[HN Gopher] Thoughts on getting laid off after nine years at Twilio
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Thoughts on getting laid off after nine years at Twilio
Author : gregorymichael
Score : 97 points
Date : 2023-02-14 19:50 UTC (3 hours ago)
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| TobyTheDog123 wrote:
| [flagged]
| mrsuprawsm wrote:
| The guy worked there for 9 years. That's a really long time,
| longer than many posters here's entire careers (mine included),
| and longer than most of us will ever work at a given job. Of
| course he's going to be emotionally invested, and knocking him
| for this is a bit cruel.
|
| Not so long ago, your kids _would_ know you as someone who
| drives buses for the local bus company, delivers the post, or
| works down the mine.
| TobyTheDog123 wrote:
| This is fair take, but I do think there is an additional
| difference between being emotionally attached to your job,
| and the content of the post.
|
| I also think there's a big difference between a very high-
| visibility job like a bus-driver/mail-delivery-worker/mine-
| worker (where the labor is very accessible/visible to kids),
| and one in software engineering (my parents work with
| computers at some company?)
| tptacek wrote:
| Don't be an ass. He's referring to the way in which all kids
| see their parents as having a particular occupation. He's not
| saying that he built his career at Twilio at his daughter's
| expense.
| TobyTheDog123 wrote:
| I also don't think he built his career at his daughter's
| expense, I'm saying that the over-dramatization of the post
| leads to this even being something to call out, even when it
| shouldn't be.
|
| You can call me names all you like, but don't expect people
| to not question intent over a poorly-conceived sentence.
| tptacek wrote:
| You're right: what you wrote is poorly conceived. You can
| probably just delete it (or edit-clear it)! I'm an ass all
| the time; I'm not high-horsing you, but maybe we'd all just
| be better off if this whole subthread vanished.
| TobyTheDog123 wrote:
| No thanks, I stand by it regardless of what smarmy
| commenters like yourself think :)
| twawaaay wrote:
| I wonder if large companies recognise they are shitting in the
| pond they are floating in.
|
| As somebody with over quarter of century of experience managing
| and hiring people I notice how candidates change over time
| (trying to adjust for how I change myself). I notice people care
| less about the company they work for and, honestly, it is more
| and more difficult to find arguments against.
|
| This whole trend of optimising everything to the max without
| caring for people is going to create an employee base that is
| completely disillusioned about their role or prospects or what's
| their best strategy for life.
|
| When more and more people started changing jobs every year just
| to get an incremental raise without even bothering to get the
| raise at the company I worked for I thought this is shortsighted
| and it will backfire on them and it will teach them. Well, did
| not happen. It just became a new normal.
|
| I wonder what new things are going to pass as acceptable.
|
| Any company needs _some_ people who care about what they do. But
| these are in shorter and shorter supply every year, it seems.
|
| When you run a query on LinkedIn it will show you a list of
| candidates with their three last jobs. I noticed page after page
| after page everybody has their third last job starting 2020/2021.
| Meaning almost all seem to be spending less than a year on each
| of their jobs in past couple years. And these are all supposed to
| be _senior_ candidates.
|
| It is no way to have a productive employee base.
|
| You can pay people more to keep them at your company for a while
| longer, but there is very little you can do to overcome their
| inherent cynicism.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| > When you run a query on LinkedIn...
|
| > It is no way to have a productive employee base.
|
| Does it follow that LinkedIn's misleading statistics, to filter
| candidates, is also no way to build a productive employee base?
