[HN Gopher] Goodbye Auth0
___________________________________________________________________
Goodbye Auth0
Author : surprisetalk
Score : 242 points
Date : 2024-02-15 09:45 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.joshcanhelp.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.joshcanhelp.com)
| edent wrote:
| Join a Union.
|
| The bitter truth is your employer has a lot more lawyers than you
| do. For all the talk about how well-compensated and in-demand
| tech workers are, the reality is usually different.
|
| You need someone in your corner to help you fight for your
| rights.
|
| If you're a tech worker in the UK, you can get three months free
| membership at https://prospect.org.uk/join/
| pjmlp wrote:
| Germany, IG Metal and Verdi are active on IT field.
| martinsnow wrote:
| Salaries in Germany are really low compared to Denmark and
| Norway.
| hulitu wrote:
| And how is the cost of living ?
| pjmlp wrote:
| I have done a quite decent life since 2004, can't complain.
| maxehmookau wrote:
| Join. A. Union.
|
| https://utaw.tech/join/ also good.
|
| Think of it as having an employment lawyer on retainer for PS8
| a month. Well worth the money.
| rakoo wrote:
| In IT we have it pretty easy and can rebound without as much
| hassle as other domains, so we think we're kinda safe. We're
| not.
|
| Join a union when things are good, to help you when things
| are bad.
| diggan wrote:
| > In IT we have it pretty easy and can rebound without as
| much hassle as other domains, so we think we're kind safe.
| We're not.
|
| Seems even people in the US aren't actually that well off,
| as the author said they'd experience "acute financial
| stress" if it wasn't for the severance:
|
| > [...] and was told that the severance offered would give
| me at least a few months free from acute financial stress
| [...]
| maxehmookau wrote:
| Wait until America wakes up and reads this thread. The
| anti-union feeling over there is very peculiar to
| Europeans.
| tjpnz wrote:
| I like the idea of unions but not in tech.. blah blah..
| meritocracy.. yadda yadda.. I can't afford union fees on
| my 600k salary.. something something.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I think for most it's not a matter of "can't afford", but
| rather closer to "don't think it's a use of money that
| will benefit me over the alternative."
|
| As a parallel: I can easily afford to buy a new car; I
| choose to buy used cars because it's a better use of
| money than the alternative.
|
| Many engineers are rational optimizers by nature.
| Draiken wrote:
| I believe this discounts the very heavy anti-union
| propaganda that we've all been subject to since...
| forever.
|
| I'm not even from the US (I'm from Brazil) but here,
| similarly, most have a very bad view of unions, fueled by
| employers that, of course, don't want to give workers any
| power.
|
| It's always ironic when we see today's workers
| continuously losing rights that were achieved mostly
| through unions (with a fair share of blood) actively hate
| unions without ever truly looking into them.
|
| Smart people always assume they are immune to propaganda,
| and objectively investigating where those feelings come
| from is not something most take the time to do.
| Confirmation bias plays a big role here.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Unions do have to overcome that history as well as the
| "free rider problem", but I don't think that's
| particularly unique to them versus any other "If you will
| give me money and power, I will make your life better"
| proposition.
|
| We get advertised travel, lifestyle, nutrition,
| convenience/utility, and entertainment products all the
| time. Most of those things over-promise and turn out to
| underperform their promises (yet not their price tags)
| and so people who are generally happy with the status quo
| need some activation energy and convincing to give up
| money and power now in hopes that this new thing being
| advertised/promised to them will deliver on its promises.
| That seems entirely rational to me.
| ddingus wrote:
| Not all of us think that way. (up super early due to a
| disgreement between my gut and some food... )
|
| However, those of us who do think that way are not shy
| about it.
| chippiewill wrote:
| Unfortunately like student unions they don't keep the focus
| on their actual remit and delving into irrelevant politics:
| https://palestine.utaw.tech/advocate/
| steffandroid wrote:
| Not irrelevant at all, military technology is a large part
| of the UK's tech sector, and arms exports to countries with
| poor human rights records are in the billions.
| rakoo wrote:
| That all depends what a union is about to you. To me, it is
| totally on-topic.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| And if you work in the games industry, there's
| https://www.gameworkers.co.uk/
| Vinnl wrote:
| Anyone have any idea how this would/could work for a company
| with employees in many different countries? Especially if the
| number of employees in your own country is low? (Single or low
| double digits.)
| edent wrote:
| Each country has its own unique employment laws. So you would
| need a different Union in each country.
|
| In the UK, for example, it doesn't matter how small your
| employer is - you still have the right to have your Trade
| Union representative with you in certain meetings.
| Vinnl wrote:
| Right, having someone in meetings is nice, but I'm thinking
| more in terms of collective bargaining, being involved in
| layoffs (e.g. making sure that every effort has been made
| to move/retrain people) and all that.
| edent wrote:
| Again, this will depend on the laws in your country.
| Speak to someone local to you.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| It's true that collective bargaining units will be per
| country, since legally the employer will have an entity
| in each country that is subject to local laws.
|
| In practice, unions have international links and often
| collaborate in the case of an action relevant to the same
| employer in multiple countries. The details are very much
| case-specific.
| diggan wrote:
| > Anyone have any idea how this would/could work for a
| company with employees in many different countries?
|
| Technically, that company should have a subsidiary for each
| country they're employing people full-time in. So you'd work
| with the local union + local subsidiary, just like it was a
| local company.
| input_sh wrote:
| It depends on so many factors. Are you actually employees or
| contractors? Do they pay you from a subsidiary registered in
| your country?
|
| I've somewhat seriously looked into this a while ago and my
| main takeaway would be: a) contractors can't unionize and b)
| you _can_ unionize locally, as long as you get signatures
| from X% of the employees in your country.
|
| Also, and I can't stress this enough, reach out to some
| already established union in your own area and ask for
| advice. You're gonna find out some things that are not easily
| googleable.
| Vinnl wrote:
| Thanks for the answers everyone!
| qaq wrote:
| Well I worked in both EU(Ireland) and US for the same company
| on the same projects the comp difference is huge. So all the
| safety nets might buy you more peace of mind but pragmatically
| you are better off just having an extra rainy day fund from the
| portion of extra income you get in the US.
| estebank wrote:
| This is true, but the number of "hidden" fees associated with
| living in the US make the difference slightly less stark than
| it seems at first, and a catastrophic health event can set
| you back to 0. The difference is biggest when working in
| tech, of course, and for the most part it is usually still
| worth it, depending on desired lifestyle.
| gwright wrote:
| I'm trying to understand what are the "hidden fees".
| Different fees, extra fees, annoying fees (when compared to
| some other country) I can wrap my head around those, but
| what fees are "hidden"?
| edent wrote:
| If your comp was that much higher, surely a few bucks a month
| for Union membership would have been an incidental expense?
| evantbyrne wrote:
| How does joining a union prevent someone from being laid off
| after a merger? Unions have their place, but I'm skeptical that
| someone-especially a presumably high-paid employee-could
| collectively bargain their way out of a planned post-merger
| mass firing.
| edent wrote:
| It doesn't prevent someone getting laid off. It makes sure
| that the process is fair and legal. It ensures that at-risk
| individuals have a chance to apply for available internal
| roles. A Union can use their legal powers to enforce proper
| compensation for an individual who is laid off and that
| remaining staff are protected.
|
| Your question is a bit like asking "how does insurance stop
| my house catching on fire?" - it doesn't; it makes sure you
| have some protection if the worst happens.
| evantbyrne wrote:
| The tradeoff is that people lose their ability to bargain
| individually, which is why you rarely see unionization of
| high-paid workers in the US. I think whether it makes sense
| for an individual to unionize really depends on their
| ability to negotiate. The more highly paid that a worker is
| and the more unique their role is, the less they have to
| gain from unionization vs looking at internal job postings
| and hiring an attorney as needed.
| edent wrote:
| It absolutely does not mean that. Unions help set minimum
| standards, not maximum ones.
|
| I've worked in private companies where the maximum comp
| is set by management and they do not allow individual
| negotiations. And I've worked in heavily unionised
| organisations where I was able to negotiate a better deal
| for myself.
|
| Do you really think your unique talents will save you
| from a lecherous boss or protect you from being
| discriminated against?
|
| And, if you wanted to sue, how much will an attorney's
| retainer cost? Hint - probably a lot more than you Union
| dues!
| evantbyrne wrote:
| I've negotiated raises without being unionized. I've paid
| lawyers for contract negotiations. It still stands that
| in this specific instance it doesn't appear that the
| suggestion of unionization is relevant. Notably absent
| from your story is your job title, salary, whether you
| were personally unionized, and any mention of anything
| the union actually did for you personally. I'm not saying
| unions are generally bad, but they aren't magic, and I
| wouldn't expect one to prevent you from being fired in a
| merger generally much less in a tech startup.
| edent wrote:
| I'm sorry for not giving you my full CV. You can look it
| up on LinkedIn if you like.
| gwright wrote:
| > Do you really think your unique talents will save you
| from a lecherous boss or protect you from being
| discriminated against?
|
| I don't understand how a union helps with this vs. an
| attorney. Other reasons for unions, but these items don't
| seem particularly persuasive to me.
| rollulus wrote:
| I don't get it why the US company layoff culture is so different
| from what I'm familiar with, the European one. What are they
| afraid of that people need to be locked out? That one brings a
| gun to work? Here you get laid off, get a notice, are expected to
| continue working for a while (but depending on your work ethic
| you'll take it easy), consume your remaining PTO, complain to
| your coworkers about what happened during a farewell dinner. So
| much more humane.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Honestly given Oktas recent security problems I don't blame
| them from be very pro-active in deactivating accounts, but the
| ways it's handled though is just inhumane. At least have the
| balls to call people, give them instructions and let them know
| that their account is being disabled during the call.
|
| For companies like Okta, and a few other high security
| positions, it's not uncommon for companies in Europe to simply
| pay people do to nothing for their remaining time.
| sushibowl wrote:
| I think the answer is pretty simply due to the difference in
| laws. In the US no notice is legally required. As you noted,
| employees that already know their employment is shortly coming
| to an end generally don't perform to the same level. Therefore
| it is in the company's interest to give no advance notice
| whatsoever until employment is officially, actually terminated.
|
| In every European country, there's a legal requirement to give
| notice. And therefore there is an incentive for the company to
| maintain amicable relations during the notice period to try and
| prevent trouble.
