Such procedures tend to fail when you move fast and break things.
The company is going to do layoffs regardless. If you swap in another CEO for Mark, that's just giving the company a different weapon to do the deed.
The comment above mine said "there's always a human at the end of the decision" implying that if Meta just had more ethical individuals, then Meta would make more ethical decisions. I am arguing that it doesn't matter whether the individuals have good or bad moral values, because the company values profit above all else.
They can perhaps consider actions which will result in large impacts to large numbers of employees (such as regulating the inflow a bit more to protect against sudden needs to dump 11,000 people). Hire fewer, more slowly, and they can then slowly and with more consideration lay off fewer people.
This isn't collectively decided by a company with tens of thousands of employees, it's decided by one or two people in HR and approved by groups rarely larger than five people. It's not only perfectly feasible to "consider the individual employee" in this decision, but a handful of people are literally paid to do exactly that, and miserably failed to do their job.
Lots of people here understandably focus on the part where those guys failed at just being decent human beings. But what I find truly disheartening is the part where those guys really sucked at doing their job: the people in that hiring chain made a decision that cost several departments thousands of dollars in covering relocation paperwork and legal fees, even though that turned out to be entirely unnecessary, and then literally caused an employer branding and PR dumpster fire. This is the equivalent of committing a bunch of performance fixes that turn out to be unnecessary, then attempting to revert them only to cause a massive crash in production -- tl;dr it's just incompetence. And it's really hilarious to see the same people who advocate for ruthlessly firing people for incompetence defend this gross incompetence under the guise of pseudo-philosophical talk about corporate morality.
Andrew in HR just does what the policy says, it's unfortunate but rules are rules, and the policy doesn't say this is any exception.
Barbra the CEO who set the policy would have made an exception if it had been brought to her attention, but it wasn't. The policy was set serving the interests of the shareholders.
Charles the shareholder is just an average member of the public and isn't party to any internal firing plans. And in any case, he owns 0.0000002% of facebook - far from a controlling interest.
And like magic, the responsibility has disappeared - vanished into the gap between Andrew and Barbra.
The only charges brought in relation to this incident, where against people making offensive jokes about it on social media.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10734735/Property-t...
> corporations are implicitly immoral
Something being legal doesn't make it moral.
Pretty solid post barring that non sequitur. This is a post about Meta, which is not controlled by Elon.
There are leaders who understand that and keep them on a tight leash, (cuz u can't not use their mindless ambition and over optimizing tendencies or ur competition will) and there are people who call themselves leaders who loose the leash.
Not only those. You give up being able to easily meet your family, friends, ... your favorite spot for hanging out is gone and you are in a completely different society, with other ways how things are done.
And then in this case with just two days in you are probably still in some temporary housing.
For staying you need to find a new job, quickly and a new apartment (which is hard without a job and without permanent visa) and when going home you likely will be marked as a loser who couldn't do it.
When I immigrated to Canada, online ordering was not as ubiquitous as it is now. I needed to ask someone in the elevator where to buy a laundry basket. I had no idea. Come to think of, how on earth would you know? They do not give you a "handbook to Canadian living" when you land on an IM-1 visa.
Bookkeeper. Lawyer. Handyman. Figure all that out, again, as if those weren't hard enough in the first case.
These things are much harder than anyone would reasonably expect. I expected the change of friends, places etc but never occurred to me how hard it'll be to re-learn shopping.
> Living & Working in Canada: A Survival Handbook (Living and Working)
https://www.amazon.com/Living-Working-Canada-Survival-Handbo...
Taxes, bank accounts, grocery stores, buying alcohol, going to the doctor's, and so and so forth. I had to learn how to do these things again.
If one never moved to a very different society there's no way to really empathise how deep these changes go, you uproot everything that was considered your life. The only thing you have left when moving 10000km away for a job is... The job itself.
That would be for the best as well.
Enjoy companies never hiring anyone because they'll be completely unable to let them go.
On your larger point, looking at countries with pretty strong worker protection, companies still have a flurry of tools to punish or get rid of workers that are way below their expected performance or crossing lines. "We can't fire people" is basically a myth, or what people really mean is "We can't willy nilly fire people like they're cattle".
I've seen people fired on the spot after heated discussion with the direction or people let go following a month or two of HR monitoring. The company only needs to do its homework and properly document offenses, follow the processes, or pay the full price if it really wants to get rid of someone with no objective reason.
The US (EDIT: given this was in Canada, clearly the US isn't as extreme an outlier as I thought) is a pretty extreme outlier in how it allows employers to deal with redundancies, because almost every other developed country recognises there's a massive power asymmetry.
Immigrants are paid less than locals… do you think that is fair?
We can just hope that the company will provide a good level of support and that the person will be able to get back on their feet ASAP.
Relocating is no protection against being laid off, be it legally or ethically.
Companies can show empathy and that they care by providing support, as said.
This is not one or the other.
Relocating should probably involve a minimum notice period, legally.
Especially in this particular case, the company for sure can afford it.
They're potentially destroying a person's life (or at least a few years of their life) with something like a 0.0000001% disturbance for the company.
You're making an empirical claim to argue against something normative.
