and projects that go no where because the vendors are so far behind they don't understand anything. For the last year I worked on a scheduling system that got absolutely nowhere, a million $ investment in surgery center equipment that was not compatible with our current software, and the always fun rotation of passwords on over 1000 servers in 3 months that were mostly manual because the vendors all charge for an SOW to do that (oh yeah this is a YEARLY activity).
      • aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
        > always fun rotation of passwords on over 1000 servers in 3 months that were mostly manual because the vendors all charge for an SOW to do that (oh yeah this is a YEARLY activity). Why do I smell Windows Server 2008?
        • TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
          NIST stopped recommending regular password rotation years ago. Why are mega corps still insisting on this? Security theater? Unknowledgable?
          • solarmist 4y ago
• Nadacambia 4y ago
  Not tech-related but it happens with law firms, which are often Limited liability partnerships (LLPs). A notable example is Heenan Blaikie in Canada, which was the 5th biggest national law firm with offices everywhere in Canada with over 500 lawyers. The firm had its most profitable years right before it was dissolved in 2014, mainly due to loss of trust and infighting - partners started leaving the firm and taking the money they put in (which I believe had a snowball effect) and lots of partners lost their money. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heenan_Blaikie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heenan_Blaikie
  • mdcds 4y ago
    OP here def interesting to learn about industries that I'm not in. thanks for sharing
• metadat 4y ago
  Not too long ago, I worked for a pre-IPO "startup" with ~2,000 total employees. Over the course of a few months, the core of engineering (based in Bay Area) was gutted by a FAANG, out of retribution, because said startup had poached some key employees from the FAANG. After I left as part of the exodus wave, I learned there was an "unlimited" $30+ million dollar extra budget for hiring employees from the startup, lol. Lesson: Don't piss off FAANG execs, they can throw what amounts to unlimited resources against you. Fortunately for the startup, it turned out they were massively overprovisioned and didn't really need all those intelligent engineers and executives. Startup ended up closing their Bay Area office and moving engineering to South America. The undead zombie corpse husk is still chugging along. The startup still somehow went public during the pando, but the IPO eventually became an embarrassing flop. Turns out a business based on surveys isn't that lucrative, after all.
  • andrewinardeer 4y ago
    This is the first time I have encountered the word 'pandemic' being shortened to 'pando' either online or meat space.
    • metadat 4y ago
      https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=Pando&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... It appears to be pretty common.
      • gouggoug 4y ago
        There's 706 results, but a lot of them are "pando.com" or words unrelated to the pandemic
    • replwoacause 4y ago
      This is the first time I have encountered the word meat space.
      • 4y ago
• PragmaticPulp 4y ago
  I worked for a company big enough to be in the HN headlines (sorry, have to stay somewhat anonymous) where development virtually stalled for a couple years after a mass exodus event. The CEO went on a rampage and fired some people on the spot for something they weren’t even responsible for, which destroyed the already fragile morale and created a steady exodus of good talent over a couple of years. It didn’t kill the company for several reasons, but primarily because: 1) The company had enough momentum, revenue, and cash in the bank that they could go on hiring sprees to replace everyone. The new hires had a lot of churn when they realized what was going on, so they just kept hiring until enough replacements stuck around. 2) Many of the employees who didn’t quit saw this as their opportunity to rise through the ranks and fill the voids. They weren’t wrong and it paid off for many of them in the form of rapid promotions and advancement. The CEO became more hands-off as he realized his micromanagement wasn’t helping, so they basically inherited a slightly better situation. After this experience, I don’t really see a developer exodus killing any big company with good momentum and decent cash reserves. As long as a company has cash flow they can spend their way into hiring replacements as long as it takes.
  • bbstats 4y ago
    Extremely similar situation happened to me at a startup.
  • gumball13 4y ago
  • that_guy_iain 4y ago
    I honestly, can't believe how many companies I've seen that have had the problem with new hires churning really quick. When I lived in the UK, I saw one company that was like that. When I moved to Berlin, it's pretty much been like that at most companies. Various reasons from the tech being crap, the culture being crap, or managers being crap. While the company normally survives for a while, since if you have the cash you can survive for a while no matter what. The company never really reaches it's true value. Most do end up being acquired by a competitor for very little money or going out of business.
• nradov 4y ago
  To your example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, there were many nursing homes where staffing levels fell below legally mandated minimums due to employees quitting (or being out sick). A few shut down, but most continued operating and simply delivered substandard care to residents. In the worst cases local authorities sometimes sent in first responders or National Guard troops to keep the residents alive. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2767282 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2767282
• knob 4y ago
  I have the inverse story; factory workers picketing outside. First day the owner of the company walks up to them and explains: this company is worth $X. The terrain (land) it occupies is worth $10X. Please get back to work.