| gabrielgio wrote:
| > In the US no notice is legally required.
|
| Required or allowed? So in the US you can't give notice?
| dspillett wrote:
| I think you've read that wrong.
|
| It is probably better phrased as "In the US, notice is not
| legally required".
| ricardobeat wrote:
| If you're asking about resigning as an employee, it seems
| to work the same way: legally speaking, you could just stop
| showing up from one day to the next.
|
| I imagine most of the time people will have the courtesy of
| giving 1-2 weeks notice if possible.
| wccrawford wrote:
| It's not just courtesy. For many local companies, the
| business owners will know each other and will let other
| business owners know if someone quits without notice, and
| so it's harder to get hired after that if you don't give
| notice.
|
| That said, sometimes the company will decide that they'd
| rather you just go, and they'll tell you not to bother
| giving notice and you can leave immediately. Someone in
| another comment said that was because of bad blood, but
| it's also because of risk and it's unlikely that a person
| will be very productive during a short notice period.
|
| When there's a tricky hand-off, though, the company might
| ask for and incentivize a longer notice period, too... So
| nothing's written in stone.
| thunfischtoast wrote:
| What bugs me: in most companies, especially ones where people
| do mostly knowledge-based work like Authy does, almost
| everyone has some kind of unique information on them. No
| matter how good your project management and code base, most
| people carry some kind of valueable knowledge in their head
| that only becomes apparant as soon as they are not there
| anymore: something like how to log into certain systems,
| backup schedules, currently pressing issues etc etc. In my
| opinion the most important thing that needs to be done during
| offboarding is transfering as much of this hidden knowledge
| as possible into the company.
|
| How do they proceed operating after kicking people out
| without prior notice? Do those projects just get stomped and
| started over with new people?
| soco wrote:
| Well, yes, but actually no: you can easily give notice then
| lock them out, you just have to pay them over the entire
| notice period as the law says. It's not commonly done but in
| special cases of really bad blood, it will. The law is there
| to protect the employee income, not to force the employer to
| give them work.
| lopis wrote:
| This has been my experience in most cases. When an employee
| is terminated, they are sent home and paid the rest of
| their time, to avoid risk of vengeful acts or whatever.
| matsemann wrote:
| Not only do you have to give notice, but here in Norway you
| also have to include employee reps and follow a strict
| process. Part of that process is to define criteria for how
| to determine who should stay or go. Then after notifying the
| employees about the ongoing reduction, each employee should
| have the opportunity to discuss with their superiors how they
| fit the criteria or if there are other roles in the company
| they could fill. And then at a set time the actual layoffs
| will be announced.
|
| So it's virtually unheard of to show up, hear about layoffs,
| and not have a job the next day. Unless it's a situation
| where the whole company is going bankrupt or so.
| raverbashing wrote:
| The notice period is mostly monetary. 30 days notice means
| you should pay for that time, but having the person actually
| work is optional (if you're being terminated)
| Scarblac wrote:
| > Therefore it is in the company's interest to give no
| advance notice whatsoever until employment is officially,
| actually terminated.
|
| That doesn't follow at all. The notice period exists so you
| can transfer your knowledge and projects to colleagues who
| will take over your work.
|
| If the notice period is in the company interest when people
| leave on their own, it's also in the company's interest when
| they have to leave?
| sumuyuda wrote:
| The notice period also exists so you can find a new job and
| aren't immediately out on the street like in the US.
|
| It is both in the interest of the company and employee, as
| neither can terminate the contract immediately.
| sokoloff wrote:
| The big difference between those two cases is when it's the
| company's decision, they have plenty of opportunity to plan
| for the transition and may frequently conclude that they've
| done enough for the transition before the conversation with
| the employee.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| This is not the "European culture", which I am not sure exists
| as one on this issue.
|
| I have seen many times people be quickly "locked out" when
| being laid off. A term for this in the UK is "garden leave"
| because you're still paid but you're told not to work or come
| to the office anymore.
|
| As the case may be this makes sense in order to avoid any
| issues (from bad blood in the office to actively malicious
| actions) and, realistically someone being laid off is not
| exactly going to do their best work, anyway...
|
| Edit: Personally I think a quick cut is better as it avoids
| having to continue going to the office when you know it's
| pretty much pointless and it allows to focus on your next step.
| The thing is that it brings home the fact that this was all a
| business arrangement despite all the emotional attachment we
| may develop over time.
| Keirmot wrote:
| Garden leave also happens in Portugal, but only when the
| relation between employer and employee deteriorated to the
| point of no return. As an example in the same company I had a
| co-worker layed off with 3 months notice, while in the
| previous year a different person in the same team was called
| to HR during the day, and let go - we all found out he was
| fired on the next daily stand up.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Well, if you're fired it's either that your performance was
| inadequate or that you did something serious enough. In the
| latter case, in general there is no notice period and in
| the former, well obviously they don't want you around
| anymore...
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| For those who might not know: To be fired is not the same
| thing as being laid off. To be fired meand being at
| fault, hence my previous comment.
| DrBazza wrote:
| I've seen the 'bad blood' issue happen at a place I formerly
| worked at, that I refer to as 'MegaBank' (which isn't short
| of the truth). One was developer that seemingly left on good
| terms, but sneakily deleted a load of prod data as he was
| 'clearing down his inbox', and another that smashed up an
| office. Which was why, after the latter, the 'reduction in
| force' meetings were conducted on a separate floor with
| security guards.
| Hamuko wrote:
| I don't think that's what was referred to as "bad blood".
| tgv wrote:
| I had that experience with a US mother company of a European
| subsidiary (of a subsidiary). CEO swings by, as he does once
| per year, and fires the whole dev team, including the local
| branch manager, because they'll take over in the US (they
| couldn't, and then bought a competitor instead; the original
| product is still running, 15 years later), and we were told to
| leave the building. I had a program building something for an
| unusual client project, but I had to close the laptop, and that
| was EUR60k down the drain, probably more if the project had
| been successful. Since then, I've avoid companies with US ties.
| sksksk wrote:
| What country was this? If it was a European subsidiary, then
| would you have not have been subject to the employment
| protection of the country's laws?
| throwaway11073 wrote:
| Sure - in most EU countries, especially to the east, they
| get some additional money (usually 1-6 months of wages +
| unused vacation days). That's about it.
|
| I don't know why people think it's not possible to fire
| people in the EU, but it is and it's a normal thing. It
| just costs some money.
| rjzzleep wrote:
| It is possible, but if someone does whatthe parent
| described like that in Europe, you get more than that and
| you could walk out of there with your laptop and nobody
| would be able to stop you, and if they did, you'd
| probably get more than 6 months of wages.
|
| There is a process to firing. EVEN in the US there is a
| process of firing. The big lie is that most people are
| fed, is that in "right to work" states you have no legal
| recourse. You do, but not if you take the severance and
| sign your leave papers, because you panic right away.
| Something I didn't know either in the US.
|
| The most important rule my (senior) friend once told me
| is to document everything, especially when your bosses
| make you do something that you feel uncomfortable with.
| Print emails if you have to and put them in a folder that
| you might never have to open if you're lucky.
| gcbirzan wrote:
| At will, right to work is union related.
| prmoustache wrote:
| The fact there is a process doesn't mean you get
| guaranteed access to building and infrastructures.
|
| You are technically still employed and paid but the
| company can refuse to let you step inside or connect to
| the network. You also can't work for another company
| without their agreement until the grace period is over.
| diggan wrote:
| > I don't know why people think it's not possible to fire
| people in the EU, but it is and it's a normal thing. It
| just costs some money.
|
| It varies across Europe as well. Some countries, like
| Sweden, have more protections than others (no matter if
| union member or not), as an example. You cannot fire
| someone unless they demonstrably neglect their work
| duties and the firing overall needs to be objectively
| justified. Then the notice period depends on how long
| you've worked there, and more conditions I surely can't
| remember right now.
|
| Compared to Spain that has "disciplinary dismissal" for
| example, where "insubordination" or "lack of discipline"
| could be enough to get you fired.
| herio wrote:
| For Sweden in addition to what's stated above, if the
| reason for being fired is downsizing of lack of work, the
| law for employment protection (LAS) also states that the
| people laid off have to be in the reverse order of their
| hiring. To the latest to be hired is the first to let go.
|
| Exceptions can be made if justified, not dug into the
| details of how that works.
| apelapan wrote:
| Insubordination is definitely grounds for termination in
| Sweden. One of the easiest and fastest ways to get your
| self fired.
|
| Your boss tells you to unpack a crate, you say no, boss
| tells you "f*ck off and never come back". Perfectly fine
| legally and you don't get any severance pay either.
|
| There is some nuanced to this, as you have the right to
| refuse unreasonable requests and you are allowed to have
| a bad day if you have a longish good record etc etc.
|
| For a knowledge worker it is more difficult to define
| what a reasonable order is and what constitutes
| insubordination, but the basic rules are the same.
| tojaprice wrote:
| In the UK, you can be let go for essentially any reason
| (excluding protected statuses) for the first two years
| (first one year in Northern Ireland).
| ponector wrote:
| In many countries in Europe it is hard to fire individual
| worker who has permanent contract.
|
| However, another story is when mass layoff is going on.
| For example in Poland group of 9+ workers can be fired
| without any real reason. Downsizing! With 3-6 month
| notice period, of course.
| tgv wrote:
| Sure, and they had to pay until the end of the contract
| plus compensation or offer other positions, but they can
| make you leave the building. It's theirs, after all. And
| foreign companies have it easier for certain claims,
| especially regarding finances and profitability, which is
| the main ground for rightful dismissal, so a lawyer told
| me.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| No country will protect the right of the employee to finish
| his work before getting out of the company.
| tecleandor wrote:
| Depends a bit on specific laws for every country, but you
| usually have to go trough proper process and announcement,
| and follow special rules if you're firing a big quantity of
| employees. Musk skipped that in the massive Twitter layoffs
| and it bit him in the back (for example, when firing the
| whole Spanish staff [0]).
