Layoffs.fyi Coronavirus Tracker | Hacker News Reader

Layoffs.fyi Coronavirus Tracker

layoffs.fyi

176 pointsKKKKkkkk136 comments

Not a lawyer, but to any fellow H1B's who are concerned about being laid off, and facing the near-impossible task of leaving the US on short notice during a worldwide lockdown: a 2017 law provides a 60-day grace period for "those whose employment ceases prior to the end of the petition validity period". Ie. if there is time left on your I-94, you should have 60-day grace period where you will remain in-status while you look for another job.

Here is the full document: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2016-11-18/pdf/2016-2... (search for "60-day nonimmigrant").

Note that during these 60-days you can then file for a change of status, and then you will still remain in-status while that request is pending (the change you file must be "non-frivolous" though!).

If you follow this route and try to change status, USCIS has the right to revoke the grace period retroactively (in cases of abuse, for example). Documentation that you were actively seeking new employment should help avoid this.

Anyway, concerned people should certainly speak to an immigration attorney (again, I am not a lawyer), but it is comforting to know that most likely we have 60 days to get our affairs in order...

I know a few who are on a part time basis (working 3 or 4 days a week) because employer cut the number of working days for the whole company. Any idea if this affects the validity of H1b because they are not working 40 hrs a week?

At time of filing H1B, the employer makes an LCA (Labour Condition Application) which includes information about the job like salary range and hours (which may be a range, maybe 30-40 hours). If the job changes enough that the LCA is no longer accurate, some action is required (an amended filing may be sufficient, to be honest I'm not sure).

If job responsibilities have changed, especially in a way that reduces the qualification requirements for the job, again they might be required to amend their H1B petition.

I'll just add again that I'm _not_ a lawyer, and only have a cursory understanding from being in the middle of all this myself :)

Another great example of how taking the time to track things and fill out a spreadsheet is itself a good useful service. My main suggestion is to emphasize in the headline/title that this is focused on tech startup layoffs. I know it's alluded to elsewhere on the site text, it's just that many people who see "layoffs.fyi" will think it's a general layoffs tracker.

And of course it's fine just to focus on tech startups – tracking all company layoffs (nevermind local businesses) would be a huge undertaking.

True that. Same basic insight applies to management. It’s worth a lot to note things down and then follow-up on them.

Another source of data is the state employment WARN lists, which is the official list of notifications required of companies when making big layoffs:

https://www.edd.ca.gov/Jobs_and_Training/warn/WARN-Report-fo...

You'd have to manually curate for tech startups, but you might find some things there.

Have the people laid off on this list consented to have their contact info (email, name, linkedin etc) published like this?

It appears to get data from two sources:

1: Self-reported

2: Reported in public lists of layoffs

https://layoffs.fyi/share-layoff-intel/

There are going to be a lot of fundamentally good businesses going under because they mismanaged their cash flow. There are going to be a lot of promising products cancelled because their companies needed to shift resources back to their main products.

If there is any silver lining to the economic destruction happening right now, in a few years I hope to see strong businesses that were started during this time.

The town I grew up in would flood regularly (pro-tip: don't build your on town on marshy ground where two rivers converge).

Having one or more floods a year was a fact of life and the local store owners would design their stores to deal with that. The best example was a newsagent (remember those?) that had their magazine/greeting card shelves on jacks. Fully loaded racks of magazines would be jacked up 6ft or more, the water would come through the store, they'd hose out the tiled floor, and be back up and running within two or three days.

And then the town built a levee that would deal with everything except 1-in-100 year floods. So the town didn't flood for 10 years or more. People became complacent, and new store owners had no experience (nor plans) for how to empty their stores should the levee be overtopped.

The first time the levee was overtopped, the old timer shop keepers started to prepare their stores for the flood waters (emptying stock, removing electronics, etc.). A surprising number of newer shops literally did nothing, even when the government was telling people the levee wasn't going to prevent a flood. And, predictably enough, a lot of the newer stores literally never came back.

Moral of the story (if there is one)? It can be hard to prepare for bad times if you've only ever known the good times.