When the distinction is not clear, professionals are essentially getting ripped off. If it was clear that everyone is a trader and some trade their coding time, then Meta wouldn't be able to do this because the trader would have put the cancellation terms in the deal. If it was clear that they are professionals and don't with FB but join that company, then it is expected that the law should protect the workers.
It's the worst when you ara positioned as a single person trader who doesn't want to be a trader, doesn't have the skills of a trader and trades with a giant trader.
Alternatively they can just return to India? I'd be surprised if they didn't receive reallocation package (16k USD according to teamblind?). I don't expect any employer to go above and beyond their contractual obligations.
There is also certain irony here in Meta employees expecting ethical behavior from Meta whilst happily creating and maintaining unethical outcomes for the customers.
Indeed. So many have returned to India in far worse circumstances during 2008 recession.
> There is also certain irony here in Meta employees expecting ethical behavior from Meta whilst happily creating and maintaining unethical outcomes for the customers.
You are right. I am sorry to say but this outpouring for folks who are in vastly better financial situation is an example of People like Us have more feelings than masses.
Are you sure they will be allowed to keep it? Relocation package is usually tied to one year work period in the new location and you have to give it back if you leave earlier than that.
Large layoffs in large orgs are generally done at a team level rather than an individual level. So presumably this individual's entire team no longer exists.
So out of respect for them relocating do you then try to reposition them in the company somehow?
And what about all the people who didn't relocate but may have recently left stable job for an opportunity at Meta? Do they not matter or should they also be repositioned out of respect? And what about those who have personal reasons that make the layoff extra difficult? For example, those who might have just had a new born or who have family members in hospital? Do their personal situations not also matter?
And for how long would these individuals be safe if you do make an exception? Do you keep them for 3 months just to be nice then proceed with the layoff anyway? I'm not sure that's much better...
I think maybe the best thing to do here is just to give good severance packages?
I don't think I'm being heartless. I'm sat here thinking both, "man this is awful" while also having no idea what the right answer is. You can argue layoffs suck more for certain people and those people should be protected, but for a larger org needing to do mass-layoffs it seems almost impossible to make those kinds of assessments on an individual level in a way that is fair. You'd inevitably just end up protecting certain types of crappy situations (recently located) over other types of crappy situations (family member just died).
Just thinking out loud... Maybe I'm missing something here.
Thats it. HR knows who is working on visa. Inform them of the situation, give them 3 months, away all their accesses and let them spend the 3 months to look for a new job. Meta makes a bazillion USD pr yeah. Even if they had to pay 1000 works on visa for 3 months it wont make a dent in their profits.
For the employee that just relocated, on the other hand, this makes all the difference in the world.
Corporate greed is disgusting when its put above Human decency like this.
This is a HUGE stress, and also puts you at a disadvantage against your prospect employers.
IMHO, there should be legislation for covering these cases. I.e. when you sponsor a Visa as an employer, it should be mandatory to pay the employee for a minimum of 12-24 months. If you want to lay them off, that's fine, but legally they would still be considered employed and paid in full until that grace period expires.
edit: To be very fair, though, there is an implicit warning in the paperwork and interview for every US work visa for exactly this kind of situation. It's not like they're playing some gotcha game. They don't come right out and say it, but, it's also not exactly hidden between the lines or in small print.
I am NOT 100% sure about this, but to the best of my knowledge, this is not the case in Canada. Work Permits are issues for the duration of the expected work and are usually at least one year long. If you lose your job, you can still remain in Canada until the expiry date of your work permit. You cannot simply start working elsewhere, but if you find a new job, your new employer can start the process of applying for a work permit for you while you are waiting in Canada. So this developer should be good to stay for another 11 to 12 months, if not even longer, while searching for a new job.
I wish there was a way to make this happen but I keep hearing software workers don't need unions because we already make so much money and the better ones have nothing to worry about.
I support "keeping them on the books" for purposes of visa and health insurance, for example, but there are legitimate security reasons to have people cut off quickly when they've been laid off or fired.
I suppose if you had really, really, really good meals provided, it would be reasonable to argue about whether that was a benefit or there for people in the office.
I think its b/c getting fired is bad ofc, but not bad like in the US. I mean we have universal basic income, free healthcare etc. So I just don't think people feel pressured in a way that drives them to exploit access even after a notice, or get mad at the company in the same way. I'm just speculating. Again, there are companies and positions in companies where its a no brainer that access is revoked for security reasons.
Most companies stop having "legitimate security reasons" when the alternative is to pay people for doing nothing. Turns out the fact that actual sabotage and theft of trade secrets is illegal (and often represents a breach of the employment contract, which can incur hefty fines) is a sufficient deterrent for most industries.
People on immigration visas were not given traditional severances. They were simply kept on the books for that period of time without having any access to any resources and/or being expected to do any work.
I’m not entirely sure what happened if they started a job before the period ended. Whether they got the rest of the money as severance or forfeited it but I doubt they really cared.
The solution is obvious: Stop clinging to this backward butts-in-seats culture that has people move to a new location even if the job they're going to do can easily be done from anywhere in the world.
Good/best practices are rarely followed, maybe 20% of practitioners actually follow them in any field.
So that means that on a daily basis, about 80% of people need to work in those "broken" environments.