|
| Simplified a lot, and in general conditions, on Spain:
| - You have to announce it at least 15 days before ( unless
| it's a disciplinary dismissal ) or pay for those 15 days of
| salary - Pay for any unused vacation days and pending
| salaries - An "objective reason" is needed for the
| firing [1] - If there's no proper "objective reason",
| you have to reinstate the worker or pay 33 days of salary
| per year worked by the user [2] - If the layoffs
| involve certain number or percentage of the workers, you
| have to go through certain legal process and get government
| authorization [3]
|
| Twitter didn't go through the process in Spain, to avoid
| paying the stocm options that were going to vest very soon,
| but then the firings were declared illegal and they had to
| pay proper severance and for the stock options too... [4]
| 0: (EN) https://www.theolivepress.es/spain-
| news/2022/11/10/elon-musks-email-late-on-friday-to-sack-
| his-spanish-workforce-declared-null-and-void-by-unions/
| 1: (ES) https://www.laboralix.com/despido-objetivo/
| 2: (ES) https://www.laboralix.com/despido-improcedente/
| 3: (ES) https://www.laboralix.com/despido-colectivo/
| 4: (ES) https://www.elconfidencial.com/tecnologia/2023-01-2
| 4/twitter-confirma-el-despido-del-80-de-su-plantilla-en-
| espana_3563189/
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| I was laid off in Sweden by an American parent company and
| all work ended the second it happened. It was funny because
| they could have asked me to keep working, but I guess a paid
| vacation was nicer for me anyway.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Garden Leave (sometimes "Gardening Leave") is the technical
| term for this. You get paid, and they _might_ insist on you
| not taking up any new job until the contract term ends, but
| they explicitly do not want you to do any work or come to
| the office or anything like that.
|
| There's a parallel and equally wasteful but popular
| practice of insisting on taking on CxO employees of a
| purchased outfit for some prolonged period, perhaps as
| insurance, except that you've got no useful or interesting
| work for them to do. Unlike Garden Leave they're not fired
| - one of my friends was even told they could expect a
| substantial pay raise, but the job is now _awful_ so their
| goal will be to wait only until as many options / bonuses/
| etc. as possible have irreversibly turned into hard money
| and then quit ASAP.
|
| It's like OK, I could do something _actually interesting_
| next week or, I could sit in tedious meetings with idiots
| for 24 months, then pay off my mortgage, and retire
| immediately with $$$$$. Ugh.
|
| If you know you'll be dead in a year, obviously the former
| is the right choice. But you probably won't be.
| glitchalumni wrote:
| Not sure which part of Europe you are referencing, but from the
| layoffs I've seen and heard of (DACH) the procedure was always
| to lock the person out immediately after the layoff
| call/meeting. If that's good or bad is rather subjective,
| personally I would rather walk out the door right after.
|
| One might have enough time to send their farewells, but that's
| about it - you are still getting payed until the end of the
| notice period of course. (let's not talk about severance
| packages, they are either non existent or a joke - you often
| also have to sign an NDA prohibiting you to talk about the
| package and the layoff in general).
|
| So basically companies pull the same questionable stuff in
| Europe as well, it's far from the fairytale you sometimes read
| about. (there are always exceptions ofc)
| wouldbecouldbe wrote:
| Not sure, I haven't seen mass layoffs, but individual ones.
| Normally it's a contract ending not being renewed, or the
| trial period, often the employee is then still active for 1-3
| months; till the contract ends.
|
| It's rare it's immediate and if it is there needs be an
| agreed fee for termination.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| > you often also have to sign an NDA
|
| you don't have to, that they arm wrest you, sure, but you
| don't have to do anything
| e12e wrote:
| At least in Norway the guiding principle in law is that the
| employee can and must work out the grace period, and locking
| an employee out is illegal. It's possible to mutually agree
| to exceptions or be granted an exception - but the latter is
| rare.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| > I don't get it why the US company layoff culture is so
| different from what I'm familiar with, the European one.
|
| Personal bias? Layoffs/Firing etc. in Austria in IT look very
| much the same. You're locked out, your devices are taken, you
| are escorted out of the office. That has nothing to do with
| being afraid, it's just a clear cut process. Why make it
| ambiguous?
| Draiken wrote:
| I agree it's a process (not very clear everywhere though),
| but the reasoning is 100% being afraid of what the employees
| can do.
|
| If the company could keep reliably profiting off of the
| employee during its notice period, why wouldn't they? It's
| all about mitigating the risk.
|
| Personally when I left, I've always spent weeks finishing off
| what I was doing, adding/updating documentation and generally
| passing on any knowledge that could potentially leave with
| me. They allow that because they're not afraid I'm gonna
| delete their source code, since I'm choosing to leave. If the
| company didn't see risk after layoffs, that's how they would
| react.
|
| And let's be real here: this is mostly a threat when layoffs
| are not justified. So to keep it simple and streamline the
| process, they treat every layoff the same.
| rglullis wrote:
| Americans don't understand/trust/respect institutions.
|
| Because they don't trust institutions, if someone that is
| working for a company and does something bad, or is shown to be
| corrupt, it will affect the public perception _of the company_
| , not of the individual.
|
| Also, because Americans don't trust institutions, a lot of the
| internal processes and cultural values are upheld by the
| individuals, and how strongly this is done depends on the
| individual's power and ability to influence. This applies to
| all levels of the organization. This allows for the
| organization as a whole to be more dynamic and effective, but
| the downside is that this works only when the individuals have
| a vested interest in the organization.
|
| When there is a layoff, or even when a simple individual is
| fired, this mutual alignment is removed and all bets are off.
| Except for fear of legal retaliation, the individual is no
| longer bound to the organization. This can lead to things like:
|
| - Executives preempting the communication of their firing and
| using it to swing internal opinion, or even taking key team
| members away with them, like Sam Altman vs OpenAI.
|
| - Employees with access to (supposedly) restricted areas
| copying sensitive information: E.g, sales reps getting data
| from all their clients to contact them and move them along.
|
| - Plain old espionage / sabotage. Don't forget, if a company is
| laying people off it means they are not doing well, and if they
| are not doing well means they certainly want to keep as much of
| what is "really happening" to themselves. Fired employees can
| use their internal communications to gather evidence from their
| boss wrongdoings, find internal memos and share with
| journalists willing to get a scoop, etc.
| cmbothwell wrote:
| This is a very incisive and insightful take and really
| distills some large cultural differences between Americans
| and Europeans down to its essence.
|
| Can I ask if you are American or European? How did you come
| about this insight?
| rglullis wrote:
| Born and raised in South America. Lived in the US for ~5
| years (2008-2013). Living in Germany since 2013. :)
| cmbothwell wrote:
| I would also posit that this inclination towards
| individuals over institutions in the US extends to
| Central and South America.
| herval wrote:
| definitely not Brazil, at least
| atemerev wrote:
| Well, there are not many countries where people actually
| trust institutions (and, above all, the government). Perhaps
| Germany, Nordic countries, Netherlands, Japan, maybe a few
| more.
|
| In Switzerland, we work with the government, and are
| generally OK with it, but proceed cautiously, as if it could
| explode any second. In Spain and France already, government
| is considered an inefficient nuisance. In many places in
| South America, the government is an adversary. In Russia,
| government is your arch-enemy, and you do everything possible
| to either hide from it, perhaps in another country, or
| actually damage it (unless you are evil and work for them).
|
| So "trusting institutions" is a foreign, alien concept for
| most of the world.
| rglullis wrote:
| Ok, but there are two institutions here: _corporations_ and
| _governments_. Who do you think that Southern Europeans
| relatively trust more of those?
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Neither. Europeans tend to be cynical and more in the
| South than in the North.
| atemerev wrote:
| I don't think that many people trust _corporations_
| anywhere. In the US, people at least can have some stake
| there, by owning stocks etc, which makes them more
| engaged. Stock markets in Europe are laughable, people
| rarely invest there, except through their bank funds.
| _heimdall wrote:
| Well I am an American that doesn't trust institutions by
| default, so to that end I fit your description here. I'm not
| sure how universal it is though, we have plenty of
| institutions here that people do trust and depend on every
| day.
|
| In this context, I think it's less about an individual's
| trust of institutions and more the institutions mistrust of
| the individual. Companies don't have to send fired employees
| home immediately, they only do this because they don't trust
| the individual to act appropriately. There's probably a bit
| of a death spiral there, where both sides continue to
| mistrust each other further, but the individual lacking trust
| of institutions alone wouldn't get them locked out as soon as
| they're notified that they've been fired.
| rglullis wrote:
| > Companies don't have to send fired employees home
| immediately, they only do this because they don't trust the
| individual to act appropriately.
|
| Companies don't have agency or feelings. If company
| _leaders_ expect people to do their jobs properly only
| because they are getting paid, it 's already an
| institutional failure, because it's not taking into account
| that individuals are fallible.
|
| If the company does not have an established process to
| protect itself from human error, whether accidental or
| intentional (like an disgruntled employee going rogue),
| when shit hits the fan all its leaders can do is to find
| blame in the individual. But instead of blaming people and
| hoping that we can force everyone to avoid mistakes, a
| better alternative would be to design a system that can
| _withstand_ human nature and fix the institutional process
| so that that error doesn 't happen again. The problem is
| that to do this takes time and most company CEOs can not
| see much beyond the next fiscal year.
| StreetChief wrote:
| > when shit hits the fan all its leaders can do is to
| find blame in the individual.
|
| Or they could, like, take responsibility for their
| actions that led them to that point?
| rglullis wrote:
| They could, but do they?
| StreetChief wrote:
| Very rarely; maybe i misunderstood your point. You're
| saying it's an institutional failure, but not one of the
| leaders? So, it's the governments fault they allowed
| corporate structures to function this way? Or maybe you
| want to blame the board of directors?
| _heimdall wrote:
| I could have been more clear here. When I mentioned
| companies there I was referring to the people running the
| companies. Of course a company has no feelings or agency,
| companies are just a legal structure around a collection
| of people. Don't get me started on the absurdity of
| arguing that companies are people, that ruling was
| terrible.
|
| I don't think its reasonable to assume that a company
| could ever have full safeguards in place to ensure that a
| bad actor employee could never cause meaningful damage,
| unless you are okay with a completely trustless system.
| Companies must trust their employees at some level,
| generally the level of trust grows in relation to the
| employee's responsibilities.
|
| Its unreasonable to assume that any system can be 100%
| foolproof, if that's a requirement it just shouldn't
| exist. In the case of companies, they have to accept dome
| level of risk that employees can cause damage, whether
| intentional or not.