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| I don't see a reason to even report money being literally
| wasted in my current jobs.
|
| There is an unused cloud service burning money at one of my
| jobs. Tens of thousands kind of money. Make a case for me even
| bothering to tell someone about it.
|
| You can't.
| innomatics wrote:
| Ok I'll bite.
|
| If management discover that you knew about the wastage, and
| did nothing, then it can be said that you aren't acting in
| the best interest of the company. Possibly the opposite,
| meaning you'd be fired. So there's that.
|
| If there is a culture of apathy and zero oversight and you
| are 100% sure no will ever care to show that you knew about
| it, then I pity your situation. Not bothering to tell someone
| about the wastage it is perpetuating that culture. Eventually
| company will fail or at best struggle.
|
| I'm my experience it's nicer working at profitable companies
| where everyone is doing their best to help the company to
| profit. That doesn't mean your income is less important than
| company income. But you agree on the former, then do
| everything in your capability to help with the latter.
|
| If your still not convinced please consider the environment.
| Cloud services consume not insignificant physical resources.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| I feel like there's something weird going on in most companies
| above a certain size. I've worked at small companies with a
| wonderful culture and people put in lots of work to get a
| beautiful product shipped. But then when the company grows
| something changes and pushes those original passionate people
| out. Everyone else sees the passionate people get treated bad
| and react appropriately. Suddenly the large company carved its
| own soul out, and then wonders why its workers come empty.
|
| I would do all I could for a job that respected me as a human
| being. But it's gotten to the point where you can't trust
| anyone above you, no matter what they say. Doing well in a
| growing company means you have to get more and more cutthroat,
| so you're incentivized to try less and less.
| timr wrote:
| > This whole trend of optimising everything to the max without
| caring for people is going to create an employee base that is
| completely disillusioned about their role or prospects or
| what's their best strategy for life.
|
| While I get where you're coming from, it's a pretty big leap to
| go from what's happening now to "optimizing everything to the
| max". Twilio _tripled in size_ since the pandemic, and wasn
| 't/isn't profitable.
|
| The same arguments can be applied to most large tech companies.
| Things got insane, and lean times were inevitable. Given your
| 25+ years in the industry, you must realize that a huge number
| of younger engineers have never seen anything other than boom
| years.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| What are you referring to? We've gone through multiple cold
| cycles already. 2012 was a year of large layoffs and tough
| hiring, so was 2016/2017 and now 2022 for seemingly arbitrary
| reasons. Some engineers may have gone through these cycles
| without issue, but everyone was acutely aware of the layoffs
| when they were occurring and if you graduated during those
| times it was especially hard to find a job until the job
| market resumed.
| timr wrote:
| > 2012 was a year of large layoffs and tough hiring, so was
| 2016/2017 and now 2022 for seemingly arbitrary reasons.
|
| Everything is relative, I suppose, but those are the sorts
| of things a person might say if they've never actually seen
| a downturn.
|
| When I say "downturn", I mean: 2001. 2008. Compared to
| _that_ , 2012 was boom times. I was running a startup then,
| and hiring was a brutal competition. Maybe not compared to
| 2020, but again...that's not normal.
|
| In 2008 we were hiring Ivy-league grads into hourly
| customer support roles. Circa 2000, programmers with
| decades of experience were going on unemployment.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| I mean, 2001 and 2008 are all 'boom times' compared to
| the great depression and other periods of severe economic
| downturns if we want to be relative. I'm not sure that
| really matters though to a new grad that took 6+ months
| to find a job during one of the period of lean times I
| mentioned in my prior post however.
|
| It can always be worse, but that doesn't mean it's not
| bad.
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| In many positions, and at many points in your career, job
| hopping or the threat of it is the only real way to get any
| noticeable raise in actual compensation.
|
| Most companies just don't really reward loyalty anymore.
| hypothesis wrote:
| Is that what they call a "loyalty tax"?
| atemerev wrote:
| What is it, 80s? There is no "company loyalty" since 2000s,
| and soon there will be no "jobs" in general.
|
| We are all contractors and mercenaries now.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| Anyone staying more than a year is loyal in my book. And
| plenty stay more than a year.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| I very much take a mercenary approach to my jobs. At my very
| first software job I remember seeing a let go employee walking
| sadly through the office with a box of his possessions under
| one arm and a potted plant in the other. Since then I have
| brought nothing personal into work. If I'm let go I just have
| to grab my keys and I'm out.
|
| Work is something I do to earn money. If companies can replace
| people for less or cut them they do. Why be loyal in that kind
| of environment? I will work hard for the money they pay me
| though.
|
| At one point I got a job offer for 25% more than I currently
| made. I told my current director at the time that I got a job
| offer for 40% more. The director matched the imaginary 40% and
| I stayed for another year. This company habitually fired people
| for the most minor of productivity drop offs. They had just
| recently promoted me without providing a raise. You reap what
| you sow.
|
| I would love to work in an environment where I felt valued as a
| person but I have yet to find that. Remote work makes that even
| harder to find now.
| darkstar_16 wrote:
| Are you me ?