Having people relocate to another country, because your organization isn't able to fix its own internal problems, means you're simply outsourcing your own costs to your employees.
And except for a select few, most people can't bend reality.
Reality being as it is, is no argument for not trying to be better or improve a situation:
Contrary to the Shaw quote above I’d say that simply resigning oneself to reality as it is and therefore precluding better approaches is the unreasonable choice.
There are all sorts of tools that allow for an asynchronous human connection, e.g., asynchronous video recordings.
Working mostly asynchronously also doesn’t mean you can’t have the occasional synchronous online meeting (including coffee) as well.
Is there any proof that's truly the case? Or isn't that yet another one of those commonly accepted, yet rarely questioned truisms when it comes to - an often dysfunctional - work culture?
Not the OP but the proof is my own experience in both in-office and remote settings. And everyone is going to go by their own life experiences. If enough people think that remote setting sucks and that junior engineers, along with many other roles, are more effective in person, then the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate that that's not the case.
Therefore, someone claiming it doesn't work, is effectively saying it doesn't work for their company, which in turn gives rise to questions as to why that's the case:
Is their company and its work truly that unique and special that it can only effectively be done synchronously and in person?
Or is it rather that the company in question itself has an underlying organizational problem?
Yes. My company is also in that category. We employ a lot of junior engineers too. >90% of them say they want some in-person interaction because it is hard to ramp up effectively on a complex codebase and a different culture.
> Therefore, someone claiming it doesn't work, is effectively saying it doesn't work for their company, which in turn gives rise to questions as to why that's the case
Because we are all humans and in absence of an in-person presence, we are not able to form trusting deep relationships.
> Is their company and its work truly that unique and special that it can only effectively be done synchronously and in person?
for example we are using gather.town. much better than Google Meet (full HD screen sharing, ad-hoc breakout sessions, blablabla, free under team size of 25, if I remember correctly)
I keep hearing such arguments but those typically aren't backed up by any data or reason as to why that's the case.
That said, poster child remote-first companies such as Basecamp, GitLab, or Zapier have their people gather a few times throughout the year, too, to allow them to get to know each other better. That's not a contradiction at all and something entirely different than mandating people move to specific location to work there the entire time.
I'd say burden of proof is on you to provide any data that remote work is equally good.
I have given remote-working a shot for three years - first ~1.5 were mandatory during COVID and last ~1.5 were during normal times. My company has gone all in on remote work and has tried to make it work. It just doesn't work and everyone is openly admitting its flaws. To name a few: a lack of trust, very shallow relationships, struggles for junior and new team members to ramp up, a lack of engagement etc.
Based on my personal experience and that of my social and professional circles, >80% people seem to prefer a hybrid model where they work 2-3 days in office and 2-3 days at home. Of course, in-office days have to be mandated for the entire team to be effective.
Much better than days of notice.
The solutions seem pretty simple to me, contractually required notice periods. My last job I had either a two or three month notice period, I can't quite remember. For those coming over on visas, you could have an initial notice period that's longer.
> I think maybe the best thing to do here is just to give good severance packages?
Missing in this for the case of visas is about how long you're allowed to stay in the country without a job. A notice period should mean you're still employed, so that adds to any grace period around a visa.
> You'd inevitably just end up protecting certain types of crappy situations (recently located) over other types of crappy situations (family member just died).
Maybe, yeah. But protecting some people rather than none is an improvement, particularly when some cases are extremely easy to identify and may make a much larger proportion of people affected significantly.
But that’s socialism! Soon after, we’ll be eating our own dogs, who wants that?
/s
> Maybe I'm missing something here.
Maybe look at how it's done in pretty much every other developed country in the world? Employees have notice periods and extra safety margins around visas.
(Of course not in USA)
More importantly, the average de-facto "standard" in many contracts is longer.
Additionally, many companies go beyond the contract requirements.
I think for a few months the company should subsidize renting a place, so new hires who move are not forced to liquidate everything back home. (Relocation packages are a thing after all.)
Reading them, so am I. There is no sign of empathy: that understanding of another individual, the ability to put oneself in someone else's shoes, that is fundamental to a healthy society and (IMO) personal integrity.
I read a comment a few years ago that no-one thinks of themselves as a bad person. To yourself, you are always okay. Yet lacking as you phrase it 'human decency', or for me, 'empathy', as so clearly illustrated in those harsh, inhuman, uncaring, comments that show no concern nor understanding of the person, the human, the feeling caring uprooted emotion-bearing trouble-striving human at the center of this...
I don't know. I feel like quite a few people in this post need to question themselves.
That's fine. You don't have to go down infinite meta-levels of empathy.
You can just treat nazis like scum, and jerks like jerks. As long as you treat other people well and with compassion, you would still be behaving far better and more positively than how those who would make those supposedly "harsh, inhuman, uncaring, comments" are.
And you just choose who you consider "people" and who you consider "scum". It's like that old joke about Linux being user-friendly, it's just very picky about who it considers a user.
That position is shit, though.
Yes. That's necessary too. Did you rather treat everybody as an undifferentiated fog? Compassion is not about bending over backwards for jerks.