| rglullis wrote:
| > Companies must trust their employees at some level,
| generally the level of trust grows in relation to the
| employee's responsibilities.
|
| Hard disagree. People should be trusted with the things
| they need to perform their role, and no more than that.
| You would not give access of a production database to a
| CTO just because they have more responsibilities than a
| sysadmin, and any CTO that tries to bludgeon their way
| into getting access to it should be considered unfit for
| work.
| _heimdall wrote:
| It sounds like we actually see that the same, I'm trying
| to make a slightly different point.
|
| Say I'm a software developer specifically working on the
| frontend library for an authentication service. The
| company needs to trust me with access to parts of the
| system and infrastructure pertinent to that feature. I
| very much agree that I should be locked out of other
| areas that I don't need for the job, for example I
| shouldn't have access to employee records, accounting,
| etc.
|
| Once I am fired, though, the company has to continue to
| trust me to not misuse the parts of the system that I do
| already have access to. If I am fired but allowed to stay
| for a transition period and my permissions aren't revoked
| immediately, the company is trusting me. If I am fired
| and immediately blocked, its a sign that the company
| didn't trust me rather than an indication of my own
| mistrust for the company/institution.
| rglullis wrote:
| You could continue to work on things, but your access
| would be set to read-only and you'd lose commit rights,
| or you'd be working on a completely separate branch and
| as part of the transition process someone else on the
| team would have to be able to report they have
| successfully merged worked from your tree to the main
| one.
| StreetChief wrote:
| The vast majority of employment in the US is so called "at
| will," which means an employee can be fired at any time for
| any reason, except an illegal one. And good luck with proving
| it was in fact an illegal one. Our "contracts" are barely
| worth the bits we use to store them. Why would we trust the
| company at all in this situation? It would be a mistake for
| every single person to take management at face value.
| dariosalvi78 wrote:
| Americans don't trust _public_ institutions. They do trust
| and love the private ones, especially when they are humongous
| corporations.
| rglullis wrote:
| The ones that they get to be direct consumers and where
| they have some choice, sure.
|
| But I doubt that you see people saying that they love
| Equifax, Healthcare Insurance companies, Comcast...
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| Americans tend to be more extreme and very individualist.
| Very distrustful of organizations and institutions. Many of
| the early European settlers were escaping religious/state
| persecution as well as the powerful trade guilds that
| dominated life in Europe at the time. I think a lot of this
| comes from the German immigration to the US, Germans to me
| seem a lot more tribal than the English. Maybe due to Germany
| operating as a collection of tribes and UK as an expansionist
| empire. Could be beer hall culture vs pub culture. When
| visiting Germany it was notable how small groups of people
| who didn't know each other barely interacted.
|
| If I needed help burying a body I would only ask my American
| friends. Friends from most other countries wouldn't help and
| just encourage me to turn myself in. Not that I've needed
| this help but if I needed to do something where it was us
| against the world I would pick Americans to join me. I found
| it more difficult to make friends with Americans, they tend
| to maintain far fewer friendships, but the few they do
| maintain are held more strongly.
| dkobia wrote:
| This is a typical approach for SaaS companies - especially ones
| that house sensitive data like Okta/Auth0. A CISO's nightmare
| is someone who's been laid off, disgruntled and still has
| access to the network.
| kypro wrote:
| This does seem to be a lot more common in the US, I actually
| had this happen to me while working for a US company and the
| author's experience was very relatable - I was immediately
| locked out of my accounts and couldn't even say goodbye to the
| people I had been working with for the last several years (I
| was working remotely at the time).
|
| But I've seen it in the UK too... Specifically one corporate I
| worked for sent a mass email to everyone on a Thursday
| afternoon saying something along the lines of "please ensure
| you're in the office tomorrow morning". Then on the Friday
| morning people were called into a room one by one, told they
| had been made redundant and were immediately escorted off site
| by security. This was just a fairly regular retail business
| too. Nothing that you would think required such an extreme
| approach.
|
| I suppose I understand it in some ways though... If you've just
| told someone you've lost your job you're probably not going to
| be very motivated to continue to work. And suppose there is
| some risk people might try to disrupt business activities in
| protest... I think it probably is better to give employees
| their redundancy pay and let them move on rather than waste
| their time for several weeks. That said, I'm not sure why the
| security escort was needed in this case. The layoffs came from
| McKinsey's infinite wisdom though, so it wouldn't surprise me
| if the security escort was their recommendation to reduce risk.
| Someone wrote:
| A reason I've heard for not keeping those laid off around is
| that you want those who stay to look to the future, not to
| what was, and that's what those who got fired will do,
| because they don't have a future at the company.
| asmor wrote:
| I had a job I referred my spouse to. The team she was in had
| some reservations, but nothing that couldn't be addressed,
| essentially a bit of temperament by culture shock young
| talented engineers tend to have on their first or second job.
| But the HR person assigned took the entire next year off, so
| she did not get any feedback except from her boss, who said
| everything was fine. Another feedback round got delayed for the
| next 3 months because someone on the team was sick, and
| eventually her delayed "team feedback round" appointment
| changed to one with HR, in which they fired her "just in case
| it was still a problem".
|
| That was the only time I've seen someone completely locked out
| - in Germany. She couldn't even complete the normal
| offboarding, because her building access was revoked, and the
| company didn't have an alternative process, so I had to bring
| it in, where people would agree with me that it was a process
| failure, and that they were very sorry, but not sorry enough to
| tell it to my spouse's face.
|
| That work relationship didn't last long after.
| pcl wrote:
| I find the "lock out and leave immediately" thing to be pretty
| weird, and perhaps US-specific.
|
| But! The Nordic approach is also bizarre! The norm is that
| employees keep working for 3 months after giving notice. There
| are, of course, plenty of exceptions. The "normal exception" is
| that if someone quits and the business thinks they are going to
| go to a competitor, they'll leave the premises within a few
| days, but continue as a paid employee for the remainder of the
| time -- known as "garden leave."
|
| In either case, though, the employee doesn't start working at
| their new job for three months!! In my experience, it's super-
| stifling, especially for startups, since three months is an
| eternity for a new company. Of course, in the tech industry,
| nobody really does all that much work for at least the trailing
| two months, since who's going to get assigned to a new project
| just before they leave?
|
| I guess this is perhaps sorta how things play out in areas of
| the US that allow noncompetes to be enforced, too.
| mickeythug wrote:
| In some parts of Europe, it is very common to do "mutual
| termination", since you cannot easily fire someone just on a
| whim. If you use the "redundancy" excuse, companies are usually
| prohibited from hiring again on the same position for 6 months.
| If you want to fire someone and not face this, there's a very
| detailed process of what you have to do, before you can justify
| termination (documented first warning to the employee, steps
| they need to take to improve, second warning, proof that they
| didn't so what was asked of them, etc).
|
| Virtually no one goes through this, and they opt for mutual
| termination, and generally a person can negotiate a severance
| package for their signature (I have seen examples of people
| negotiating almost a year's salary as severance), and they are
| out immediately.
|
| But this is also a scare tactic and people get caught by
| surprise and sign anything, sometimes without any severance.
| During this past year, as mass layoffs were happening in waves,
| people got more informed about this and were smarter in
| negotiating their exits.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| > What are they afraid of that people need to be locked out?
| That one brings a gun to work?
|
| So I'm a Brit who briefly worked over in Alabama for a few
| months and yes, that was a genuine concern with some of the
| folks that were let go by the company. It was well known that
| quite a few staff members had firearms in their vehicles.
| ryandrake wrote:
| When I lived in Florida, we had a guy who, upon learning he
| was fired, loudly threatened to come back to the office with
| one of his AK-47s and mow everyone down. He shouted this
| across to everyone in the single-floor open office as he was
| being physically removed from the building. And we knew he
| had multiple guns because we did a few company outings at a
| shooting range.
|
| You better believe he was locked out as soon as he could be
| removed from the building, and we had armed security there
| for some time after his termination.
| sokoloff wrote:
| At my second job, the company terminated an employee for poor
| performance and intended to let them stay on a short term to
| wrap things up and then start their severance. The first
| evening (or maybe the first Friday evening), that dev stayed
| late in the office and deleted the source trees from as many
| machines as he could get access to (this was 1996, so most
| machines didn't have logins) and wiped the hard drive on the
| revision control server.
|
| That experience (and the amount of loss and wasted time in
| reconstructing as best we could) heavily colored my view of the
| risk-reward ratio of letting terminated employees have
| continued access to premises and systems.
|
| If I have any doubts about the future behavior of someone who
| just received very shocking, disorienting, and angering news,
| it is my job to protect the company and other employees much
| more than it is to allow the terminated employee continued
| access.
| supriyo-biswas wrote:
| Also see the case of Shannon You[1] where the person in
| question leaked the trade secrets for BPA-free liner
| production used in soft drink cans for being fired.
|
| [1] https://www.justice.gov/usao-edtn/pr/phd-chemist-
| sentenced-1...
| anonexpat wrote:
| You's case was deliberate corporate espionage, not a
| disgruntled former employee.
| madsbuch wrote:
| Given that this is the US, he was probably sued and is still
| in prison.
|
| Also, this is an insanely childish way to act - again to the
| original commenter. It it seems like there is a difference in
| US an EU culture here.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > Given that this is the US, he was probably sued and is
| still in prison.
|
| Like most things in life, it depends. You'd have to get a
| prosecutor to agree to accepting the case to bring charges
| against the individual. They'd have to decide if there was
| enough evidence, they'd have to decide if they thought they
| could convince a judge/jury, then they'd have to decide if
| it was even worth their time. In 1996, that might have been
| a more difficult thing to do than today.
|
| > Also, this is an insanely childish way to act
|
| Yeah? And? So? Are you attempting to say that no non-
| American has ever acted irrationally or childish? I have a
| few history books that would disagree
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| > Also, this is an insanely childish way to act - again to
| the original commenter. It it seems like there is a
| difference in US an EU culture here.
|
| It is, but safety protocols are put in for the extreme
| unexpected case. "Regulations are written in blood" and all
| that.
|
| Not all Americans are childish any more than no EU citizens
| are.
| Draiken wrote:
| So because the company hired a criminal sociopath, every
| other person laid off until the end of times must be treated
| the same way? Certainly there are better ways to handle even
| this crazy scenario you mentioned.