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Probably
| wg0 wrote:
| Here's a very controversial and bitter take. Aiming for
| maximum downvotes.
|
| It's only when you get fired, you start to see clearly and
| are able to come out of that flowery lala land of "we're a
| team", "we're a family" and all that misplaced rather abused
| analogies.
|
| It's just a commercial relationship rooted in generating
| profit (nothing wrong with that) for which have to
| collaborate with others. There's no team, there's no family.
|
| Any prose and poetry beides that is also about squeezing
| every ounce of profit. It is a for profit activity so at
| least be direct and honest about it and refrain from
| borrowing analogies from other social constructs.
| soundsgoodtome wrote:
| Can you even downvote on HN?
|
| E: For reference, I wouldn't downvote this because it ain't
| wrong.
| whstl wrote:
| I don't think it's controversial. Or bitter.
|
| Maybe I disagree about the part about "only when you get
| fired". To me it was enough seeing people getting fired, or
| having promotions postponed multiple times for no reason,
| or seeing a co-worker getting a verbal offers of a raise
| getting rescinded after they denied a job offer from
| another company, or having a C-level give me silent
| treatment when I disagreed with stupid release deadlines.
| goostavos wrote:
| >I would love to work in an environment where I felt valued
| as a person but I have yet to find that
|
| CAN that even exist? The mercenary approach seems to me the
| only one that doesn't fall prey to living in a fantasy about
| how things "Should" be -- there is only the way they are:
| it's a business relationship.
|
| Younger me thought otherwise. I was big into startup culture,
| enjoyed the comradery of working long hours, taking pride in
| this thing we were building together. Management was great.
| Hierarchy was minimal. I felt "valued"... And then we were
| all let go with a phone call. I remember just being like
| "...Ohhhhh. Right." It's a business relationship. That's as
| far as it goes. Anything else is an illusion.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| Not just a business relationship. A fundamentally
| adversarial business relationship.
|
| Every dollar paid to me is a dollar less for the
| founder/VCs.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| > > I would love to work in an environment where >
| > I felt valued as a person but I have yet to find that
| > CAN that even exist?
|
| Theoretically, yes.
|
| I would be very loyal to a place that helped me grow as a
| person with continuing education opportunities.
|
| I would also be very loyal to a place that had a solid
| balance of feature delivery versus vs. technical debt
| management. (I feel this benefits the company in the medium
| to long run as well, even moreso than the engineers)
|
| Those things would not necessarily be hard to achieve and
| would pay for themselves.
|
| Yet nobody actually seems to run their company that way.
|
| I guess the fundamental roadblock is that so many things in
| capitalism force you to think _only_ about the short game.
| Thinking even 12 months ahead is often viewed as sheer
| insanity.
|
| As an engineer, I understand the pressures faced by higher-
| ups. Keeping the lights on is expensive. Investors want
| results sooner or later. And higher-ups often don't have
| the engineering chops to understand why good engineering
| processes can be such force multipliers enabling faster
| delivery in 18, 24, 72, whatever months.
| whstl wrote:
| Sometimes it's not even about the short game of
| capitalism. I've seen multiple times undesired
| meaningless features being highly-prioritized without
| rhyme or reason because of hunches from some PO, because
| it was politically good internally for some product
| manager, or because the designer decided to do some
| redesign, and no higher-up wanted to intervene and check
| how important it was. When I saw that happening and _I_
| was "the higher up", I had to burn a lot of political
| capital to get the message from the team across. Modern
| software development is highly dysfunctional but we
| somehow refuse to tackle it.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| Modern software development is highly dysfunctional
| but we somehow refuse to tackle it.