It's a problem when you're different from the Nazis only by virtue of "but I'm a good guy".
Being empathetic (take it from someone that believes they're an hyper empath) means understanding that if I were born in the 1910s in Germany and maybe blond and blue eyed, I could have probably been a big Adolf fan, but I was not, so current me believes fascists in general should get punched in the face indiscriminately and with extreme prejudice.
Having black-and-white thinking, of "I would never do that", like you seem to do, is proof itself of lack of empathy.
No, it's the opposite. I wouldn't treat anyone as an Untermensch because I'm convinced that the difference between me and them is a few throws of the dice. If you divide the world into "people worthy of empathy (by virtue of the dice showing X)" and "sub-humans to be treated like scum and vermin (by virtue of the dice showing Y)", you're completely sharing their worldview, you just randomly weren't born into their shoes and you don't agree with them on what the dice should show, but that's it.
That's not to say you should tolerate Nazis, but to not feel any empathy for them, and to not treat them as humans? Yeah, good luck on that road.
"Sure I tortured prisoners and waterboarded them ... but they were insurgents, and I'm a good guy, so it's all cool if I do it. Had they done the same to me though, wow, what a crime against humanity" has a super weird vibe to me. But it works, and Abu Ghraib documented neatly, how happy people can be while they torture others, if you tell them they're the good guys and that it's okay, because the others aren't really human.
Yeah, it's kind of like how Nazis killed people, and anti-Nazis killed people too.
So from that aspect they'd be the same. Besides, both sides also breathed, drank beer, and tied their shoes.
But the anti-nazis killed Nazis, not just anybody that they fancied for power, and they did it for freedom, and they didn't base it on innate characteristics (like being a Jew, or gypsie, or gay) but on bad behavior (like having occupied half of Europe, and burned people) and on stopping aggression.
So, yeah, there's that.
First, getting vaccinated is indeed not just about your own protection but also about empathy.
Second, actual empathetic people don’t suddenly lose all their empathy and go into “got mine fuck you” mode the moment something doesn’t go their way.
First, there's history.
Second, the POTUS himself - self proclaimed enemy of divisiveness - yapped "pandemic of the unvaccinated." Which was a lie. A lie for which he has yet to acknowledge, let alone apologize for.
The point is, people with an appreciation for history, and a willingness to exert their God given rights were being manipulated and maligned. That's not cool. That's not unifying.
To see it as trivial and harmless says more about you buying into the ruse than anything else.
History is clear my friend...be careful what you wish for, especially when your government is making big promises that hinge on your convenience and someone else's loss of liberty.
For example, NY state requires that children attending daycare or school be vaccinated against a range of pathogens.
I don't know what you're envisioning happening with mandatory SARS-CoV-2 vaccination, or why you consider it a "ruse." A "ruse" for what, exactly?
I don't think mandatory vaccination equals anyone's "loss of liberty." I don't think there's a right to not be vaccinated. It's a critical public health measure that brings huge benefits to society, and which imposes virtually no burden on the individual.
Rewind and remember all that was promised with the vaccinations. The effectiveness. The long term safety (without *any* such testing). Remember the comparisons to other historic vaccinations by professionals well aware the mRNA technology was new and relatively untested. The Covid jab !== The Polio jab. Not even close.
Remember how masks were required. Then remember the news that most masks are ineffective because the virus is smaller that what the masks can stop? How did we not know that? Why do some continue to push masks, even the ones that are effectively useless?
Remember the guy (i.e., Biden) who talked down the divisiveness of others then shamelessly said, "It's a pandemic of the unvaccinated" forcing an unnecessary wedge between the citizens. For what? To get a jab that does perform as promised? To wear "government sanctioned" masks that don't do anything?
For the record, being someone's guinea pig is not liberty. Being someone's political chew toy is not liberty. You can think what you want about public health and the mRNA jabs but don't confuse your confidence with liberty.
The fact that many reasonable and intelligent people such as yourself have forgotten so many important details can only be explained by...a ruse. But that ok, just be sure to carry your Covid papers / Covid passport and you'll be safe.
> The effectiveness.
The vaccines are highly effective at preventing severe disease and death, which was always their primary goal. If you go back and read the vaccine trial procedures on clinicaltrials.gov, you'll see that their "primary endpoint" was prevention of serious disease, and that preventing infection was viewed as the cherry on top - it wasn't the primary endpoint, and the trials weren't designed to test for infection. The fact that the mRNA vaccines protected so well against infection with the original strain was just an added bonus.
> The long term safety (without any such testing).
There was extremely rigorous safety testing. They followed tens of thousands of people for months. The "long term" aspect you're bringing up is unscientific. Based on the modern scientific understanding of the immune system, the types of long-term side-effects that anti-vaxxers posit are not possible, and there is no known example of such a side effect ever occurring with any vaccine. Vaccine side-effects always show up within a few months at most, and there was extensive testing to look for such side-effects.
> The Covid jab !== The Polio jab. Not even close.
You're right, but not in Ruhe way you think. The mRNA CoVID vaccines are far safer than the widely used oral polio vaccine.
> don't confuse your confidence with liberty
I don't agree with you on the definition of "liberty." I view the "liberty" to not get vaccinated as similar to the "liberty" to not wear a seatbelt or to buy a car without airbags.