Talking to experienced people and observe the environment is also a good way to not repeat mistakes to learn a lesson.

Out of curiosity, which town are you talking about?

Also another moral to the story: if there’s enough people that didn’t prepare they will get bailed out somehow. So why bother preparing?

Airbnb:

> 80% of Marketing Layoffs globally. Followed by non-technical roles (business functions - Finance, HR, Legal, Business Operations, Sales Dept)

Can someone confirm that ?

This sparks a lot of questions for me. Obviously some markets are hit really hard by covid, but for any company that was already considering layoffs, now is probably a great time to do them and scapegoat covid.

Also for the tech companies, it's often unclear what job types are affected. E.g. engineers often aren't included in layoffs since they are such big investments, and a hiring freeze will eventually reduce their headcount due to attrition. Operations are often first to go since their need fluctuates with the volume of the business.

> Obviously some markets are hit really hard by covid, but for any company that was already considering layoffs, now is probably a great time to do them and scapegoat covid.

Velodyne is getting sued for laying people off and blaming it on the virus (yes there is more to the story, but that's not a misleading summary).

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-04/silicon-v...

Another shameless plug: https://ultrafucked.com 2000s style.

Perhaps a mid-month who's hiring would be appropriate?

reminds me of this one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fucked_Company

The feel is different though. There needs to be schadenfreude. FuckedCo wasn’t just a lay-off tracker, it was watching an entire economic sector collapse because of bad investments and poorly run businesses. It was the watching a unicorn die because it turns out when you lose money on every transaction, you can’t just make it up with volume. The closest FuckedCo moment now would be WeWork’s implosion.

I remember! The FC message board was a riot.

It's not easy to find a new job these days. I had a job but the job offer got retracted due to Coronavirus/economy. I hope I can have interviews next week. Love to do some contracting/freelance work to keep me afloat

(4000+ companies tracked)

I would have thought it was safe to assume just about everyone has a hiring freeze right now?

Nope. I’ve been getting the normal FAANG recruiter inbounds, and my fiancé just accepted a role at a venture backed startup after receiving two offers.

It's not, really. I'm in the interview process with about half a dozen companies right now. Coronavirus has hit companies very unevenly: some have lost 80% of their business, but some have seen their userbase grow by 50% just in the last month.

Not at all. Effects vary wildly across industries and even within that, companies are affected in very different ways.

Many companies are redoubling their hiring efforts — lots of new talent suddenly available is big opportunity.

We're also wrapping up interviews for three positions. University/education.

We'll be running into a hiring freeze very shortly, but I assume other organizations that are essential and have positions key to providing service will continue to be filled.

Not at all, my company is hiring, we have TONS of work to do!

Sorry if self-plug isn't acceptable, I built one recently using Airtable to crowdsource data - https://www.freshgrads.info/corona-hiring-impact-tracker/

Excuse my ignorant question but does AirTable not give attribute filter/sorting functionality (never actively used/developed with said service)?

I've seen multiple pages that use AirTable for similar data popup lately but am either obliviously overlooking basic filter/attribute query and sorting functionality in the mobile interface or it's just lacking. I can't even look at all entries tagged with "hiring" etc. in uniform.

Edit: the site in the core thread actually describes this - "View site on a desktop to sort, filter, search."

It blows my mind that a SaaS like this (AirTable) wouldn't have a working mobile UI for this functionality.

Really surprising zwift is on the list, I would expect them to be thriving at this time.

We aggregated all these lists on https://getwanted.com/switch + a search engine per location / position

This is tough one to think about mostly because it is not something any of us here can control. It can happen (especially now), but we shouldn’t obsess over it.

Let it be, do your best, don’t dwell.

How many layoffs within tech? It is unclear to me much and how tech is affected.

My condolences to all those laid off.

May their talents be put to better use immediately!

Great effort! For those laid off, we’re working on compiling the companies that are still hiring filtered by role + location to help with your search.

https://levels.fyi/still-hiring

Reply on news.ycombinator.com