  • ec109685 4y ago
    So if the factory is in business, the owner has an $11x asset. Otherwise, a $10x asset. Seems like still in best interest to have employees for factory.
    • ars 4y ago
      Yes, that's why he told them this - he prefers to be in business with employees. He's just telling them their negotiating position is very very weak, and their strike has no value.
    • aaron695 4y ago
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • pydry 4y ago
    That signals an extraordinarily inefficient use of land. With land that valuable, and a land value tax/higher property taxes he'd have been run out of business years ago and replaced by one or more economically efficient companies.
    • codingdave 4y ago
      Yes, but his statement that the land is worth 10X doesn't have to be true to be effective leverage in negotiation. Perception is everything, and casually dropping a "Eh, I don't really need you", and turning your back on a negotiation is often amazingly effective.
• pengaru 4y ago
  • awestroke 4y ago
    Business owners often force employees to strike to get reasonable pay and working conditions
• pryelluw 4y ago
  I once worked for a small but very profitable tech company. The owner pretty much had to sit back and rake in the money. He was, however, a huge asshole and alcoholic. Wasn’t able to let it function without him. Went from a couple of million dollars profit to closed when I quit. He couldn’t find other devs. Tried to outsource it but just failed. I quit because he tried to treat me like shit. Like he treated his other employees behind the scenes (the guy was very sneaky). So I left. Then tried to offer me a cut but I wasn’t gonna partner with such asshole. There isn’t enough money in this world. Last I heard he was trying to launch a similar product but failing horribly. The product wasn’t complex but required specific knowledge of different things. So it was rare to find people with that knowledge who were also effective.
  • jamestimmins 4y ago
    Now that the company is gone, have you considered using your experience to build a similar product in that space?
    • pryelluw 4y ago
      Yes, but it’s not what I want to do with my life. The journey is the destination.
      • mod 4y ago
        You should post it in the next "idea" thread.
      • swyx 4y ago
        i mean, 2m a year passive income, that sounds like a pretty good space to be in. it doesnt seem like you have any particular loyalty to it and its closed so... what was the business? you dont have to name it, im just curious economics-wise what let this business exist on autopilot
        • pryelluw 4y ago
          It wasn’t passive income. The business was simple enough and he had managed to hire good people. It would run by itself pretty much. It wasn’t a typical startup. Just a small business that sold a software as a service. The product revolved around making sales easier. The owner was a long time sales person.
• ikiris 4y ago
  Ubiquity. They're just a software zombie shambling on at this point.
  • para_parolu 4y ago
    Wait, what happened?
    • ikiris 4y ago
      Just one example: https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubiquiti/comments/scqlg3/what_happened_to_edgeos/huejyey/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubiquiti/comments/scqlg3/what_happe... the software is basically unupdated for quite some time outside of their new cloud only inferior products, and i've tried reporting bugs to the support multiple times and every time they just are clueless, drop the issue entirely, or find some trivial way to argue its not actually their fault when it clearly is, like an on demand bgp crash under specific common private as peernig config as one example. They had a wonderful product for the price point in multiple areas, and basically all their replacements have been inferior and often flaky.
  • awestroke 4y ago
    This is just FUD unless you can elaborate and provide details
  • unethical_ban 4y ago
    Do you mean Ubiquiti, the networking company? Do you have any anecdote on human talent exodus causing a failure, or are you riffing on the company in general?
• that_guy_iain 4y ago
  One of the reasons the company I just left is dying is they lost a bunch of employees that and a terrible tech plan. I worked for company A, company A got merged with company B since they were both owned by the same mega corp. Company A and Company B were in the same industry but served different needs. They were both companies in the EV industry but one was aimed at drivers and the other aimed at charging station companies. When they did the merger, it seems part of the thinking was to get rid of the IT staff at company A. So obivously, they basically all left. Major issue was they decided to do a rewrite. So they ended up having a bunch of developers who didn't know the business, could barely read the old code, etc rewrite this company's application. Because they had no idea about it, they didn't realise how unrealistic the expectations were or even the fact it was a rewrite. It was framed as a migration. We move this app over here because we have the core features and we can just add on a few more. Except they didn't have the core features. They put the legacy system in to maintainance only and hired consultants to maintain it. Which led to it breaking down constantly and client demands going unmet. While that was happening all the business people started to leave. So all the people who understood how the business side of thing worked, had connections with clients, etc left. This resulted in all the strategies and plans that the company were making were based on a business world that didn't exist. They spent 12 months telling each other, they would do this and that and the industry needs this. Then when they released and went to market with pre-existing clients they found out all of this was nonsense and they needed to do all the stuff the old business teams were doing. By the end of it, the mega corp that owned them realised they screwed up the company too badly so decided to sell. In the two years since the merger they had spent at least 30 million on the new platform. Spent 15 million before that on building it up before doing th merger. Originally bought company A for 8 million. Company B, I'm not sure how much they spent there but realistically probably a total of 40 million easily. It was generating profit too before it got merged with Company A. They tried to sell it for 400 million. Got nowhere. Reduced the price to 200 million. Nothing. Ended up selling it for 75 million while clearing the debts for the company with a "gain" of 50 million.
