[HN Gopher] Eight hundred employees resign after WhiteHat Jr ask...
___________________________________________________________________
Eight hundred employees resign after WhiteHat Jr asks them to work
from office
Author : randycupertino
Score : 337 points
Date : 2022-05-14 16:41 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (atechdaily.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (atechdaily.com)
| gkoberger wrote:
| I 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-employ...
|
| This isn't a case of workers preferring WFH over the office; it's
| a sneaky layoff.
| searchableguy wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| I'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.
| Tepix wrote:
| Apps 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.
| __B_B__ wrote:
| It'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.
| toshk wrote:
| From personal experience teaching a small kid that does
| really well one on one learning. But with paper absolutely
| nothing.
|
| One of the big benefits is of computers vs books: being
| able to directly give automated feedback.
|
| Pronounce or type a word wrong, the computer instantly
| gives you specific feedback. If you do assignments on paper
| teachers checks it much further away from the point the
| cognitive effort has been applied. There is a much less
| direct feedback loop.
|
| Especially for learning how to read a computer can give
| feedback whereas kids can go through texts not fully
| understanding, or misreading words without any correction.
|
| Of course one on one is in some ways much more effective.
| But there are time constraints.
|
| To automate certain things computer programs are most time
| effective. Just have to check in to make sure they are
| taking their work seriously.
|
| It's also harder to pretend to be studying with a computer
| nradov wrote:
| With computerized education courses, kids tend to just
| click through the answers as quickly as possible without
| really engaging with the material. Only a human teacher
| can tell whether the student is really engaged and
| learning.
|
| Computerized training only really works for older
| students who are already highly motivated to learn a
| particular skill.
| emteycz wrote:
| Absolutely disagree.
|
| Kids do that when they're forced to it. Anybody would do
| that.
|
| Kids who are interested in what they're learning about
| won't do that.
|
| Perhaps we shouldn't expect people (kids or not) to do so
| much irrelevant stuff.
| codedokode wrote:
| The problem with computers is that they can point you at
| a mistake, but they cannot understand why you made this
| mistake and explain the part that you didn't know.
| indigochill wrote:
| > At best a computer is going to be like a book v2
|
| Yes, I agree, but I think you underestimate just how much
| power v2 can bring to books.
|
| Computers make interactive media relatively easy to create.
| Interactivity provides a literal new dimension to the
| information you can convey that makes some things easier
| and faster to understand than if you were to read them from
| a book. As a student, you can be handed a live simulation
| and experiment with it to "grow" an intuition for the
| subject matter. Nicky Case's explainers are a prime example
| of this in action.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| it would appear that you've forgotten the key power of a
| human in education - adaptability.
|
| A teacher is able to see where a student is making a
| mistake, why that mistake is happening and what else
| might be going wrong. A computer is a supplement to that.
| It will never be a replacement.
| emteycz wrote:
| Where have you seen a teacher adapt to a student? I have
| seen them screaming when kids don't do what the teacher
| expects (but doesn't properly explain). A computer would
| never do that.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| why are you assuming that all teachers are terrible?
|
| In over 15 years of receiving an education, i met several
| great teachers and a few excellent ones.
| emteycz wrote:
| Because I've never seen a good one, and even if they
| exist, there's no guarantee that a particular child will
| have a good teacher. Half of them are below average, and
| we both know how incredibly bad is the average.
| pseudostem wrote:
| As someone who is approaching mid 40s and has gone back to
| college, I would say I disagree with you.
|
| Ed tech is a problem yes, because you get only 1 kind of
| content on a single platform. But in general, computers
| have given me access to so much more than a singular human
| interaction could.
|
| I'll use an example (real one). "Linear Algebra" search
| right here on HN yields a few results and I especially
| liked the animated web book. Gilbert Strang's videos are
| well... Gilbert Strang's videos. 3blue1brown throws a
| fantastic perspective. Pavel Grinfeld is brilliant too.
|
| I have so many options now, which didn't exist in 1995. And
| each of them is so different and great in its own way.
| jfengel wrote:
| When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
|
| If you ask techies to describe education, it consists of
| memorizing trivia. And that fits perfectly well into
| computerized education.