|
| That feels so inhumane to me. If you don't see your employees
| as humans, instead as mere resources and, as soon as they are
| laid off, threats, then we can say it makes sense.
| ianhawes wrote:
| Similar things have happened in my ~12 year career which
| leads me to believe it is not as uncommon as your comment
| would portray it.
|
| The first instance I can recall, a developer was terminated
| and his access was revoked. He goes home, waits until
| midnight, then tries logging into as many systems as he
| can. He apparently had saved a WordPress password on his
| Google Drive. He logs into WordPress and defaces a bunch of
| pages on the corporate website. FWIW he was one of my
| reports and he did not come off as a sociopath or unstable
| and his actions surprised me.
|
| Second instance at a different startup, a marketing guy is
| terminated but was allowed to hang out at the office for a
| bit (for some reason management decided to fire him on a
| Thursday morning knowing he carpooled with several other
| employees). I felt bad so I took him out to lunch. At lunch
| he tells me he had a feeling he was about to be fired so he
| dumped the ~400K+ database of emails in our HubSpot account
| to sell to a competitor. I told him that was easily the
| dumbest idea he's ever had. I text the CEO from the
| bathroom to warn him. He's trespassed from the building
| upon our return. Oh, and he suspected I tipped them off and
| so he keyed my car.
|
| Third instance at my own company, I terminated a contractor
| and removed their access to all services immediately. They
| attempt to run a series of reports on vendors, contractors,
| and other sensitive data from the admin UI without
| realizing their session was invalidated. I get the error
| notifications and add more granular permissions to the
| admin panel.
|
| Is it inhumane? No. Is it rude? Yes. I think you have no
| choice _but_ to treat these people as humans. Humans do
| human things and act out for a variety of reasons and you
| have to expect that. Are they inherently bad people? No.
| Draiken wrote:
| I can definitely understand that assuming everyone is not
| a sociopath is very naive. But the reason I say this is
| inhumane is not about the security implications.
|
| There's a whole plethora of issues around layoffs that
| are often ignored. I recall looking at Slack's people
| list constantly to see which accounts were suddenly
| marked as "deactivated". People I had great relationships
| with but never exchanged personal emails simply gone.
| That dread of "what the fuck is happening" and "am I
| next?" overcoming you. Some people scramble to create
| sheets with contact information from those who were laid
| off.
|
| That's absolutely inhumane.
|
| I survived 3 layoffs in the past few years and I can
| still distinctly remember the awful feeling each of those
| left me with. I can only imagine how much worse that is
| for those affected.
|
| We can separate the security parts from the human parts.
| Companies choose not to do that, for whatever reason that
| I simply cannot understand. Especially companies with so
| called "human resources" should be extremely prepared for
| situations like this, to make sure everyone is actually
| treated well.
|
| Recently we had that viral video of a person that
| recorded themselves getting fired with zero reasoning of
| why. That's the kind of shit that happens with these
| layoffs. Bad management at its worst.
|
| In short, I agree with you with regards to security
| implications. But those can be solved with proper access
| controls and planning. What I don't agree with is
| everything else around it. Not once I have seen companies
| laying off people handle this in any manner that I would
| describe as humane.
|
| We can do better, I don't know why we don't.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > Especially companies with so called "human resources"
|
| Never forget that "human" is _an adjective_ in that
| phrase, not a noun. HR 's duty and focus is on serving
| and protecting the company, not the employees.
| coredog64 wrote:
| I had a coworker who wasn't even laid off and did something
| along these lines* on his last day because he felt hard
| done by.
|
| *Deleted the configuration from the core network switch.
| dylan604 wrote:
| So just a typical AWS us-east-1 employee then on a random
| day?
| dylan604 wrote:
| You don't have to be a sociopath or a criminal to be able
| to do harm to a company. There are some positions where
| clients loyal to the person rather than the company like
| sales or some form of producer/manager depending on the
| industry.
|
| There are stories of sales teams going in and grabbing
| their rolodex (instantly dating the stories) so they could
| use the contacts where ever they land next. They could also
| reach out to the contacts to attempt to poison them towards
| the company, libel be damned.
| rglullis wrote:
| Is that the lesson to learn here, really? An employee makes a
| stupid thing and the leadership didn't look into its security
| practices to avoid this type of attack?
| ianhawes wrote:
| The lesson here is that once an employee or contractor is
| terminated, you remove all access to internal
| infrastructure. That's it. That is the lesson.
| rglullis wrote:
| Then your company is still susceptible to being destroyed
| by any random employee.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Potentially, yes. Someone could go nutty before being
| dismissed, and it just be Tuesday. That's why there's
| things we often refer to in this industry as backups. If
| it is just a software bit of mischief, you should be able
| to recover from that without too much down time.
| s/disgruntled employee/ransom ware/ and it's really no
| different.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Not "terminating" your employees and having meaningful
| conversations on how it goes after they know they're let
| go helps a lot.
|
| That forces the employer to come up with actual
| explainations someone can digest, and gives the employee
| time to be rational and plan the pivot.
|
| There will still be ugly stories, and preemptively
| removing accesses will be needed in some cases, but
| that's by far the exception and not the norm, and we
| usually know when that will be the case.
| osmano807 wrote:
| The lesson to learn is to entrench fail-deadly protocols in
| as much infrastructure as possible in case of termination.
| rglullis wrote:
| > in case of termination
|
| The lesson is that employees should only have access to
| the resources that they need to do their job _at all
| times_ , and that there should be a fine-grained
| permission system to check if someone can read or read-
| write to all these resources.
|
| Even when I am working on my projects, _by myself_ , I
| use different accounts to access my services, depending
| on the role. At first it might seem crazy, but if you
| learned how to do this and you automate this process, it
| is a life-saver if you suddenly find yourself need quick
| help from some contractor or if you want to give a backup
| key to a trusted friend as a way to say "here is what you
| need to do in case something happens to me".
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > and the leadership didn't look into its security
| practices to avoid this type of attack?
|
| It sounds like they very much did, starting with physical
| security. Especially in that time period, physical access
| was probably the biggest component even.
| smugglerFlynn wrote:
| If your crazy ex steals your watch on the way out, does it
| mean all new people you meet will get a frisk search at the
| end of each date?
|
| That's not how trust works, regardless of potential
| consequences.
| sokoloff wrote:
| No, but you probably do get your key back immediately after
| your next breakup.
| Foobar8568 wrote:
| I have seen a company firing one of their developer who went to
| Europe on a 2weeks business trip to assist a NGO to implement
| their tool. One day, said developer couldn't access their
| emails and was wondering why. At the end, it was the NGO/client
| who let the dev informed.
| mgaunard wrote:
| In Europe, for some jobs, you'll be granted garden leave, i.e.
| you can stay home during your notice and still be paid.
|
| It's essentially a mechanism where they avoid having someone
| with a negative mentality that's not going to work hard anyway
| around the office.
| ollysb wrote:
| Gardening leave is usually for positions where the employee
| holds competitive information on active deals etc. During the
| gardening leave they're under NDA which allows for their
| competitive information to go stale before starting at a new
| company.
| mgaunard wrote:
| Non-disclosure, non-compete and notice are different things
| that you're mixing together.
|
| Notice is compulsory -- you simply cannot let go of the
| employee immediately and must continue paying them for 3
| months (or up to 4 months in some countries where every
| calendar month started is due).
|
| Non-compete is opt-in by the employer, and allows them to
| prevent you from working for a competitor (for up to one
| year I believe). In exchange the employer must still pay
| your previous salary (some employers will ask employees
| without compensation, but that's not legally enforceable).
|
| Non-disclosure means that you're not able to disclose
| company and trade secrets, similarly to an NDA. It is a
| standard term in most employment contracts and usually
| applies for one year, regardless of the non-compete being
| enforced or not.
|
| It is fairly common to send people for garden leave during
| their notice, but actually extending it further by
| enforcing the non-compete is a costly thing and will only
| be done for strategic employees.
| brk wrote:
| >I don't get it why the US company layoff culture is so
| different from what I'm familiar with, the European one.
|
| Not trying to single you out, but these kinds of comments
| always baffle me.
|
| Around the world, we have different religions, cultures,
| languages, customs, currencies, holidays, skin colors, legal
| structures, etc. And then someone is confused why people on the
| other side of the world don't do things the same way.
|
| For me, as a product of all of the things above in the US, if a
| company tells me they no longer need my services, then I am not
| going to keep working for a while. That doesn't mean I am going
| to be spiteful, but just that I acknowledge their decision, and
| so I will move on to something else. To me, continuing to work
| alongside (former-ish) teammates in a dead man walking
| situation seems strange, but I can see why it might work in
| Europe.
| artyom wrote:
| Because losing your job is really a bummer everywhere, but in
| Europe you've got a lot of things covered by the welfare state
| (how well, it's a different discussion), so it's less
| stressful, which reduces the probability of people being
| _really pissed_.
|
| In the US, you're probably out of healthcare in the blink of an
| eye, may have no severance, no coverage, no unemployment
| benefits, and in some cases it'd mean _deportation_.
|
| So yeah, two different worlds.
| rescbr wrote:
| > and in some cases it'd mean deportation.
|
| I completely understand the shittiness of this issue and I'm
| not from a developed country, but I mean, this is the reality
| of a temporary work visa, no?
|
| I might be more pessimist/realist, but until I receive a
| permanent residency visa, I'd treat everything as temporary,
| ready to move back in a couple days notice.
| cptskippy wrote:
| In the US there's an H-1B Visa program that allows skilled
| workers to come over as a path to citizenship. However the
| program is fraught with all manner of requirements like
| company sponsorship. Changing jobs under the H-1B program
| results in your journey to citizenship being reset, and
| current bureaucracy and politics have resulted in that
| journey taking upwards of a decade or more.
|
| As a result of policy, H-1B workers will take substandard
| pay, abuse, and burdens to maintain a job with a company
| willing to sponsor them until they can get their Green
| Card. This creates a from of indentured servitude.
|
| The knock on affect is that it lowers wages for everyone
| because there's a vast pool of skilled workers willing to
| accept lower pay from a company willing to maintain
| sponsorship of them for 10+ years.
|
| Imagine on year 9 you get laid off, now your indentured
| servitude got extended another 10 years if you can find a
| new sponsor.