  • mdcds 4y ago
    > I worked for company A, company A got merged with company B since they were both owned by the same mega corp. Company A and Company B were in the same industry but served different needs. I thought at first that you were talking about Disney Streaming / Hulu
• almostarockstar 4y ago
  Relevant story based on your example: During the early days of the covid lockdowns, before nursing home staff or residents were vaccinated, many staff quit en masse to work as covid test center staff. The hours were better. The job was less complex and less demanding. The pay was comparable. Then when the remaining staff began to contract covid, they were down to a few core people working continuously to provide care. Many recently (and not so recently) retired nurses returned to work until they could figure things out. There isn't much to learn about enterprise staffing here except that when the chips are down, people who are truly devoted to their jobs will go to extraordinary lengths to make sure it gets done. I feel it's a pity these people are often (in my country) poorly compensated for the incredible effort they make.
• cynusx 4y ago
  Being on the hiring side of the engineering job market you do see the occasional companies imploding when their entire technical staff departs. When it happens to post series-A companies it's usually just a team that leaves such as what happened when Bumble recruited the entire Barcelona-based engineering office of another company.
• denimnerd42 4y ago
  Not shut down but my company is one of the top 3 largest in its sector, but it's third place. It has failed to transition to modern IT practices over and over again. Important ICs generating millions in value keep leaving because IT at this company is so frustrating to work in. There has been so much turnover few projects can deliver on any sort of timely basis. The stock just is going to continue to get hammered as the effectiveness of the organization just slips and slips. It spends something like 2x on IT as its competitors and gets less for it. There's tens of thousands of IT employees so it's difficult to get a full read on things but within company wide slack it's clear things are not going well.
  • Victerius 4y ago
    Name and shame.
• bambataa 4y ago
  Does anyone know how Basecamp is doing since it had its moment in the news?
• Havoc 4y ago
  Honeywell after GE acquisition. They basically bought empty buildings at insane values given how fast the talent clears out
  • EFreethought 4y ago
    Could you expand on this? I thought the GE/Honeywell merger was blocked by the EU.
    • Havoc 4y ago
      It’s from the Jack Welsh autobiography - GE ceo at the time. Basically bought it, didn’t have any lock in on employees, culture clash and subsequent exodus
• mkl95 4y ago
  It happens all the time at small to mid sized startups. Some senior employees quit and form another startup. Their former company struggles to replace them and slowly dies, or becomes a small business.
• khitchdee 4y ago
  Intel.
• avg_dev 4y ago
  Respectfully, I believe that your premise is flawed. The symptom may be qualified, good employees quitting and leaving the company unable to fulfill its obligations, but the root cause is the poor leadership that caused them to leave in the first place.
• hnsch2412 4y ago
  Artesian Builds
  • ajkjk 4y ago
    What happened?
• tehCorner 4y ago
  My first job was in a company fully dedicated to milk the European H2020 projects' cow. Their business model was to offer the lowest budget on a series of projects and then have a bunch of interns like me do all the work on their own with very bad conditions (very few were actually even paid and we didn't have right for holidays). At some point we all realized the profit the company was making with us and demanded better conditions, they rejected our claims and we planned to leave all at time they had to deliver the projects and get paid. Nothing got delivered, they didn't get paid and just went out of business.
• zayan 4y ago
• zayan 4y ago
• JoeAltmaier 4y ago
  Restaurants still have a hard time hiring. Many operate with reduced schedules, and some have closed.
• rossdavidh 4y ago
  Lots of small companies have this, since they often don't have any crosstraining or internal documentation of processes. Once a person leaves (quit, died, sick, whatever) there is no one else who knows what they were doing or how it got done.