|
| And it's just _unreasonably_ difficult.
|
| Sure, it's pretty rare to hear from anybody that their
| particular field runs smoothly.
|
| But our field. Man oh man. We know what tech debt is, and
| we know how it affects the time+effort required to
| achieve a certain velocity. And yet we spend more time
| shooting ourselves in the foot than doing anything else.
|
| Quite honestly I feel that the problem has become
| massively worse in the last decade, with everybody cargo-
| culting the highly complex architectures of FAANG
| companies when in reality much simpler alternatives would
| be an order of magnitude better.
| vsareto wrote:
| >CAN that even exist?
|
| Fully remote lifestyle business where everyone's workload
| is around 12-24 hours a week with $100k+ salaries. Everyone
| in the company makes around the same amount (CEO to
| junior). Full transparency for the accounting books. Excess
| profits get evenly distributed to everyone. No investors to
| answer to. A job that gives enough time and money to do
| what you want in life.
|
| This is really only for people who are already good at
| something though.
| kungito wrote:
| At my first job our manager was fired around the time his
| partner died of cancer and he was left with 2 little kids. He
| was slacking but also they knew about the whole situation. He
| was there for over 10 years. That changed me forever
| wonderwonder wrote:
| That's really harsh. At the job I mentioned in the above
| they pip'd me because I delivered 8 points per week instead
| of 10 for 2 weeks right when COVID lockdown hit. They
| couldn't understand why the world melting down and my kids
| suddenly home schooling would have any affect on my
| productivity.
|
| Companies treat us as replaceable widgets. If widget A is
| broken just throw it away and use widget B. No reason to be
| loyal in that environment.
| nivenkos wrote:
| To the suits we're just a translation layer between the
| business requirements to deployed code. And they'll be
| happy to reduce the work to story points and neo-
| Taylorism, so they can try to treat each person as an
| interchangeable unit of production, and then minimise
| costs.
|
| In an era of trillon-dollar megacorps and multi-
| billionaire CEOs, Marx was ahead of his time:
|
| > He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only
| the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily
| acquired knack, that is required of him. [...] As
| privates of the industrial army they are placed under the
| command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants.
| Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of
| the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved
| by the machine, by the overlooker, and, above all, by the
| individual bourgeois manufacturer himself
| malfist wrote:
| I have a friend who spent 30 years working for a factory
| building aircraft for the military. One year, a new lead
| manager comes in and decides he wants everyone on the floor
| to have a college degree and fires my friend and the six
| other people there without college degrees.
|
| It really messed up my friend, he was really close to a
| comfortable retirement, but had to borrow against his 401k
| to make it through until he could get another job. He was
| the safety officer for the entire factory, 15+ years of
| experience doing that. Now he's too close to retirement age
| and no one will hire him, even though he's personally a
| long way from retirement.
|
| So now he's working a physically demanding job on the line
| making cars. All that experience and skills with safety?
| Junk.
|
| No company has loyalty to their employees. It's all about
| the next quarter.
| denimnerd42 wrote:
| accounting rules need to change such that employees are assets,
| not liabilities.
|
| https://hbr.org/2019/10/the-problem-with-accounting-for-empl...
| gedy wrote:
| My first two jobs out of college, were 14 years combined. End
| result was had to move away to work remote to afford a house.
| (Not SF either)
| fzeroracer wrote:
| We're seeing the consequences of this stuff. Productivity is
| going down and you have a bunch of your typical CEO-favored
| sites going on about quiet quitting, ghosted interviews,
| unthankful employees etc. To counter this issue rather than
| improving the workplace they're deciding to try and enforce
| productivity through spying on workers and forcing people back
| into the office.
|
| It's all a symptom of what you mentioned where CEOs, upper
| level management etc are all so thoroughly disconnected from
| the workforce that they make boneheaded and bad business
| decisions that destroy the business 3-5 years out. Though none
| of them get punished for it because of golden parachutes
| ensuring even the most failing CEO gets rewarded for destroying
| the company they were running.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I've worked at my same company for 10 years and I'm
| disillusioned. There's no real advancement and nowhere else
| seems any better.