| estebank wrote:
| In (some?) other countries work visas are not tied to
| employer but rather job category, and the length of time
| waiting for permanent residency is usually 2 years. In the
| US an H1B can be transferred once you reach the portability
| threshold if you can find another employer, and depending
| on the country of origin you can be waiting for permanent
| residency (green card, not citizenship) for 2 decades. An
| L1B is tied to an employer and you're effectively illegally
| in the country as soon as you're laid off. In practice the
| government gracefully gives you a week to completely uproot
| your life and get the hell out. I was lucky, I went from
| arriving in the country to receiving citizenship in ~10
| years, but the 4 years trying to get permanent residency
| were the most stressful of my life, and being spared by
| layoffs did little to help. Even being privileged knowing
| you can go elsewhere, and fully open eyed about the
| situation, it still sucks.
| DoughnutHole wrote:
| Well there are temporary work visas out there in various
| countries that are fixed-term, e.g. a visa holder is
| entitled to stay in the country for 2 years. If they lose
| their job they're still entitled to stay for the remainder
| of the term, and have plenty of time to find other work
| (which doesn't require any sponsorship). Examples of this
| include the J-1 visa in the US which is explicitly a 2-year
| inextensible cultural exchange visa that lets you work
| whatever job you want.
|
| The thing that makes the H-1B and visas like it insecure is
| their being tied to employer sponsorship. I don't think
| that's inherently unfair - the whole point of the visa is
| to bring in skilled workers in valuable industries.
|
| What I _do_ think is shitty about the H-1B in particular is
| just how short the grace period is to find a new sponsor.
| 60 days is a tight schedule even for a skilled worker in a
| good market, and layoffs don 't tend to happen in good
| markets. It definitely opens up visa holders to
| exploitation by employers, and temporary downturns can end
| up kicking out a lot of valuable people.
|
| There are other countries with skilled worker visas with
| more generous grace periods - e.g. Ireland's Critical
| Skills Employment Permit allows you 6 months to find a new
| job if you're laid off. I don't see the problem with that
| if the visa holder can support themselves financially over
| that timeframe.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Unfortunately, if you are a chinese or indian citizen on an
| h1b the wait time for a green card is outrageously long.
| You can't really live in a "ready to move back in a couple
| days notice" state for decades. People buy homes, getting
| married, and have kids.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Tying healthcare to employment is a uniquely stupid idea.
| madsbuch wrote:
| It is the case in much of EU also: In Germany most of the
| healthcare is covered by the employer. In Denmark, where I
| reside, you get an extra coverage with most
| (tech-)employments that provides access you wouldn't have
| otherwise.
| jwr wrote:
| Yes, the employers pay, but you do not _lose_ your
| healthcare immediately after being fired. The state
| provides it for you as part of the social security net. I
| don 't know specifically about Germany or Denmark, but I
| suppose it's the same across the EU.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| In France you can keep the insurance you used to have
| from the employer who fired you, but you'll have to pay
| for it out of pocket. I don't know whether you'll also
| keep the same price or if it'll be adjusted up (since you
| presumably don't benefit from whatever deal the employer
| managed to get).
|
| If you don't have this insurance (mutuelle), the State
| does provide the social security (it's provided either
| way, the mutuelle is on top of this).
|
| But this is _basic_ social security. If you 're in a car
| crash or something, you're mostly covered. If you need
| work done on your teeth, you're on your own.
|
| When I needed to spend the night in a hospital after
| breaking my wrist, basic social security covered the
| ambulance and the actual procedure of putting my arm back
| together, but had I not had a mutuelle, I would've been
| on the hook for the hospital stay.
| estebank wrote:
| It's the same in the UK. But the interest difference with
| the IS I've noticed is the effect of price anchoring:
| because everyone has a provider of last resort, the
| private providers compete on features _and_ price. IIRC
| my employer payed ~100gbp for Bupa, while my current
| employer in the US pays ten times that for my current
| provider.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| I stayed a few times at the hospital and the price was
| something like 20EUR/day. Quite affordable, especially
| that the price is decreasing when the stay is longer.
|
| It may be a bit more (would need to dig the bill but it
| was of that order of magnitude) and I am writing this do
| that a non-EU person does not get the idea that it was
| 1000EUR a day or something.
| rglullis wrote:
| > covered by the employer
|
| Only 50%, no?
|
| Also, in Germany the _cost_ of insurance is tied to
| income. So I went from the bizarre situation where I went
| from paying ~500EUR while employed to less than 200EUR
| now that my business is not generating substantial
| revenue.
| allendoerfer wrote:
| It is the _bizarre_ idea of socialized healthcare, were
| all (publicly insured) Germans share the costs and pay
| according to their ability to do so, while even poor
| people (or founders like you) can afford to have all
| necessary procedures done without going bankrupt.
| briffle wrote:
| I'd be fine with getting money for healthcare from my
| employer (especially if it was in a special pre-tax
| account, like a 401k that I could then use to purchase
| healthcare), but my being tied to whatever 2-3 plan options
| the head of HR and company president were wined and dined
| for seems a little crazy to me.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| 401ks are also dumb. Just set the IRA cap higher. Why do
| I need a whole bureaucratic system to decide I'm worthy
| of 18k of tax shelter instead of 6k?
|
| Or get rid of tax shelters. Everyone I know who's broke
| is too broke to be buying stocks anyway. I can afford
| some tax.
| moi2388 wrote:
| Not only because sick people might be too sick to work
| since they're sick
| azinman2 wrote:
| Cobra enables continued healthcare, many states have
| unemployment benefits, and I believe in all cases (?) you
| have some number of days to get a new visa sponsor.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Paying one's own insurance when you don't know how long
| you'll have no income is outrageously expensive. Last time
| I changed jobs I just went without because the COBRA
| offering was so expensive.
|
| I have no clue how unemployment works. I don't think I've
| ever paid into it?
| karmajunkie wrote:
| if you've worked a w2 job in the US you've paid into it
| indirectly --your employer pays it on your behalf.
| cmiles74 wrote:
| You need to have some serious savings to pay out the
| monthly cost of COBRA. The last time I was in this
| position, it was ~$1,800/month to cover my family.
| Technetium wrote:
| Looks like you never actually had to pay for COBRA out of
| pocket. It's not financially feasible for the large
| majority of people, especially those who didn't have to pay
| out of pocket for their coverage previously. A single
| person can be ~$800USD, and if you want to cover dependents
| in your family, at least double it.
| kstrauser wrote:
| My family coverage was $1900.
| JoshGlazebrook wrote:
| Mine was going to be around $2200/month. Thankfully my
| company paid for the first 6 months following the layoff.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Mine covered 4 months. I'm glad I was able to find
| another job before that ran out.
| duped wrote:
| My partner is losing their healthcare very soon and it's
| cheaper to pay out of pocket for regular doctors and
| prescriptions than pay for COBRA. You basically have to
| be in the hospital for COBRA to be worth it.
| duped wrote:
| You should look up what max unemployment benefit payments
| are for your state, because they probably won't cover
| rent/mortgage if you live in any moderate CoL area.
| JoshGlazebrook wrote:
| The way you speak of all of these things just makes it
| obvious you've never been laid off and in the position to
| need to utilize these things. COBRA lets you keep your
| existing plan, but you pay for the entire premium. In most
| cases this is $1000-2000 per month. For someone in survival
| mode and needing to find where to cut costs, 2k per month
| could be more than their rent.
|
| The max unemployment benefits for any state is not going to
| cover much of anything, you better have savings to fall
| back on.
|
| And for those on H1B, there is a 60 day grace period. Maybe
| in 2021-2022 it was extremely easy, but today? A lot of
| people will be lucky to get through a full interview loop
| in that time.
| azinman2 wrote:
| I haven't been laid off, you're right. I'm just saying
| the GP made lots of absolute claims that aren't
| absolutely true. Of course many European countries have
| bigger and better safety nets than the US, but it's not
| like the US has none.
|
| Most of the world (which isn't the U.S. or Europe) is
| even worse.
| andrewaylett wrote:
| The UK has rules about such things. If your job is at risk of
| redundancy, there are formal processes to follow. If enough
| jobs are at risk of redundancy, there's a whole consultation
| process that needs to happen before people are actually "made
| redundant". People are expected to work while that takes place.
|
| Money can smooth things over, though. The process is expensive,
| and _has_ to be done properly, or the company can offer
| "voluntary redundancy" where they pay you to go away quietly.
| That happened to me. I don't know whether I was locked out or
| not, because I didn't try to log in again.
| tw04 wrote:
| Who would want that? The US style is the best of both worlds
| IMO. By cutting you off immediately the company protects itself
| from rogue employees who may try to harm the company while
| their access is still enabled.
|
| For the employee, being cut off means you don't actually have
| to do anymore work for a company that's letting you go. You're
| either getting severance or you aren't, and I'd much rather
| collect severance while not having to work. In the instance
| that they're letting you go without severance: yes that's
| horrible they just pulled the rug. But _usually_ that 's a
| result of poor performance and you probably should've seen it
| coming. And frankly that's also why we have unemployment.
| Repulsion9513 wrote:
| It's definitely a thing in the UK as well, at the very least.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_leave
| paulddraper wrote:
| > So much more humane.
|
| I'd 100% rather get 3 weeks severance than get paid to a couple
| more months (or whatever).
|
| ---
|
| Also, the whole "security escorting you out" schtick...I'm
| certain that happens, but I've never seen it personally.
| dm03514 wrote:
| Auth0 truly did an amazing job on hiring for culture, being
| transparent and living their values.
|
| The pre-acquisition Glassdoor reviews were astounding and back
| this up.
|
| For myself, working at auth0 was truly life altering. It was the
| first time I was in a long standing multi-national environment.
|
| It was the first time I was deeply exposed to other cultures and
| ways of living.
|
| As a side effect of working at Auth0, This exposure completely
| reshaped my worldview and thoughts on luck and privilege.
| Watching Argentina inflation fluctuate as people I spent 8 hours
| a day with struggle to pay their bills and provide for their
| families as I live stably with no worry I really internalized how
| much pure raw luck plays in setting us up for life: Who we're
| born to and where we're born.
| EdSharkey wrote:
| Word choice can help your thinking. We all receive different
| struggles and decide how to respond.
|
| The way you describe your 'luck', I read as "random good
| fortune" tinged with some guilt for being a 'have' when there
| are so many 'have-not's.
|
| I prefer 'blessed', and not in the corny #blessed way, to
| describe my condition. To me, I was given much because so much
| is expected of me by God, by universe and by my higher self.