  • alecco 4y ago
    Perfectly preventable. Usually the problem is hot-potato management never makes sure the procedures and know-how are well documented. It's basically the same mentality when they either not backup or they never test the backups are working.
• jccalhoun 4y ago
  It seems like most of the stories here are really about businesses shutting down because people didn't treat their employees well.
• egberts1 4y ago
  As “the” rockstar programmer fresh outta high school who started “the credit card at the gas pump” business, the entrepreneur too got too greedy and stingy with the payout despite me helping hiring the best development team … in 1980. And I was paid $10,000/month (1981 dollars), the least of all sr. programmers. Platform was 8086, Motorola 6502, 16KB RAM, RS-488/RS-232, and assembly languages. Surely enough, we broke away and and many of us joined Gasboy, Inc. The budding star of a startup at many gas and oil conferences was then no more. Had numerous offers (due to my networking of my business card being handed out at conference). Them recruiters were all initially shocked at my price tag but insisted then. I instead went into 1980s primordial cybersecurity and never looked back. 40 years later, there is at least 6 of those credit card paypoints at every gas stations throughout the world. And I am glad I did. I liked what I contributed to the safety of the computing world. Off topic: And most designers are still an idiot, security-wise.
• schnevets 4y ago
  It's not quite "dying", but there is a pattern that is so obvious it's confounding: > Small group of experts form Boutique Consultancy focused on specific technology (Cloud, SaaS Product, Framework, Open-source tool, etc.); Headcount = ~10 employees > Experts start making referrals and mentoring analysts in specific technology; Slight diversification in offerings; Headcount = ~100 employees > Boutique Consultancy makes major splash with huge client; Hire like crazy; Maybe accept additional investment; Headcount = ~300 employees > Boutique Consultancy gets acquired by Global Service and Consulting Provider; Assurance that branding and leadership will remain; Buyers interested in "synergy deals"; Headcount = ~300 employees in +100,000 employee network > Original experts and early employees take acquisition payouts and find/found new Boutique Consultancies; Buyers satisfied with acquired brand and customer base; Headcount = ~100 employees
• conductr 4y ago
  Not really notable but I know of this impacting local businesses in my area due to the labor shortage * nursery where I buy plants couldn’t find laborers over this past spring/summer and decided to close up shop. It was a pretty big operation as they go. Owner was near retirement age and the land is probably worth 10x the business at this point so just decided to call it quits because he couldn’t do the basic stuff of caring for plants/moving them around. * dog boarding/kennels/grooming seems to be hit very hard on labor shortage. The place I board our pets is at 50% capacity due to labor shortages, probably a downward spiral * several/most restaurants in downtown area never reopened because of no staff * I work for a healthcare company and we actually have nursing homes temporarily closed as mentioned as an example. We almost had to close a few of our ICUs with ventilators during peak Covid because we had no staff. In some cases, FEMA nurses actually came in to help keep it open. Anything with a mandated staffing ratio is challenging at the moment. It’s improving as Covid cases improve though.
• screye 4y ago
  > if half the staff left a nursing home, it would be forced to shut down This is only true when the rank and file employees have a relationship with the clients. National nursing home chains will be just fine if they churn through 50% of their staff. A local mom-n-pop business that runs because each of the employees has a strong relationship with the entire community will not survive the damage to reputation. Rank and file programmers are replaceable. On the other hand, an artistic endeavor without the creative source will fail (see new Metal Gear games or new Star wars movies). A field that needs technical breakthroughs will fail unless you have the 1 of the 10 people capable of making that breakthrough happen. A small-ish company that relies solely on visionaries as their identity will die without the visionary (Jobs 1.0) I can't think of many other companies where the rank-n-file are not replaceable. Slow death is always possible, but the above scenarios practically guarantee failure.
• colordrops 4y ago
  Not really that worthy of note, but I worked at a small startup in SF in 2014 with 2 founders and 3 employees. We all quit within 2 days. It was uncoordinated and coincidental. The founders were flabbergasted. I spoke with the others and the reasoning was the same. We were all very seasoned senior engineers, but the founders didn't trust us and handed us kanban tickets like short order cooks because they had PhDs. It was demoralizing.
  • mdcds 4y ago
    did the company survive?
    • colordrops 4y ago
      Not really. The founders got acquihired. Basically a face saving operation. The company and product did not go with them so it was just a fancy hiring process.
  • samorozco 4y ago
    I have a very similar story. Small startup, 6 developers, 4 other employees and 2 founds. They fired an employee for lack of output and then all but 1 developer left the company.