|
| It doesn't help that so many school systems do in fact look
| at it that way. That's why we've gotten more and more
| standardized testing. They want to know they're getting
| value for money, so they define value in ways they can
| measure cheaply.
| dv_dt wrote:
| If a company is hemorrhaging money, why not eliminate some
| office leases and keep more people remote? Maybe that comes
| later after the self-layoff selection?
| searchableguy wrote:
| Remote work at scale doesn't work well in India due to
| general distrust.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Is America known for our deep and abiding inherent trust of
| our fellow countrymen? (I don't believe we're known for
| that, yet remote working works here, at least to a very
| large degree.)
| gomox wrote:
| When compared to most western cultures other than Saxons
| and Scandinavians, I would say yes, very much so.
| frostburg wrote:
| I'm always suspicious of post-hoc cultural explanations,
| but I think that the argument would be that you don't
| trust other americans to not shoot you, but you generally
| trust them to work.
| mahastore wrote:
| is this supposed to be funny?
| pyinstallwoes wrote:
| This is a terrible analogy.
| frostburg wrote:
| Yes, hence me stating that I don't actually believe in
| that line of explanation.
| aksss wrote:
| Wow, I would say the reverse insomuch as I don't trust
| the majority of my fellow random Americans, without
| adequate oversight, to work a) hard and b) with detailed
| compliance to process and procedure. I absolutely trust
| the majority of my fellow random Americans to not shoot
| me, and I live in a state with constitutional concealed
| carry and a city where it's not abnormal to see open
| carry.
| xen2xen1 wrote:
| I live in a small town in a state where you don't even
| need a gun permit, guns of all kinds are very popular,
| and I have no fear of being shot. That may have only been
| a cheap side part to of your comment, but, dang.
| yao420 wrote:
| On the other hand I'm in Texas and after passing the open
| carry we've seen a huge rise in gun violence related to
| road rage. The H-E-B grocery store near me had murder
| happen because someone 'stole' the parking of an angry
| person with a gun.
|
| https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2022/04/12/u
| s/r...
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Generally speaking (though that is changing somewhat)
| American's are known to be Workaolics, taking fewer
| vacation days, working more hours, etc etc etc.
|
| I dont know about trust per say, but there is I think
| more of social resistance to co-workers who would be
| perceived as "not pulling their weight", which I think
| would contribute to work from home success here
|
| That said I can not speak to the culture in India so it
| may be the same there, no idea
| endominus wrote:
| In comparison to some other places I've been to, yes,
| absolutely. There is a much, much greater assumption in
| the US that the person you're talking to is actually
| being honest with you than there is in some other
| countries. As an example, take the "dishonest used car
| salesman" stock character - in many other places, that is
| the _default_ expected behavior of anyone selling you
| anything. Like going to a bazaar; the price you get will
| be an absolute rip-off, and you are expected to know this
| and argue with the store owner. That lack of trust feeds
| into all levels of a society. Americans might have some
| high-level trust issues regarding political differences,
| but nothing like the bone-deep understanding that
| everyone outside of your family or tribe is actively and
| constantly trying to deceive, manipulate, and take
| advantage of you that people who grew up in real low-
| trust societies have ingrained in themselves. (exceptions
| might be people growing up in low-trust enclaves within
| the greater US society - as I understand it, this is part
| of the reason why some inner city communities struggle to
| cohere and advocate for themselves effectively, under the
| term "crabs in a bucket syndrome"). Stuff like the
| Theranos revelations or that a high percentage of
| programming jobs applicants can't actually program is
| shocking to most Americans; it's par for the course in
| some of the places I've lived.
| imbnwa wrote:
| "Stuff like the Theranos revelations or that a high
| percentage of programming jobs applicants can't actually
| program is shocking to most Americans; it's par for the
| course in some of the places I've lived."
|
| I've only been in this industry six years at your average
| Java Spring SCRUM shop but I also find myself shocking at
| the claim 'a high percentage of programming jobs
| applicants can't actually program', like what do we mean
| when this gets said?
| Sevii wrote:
| They can't do fizzbuzz in an interview.
| imbnwa wrote:
| This raises the question of what measure between Fizz
| Buzz and 'invert a binary tree' are more accurate of day-
| to-day work
| lcvw wrote:
| That they legitimately have no idea how to write a
| computer program.