| whstl wrote:
| Trust me, there is. But it requires the constant job-hopping
| and series of mind-numbing interviews everyone is doing.
| noddingham wrote:
| I don't understand how Twilio could need 8500 employees?
| Atlassian reports 8100 and I'd say they have a much larger and
| diverse body of work than Twilio. Am I being crass in thinking
| that this could have been avoided had they not grown headcount
| "like a rocket ship: straight up and to the right"?
| johncessna wrote:
| Since the author posted this, what's your goal with writing
| something like this?
| paulgb wrote:
| Does it need to have a goal? I found it to be a touching read
| and an often not-seen personal perspective on the ongoing
| layoffs.
| johncessna wrote:
| [flagged]
| mcphage wrote:
| Probably catharsis.
| thomasfromcdnjs wrote:
| Yeah, doesn't really say much.
| asaph wrote:
| As per https://layoffs.fyi/, Twilio laid off 1500 people on
| 2/13/2023, 17% of its workforce.
| julianeon wrote:
| Very lovely window into what it's like to work at a place for 9
| years, and then leave.
| throwaway675309 wrote:
| Sorry to hear about this, being let go is always a demoralizing
| experience, but I just can't identify with this type of
| histrionic response towards being laid off at a company. It's not
| like you're losing a loved one, and if you properly built up your
| friendships with your coworkers, they'll still be meaningful
| relationships even after you're gone. All the lessons and skills
| that you acquired are still persistent as well.
|
| There must be some kind of cult of personality phenomenon that
| applies to companies as well as people. I hope that the one good
| takeaway for this person is that unless you're a majority
| stakeholder or have ownership in the company, one should learn to
| be detached about where your paycheck comes from.
| haswell wrote:
| Greg's "Devs and Depression" talk many years back was a light in
| the middle of a very dark period of time in my life.
|
| Having followed some of Greg's work when I was doing developer
| relations, this particular post hit me closer to home than most,
| and is just another reminder of the caliber of people impacted by
| these cuts.
|
| When I voluntarily left my job last year to refocus on my mental
| health for awhile, it was one of the harder decisions to make and
| I was an emotional wreck throughout the process. Having this
| happen suddenly is something I'm grateful I haven't yet
| experienced. Posts like this are a good reminder of just how
| personal many of these layoffs are for people, and I have nothing
| but empathy for everyone going through this right now.
| e2e4 wrote:
| https://youtu.be/CausE8Sc8Uc
| danesparza wrote:
| Why in the world would Twilio take somebody who is this loyal to
| their culture and put them out on their ear?
|
| This person was a true believer. They stuck with the company for
| 9 YEARS.
|
| If you want to shift the company, then do that -- and take your
| true believers WITH YOU.
|
| This isn't leadership on Twilio's part. This is a scared company.
| They aren't making smart decisions. They're just cowing to
| investors.
| znpy wrote:
| > They're just cowing to investors.
|
| That's what company do... keep the investors happy.
|
| That's also why some companies underline at every possible
| occasion that they are bootstrapped (ie: they've grown
| organically without investments from vc firms or similar).
| giardini wrote:
| I need a break: I read this as
|
| _" Thoughts on getting laid after nine years at Twilio..."_
|
| and my first though was "...and I thought _my_ job was bad! "
| vertis wrote:
| One thing I recommend in this situation is forming alumni groups
| if they don't already exist. Regardless of whether it's layoffs
| or through just reaching the end of your journey it's a great
| time to form and/or retain your community.
|
| I'm part of several alumni groups on slack and they continue to
| be one of the most important networks for all kinds of
| opportunities. Way way better than Linked In.
|
| Essentially all the trust benefits and social capital of being
| part of the corporate tribe continue beyond the end of
| employment.
|
| Edit: fix really long sentence
| cableshaft wrote:
| Yeah, this is a good idea. There's one guy at my previous job
| that invites all former coworkers to hang out at a bar a couple
| times a year, and we get together and catch up. Not too many,
| just about 10 people end up showing up, but it's enough. I
| haven't used it for a new job yet, although it did get me an
| interview.