|
| The extent to which I am blessed is a component of my calling
| to improve the total human condition.
|
| If you lean in to that way of thinking, you obligate yourself
| and that can be as heavy a burden as you choose to make it.
| That choice and the freedom to decide how to fulfill that
| obligation are a part of the blessing.
|
| To naval gaze and feel guilt is natural but fruitless stinkin'
| thinkin'. Motivating oneself with gratitude and humbling
| oneself by giving glory are ways to power through guilt.
| _heimdall wrote:
| > I prefer 'blessed', and not in the corny #blessed way, to
| describe my condition. To me, I was given much because so
| much is expected of me by God, by universe and by my higher
| self.
|
| How do you avoid this leading to a feeling that you, and
| anyone else "blessed", is more important that others? Should
| we really assume that the condition of one's life is an
| indicator of both the existence of a higher power and of that
| person's relative importance to it?
| ricenews wrote:
| Not OP, but I'll take a crack at responding.
|
| The feeling of being "blessed" is the recognition that a
| substantial component of your current fortune is due to
| circumstances outside your control, whether due to a higher
| power, support from family/friends, raw luck, or the
| kindness of strangers. The proper and typical response to
| this feeling is one of gratitude, not self-importance, and
| the desired response is to contribute in various ways to
| the blessing of others (i.e. pay it forward).
|
| It's only when we lose the salience of that "blessed"
| feeling, and we start to take our circumstances for
| granted, that leads to our feeling of greater importance
| than others. It's a slippery position no doubt, but the
| alternative feelings are: guilt (that I've received
| unfairly), anxiety (that what I've received may not be
| enough), jealousy (that what I've received is not enough),
| or pride/self-satisfaction (that I'm primarily responsible
| for what I've received). And honestly, it's pride that is
| the true gateway to that feeling of self-importance you
| describe.
| remram wrote:
| What you're describing is better captured by the word
| "lucky". "Blessed" is lucky plus an acknowledgement that
| this luck was granted to you on purpose by a higher
| power, so you deserved it in a karmic way (though not
| operational way). It really irks me too.
| simplify wrote:
| "Blessed" does not necessarily imply karmic nor
| deserving. Many Christians will say they've been blessed
| and recognize they don't deserve it.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| > "Blessed" is lucky plus an acknowledgement that this
| luck was granted to you on purpose by a higher power, so
| you deserved it in a karmic way
|
| The karmic component would make it a reward. So much as
| you are blessed with resources, you are then able to make
| sacrifices that aren't necessarily enviable.
| _heimdall wrote:
| I definitely understand it from the angle you're
| describing, though similar to a sibling comment I'd see
| that as "lucky" more than "blessed".
|
| The OP comment was removed ,but if I remember right it
| was specifically calling out their life circumstances as
| being given by god specifically, and a view that this is
| both a purposeful prioritization of that person and a
| responsibility to use gods blessings.
|
| I wouldn't even argue directly against that view, mainly
| because I strongly believe that everyone has an absolute
| right to freedom of religion. I would have been curious
| to hear more though, because at least how I remember the
| OP describing it there was more to it than a recognition
| of the circumstances they were born into and how it
| compares to others less fortunate.
| 616c wrote:
| I traveled some in college to not so tourist friendly places
| and then worked as an expat in IT and I feel so fortunate for
| the same takeaways I am bitter and cynical as an American but
| defend the other at home and abroad because it made me keenly
| aware of our shared perspective It always makes me often wallow
| in guilt it took a privileged family to kick that off and let
| me learn it far away and not build up such empathy at home.
|
| When I read shared experiences like ours on the Internet it
| reminds me of what I think is the one true value of this tool
| for humanity I wish it was used for that the majority of the
| time by most people but oh well!
| yellow_lead wrote:
| It's difficult to find a good balance between engaging with your
| work and colleagues, and the reality that your employer-employee
| relationship is a business relationship that could be severed at
| any time. Reading this post reminds me of that.
| hasty_pudding wrote:
| I feel like Auth0 is one of those products that shouldn't exist.
|
| Youre paying ALOT for what you can do with a JWT.
| nusl wrote:
| Auth0 does a lot more than just a JWT. Sure, it's more
| expensive and probably not something you'll need, and if you
| do; why? But it's definitely not just a JWT.
| hasty_pudding wrote:
| like what?
| mplewis wrote:
| https://auth0.com/docs/get-started/auth0-overview
| paulddraper wrote:
| SSO (for starters)
| ugly1kenowbi wrote:
| is that your take on Auth0 specifically, or SaaS authentication
| in general?
| evantbyrne wrote:
| I'm not sure the JWT characterization is fair, but in a world
| of open-source, auth doesn't feel like something you should
| have to pay a subscription for.
| stevage wrote:
| I use auth0.
|
| For starters I would have no idea where to begin without the
| SaaS.
|
| Next, it handles account management, signup, password resets
| etc. You'd have to write that yourself.
| buro9 wrote:
| This bit at the end:
|
| > and learned an enormous amount about what it means to build and
| run a people-first company
|
| Seems at odds with this bit at the beginning:
|
| > And then it happened, I got the email. Slack didn't work. My
| laptop restarted and came back with accounts missing. It really,
| actually happened. And even though the writing seemed to be on
| the wall, I was still caught a bit off guard.
|
| This industry (not specifically this company) fires people in a
| way that is not as people-first as all of the declarations make
| out.
|
| If people want it to be people first through and through... know
| that every right that you ever had was earned through a union.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| The "people first" company was Auth0. The company that sent the
| email and terminated access instantly was Okta.
|
| Fairly clear to me.
| AndrewPGameDev wrote:
| How can a company be "people first" when they sell out to a
| larger company who isn't "people first"?
| joshcanhelp wrote:
| This is a good question. A lot of people, all over the
| world, put a lot of work into something and getting
| acquired turns stock options worth $0 into options worth a
| lot more than that. It's just my $0.02 but, knowing the
| founders and who they are, I'm fairly sure this was more
| about giving back to the folks that made it happen than it
| was a purely business decision.
|
| Also, Auth0 was investor-backed so there was likely a lot
| of pressure to sell at the price being offered. I don't
| know how all that works exactly but I can imagine that this
| kind of decision is made by more people than just the
| founders.
| whoisthemachine wrote:
| Ethics are tricky!
| plagiarist wrote:
| At billions of dollars in acquisition you'd think any
| employee wouldn't have financial stability as a top concern
| like mentioned a few times here.
| scott_w wrote:
| Just off the top of my head:
|
| - They didn't know the purchasing company wasn't "people
| first"
|
| - The founders burnt out and needed an exit
|
| - The purchasing company was "people first" at the time of
| purchase
|
| I'm not placing a judgement on Okta here, by the way,
| because I know nothing about them. Just answering your
| question.
| eurg wrote:
| For a company I once worked, it was because the VCs held
| more than 50% of the company, and the founders - ultimately
| - didn't have a say.
| morgante wrote:
| It has nothing to do with being "people-first" or not.
|
| Leaving terminated employees with access to sensitive systems
| is poor security practice.
| progbits wrote:
| You trusted them with that access yesterday, and they are not
| being fired for cause (eg. stealing company secrets), so why
| don't you trust them today?
|
| This sort of thing only really happens in US companies (see
| lots of other comments in this thread on this), and maybe
| that should be a clue this isn't "security practice".
| morgante wrote:
| Fired employees are much more likely to do something
| malicious, either by sabotaging systems or stealing
| proprietary data. The incentives are totally different.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| > so why don't you trust them today
|
| Because they heard about being laid off this morning and
| who knows what goes through the mind of a laid off person.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Exactly this. The company just subjected the individual
| to an enormous amount of stress that didn't exist
| yesterday coupled with the fact that the long-term payoff
| to them of "don't act like a jackass at work" has just
| changed _a lot_.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Yes. That's the unfortunate part of being laid off. So to
| protect the individual from himself and the company from
| the individual it might be actually better to just lock
| people out.
|
| Funnily, nobody has such empathy towards a company when
| the employee lays the company off. Then everyone is like
| ,,suck it up company, suck it up boss".
| groby_b wrote:
| I'm fairly certain when an employee lays the company off,
| they do them the same courtesy and immediately lock them
| out from their life as well.
|
| Also, if you'd like more empathy, in both directions,
| there is nothing in the US _preventing_ you from
| extending an employment contract with a well-defined
| layoff & severance process. Most companies choose not to
| do so, to preserve options. Well, you made your at-will
| bed, you get to lie in it.
|
| If you're a manager caught in the middle: Yep. It sucks.
| It's also predictably part of your job, so make sure
| you're compensated accordingly. (You can't manage for an
| extended period without being forced to lay off somebody
| at some point. ZIRP stretched that period, a lot. It's
| still a thing that's part of the job)
| marcinzm wrote:
| > only really happens in US companies (see lots of other
| comments in this thread on this)
|
| That's not what the comments say.
| nucleardog wrote:
| > You trusted them with that access yesterday, and they are
| not being fired for cause (eg. stealing company secrets),
| so why don't you trust them today?
|
| Yesterday, behaving in a manner that would result in your
| continued employment had clear, short term incentives like
| receiving further income. The company had leverage in that
| if you were to behave inappropriately they could terminate
| your employment and take away that income.
|
| Today, the company has terminated your employment and taken
| away that income. The only reasons to not be malicious are
| long term consequences (future employment prospects,
| criminal charges, etc) and personal values.
|
| People in general are notoriously bad at aligning their
| actions with long term incentives or consequences
| (especially consequences). You're testing this out in this
| employee for the first time in a situation where they're
| under much higher anxiety and stress than normal and you no
| longer have any real leverage over them.
|
| I'd imagine the difference in the US has more to do with
| the short notice period and lack of social safety net
| making being terminated a much more impactful event for the
| employee.
| scott_w wrote:
| In addition to what others said, there's also a compliance
| aspect.
|
| Even if 99% of laid off staff will react fairly and
| reasonably, it only takes a few to do serious damage,
| potentially to your customers.
|
| Even on a small scale, those laid off can cause some harm:
| "losing" things, getting extremely enthusiastic with
| decommissioning equipment, or even filling the company cars
| with fuel right before giving them back to the hire
| company.
