by mdcds on 9/14/22, 12:05 AM with 486 comments
I imagine if half the staff left a nursing home, it would be forced to shut down.
by zomgbbq on 9/14/22, 1:29 AM
by tomblomfield on 9/14/22, 1:49 AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traitorous_eight
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Power-Law-Venture-Capital-Disruptio...
by PragmaticPulp on 9/14/22, 2:27 AM
It didn’t kill the company for several reasons, but primarily because:
1) The company had enough momentum, revenue, and cash in the bank that they could go on hiring sprees to replace everyone. The new hires had a lot of churn when they realized what was going on, so they just kept hiring until enough replacements stuck around.
2) Many of the employees who didn’t quit saw this as their opportunity to rise through the ranks and fill the voids. They weren’t wrong and it paid off for many of them in the form of rapid promotions and advancement. The CEO became more hands-off as he realized his micromanagement wasn’t helping, so they basically inherited a slightly better situation.
After this experience, I don’t really see a developer exodus killing any big company with good momentum and decent cash reserves. As long as a company has cash flow they can spend their way into hiring replacements as long as it takes.
by hollywood_court on 9/14/22, 12:28 AM
I've personally been involved with more than one general contractor going under. When I was a young carpenter, I followed my best friend from job to job and contractor to contractor. When he walked off a job, the rest of us followed. He and I and a group of Dominicans (from Dominica not the DR) put more than one GC out of business because we'd walk and then we'd tell everyone we knew that they shouldn't work for said GC.
When I became older and my friend moved away, I took his place. It was so satisfying leaving a job and then receiving a phone call from the client a few days/week later asking me and the crew to come back and finish with promises that the GC would be out of the picture.
It's incredibly difficult to find skilled tradesman in the Caribbean that will show up sober each day and perform quality work. We always had the long end of the stick.
by MikeF_323 on 9/14/22, 12:37 AM
by metadat on 9/14/22, 2:26 AM
Lesson: Don't piss off FAANG execs, they can throw what amounts to unlimited resources against you.
Fortunately for the startup, it turned out they were massively overprovisioned and didn't really need all those intelligent engineers and executives. Startup ended up closing their Bay Area office and moving engineering to South America. The undead zombie corpse husk is still chugging along.
The startup still somehow went public during the pando, but the IPO eventually became an embarrassing flop. Turns out a business based on surveys isn't that lucrative, after all.
by Nadacambia on 9/14/22, 2:17 AM
by vsskanth on 9/14/22, 1:05 AM
It’s also common in rehab centers. You can’t take Medicare patients without a minimum staff count. If too many nurses leave, patients can’t be accepted and you end up bleeding.
Basically any job that primarily requires human capital.
by yardie on 9/14/22, 1:11 AM
by pryelluw on 9/14/22, 3:52 AM
He was, however, a huge asshole and alcoholic. Wasn’t able to let it function without him. Went from a couple of million dollars profit to closed when I quit. He couldn’t find other devs. Tried to outsource it but just failed.
I quit because he tried to treat me like shit. Like he treated his other employees behind the scenes (the guy was very sneaky). So I left.
Then tried to offer me a cut but I wasn’t gonna partner with such asshole. There isn’t enough money in this world.
Last I heard he was trying to launch a similar product but failing horribly.
The product wasn’t complex but required specific knowledge of different things. So it was rare to find people with that knowledge who were also effective.
by tehCorner on 9/14/22, 10:28 AM
At some point we all realized the profit the company was making with us and demanded better conditions, they rejected our claims and we planned to leave all at time they had to deliver the projects and get paid. Nothing got delivered, they didn't get paid and just went out of business.
by jzig on 9/14/22, 1:58 AM
by thrill on 9/14/22, 1:27 AM
I wouldn't be surprised to see a competitor buy them just to acquire their customer base and acqui-fire the current team.
by agentwiggles on 9/14/22, 1:07 AM
Within a year or so of the acquisition there was a trickle of departures that eventually turned into a mass exodus. There's almost no one left in the org who was part of the original company at this point.