|
| My first job was at a company which had a poor interview
| process. Hire fast fire fast right?
|
| 1. One programmer spent nine month trying to implement a
| simple Java app that read data from a message queue,
| called a library, then wrote data to a message queue.
| There was an example program available that did the same
| thing but reading/writing to files. When he was fired
| deleted his code, then I implemented the app in one week,
| I had only 6 months full time experience, he claimed to
| have 30 years.
|
| 2. Another programmer ignores all directions and spent 6
| months implementing a library that did the EXACT opposite
| of what the customer asked for. When he was fired we had
| to rewrite his entire code base because it was so
| convoluted and poorly written. In the post-mortem we
| concluded it would have been better to have just deleted
| his code base as well when he left. He claimed to have
| over 10 years experience.
|
| 3. Several programmers were hired for C programming jobs
| and didn't know how to use basic memory and string
| functions like malloc and free.
|
| 4. One programmer was so obsessed with functional
| programming that he verbally abused other staff members
| for writing C code (this was required by management and
| the customer). When he was forced to write C he wrote his
| code as if it were lisp through massive abuse of macros.
| When he was fired his code had to be deleted.
|
| 5. Many programmers required large amounts of help with
| simple tasks. Operating on a Linux servers, using make
| files, etc. this was not such a problem since they came
| it at a Junior level, but it took massive amounts of
| time.
|
| 6. A programmer who could not touch type, but typed keys
| one at a time with only his index fingers.
|
| 7. A programmer who came to design meetings asking the
| same questions every week, and talking about running into
| the same problem every stand up. We would work with him
| to unblock him, then he would come back and say he had
| the same problem again. It was maddening and when he was
| fired we had to delete his code.
|
| Just some examples (in the US btw). I'm not a huge fan of
| fizz buzz either, but you need some sort of test or you
| will get a lot of people who have done some tutorials and
| think they can go be a programmer now.
| deadbunny wrote:
| > A programmer who could not touch type, but typed keys
| one at a time with only his index fingers.
|
| This seems pretty arbitrary.
| lcvw wrote:
| It is arbitrary. But he worked really slow. And it stood
| out to me that someone who claimed to have been doing
| this for years wouldn't have muscle memory yet. It was
| one of the things that made me think he had lied on his
| resume, but I didn't judge him for it until he had
| undeniably proved that he wasn't going to be productive.
| sokoloff wrote:
| The applicant who can't program often (hopefully/ideally)
| stays an applicant for a long time and many applications.
| The applicant who can is more likely to be hired.
|
| It's no surprise that the average applicant's skills are
| relatively weak.
| endominus wrote:
| That is one explanation for the phenomenon, but I was
| actually referring to the sibling comment's note about
| many applicants being unable to code fizzbuzz during on-
| site interviews (if you haven't read it, then I encourage
| you to read through the blog post that first, I think,
| brought the issue to many people's attention;
| https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-
| program/).
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| I don't buy the thing about programmer applicants being
| unable to program. Easiest thing to screen out in the
| world. Fizzbuzz and that's it. I think it's mostly
| American companies pretending to be victims, particularly
| American companies that are run by people who can't
| program. Like tptacek saying it takes like two years to
| get someone out of a company who can't program, like he
| has to be managed into a weird office first, then like
| all this massaging and passive actions to like put a
| bubble around him, because you can't fire anybody ever.
|
| In the government maybe, but in corporations you can get
| yourself fired in two seconds, not two years, two
| seconds. "Fuck you" "you're fired!!!" That's it. Two
| seconds. The whole thing is being on the knife's edge to
| being fired, they keep you there and move you with that
| knife's edge. That's the boss's point of contact with
| you, exactly like a mugger. They have no idea what
| happens if you're fired! No idea! No idea about the
| Turkish prison system, no idea about government
| assistance, no idea, they carefully protect themselves
| and tell people not to tell them.
|
| Also keep in mind I was deliberately sabotaged in my
| curriculum, the whole standing up to torture thing I talk
| about if you read my comments, so if an interviewer asks
| where I worked in April 2009 I'm like, "There's no April
| 2009. Is that a reference to the Gregorian Calendar?"