| busterarm wrote:
| I can't imagine working for so long at a place burning huge piles
| of cash every quarter. Looking for the exit is something I'd have
| done at least 5 years ago.
| rybosworld wrote:
| I think it's awesome that some people enjoy their work and love
| their jobs.
|
| That said, if you aren't an owner of the company then I think
| it's unhealthy to be emotionally invested.
|
| In my last job, I had received a competing offer and informed my
| boss that I would rather not leave but that this other offer was
| too financially good for me to ignore. My boss responded by
| beating the other offer and I stayed there for about five more
| years.
|
| I later admitted to him that I felt guilt about leveraging an
| offer in this way. He said something that really stuck with me:
| "You've got to put yourself first".
|
| In retrospect, the thing that _actually_ stuck with me is that I
| 'd gleamed into the mind of upper management. That is, they are
| putting themselves first, and so should you.
| qup wrote:
| You gotta look out for #1, because nobody else will.
| maccard wrote:
| > "You've got to put yourself first".
|
| This doesn't mean "take the highest offer", it means putting
| yourself first. In your situation, going back to your boss was
| clearly an ask to stay because that was what you wanted. It's
| possible to be comfortable and content with your work and your
| job, and to prioritize that over chasing more money too.
| ravenstine wrote:
| While I totally agree, I can't blame people for getting
| emotionally invested because today's companies _hammer_ that
| corporate propaganda into everyone 's heads all the time. There
| are good intentions, but it's manipulative in the same way that
| a flaky boyfriend or girlfriend can lead you on even though
| they're not truly serious or committed. In the cast of
| corporatism, the sentimentality is directed toward a group of
| disparate individuals with an overlapping albeit replaceable
| goal. The best thing for everyone is to see it for what it is,
| not assume malice, and keep a safe distance.
| znpy wrote:
| Story time: many moons ago i was in the sane situation, and
| decided to stay because i loved the team and had a very good
| work relationship with my boss/team leader... despite the
| company being kind of a circus on fire.
|
| What I didn't know was that the company that was trying to hire
| me was also in contact with my boss/team leader, which actually
| accepted the offer and left.
|
| We still have a good relationship and I still consider him a
| friend (hope it's the same for him) and we meet from time to
| time for a beer with other former colleagues.
|
| Needless to say, that was a very formative experience.
| vlunkr wrote:
| > unhealthy to be emotionally invested.
|
| I used to agree with this, but I've changed my tune recently.
| Working 8 hours a day on something you're not emotionally
| invested in for years is incredibly depressing and puts you at
| risk of burn out. My more nuanced opinion is that you need to
| find the right pieces of the company to be invested in. I can
| take pride in the quality of the code, in trying to help out my
| co-workers, etc.
| twblalock wrote:
| > That is, they are putting themselves first, and so should
| you.
|
| Another point to make is, it's possible to know this, put
| yourself first, _and_ still love your job.
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| I've always been impressed with upper management at my current
| company, and I don't believe any of them have that mindset. My
| wife broke her leg a couple weeks ago, and we have a 3 month
| old baby and a 4 year old. I had just started working again
| after taking paternity leave. I've been a rather poor employee
| the last several weeks, and will continue to be for a while.
| Middle management is stressed out about schedules and stressing
| me out, while the word from upper management has been
| consistently clear: you've always gone the extra mile for the
| company, so let the company do the same for you. Focus on
| taking care of your family and don't worry about work.
| andonisus wrote:
| I see it like this: it is my work. It is my name that goes on
| the CR, on the commit, on the documentation, etc. Why shouldn't
| I take as much pride and genuinely care about it as much as I
| can? At the end of it all, it is my effort, and I will give he
| best effort I can.
|
| I know I'm speaking about effort, and you're speaking about
| becoming emotionally invested, but the latter is a natural
| manifestation of of the former; the emotional investment arises
| because of the effort I put forth.