So it goes. Many good engineers and companies spun out of that original one, and found greener pastures and new opportunities. Still, at the time, it felt like a massive waste of a group of truly talented people, to try to corporate-ize them and scare them all off in the process.
by denimnerd42 on 9/14/22, 7:55 AM
by knob on 9/14/22, 2:32 AM
by that_guy_iain on 9/14/22, 6:17 AM
I worked for company A, company A got merged with company B since they were both owned by the same mega corp. Company A and Company B were in the same industry but served different needs. They were both companies in the EV industry but one was aimed at drivers and the other aimed at charging station companies. When they did the merger, it seems part of the thinking was to get rid of the IT staff at company A. So obivously, they basically all left. Major issue was they decided to do a rewrite. So they ended up having a bunch of developers who didn't know the business, could barely read the old code, etc rewrite this company's application. Because they had no idea about it, they didn't realise how unrealistic the expectations were or even the fact it was a rewrite. It was framed as a migration. We move this app over here because we have the core features and we can just add on a few more. Except they didn't have the core features. They put the legacy system in to maintainance only and hired consultants to maintain it. Which led to it breaking down constantly and client demands going unmet. While that was happening all the business people started to leave. So all the people who understood how the business side of thing worked, had connections with clients, etc left. This resulted in all the strategies and plans that the company were making were based on a business world that didn't exist. They spent 12 months telling each other, they would do this and that and the industry needs this. Then when they released and went to market with pre-existing clients they found out all of this was nonsense and they needed to do all the stuff the old business teams were doing.
By the end of it, the mega corp that owned them realised they screwed up the company too badly so decided to sell. In the two years since the merger they had spent at least 30 million on the new platform. Spent 15 million before that on building it up before doing th merger. Originally bought company A for 8 million. Company B, I'm not sure how much they spent there but realistically probably a total of 40 million easily. It was generating profit too before it got merged with Company A. They tried to sell it for 400 million. Got nowhere. Reduced the price to 200 million. Nothing. Ended up selling it for 75 million while clearing the debts for the company with a "gain" of 50 million.
by conductr on 9/14/22, 2:15 PM
* nursery where I buy plants couldn’t find laborers over this past spring/summer and decided to close up shop. It was a pretty big operation as they go. Owner was near retirement age and the land is probably worth 10x the business at this point so just decided to call it quits because he couldn’t do the basic stuff of caring for plants/moving them around.
* dog boarding/kennels/grooming seems to be hit very hard on labor shortage. The place I board our pets is at 50% capacity due to labor shortages, probably a downward spiral
* several/most restaurants in downtown area never reopened because of no staff
* I work for a healthcare company and we actually have nursing homes temporarily closed as mentioned as an example. We almost had to close a few of our ICUs with ventilators during peak Covid because we had no staff. In some cases, FEMA nurses actually came in to help keep it open. Anything with a mandated staffing ratio is challenging at the moment. It’s improving as Covid cases improve though.
by bambataa on 9/14/22, 8:01 AM
by colordrops on 9/14/22, 2:39 PM
The founders were flabbergasted. I spoke with the others and the reasoning was the same. We were all very seasoned senior engineers, but the founders didn't trust us and handed us kanban tickets like short order cooks because they had PhDs. It was demoralizing.
by nradov on 9/14/22, 2:31 AM
by egberts1 on 9/14/22, 1:49 PM
Platform was 8086, Motorola 6502, 16KB RAM, RS-488/RS-232, and assembly languages.
Surely enough, we broke away and and many of us joined Gasboy, Inc.
The budding star of a startup at many gas and oil conferences was then no more.
Had numerous offers (due to my networking of my business card being handed out at conference). Them recruiters were all initially shocked at my price tag but insisted then.
I instead went into 1980s primordial cybersecurity and never looked back.
40 years later, there is at least 6 of those credit card paypoints at every gas stations throughout the world.
And I am glad I did. I liked what I contributed to the safety of the computing world.
Off topic: And most designers are still an idiot, security-wise.
by Havoc on 9/14/22, 8:28 AM
by strathmeyer on 9/14/22, 1:13 AM
by jonahbenton on 9/14/22, 1:36 AM
Of course, in these cases, the monkeys are often incompetent in the context of operating the business, so customers leave (or die). And THEN the business shuts down.