|
| So keep in mind, with my harsh words, I watched the
| shitshow from the cheapest seat.
| NullPrefix wrote:
| Mate, this sounds like a bit of a rant with some missing
| details. Do you want to make a blogpost or something?
| sokoloff wrote:
| What force do you think prevents unqualified people from
| _applying_ for high-paying jobs?
|
| I had a ten-year experienced candidate unable to _write a
| function to sum an array of integers_. Any language he
| wanted. Wasn't that he didn't consider overflow or
| something like that. Just couldn't get started at all. I
| have no idea what he was doing for 10 years, but I gave
| him something easier than fizzbuzz and he blew it. If
| you've interviewed 100 applicants and never come across
| someone who couldn't fizzbuzz, I think you've experienced
| well above the average.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| Get applicants with emails like @google.com,
| @facebook.com, @harvard.edu, that's an easy filter.
| Surely you, Jim Sokoloff I believe your name is, are not
| trying to find a perfect deal, at the bottom of the
| barrel, and pay an insulting wage, right?
|
| Can you do fizzbuzz yourself? Write that email filter
| yourself, there's a fizzbuzz for you right there.
| saagarjha wrote:
| You should really expand your hiring if your filter is
| solely someone else's.
| searchableguy wrote:
| I don't have any insight on the culture side of US and I
| will refrain from making any conclusions.
|
| So let's take culture aside, you have to consider power
| imbalance between workers in both of those countries.
|
| In India, 10 people will line up to take your job at a
| moment's notice regardless of the city and conditions.
|
| Management won't begrudgingly agree to remote work if
| they have options and distrust workers (usually the case
| here).
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Depends on whether or not office leases or salaries are the
| bigger expense.
| dv_dt wrote:
| Or one could plan to cut some of both and come out of it
| with a leaner opex profile that keeps more human capacity.
| [deleted]
| davidgerard wrote:
| cheap reblog of https://inc42.com/buzz/exclusive-
| over-800-whitehat-jr-employ...
| vishnugupta wrote:
| Schools are reopening this week in India. These online coaching
| classes saw big growth last two years but now I expect a massive
| subscriber churn.
| shreyshnaccount wrote:
| Schools have been open for months, atleast in the Delhi region
| rossdavidh wrote:
| This 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 wrote:
| what is the reason for churn?
| vishnugupta wrote:
| Online 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.
| samstave wrote:
| This is why America is doomed internally.. we cant even
| have a discussion such as this, regarding what kids are
| busy doing studying.
|
| I mean the entire dialogue around education from a cultural
| perspective is completely void in the US.
| sitkack wrote:
| We don't educate, we school.
| [deleted]
| SmartestUnknown wrote:
| God! 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-p...
|
| [2]
| https://www.reddit.com/r/india/search?q=pradeep+poonia&restr...
| zerop wrote:
| White hat is actually grey.
| SrslyJosh wrote:
| > As the Covid situation has improved
|
| LOL, sure.
| nikolay wrote:
| I 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.
| happy-go-lucky wrote:
| Seems 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.
| [deleted]
| ldjkfkdsjnv wrote:
| I 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.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| It 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.
| tyrfing wrote:
| The 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!
| [deleted]
| dubswithus wrote:
| Is this going to impact operations?
| deadalus wrote:
| Came across this article about Whitehat Jr, its hilarious :
| https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/who-wolf-gupta-story-b...
|
| They created a fictional character 'WOLF GUPTA' to promote their
| brand.
| kburman wrote:
| Creating 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 wrote:
| Reminds me of the fictional highschool prodigy musician "Ling
| Ling" that the "Ling Ling 40hrs" subreddit created
| simonh wrote:
| Was anyone ever threatened with legal action for saying Ling
| Ling was a fictional character?
| ipnon wrote:
| You will never see an "Office Space" type movie for remote
| workers.
| conradfr wrote:
| I guess there was the Mythic Quest Quarantine episode.
| krasin wrote:
| I 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.
| 0des wrote:
| You going to burn down your living room?
| smcl wrote:
| I think the equivalent would be running "TRUNCATE TABLE..."
| on a bunch of production data and deleting the backups
| 1123581321 wrote:
| I've been performing gangland style murders of my own printers
| for decades.