| tptacek wrote:
| This is one of those things that makes sense in the airless
| vacuum of a message board that has no connection to ordinary
| life; the mythical "touchless grass" as the tweeters say. In
| reality, people in all walks of life form deep emotional
| attachments to their jobs. Plant closures disrupt the
| identities of entire cities. People are emotionally attached to
| jobs as checkout clerks. Hit songs have been written about the
| phenomenon. You can't just tell people not to have human
| connections to their work. It's like telling Glen Campbell that
| the Wichita Lineman doesn't own enough of Southwestern Bell to
| be identifying himself as such.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> You can 't just tell people not to have human connections
| to their work._
|
| In my case, it has been required.
|
| I'm very fortunate, to have worked for 27 years, for a
| company that had many, _many_ faults, but always treated
| their workers as if their career at the company was a
| critical factor.
|
| That's because it was a "classic" Japanese company.
|
| The best managers that I had, were Japanese (including one
| that eventually because the Chairman of the Board). The worst
| ones -by a large margin- were the Americans.
|
| The Americans had very little Integrity. They also tended to
| be casually dishonest, in a jaw-dropping way.
|
| Eventually, my team was dissolved, and I was laid off. I got
| a year's severance (It was capped -by the Americans,
| otherwise, it would have been more). My manager flew in from
| Japan, to tell me. He was next on the chopping block,
| himself.
|
| Integrity is important, and very, very rare.
|
| I like to feel as if I demonstrated it, in my own management.
| My employees seemed to agree.
|
| If I talk about it here, I tend to be met with some fairly
| sneering, insulting responses.
| perfecthjrjth wrote:
| Integrity as a virtue is given less weight in almost all
| business transactions, these days.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| If you wander around the Diamond District, in NYC, you'll
| see all these skinny little guys, in rumpled suits,
| walking around; very often, accompanied by a much larger
| guy, in a more fitted suit.
|
| These chaps can have millions of dollars' worth of
| diamonds in their pockets, and they routinely exchange
| them on a handshake basis.
|
| Integrity has worked for them for a long, long time.
|
| It's not dead. It's just resting. Probably pining for the
| Fjords.
| lkrubner wrote:
| In his autobiography Akio Morita (founder at Sony) tells a
| story in the 1960s, they'd hired an American salesman, who
| had done very well for them for many years, but then the
| guy thought he could make better money elsewhere, so he
| changed jobs. The next year they were all at a big
| electronics conference in Las Vegas, and Akio Morita was
| there talking up Sony's latest products, and this American
| sales guy walks up to them to say hello. Akio Morita, and
| the rest of the Japanese team, thought perhaps the American
| would have a sense of shame and so would try to avoid them,
| but instead the guy walked up and was very friendly and
| chatted with them awhile. Afterwards Akio Morita realized
| that the American saw nothing shameful in leaving Sony for
| some other company that was paying better. It was a bit of
| a shock for Akio Morita. He had initially thought of
| America as a paradise for managers, because they could fire
| a worker whenever they wanted to, but that incident with
| the salesman caused Akio Morita to see the other side of
| it, that a worker could quit at any time, and so Akio
| Morita developed doubts about the American system.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I remember when a color scientist that we worked with
| (she was Japanese), left the company, and joined a direct
| competitor.
|
| Her name was struck from the lists. It's as if she was
| never there.
|
| Damn good at her job. I suspect that the "classic
| Japanese" culture of our company didn't give her the
| opportunities that the more modern company she joined,
| would.
|
| I'm not giving names, but both companies are household
| names.
| throwaway675309 wrote:
| I'd agree with what you're saying, although I think it highly
| is dependent upon the personality and independence level of
| the individual. Even at jobs where I found the work
| interesting, I've never had the slightest emotional
| attachment to the company. I'm vastly more interested in
| working on my own projects and hobbies and after putting in
| the requisite 7-8 hours in a day I completely switch off.
|
| It's the same for the ostensible loyalty towards ones
| hometown. I've been just as comfortable living in China as I
| have back in the states.
|
| I have no loyalty to abstractions like symbols, countries or
| companies. Loyalty is reserved for friends and my family.