> But that ok, just be sure to carry your Covid papers / Covid passport and you'll be safe.
If you travel around the world, you'll find that much more than just CoVID vaccination is required.
And your lack of understanding this is a lack of empathy BTW. You don't care what reason somebody has to deny the vaccine. You are (for whatever reason) convinced that it is the right thing to do and want to force it on all others (mandate).
At the start of the pandemic we are told it's no big deal. Then a few weeks later it's a massive deal. At first masks don't work so don't rush out and buy them. Then masks are mandatory in all public places. We then put society on hold for about a year. Finally we have an experimental drug that helps you be protected from the virus. YOU MUST TAKE THE DRUG! Don't want it? YOU MUST TAKE THE DRUG! You already had COVID and recovered? YOU MUST TAKE THE DRUG! You had a legitimate medical reaction to a previous vaccine? YOU MUST TAKE THE DRUG!
That process broke the trust of a significant amount of people. Why trust the establishment when they change their minds all the time and demand demand demand? If they do all these things in the name of empathy, empathy shouldn't be the base principle.
The actual reasons are self preservation and slowing down a pandemic. And when people don’t care about the latter, that is an easy tell that yeah they have zero empathy.
Especially since your actions do absolutely nothing to advance that goal you likely just made up now. If the governments have learned anything, it's that mandates need to be quicker and stronger, with much more stringent penalties for the dodgers.
So yeah... thanks for nothing.
There’s people who were forced to sell their homes, lost their jobs, and can’t move back to the place they grew up right here on American soil - in layman’s terms, I’m out of f’s to give.
I understand that some people have an irrational fear of the vaccine, and I can even try to empathize with them to that extent. However, it still is very difficult to understand the level of opposition to something which is so simple (just two painless injections, each taking seconds to administer) and so overwhelmingly positive (a 90+% reduction in the chance of serious disease, in exchange for a vanishingly small risk).
Public health messaging in the US was terrible, but US public health agencies were extremely cautious with the vaccines. If they hadn't cared about testing the vaccines, the vaccines could have been rolled out by mid-2020. After all, the vaccines were formulated all the way back in January 2020, pretty much as soon as the viral RNA sequence was published. I think it's sad that people have the impression that the vaccines were not thoroughly tested, because they were actually subjected to an extremely high level of scrutiny. They weren't approved until full-scale phase-3 trials with tens of thousands of participants had shown that the risk of severe side-effects was minuscule (i.e., as low as in other approved, safe vaccines).
The vaccine saved on the order of a million lives in the US. It's one of the most unambiguously positive things developed by humankind. That's why the strident opposition is so difficult to understand - it points to something very wrong in society.
I prefer that strategy rather than have an environment of "gatekeepers".
Great observation.
I wouldn't go that far. The signal to noise ratio is worse than it used to be, but there's still nothing else like HN and there are still a lot of interesting technical conversations to observe or to be had. I continue to learn more here than anywhere else. I'll cope with putting in a bit more effort mentally filtering out the unproductive conversations.
yes there is, lobste.rs is exactly HN but with a lot more selective membership and hence better comments.
which is fine, if that's what you want, but, as a daily reader of both, they aren't even close to being the same thing
If only the rest of us could be as moral and empathetic as you, I'm sure the world would soon be holding hands and singing kumbaya in a gigantic, human circle.
From my focus on emotions and conflict over the last 10 years, I'd say many people actually think they're bad people (or at least that they might be). I think one of the hardest things is to defend our own good intentions and I've found that as I get better at doing it for myself, I tend to also defend the good intentions of others.
A colleague a few years ago went as far as to suggest that this is how you ended up with nazis.
I hope with ubiquitous communications now that we tell these people that no it’s not acceptable to behave like this! Compassion should be awarded.
Below average empathy is pervasive and a pretty common human characteristic, like being tall or having curly hair.
To empower those folk is how you end up with nazis, which is the point.
Your colleague does appear to have done a lot of reflection and/or reading ( feel free to ask him to contact me if he finds the stuff on my profile of interest). Most people just think Hitler=evil as the sole contibuting factor to the holocast, but I say that it's people around him, who did not have the conscience or who ignored it, that lead to his rise. There are a fair number of potential 'hitlers' around us, but it's primarily people around those dysfunctional individuals that keep them in check.
There are two types: the ignorant and the complicit. The complicit are who you have to worry about. It was seen as a means to an end and was without compassion or care of others just the personal gain of rank or power.
Ask an American active in tech-orientated social media about it, they'll invariably say "Oh, well of course that doesn't affect people like me".
Until they want to go to a restaurant, but it's been shut down because the owners couldn't get it in their head that they should pay more than minimum wage and no one wants to work for that. Or the restaurant is open, with employees who cannot afford to stay home even though they are contagious, and the tech people get sick. Or their boss wants to shrink the workforce by 10-50% and so they make it undesirable to be there to avoid paying severance.
And it has to be them, not people in the same position.
But it's only some Americans who think like that. Too broad a brush doesn't work.