| mattkevan wrote:
| Ha, 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 wrote:
| When 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.
| acheron wrote:
| Damn it feels good to be a gangsta
| egberts1 wrote:
| but of course, how else are they going to do a layoff on an
| extremely short notice without all the legalese and laws of
| layoff.
| Imnimo wrote:
| I know this has nothing to do with the story, but I cannot get
| over how close this company name is to Weenie Hut Junior.
| [deleted]
| ghoomketu wrote:
| For 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.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Yes, 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.
| breitling wrote:
| Haven't heard from Pradeep in a while. Do you know how all
| those cases progressed?
| amitheonlyone wrote:
| Last news I saw was that Whitehat Jr withdrew their case
| samstave wrote:
| Uhm.... if you call yourself "whitehat jr"... I auto dont trust
| you.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| My brain keeps parsing that as a mashup of "Whitecastle" and
| "Carls, Jr."
| mbostleman wrote:
| Ah the ever elusive causation shell game.
| ftyhbhyjnjk wrote:
| bin_bash wrote:
| WhiteHat Jr is a coding school in India
| drieddust wrote:
| Watch 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.
| sonicggg wrote:
| Can 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 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| What action can they threaten that's worse than just firing
| the employees?
| mc4ndr3 wrote:
| If education can work online, why not the makers of online
| education? Sounds like a company that doesn't believe in their
| own product.
| matt_heimer wrote:
| They hired remote workers regardless of location and decided to
| give everyone a month to starting working from an office?
| geocrasher wrote:
| "This was a well-planned and managed layoff that WhiteHat Jr
| did," a former employee remarked.
|
| Indeed. Vicious, but well played.
| Afforess wrote:
| It's an old tactic, IBM used to do it all the time:
| https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/ibm-tells-its...
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Yep. One month to relocate cities? This isn't merely "drive 15
| minutes to the office".
| nanidin wrote:
| Yep, time to reconsider the resignations as constructive
| dismissal via the legal system.
| hedora wrote:
| Note 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 wrote:
| In Canada I think this could be a "constructive dismissal".
| I believe this may be a general common-law thing, but
| IANAL.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Would refusing to move be cause for termination? That's not
| a layoff, perhaps, at least in the eyes of the unemployment
| regulations?
| humanistbot wrote:
| Yes
| heroic wrote:
| This would be then termination with cause. Employment
| agreements generally state that employees can be required
| to work from any location as required by the employer.
| Refusal is then called breach of contract and hence
| termination without cause.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| According to the article they only have offices in India.
| I don't think welfare is that great there anyway. Nor
| worker protection laws.
| matsemann wrote:
| All my contracts have stated where the workplace is. Not
| the specific address, but on a city / region level. Then
| one part can't just change that.
| hansvm wrote:
| There are limits. If you sign up for a desk job in LA
| with no mention of travel and then get shuffled every day
| to Chicago, NYC, ... then it's unlikely the courts would
| agree that it was a termination with cause if the
| employee refused to cooperate. Here the courts might find
| that a month is insufficient notice, they might find that
| since the job started in the office there was always a
| reasonable expectation that the employees would have to
| return to the office, there might be jurisdictional
| questions, and who knows what else. Without a lot more
| details I'd hesitate to speculate as to the legal outcome
| in this case.
| bawolff wrote:
| As with all things, depends on where you live.
|
| IANAL - but for example, in canada, forcing employees to
| move,or even significantly increase their commute, is
| considered the same as unilaterally changing the
| employees pay, and cant be done without the employees
| consent.
| [deleted]
| irrational wrote:
| This is in India. Do they have the same unemployment laws
| in India?
| phpisthebest wrote:
| [Assuming US laws] In most states you can terminate
| employment due to "Changing of Terms and Conditions" and
| still get Unemployment. Of Course check your local state
| laws, but their is a prevailing myth that if you
| voluntarily quit you always forfeit unemployment, that is
| not true, it is harder for sure, however in a situation
| like this chances are you would win unemployment hearing
| azinman2 wrote:
| Is that true in India?
| searchableguy wrote:
| This is likely a general layoff. Edtech bubble in India has
| bursted. Many edtech are going through huge layoffs.
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