Ask HN: Who is firing?
Though there are lot of companies hiring compared to year before, there are bunch of companies firing as well.
http://kara.allthingsd.com/20101130/yahoo-layoffs-coming-dec...
Limewire had a big judgment against it recently. They have another product in the works, but they may be doing some downsizing.
Sorry for the lack of sources. I'll try to come back with them later.
I imagine other states have their own listings as well.
http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/dpp/news/lockheed-martin-clos...
Much of it has to be done before the end of the year, per the US government. Haven't dug into why that is the case just yet, but I'm aware of much going on with said health insurer.
(Not criticizing what you said directly, just reacting to that term.)
Employers like to use "lay off" to imply that it was not the fault of the management team, it's not because they're bad guys, it's just the unfortunate reality. That's partly true, it's partly bullshit, and the fact is that it affects people profoundly, and calling it a "lay-off" doesn't help things.
Employees who have been terminated like to use "lay off" to imply that it wasn't their fault, to avoid impacting their hireability. But if the ex-employee had been a net asset, they wouldn't be laying that ex-employee off, unless they were liquidating the entire company.
In practice, lean times give management, whether soft-hearted or black-hearted, an opportunity to make hard calls, in the equityholders' favour, at the expense of the employees. You can like that, hate that, whatever.
I prefer to eschew both "lay off" and "fire", and use the word "terminate", as in "one employee was terminated yesterday, and two thousand were terminated at some point last month". I do this in the hopes of being starkly clear about the simple fact of the termination, and avoiding the sugar coat. You can also use "terminated with cause", which is a legal distinction in some jurisdictions, and I think it's an interesting one.
Oh, but... if I wanted to start a thread that contrasts threads called "who's hiring", then I'd be clever and rhyme and call my thread "who's firing". And if I were responding to that thread, I'd use the word in the topic question. And I wouldn't whip out the pedantry unless someone else did it first.
end-of-rant
"fire" says it is the fault of employee.
In the US, the standard is employment at will, which means you can terminate without cause at any time (unless you are actually terminating for a disallowed cause, confusingly), so "terminated for cause" is a small minority of "fired".
Of course, within those people who are more or less interchangeable, of course the ones let go are the poorest value, but there's a significant gap between someone who was let go because the company wanted to reduce the number of engineers they employed and someone who was let go because he is incompetent and the employer turns right around and starts advertising to replace him.
It makes sense if, say, you work at a supplier for Ford, and Ford slows their production temporarily, so they don't need the part you make. So you get laid off for a month or two, knowing Ford will gear back up eventually and start ordering more parts.
That doesn't happen in most industries. But even if it did, who's going to want to sit on their heels without an income hoping they'll be brought back in?
Edit: FTE's seem safe for the moment.
Edit: details
Sad, but seems to be the trend.
They seem to think that by outsourcing work to overseas mills that they can save money. Sales and support aside, it's the companies that are outsourcing engineering that are really hurting.
I love it when someone emails support and gets an answer like "plz read wiki"... and then you realize the person that wrote that is a white dude from Chicago that speaks no languages other than English. I can forgive lazy writing if English is not your first language. But if it's your only language, please spell please correctly and use "the" when appropriate. A complete sentence would also be nice.
But I digress.
A company I used to work for outsourced a large chunk of the work force to Poland. Poland was chosen because they were technically sound, generally, spoke above-average intelligible English and, most importantly, valued the American dollar about 6 times more than we do.
This meant, generally, that they could hire 6 Polish workers for every American worker we laid off (if you ignore the fact that many of the American workers were longer in the tooth, and hence higher on the salary scale, which made it even more profitable a deal.)
The main worry about moving somewhere with an economy that isn't horribly weak is that as our American dollars infuse their economy, and more Polish outsourcing companies are stood up to attract more American dollars, we inflate their economy. The cost of living goes up, the value of our dollar becomes less strong, and the benefits to having moved work there becomes less appealing. This could well lead to a tipping point when American companies pull out, which I worry could 'burst the bubble' and leave Krakow Poland in worse shape than if we'd never been there.
Every company should be ready to do a firing if it's required that the employee and the company part ways.