There's an Adam Curtis documentary All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace [0] that I think is relevant. HN (and even at this point broader programmer "culture") is a "fruit of the poison tree" in a sense - the philosophy of individualism and "greed is good" runs deep.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_o...
If you're violently against X or Y that's fine. But apply the rules evenly, fairly, and rationally. When you hate so hard and so long that you lose your compass...that's irrational.
The majority of Trump haters fall into this bucket.
Do feel free to share examples of other politicians mocking disabled people, or bragging about sexual assault, or trying a coup or any of the millions of transgressions of trump and not facing any criticism.
The hate is too strong in you and yours.
Hard pass. Have a nice day. And yeah, thanks for proving my point.
But let's talk about the stuff politicians do that is truly wrong and evil, like waging wars that kill people?
Let's talk about the War on Terror and how many people died. Remember that the media and government sold the American people a bunch of lies to sell these wars.
https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/civilians/ir... 100,000+ civilian deaths
https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/civilians/af... 70,000+ civilian deaths
Thanks for mentioning regime change, which coups do you blame on Donald Trump from this list? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
- the media doesn't make an issue out of it
- it's been normalized
The irony is, the loud broken-compass hypocrites are part of the problem. They're not speaking truth to the prevailing powers. Power who have set the stage for Trump and his ilk. Don is a symptom. It's foolish to obsess over a symptom while the root causes get a free pass.
Or, he should have told you how wonderful he was for signing the Paris Climate Agreement, yet - per Naomi Klein and others - it was a nonsense agreement (i.e., nothing binding, soft commitments, etc.). And then on his watch of 8 yrs, USA fracking production ramps up to the point of the USA becoming a net exporter of fossil fuels. How green is that?
And these things compare how to your example? You have lost your compass as well.
But thank you for proving my point.
I would say, if the hate was completely irrational, or you think that the other politicians are just as bad, then that is not ok either. Since two wrongs does not equal right, and actions should not be seen as a balance scale of 'doing equally bad things to each other', which somehow rationally makes it ok to do bad things in what seems to be a hateful way. It should not be accepted to do bad things, no matter the party, the opposition or person.
So if you think Trump is doing bad things, and the other party is doing bad things as well, rejecting both Trump and the other party seems like the logical option given the options? You don't have to belong to any camp/party, it's a hurtful illusion/rhetoric IMO, 'us or them'.
And if you think the current other politicians are doing bad things as well, I'm genuinely interested to know what bad things they are, and not just things which can be seen as political disagreements. Because I I just don't know what you are thinking about when you say it specifically, it's as simple as that, not ill intentioned. But I can understand if you do not wish to air your opinions.
But I'm under no illusion that on both sides of the parties there are and have been bad actors and corruption, which has been ongoing in many forms, which must be fought no matter where it is. I'm just afraid that when you 'weigh evil' as a justification you lose nuance, and people are more likely to fall into the tribalistic rhetoric equivalent of 'mud slinging' or just calling 'hate' which I find sadly unproductive.
I saw a lot of folks do this over the last six years. I found that really strange.
The problem is that people immedietly put people into either against or with, and the whole rhetoric is so tribalistic since it always ends up being so emotional as well. Instead of talking about interesting issues, it's just these one dimensional soundbite opinions.
But what do you really mean? You think that hearing a person out without immedietly announcing my political stances is wrong? Could the issue be that you are tired of injustice and think of people as 'enablers' immedietly if they are not in opposition?
In the spirit of openness, I don't have problems admitting my politicals views, I never liked Trumps political agendas or the person himself. And I think what he did is not ok, and I'm bewildered that he hasn't been brought to court, or gone to jail. Doesn't mean I can't hear other people's opinions without shouting my alignemnts first, which seems unproductive tbh.
A person thinks the sky is blue. Then Trump publicly says “the sky is blue”. This person now makes the point to say “the sky is NOT blue” just because Trump agreed with their original opinion. What I find irrational about some people’s reaction to Trump is that they feel compelled to change because Trump might agree with them.
I can only hope that the middle gets sick and tired of the extremes of both sides and starts voting in a way that makes the extremes reflective on their own behavior.
As a Canadian, I am not on either side, so I don't actually like or support Trump. Sometimes he is funny, sometimes his antics expose the folly of others, and sometimes he is a stupid brute.
As an outside observer, it is easy to see that Trump is not treated the same as others, and my observation is that pattern is being repeated with Elon.
I also think that you are under-estimating the luxurious and easy lifestyle which one can enjoy while living in India. (and what he tried to give up for migrating)
I know some of the top talents who decided to never migrate, because of better helping hands, supporting community and families, easy cabs/transportation to easy payments. And it is just improving over time...
Meta firing people is not the problem in of itself, but the methods used to do it is somewhat destroying the impression that they value what they have hoisted up to everyone; namely the degree of connectiveness and that community of connectiveness.
A better way would be for Mark Z to sell some of his stock holdings and offer dis-engagement bonuses for people to leave.
This is also highlights the incentives bias you have to avoid, in this case the ads-revenue incentive bias.
If I did the same thing now, I would have to sell my house, somehow ship all my posessions to the other country without inconveniencing my wife and child, etc. I’d have to be damn certain my job wouldn’t disappear a day after I arrive.
In other words, I could _never_ move to the US.