Many businesses will indeed complain about not being able to find monkeys to staff the business. What they mean is that they are unable to find monkeys who will work for peanuts when other businesses are paying monkeys in bananas, or something they like more than peanuts.
by heavyset_go on 9/14/22, 1:33 AM
Irresponsible owners overleveraged themselves into situations where folding or bankruptcy were the only options once they couldn't afford their liabilities. There are a lot of companies that go under if for some reason their revenues dip for a long enough time.
by screye on 9/14/22, 2:34 PM
This is only true when the rank and file employees have a relationship with the clients. National nursing home chains will be just fine if they churn through 50% of their staff. A local mom-n-pop business that runs because each of the employees has a strong relationship with the entire community will not survive the damage to reputation. Rank and file programmers are replaceable.
On the other hand, an artistic endeavor without the creative source will fail (see new Metal Gear games or new Star wars movies). A field that needs technical breakthroughs will fail unless you have the 1 of the 10 people capable of making that breakthrough happen. A small-ish company that relies solely on visionaries as their identity will die without the visionary (Jobs 1.0)
I can't think of many other companies where the rank-n-file are not replaceable. Slow death is always possible, but the above scenarios practically guarantee failure.
by schnevets on 9/14/22, 2:08 PM
> Small group of experts form Boutique Consultancy focused on specific technology (Cloud, SaaS Product, Framework, Open-source tool, etc.); Headcount = ~10 employees
> Experts start making referrals and mentoring analysts in specific technology; Slight diversification in offerings; Headcount = ~100 employees
> Boutique Consultancy makes major splash with huge client; Hire like crazy; Maybe accept additional investment; Headcount = ~300 employees
> Boutique Consultancy gets acquired by Global Service and Consulting Provider; Assurance that branding and leadership will remain; Buyers interested in "synergy deals"; Headcount = ~300 employees in +100,000 employee network
> Original experts and early employees take acquisition payouts and find/found new Boutique Consultancies; Buyers satisfied with acquired brand and customer base; Headcount = ~100 employees
by cynusx on 9/14/22, 7:50 AM
When it happens to post series-A companies it's usually just a team that leaves such as what happened when Bumble recruited the entire Barcelona-based engineering office of another company.
by rossdavidh on 9/14/22, 1:10 PM
by hackingthenews on 9/14/22, 1:23 AM
by mkl95 on 9/14/22, 8:51 AM
by JoeAltmaier on 9/14/22, 1:06 PM
by aintmeit on 9/14/22, 1:15 AM
by ikiris on 9/14/22, 6:07 AM
by almostarockstar on 9/14/22, 7:47 AM
During the early days of the covid lockdowns, before nursing home staff or residents were vaccinated, many staff quit en masse to work as covid test center staff. The hours were better. The job was less complex and less demanding. The pay was comparable.
Then when the remaining staff began to contract covid, they were down to a few core people working continuously to provide care. Many recently (and not so recently) retired nurses returned to work until they could figure things out.
There isn't much to learn about enterprise staffing here except that when the chips are down, people who are truly devoted to their jobs will go to extraordinary lengths to make sure it gets done.
I feel it's a pity these people are often (in my country) poorly compensated for the incredible effort they make.
by jccalhoun on 9/14/22, 1:33 PM
by hnsch2412 on 9/14/22, 9:36 AM
by spywaregorilla on 9/14/22, 1:28 AM
by khitchdee on 9/14/22, 8:55 AM
by FunnyBadger on 9/15/22, 7:08 PM
First you have Price's Law - half the people actually doing work rises with the square root of the total employee count. It's a variant of Pareto law. So as you grown bigger, the critical path of viable operation depends on fewer and fewer people per capita.
That group is also the group who first to see problems and least likely to put up with BS so they are the first to leave when things go downhill. The bigger the organization, the fewer people who need to leave to destroy it.
This is one of several dynamics that assure a role of startups and entrepreneurs because large companies can never be safe or stable or eternal.
Related to this: most startups last no more than 5 years but large corporations seldom live beyond 20-25 years. The handful of corporations that do are super rare and mostly living on borrowed time. Usually the only thing keeping larger companies around beyond 20-25 is one or a few very charismatic leaders/executives - as soon as they go, it comes crashing down. Hewlett-Packard is a classic example of this.
by avg_dev on 9/14/22, 9:25 AM
by bergenty on 9/14/22, 1:02 AM