| buro9 wrote:
| That wasn't my point, my point was firing someone via email
| is heartless, and that employers should have the decency to
| speak to a person and let them know why.
|
| The system access can still be removed at the same time.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Welcome to job life. What are you expecting from a company
| when they want to shun you out the door, hugs and kisses?
|
| Companies never value you. Your just a ticket with a number
| associated to it. Harsh but prove me wrong.
| fuhrtf wrote:
| I don't think there's a good way to lay people off in the
| remote work era. With emails at least you get a
| standardized message across. with all hands on deck Skype
| meetings you can come across as the devil by just
| mispronouncing 1 word. With Skype 1on1s you expose your
| remaining employees to embarrassment on TikTok like that
| one woman recently did.
| CalRobert wrote:
| Auth0 was a much better place to work than Okta.
| briffle wrote:
| as a potential client, they were also night and day
| different. I had great sales conversations with Auth0, and
| they had so many easy to follow examples, tutorials, etc.
| Very helpful engineers on the call, who asked questions about
| our environments, etc.
|
| A sales call with Okta just left me feeling dirty. It felt a
| lot like my sales calls when I was an Oracle customer. All
| about how many products they could push on us, no good
| technical explanations, and of course, huge pressure to 'sign
| this contract before the end of the month to get this great
| price'.
|
| I wanted to go with Auth0, but then they got aquired, and we
| just said hell no.
| CalRobert wrote:
| Auth0 wasn't perfect (I would've like fewer pages), but it
| was pretty damn good. I learned a lot there and had one of
| the best managers of my career there. I also was the only
| employee in my country for several years and still felt
| very included. It was telling that I was able to chat with
| Eugenio myself even as a lowly IC. Okta's main claim to
| fame seemed to be a great sales team, though your
| explanation sounds like that wasn't great either.
| johnnyAghands wrote:
| > and learned an enormous amount about what it means to build
| and run a people-first company
|
| He's talking about Auth0.
|
| > And then it happened, I got the email. Slack didn't work. My
| laptop restarted and came back with accounts missing. It
| really, actually happened. And even though the writing seemed
| to be on the wall, I was still caught a bit off guard.
|
| Talking about how that culture no longer existed -- it's fully
| Okta now. The Auth0 culture essentially erroded until it
| finally just no longer existed. This of course happened at a
| different pace across differnt organizations. Unfortunately,
| I'd say ours was probably one of the earliest to get hit.
|
| ---
|
| As an aside, I was part of same team (also laid off), and had
| an especially unique viewpoint.
|
| I joined Auth0 in 2020 -- months before the acquisition. I
| joined because of the culture and the amazing people I get to
| work with and learn from. I had a lot of fun and we built some
| amazing things. After about 18 months I decided to join a local
| startup, itching to get back to a much smaller arena, building
| something from the ground up. Applying all the great things
| I've learned in my career thus far. Long story short, as most
| starups go, especially during COVID, it didn't pan out.
|
| I kept in touch with my old colleagues, now my friends, who
| approached me with a potential new opportunity. They did warn
| me things were different now, but I was excited to get to work
| with great people again.
|
| Coming back it was starkly different. Gone was the magic that
| was once there. A lot of familiar faces were still around, but
| so too were a lot gone now. I can feel the beating of the Okta
| drums more loudly now.. there just felt a lot of separation
| between leadership and us dreamers at the bottom. I felt like I
| was just back at a corporate company now, more worried about
| writing OKRs and how they made my boss/division look good
| verses actually making our customers lives better. There was a
| constant dread in the air.. verses excitement.
|
| It's strange, but in some ways its almost like a feeling of
| mourning. That meme about not knowing when you're in the good
| old days is very true. Goodbye Auth0 <3
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > know that every right that you ever had was earned through a
| union
|
| This really isn't true. Lots of these perks are because there
| was loads of money sloshing around, and a competitive hiring
| environment drove the culture to be as attractive as possible
| for employees.
| stevage wrote:
| Perks and rights are extremely different. Companies can't
| take rights away.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Well, laws create rights, not unions, as far as I
| understand things.
| nu11ptr wrote:
| Do a lot of companies actually fire people via email? That seems
| very cold! Most of the companies I've worked for they will call
| you into a meeting with your boss and HR and then have security
| walk you out after gathering your things. Not ideal, but at least
| has a human element. If this person was remote then it could at
| least be done via phone.
| great_wubwub wrote:
| Once I got laid off via 1:1 call. Once I got laid off via a
| mass call with HR, they canned my entire department at once
| (300+ people). Once I got laid off via bulk bcc'd email because
| I was on vacation and missed the last-minute mass call with HR.
|
| This has never happened to me, but I am absolutely 100%
| positive some companies just shut your access off, send you an
| email to an account you can't log into any more, and move on
| without a second thought.
| prmoustache wrote:
| I am pretty sure the guy was working remotely.
| paulddraper wrote:
| That doesn't change anything about the comment, other than
| "security walk you out."
| adrr wrote:
| For small layoffs its possible to do it individually. If you're
| firing hundreds or thousands of people, there isn't enough HR
| to go around and a lack of IT people to individually cut
| people's access throughout the day. Laid off in 2012, they just
| put hundreds of us in an event room and let us all go at once.
| I'd prefer an email and not have to do the walk of shame back
| to my desk with a box.
| paulddraper wrote:
| The larger the company, the more resources you have.
| gwright wrote:
| More resources for "normal" business. Laying off large
| number of people isn't normal business and so there would
| be no expectation you had HR/security resources just
| sitting around waiting for that type of an event.
| planetjones wrote:
| That was brilliantly written and summarised. Seems that Auth0
| really did walk the walk in terms of developer experience and
| support. Thanks and good luck!
| subarctic wrote:
| The article mentions Okta but the headline is about Auth0 - are
| they the same company now?
| briHass wrote:
| Acquired in May 2021, 6.5 billion.
| activitypea wrote:
| > I was still caught a bit off guard. What about that high-
| priority project I was helping to lead? What about the training I
| was scheduled to deliver? What about the offsite next month?
|
| This is the part that always confuses me. I understand why they
| treat employees as disposable, but it's like they don't care
| about continuation of business either.
|
| I feel like everytime I've quit a job, I cared more about my
| succession plan than my employer just because I have professional
| standards I set for myself. It makes no sense to me.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Social systems like "a company" are surprisingly adaptive. Did
| your company fall over? Will Auth0 fall over? Very likely no.
|
| There's almost no single person, project, process, or piece of
| knowledge that is truly existential to a moderate sized
| organization.
| matwood wrote:
| Everyone is replaceable, even the CEO. Some plates will drop,
| the people left pick up the pieces and keep going.
| victor106 wrote:
| It's not talked about as much but one of the main reasons for
| American and European software developers being let go is
| outsourcing to places like India.
|
| Companies save 90% of the cost of hiring someone in America.
|
| Very soon we are going to see what happened to manufacturing jobs
| happen to software jobs in the US unless the government steps in.
| Unfortunately I don't see anyone talk about it
| sokoloff wrote:
| What do you mean it's not talked about? It was an incredibly
| common theme during the celebrations of remote work increases.
|
| A: "Finally, I can work from anywhere and don't have to live in
| an expensive place and commute to that office every day."
|
| B-Z: "Um, don't you think that being able to work from anywhere
| increases the possibility of the company to hire from anywhere
| as well? And that it's not guaranteed to be you or your
| neighbor who is hired?"
| CalRobert wrote:
| To be fair, there's also those of us in Europe splitting the
| difference.
|
| Auth0 is interesting in that it kinda did this from the start
| - a lot of the engineering was in South America - especially
| Argentina (it was founded by an Argentinian after all!) and
| there was great talent in nearly the same time zone. I don't
| understand why more companies in the US don't look at Latin
| America for affordable engineering talent.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| > Very soon we are going to see what happened to manufacturing
| jobs happen to software jobs in the US unless the government
| steps in. Unfortunately I don't see anyone talk about it
|
| Outsourcing is nothing new. I don't know why you (and others)
| act like it is only going to happen now with remote work.
|
| My first job in my home country, 20 years ago, was outsourcing
| to a US company. I was just very cheap labor.
| pm90 wrote:
| I can't help but wonder about all the people who can't express
| themselves as well as this Author. No shade on them, Im glad to
| have read about their journey. But the cynical part of me wonders
| about all the other affected folks, and what their perspective
| was about their tenure.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| A shock to reality, I suppose.
|
| I yawn at these posts because you should expect in life to be
| churned and when flavourless thrown out. Pick yourself up and
| move on.
|
| Should I care that someone worked at Auth0, SpaceX, Amazon or
| Google when they're just another company that pays you money?
| How is it any different to where I work?
|
| I've done them all, banks, animation studio, enterprise,
| corporate, sme, porn and can tell you every single one is the
| same.
|
| It's the corps vision of fairy dust that alludes the employee
| wrong is what. "Work for us and live a life of wonders and
| giggles *"
|
| * until we get bored of you
| paulddraper wrote:
| > you should expect in life to be churned and when
| flavourless thrown out
|
| Accurate
| joshcanhelp wrote:
| This was on my mind when I published it. I know, personally,
| other folks who did not have as fond of a memory as I do and
| others who are in a tough spot because of these layoffs (visa
| issues, financial hardships, etc). I certainly don't mean to
| imply that I represent all views here but it seems to have
| resonated with a lot of my former colleagues (who were the
| audience for this post).
| flumpcakes wrote:
| It has been interesting to read the comments here. At places I've
| worked I've always worked my full notice (usually months),
| however when other people have quit they've been locked out of
| their systems, and some escorted from the premises. Perhaps I
| come across as a naive/nice/non-malicious. My roles have always
| been in some of the most sensitive positions within
| organisations. Often without a clear successor so perhaps the
| worry was about not being able to fix things if I was to become
| disgruntled. (Or simply not knowing if they _could_ lock me
| out... as crazy as that sounds!)
| brightstep wrote:
| > I was being exposed to engineering concepts that just weren't a
| thing in agency work: unit testing, CI/CD, git hygiene, release
| management.
|
| As someone who's worked at an agency that's grown from twenty
| engineers to hundreds over the last five years, what? Even when
| we were small and scrappy we still wrote unit tests...
| joshcanhelp wrote:
| My experience was 100% different (but also 6+ years ago).
| Margins just weren't enough to build it into estimates and it
| was nearly impossible to sell it to clients as a line item.
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