That was my experience. I moved to the US, stayed in a hostel for a month, it seems very normal. At that age, you're also more likely to be able to rely on your parents if things go wrong.
20 years later, I relocated again. This was a different story. Even without a family, it was a much bigger commitment. Over the years, we accumulate goods, friends, job security, we start to worry about saving for retirement and want to avoid mistakes.
Anyone who moves across the world for an employer without getting a term like that in writing simply is naive - and we shouldn't offer them sympathy after the fact. It's like someone having their house flooded when they deliberately decided not to get flood insurance... Like, you knew the risk you were taking on...
What you're saying is fantasy land except for executives.
I have negotiated changes to my employment contract at every job I've ever worked, big and small companies, so it is very possible. Usually just crossing out a clause or editing a number is pretty straightforward and doesn't require approvals too high up the management chain.
He had just immigrated with his family from Asia for a job, and soon after the startup we were at fired everyone and shut down.
I took it easy before finding a job but he had to literally accept the 1st offer he got (which was bad) or he would have probably needed to move back.
Three months salary in a tech job is more than most people make in a year.
If you are moving overseas, maybe wait before selling all your stuff until you pass probation. This idea that you should be guaranteed three months is so backwards. You are on trial.
Tell me anyone’s advice that goes “we should fire slow, hire fast”.
Your partner also quits their good job. That good job might not be available if you come back, congratulations, you're back at years of job hunting and job hopping to be where you were years before. In the new country maybe this was not a concern and the other partner who was just laid off had a great salary to cover.
Your kids leave their good school. Now that school no longer accepts applicants and you're stuck with whatever you can find on a short notice.
This list is far from comprehensive.
So you're going "all in", hoping for a giant reward (aka to make more in a year than the average Indian makes in their lifetime). It doesn't work out. That's part of the risk of going all in.
Or you don't go all in, you don't move your family immediately, and you have a much lower risk for the cost of paying for a flat in Canada and one in India for a few months until everything has settled and you're confident enough.
Well I have uprooted my life like this and it is nowhere as dramatic as it is made out here specially in in-demand , well paid professions.
In fact every year millions of people across the world are uprooting their lives moving from villages to cities, across states, countries, continents with absolutely meagre resources compared to high income software engineers.
Sure this person had some bad luck but to make it some kind of story about injustices in the modern world is ,frankly, more horrifying.
> For all you budding Elons, here's a shorthand for it. ..
This entitlement is breathtaking. How about people not taking international positions if it is such a huge risk and sacrifice for little gain to them.
Competing for jobs with 10k+ people who are more qualified than you during industry-wide hiring freezes must be fun.
* Filling diversity quota
* Cheaper
* Economic migrant
The worst part about this is that I was working doubly hard, paying insane taxes while paying insane rents. But eventually I realized people saying these things are just looking for their psychological safety. Of course such people are a minority and usually from lower rungs of society. When they see foreigners coming over and living a better life, they come up with abstracts and conspiracy theories. Sad to see such people filtering onto HN. This place has always been forward looking, so far.
You must not wade into the political topics very often.
If you are hearing this kind of talk regularly, I think it's time to change who you work with as this doesn't seem right or normal to me.
I think this bit is actually a good thing. The rest of the story is indeed unfortunate, but having to eliminate possessions is probably more positive in life than negative. We tend to accumulate so much, and then our stuff becomes an invisible burden.
Facebook is evil. When bad things happen to elite people who choose evil, sympathy is misplaced.
there was no way he could tell he would be laid off ahead of time
Whatever they do to people who are weaker than you they'll do to you next. Or something like that.
I agree that work isn’t family and that it’s a business first, but recently it seems like causing or experiencing suffering is being seen as a kind of proof of commitment. I don’t think that path ends well.
Same issue.
Or, don't relocate [internationally] to a job which can fire you with zero notice or compensation?
Don't get me wrong I agree with the sentiment of it being a Dick Move, but the only protection from that is contractual. Saying "please be nice" is not a serious direction to corporate governance.
2) Also remember that Musk would probably have given someone those three months to find other employment, seeing as he gave Twitter employees up to six months. So I don't think he's a good example for this. Use instead... hm... how about Meta?
They do? This comes as a surprise to me. It could very well be true but I would like a citation for this. Kind of finding it hard to just accept this for a fact because I have been hanging out with technical folks for a long time and most folks I hang out don't see to be high on the autistic spectrum.
also, high is relative. too high would make it very hard to get and maintain a job.
Elon — the classist, union busting, worker rights abusing (like how he treated lower working class workers during lockdown or how he will randomly fire you while walking around a factory), hyper capitalist. He is definitely okay with this. Can’t imagine him not wanting to do this if he could get away with it.
This is outdated. Assuming you are using "empathy" conversationally, it's driven by the fact that people higher on the autistic spectrum don't perceive what other people feel very well, and historically this was misinterpreted. The comments on HN aren't "I don't understand why anyone would be upset". They are "it's only business". Those who claim that they are autistic so they can be assholes are just assholes who are happy to lie to try to justify it socially.