| zerr wrote:
| 2 hours notice - How do you handover the work? Or is there
| nothing to handover?
| sensitivefrost wrote:
| Twilio fired 17% of its staff. There was no handover.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I got 0 hours notice -that's fairly common, in the US. Usually,
| you aren't even allowed to go to your desk, and collect your
| stuff. You have to schedule an appointment to come back, after
| work hours, and be escorted there by a security guard.
|
| I (and my team) already knew it was coming. The writing was on
| the wall, and we had our affairs in order. My Japanese manager
| appreciated it. I think the American HR manager was a bit
| disappointed that there wasn't much of an opportunity for the
| casual bullying and shaming that they do, in these
| circumstances. The last HR manager was OK. I had zero respect
| for his predecessor.
|
| HR had the highest turnover of any department in the company. I
| tended to have a somewhat adversarial relationship with most of
| the HR managers, but the one that I respected most was fired in
| an explosion, more than twenty years ago, and now manages a
| much more prestigious organization. I sincerely wish her well,
| and she has my respect; little as I'm sure that means to her.
|
| In Marketing and Sales organizations, it's common for people to
| be walked out the door, immediately after handing in their
| resignation.
| akmarinov wrote:
| Who cares? You don't work there anymore. Not your problem.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| I have never seen a handover being very useful. Nobody has time
| to receive the handover and if the system is not a total mess,
| other people will get up to speed quickly as needed. Every time
| I have seen somebody leave or being laid off, things just moved
| on without much problem.
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| Here's the thing I've learned lately from friends who have
| survived layoffs: handover often doesn't happen.
|
| The company terminates access effective immediately (maybe with
| gardening leave) for security reasons.
|
| The immediate loss of institutional knowledge causes fucking
| havoc across the board.
|
| So some people will be taken back on as contractors for a while
| at extremely expensive rates.
|
| This also means there's a weird incentive to start hoarding
| knowledge if you suspect layoffs are coming down the pipe...
| nivenkos wrote:
| And then more good people leave too, as they're more willing
| to accept other offers.
| paradox460 wrote:
| This happened to me. Was the sole developer on a certain
| service. Other engineers would use the service at the
| company, but no one else really wanted to get into it and
| work on it.
|
| Was working on fixing an issue one morning, got roped into a
| meeting, and escorted from the building. Next week, saw an
| email from a coworker asking how to do something with the
| service. Told him, politely (don't burn bridges) that I
| didn't work there anymore and wasn't interested in helping
| that company without payment. Yeah, it might be thought of
| that I hung him out to dry, but that wasn't my intent. I just
| won't work for free, particularly when I was booted without
| much chance to get my affairs sorted
| fzeroracer wrote:
| This happens all the time and the downstream effects of
| hazardous layoffs are often not seen or felt until Jim the
| resident container expert isn't around to restart the
| critical containers that all of your other services need, so
| you start losing a lot of money and time as John the
| replacement scrambles to figure out how the system works and
| what to do.
|
| Or they get hired back as a contractor for 3x-4x the hourly
| wage as you mentioned.
| librish wrote:
| Reading the responses to some of these posts it feels like the
| pendulum has swung too far in the other direction in the "the
| company is not your family" discussion.
|
| Yes, if you expect corporate America to always treat you fairly
| you're going to end up disappointed. But spending _9_ years at a
| place and not even giving a little bit of yourself to the company
| seems even worse.
|
| It's OK to think that your boss cares about you as a person, it's
| OK to make friends at work, and it's OK to believe in the company
| mission, as long as you don't overdo it.
| znpy wrote:
| The author of the post clearly would agree with you.
|
| And got fired anyway.
| znpy wrote:
| This is not pure cynicism though: had they decided to leave
| after the first round of layoff they would probably be in a
| better position when negotiating the next job (something that
| sadly now they have to do anyway, but as someone currently
| unemployed).
| Xeronate wrote:
| Your sentiment is nice in theory, but in reality it's just a
| recipe for getting taken advantage of.
| librish wrote:
| It's OK to be taken advantage of _a little bit_.
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