Or, people with autism have a correlation to issues with cognitive empathy (recognizing what another person's mental state), but not affective empathy (the desire to respond to the other person's mental state.)[1]
> Musk would probably have given someone those three months to find other employment, seeing as he gave Twitter employees up to six months.
Has it changed again? Last I saw was 3 months. At any rate, he started and continues to try to get people to quit by a lot of policy changes. And has a history of burning out his employees in fairly harsh ways.
You can say he's effective, but he doesn't sound pleasant to work for.
Does this absolve them of hurting others? Of course not really, but it might help others understand why it's hard to get people with such defenses to even acknowledge that their communication can be hurtful, etc.
I think the best time to remind those kind of people of this, is when they get fucked over themselves at some point.
Kind of telling them "Just shut up and cope doesn't feel so good when shit happens to you now does it? Nanananana"
Alternative POV: that's the worst time. At those moments, the person is unlikely to be very receptive. They'll see it as proof that you are a bitter, vengeful person not worth listening to. Yes, that would a bit hypocritical of them, but that's humanity for you. That hardens people, leading to exactly the kind of cold-hearted comments the original commenter was talking about. Also, you will have foregone an opportunity to show contrast with a better way of being around other people. Lead by example, and all that.
I suggest that the best time is a while after such an event, when they have recovered from it but it's still fresh in their memory. While they're feeling good about having received help, that's a good time to remind them that giving help also feels good. I've seen people's attitudes get turned around by that, vs. never by forsaking them in an hour of need.
Else many will often brush it off and reboot the "jerk" act when they've recovered.
Especially if they feel entitled to the help and compassion shown to them when they're down, and it helps them recover faster and scratch free (and thus makes the falling down less impactful). In that case they end up still not valuing said help and compassion (because for them it was on full and easy supply).
Feel free after to make the point that normally such help should be given cheerfully, or different types of help they can pay forward.
It's amusing that even when the subject is completely unrelated to Elon Musk, people keep finding ways to drag him back into the conversation for some inexplicable reason.
He, his name, his problems/acts/behavior are in the zeitgeist, it's on people's minds, it's not surprising that he gets mentioned frequently.
Rather, I'm seeing it more as just -- that's just life, what makes this particular case so special?
People move for jobs all the time (including internationally), and shit happens all the time (you get laid off, your significant other breaks up with you, a loved one passes away).
It would be one thing if Facebook was actively tricking him. But we all can assume it was just a normal hiring/transfer process that had been in motion for many months, and company-wide layoffs wound up hitting his team (which couldn't have been known months in advance), and so he was the victim of really bad timing. But not out of malice, and he's still presumably getting months of severance like everyone else, so he can go back to India with money and look for a new job, which he's presumably extremely qualified to do (having been hired by Facebook).
And heck, it's usually a lot better to get laid off after 2 days (living in a temporary apartment) than say 4 months (you've bought a house).
So is it a bunch of time and effort wasted? Of course. Does it suck? Of course. But people get laid off all the time through no fault of their own, and sometimes the timing is terrible. Which sucks. But does that make it HN front-page worthy? I think it's totally valid to say it's not -- but that doesn't mean you lack "even the most basic of human decency". It just means you don't think this is news. And that's OK.
"Everyone will get an email soon letting you know what this layoff means for you. After that, every affected employee will have the opportunity to speak with someone to get their questions answered and join information sessions.
Some of the details in the US include:
Severance. We will pay 16 weeks of base pay plus two additional weeks for every year of service, with no cap.
PTO. We’ll pay for all remaining PTO time.
RSU vesting. Everyone impacted will receive their November 15, 2022 vesting.
Health insurance. We’ll cover the cost of healthcare for people and their families for six months.
Career services. We’ll provide three months of career support with an external vendor, including early access to unpublished job leads.
Immigration support. I know this is especially difficult if you’re here on a visa. There’s a notice period before termination and some visa grace periods, which means everyone will have time to make plans and work through their immigration status. We have dedicated immigration specialists to help guide you based on what you and your family need.
Outside the US, support will be similar, and we’ll follow up soon with separate processes that take into account local employment laws."
https://facebook.relayto.com/e/mark-zuckerberg-s-message-to-...
When I was younger, my father worked in the oil business. Relocation to other states & countries was reasonably common.
One of the scariest stories came from their last time in Saudi Arabia (I usually save the "you & your family are being deported in 48 hours" or "oops, your moonshine still burned down your house" stories for drinking time). This family was being relocated back to the US after more than 2 decades working in Saudi Arabia. There was a storm in the Atlantic. A really bad one. The shipping company had to jettison about 100 containers to "save the ship". Everything they owned. Every thing they collected in their adult life went overboard to a watery grave. All they had left was the luggage that they carried on the airflight back to the US. Insurance covered nothing since it was an intentional act by the ship's crew.
So to do that to someone and then days later be like "we actually don't want you" is beyond shitty. This persons visa is dependent on their employment so now they get to go into a city they don't know and try desperately to find employment with an employer who is interested in sponsoring someone from abroad (which is a small fraction of the total employers).
For all you budding Elons, here's a shorthand for it. If you ask someone to move across the world and don't need them anymore, give them three months on the books to find somewhere else that don't count against their visa. It will give them a chance to get settled and go on interviews. Or don't recruit internationally.