Eight hundred employees resign after WhiteHat Jr asks them to work from office
inc42.com
inc42.com
Meta and Disney invested a lot of money into these companies and they use it to bully anyone who tries to bring these issues up by shutting down their YouTube channels and filing defamation law suits [1,2]. The entire online education industry is unregulated and resort to shitty antics to extort money. I don't understand why these companies need to exist when we have other free and amazing resources online like Khan Academy which teach all topics to all ages of people.
[1] https://thepost.co.in/news/633/whitehat-jr-lawsuit-pradeep-p...
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/india/search?q=pradeep+poonia&restr...
I too wish this didn't exist. But I'm learning to replace wishful thinking with something better.
In this case, I think reality is providing a valuable learning opportunity to those parents: that they should verify everything before taking as truth, and only believe as an anticipation of goodwill only during the period necessary for verification (to avoid ending up pessimistic or cynic, for instance).
While there are still people that didn't learn and apply these lessons well, there will always be Byju's out there...
What they need to be provided is a good layer, and a clampdown on corporate fraud.
There isn't much hope in breaking the wheels of the megacorp and government alliances, but at the very least we can share our criticism and condemn these behaviors.
Cram school culture, FOMO and dreams of children making it big.
These apps are just a part of the larger culture where IIT cram school tuitions are supposed to begin at age 11. Every one in India likes to diss on Engineering education, but it continues to remain the most predictable way of making an upper middle class living.
Parent obviously spend good money on education for this reason.
To get more context please google "pradeep poonia whitehat" and you will get all the gory details, whatsapp chats, etc.
> One of the employees who resigned told the website that a month’s time was not enough for relocation. “Some have kids, some have aged and sick parents, while others have other responsibilities. It is not right to call back employees in such a short period of time,” the former WhiteHat Jr employee said.
> Another employee said salaries also factored in the decision to not return to the office. At the time of hiring, employees were told about their job location – WhiteHat Jr has offices in Gurugram, Mumbai and Bengaluru. However, after working from home for two years, employees believed that their salaries should be revised to reflect the cost of living in expensive cities.
This looks like more of an engineered layoff from a company that is already in a death spiral:
> “This was a well-planned and managed layoff that WhiteHat Jr did,” a former employee remarked.
“This was a well-planned and managed layoff that WhiteHat Jr did,” a former employee remarked.
If you are at the company, or just resigned because of this unreasonable policy change, I highly suggest you use your local bar association's referral service (or some other means) to schedule an inexpensive consult with a labor attorney.
IANAL - but for example, in canada, forcing employees to move,or even significantly increase their commute, is considered the same as unilaterally changing the employees pay, and cant be done without the employees consent.
No, we dont want to fire you, but since you decline to work from any of the proposed location in Somalia, North Korea, and the North Pole...
They created a fictional character 'WOLF GUPTA' to promote their brand.
When asked about this kid wolf Gupta they sent a full legal team to threaten anyone who raises questions mass reporting bad reviews as a task from their employees.
And when it got out of hand they acknowledged that it was all a lie and continued misleadig parents like nothing bad in it.
But now with physical schools starting kids will be busy for a good 6-7 hrs after which (and home work, playtime) they will hardly have time for online coaching classes. Parents would soon realize this, if not already, and discontinue subscriptions.
I mean the entire dialogue around education from a cultural perspective is completely void in the US.
Sure I spend some time goofing off like you describe, but my work is neither measured nor paid by the hour.
1/ The company was hemorrhaging money and wanted resignations (if I'm understanding "INR CR" correctly, they lost $218,102,508 USD last year??)
2/ This was India, so the stock image feels a bit misleading
3/ It happened two months ago, not recently
4/ It wasn't just coming back to the office; it was relocating people to offices who hadn't worked there before
5/ They even forced people who worked near an office go to OTHER offices in other cities
Here's the original source, which is much better (and includes details on revenue and expenses): https://inc42.com/buzz/exclusive-over-800-whitehat-jr-employ...
This isn't a case of workers preferring WFH over the office; it's a sneaky layoff.
Unrelated, it's amazing how edtech startups have been beaten by traditional coaching institutions. Not only those institutions are profitable but they are beating growth numbers consistently.
Also apps like tandem have made it free, quick and easy to find someone online to practice with.
One of the big benefits is of computers vs books: being able to directly give automated feedback.
Pronounce or type a word wrong, the computer instantly gives you specific feedback. If you do assignments on paper teachers checks it much further away from the point the cognitive effort has been applied. There is a much less direct feedback loop.
Especially for learning how to read a computer can give feedback whereas kids can go through texts not fully understanding, or misreading words without any correction.
Of course one on one is in some ways much more effective. But there are time constraints.
To automate certain things computer programs are most time effective. Just have to check in to make sure they are taking their work seriously.
It's also harder to pretend to be studying with a computer
Computerized training only really works for older students who are already highly motivated to learn a particular skill.
Kids do that when they're forced to it. Anybody would do that.
Kids who are interested in what they're learning about won't do that.
Perhaps we shouldn't expect people (kids or not) to do so much irrelevant stuff.
And true I don't like multiple choice for that reason.
However in my experience it's much easier to check from a distance if they are messing around or not with a computer. And computer won't easily allow them to continue with wrong answers. (Certain programs are better then others)
One on one is always better, but there is not room for a lot of one one time in most schools
Yes, I agree, but I think you underestimate just how much power v2 can bring to books.
Computers make interactive media relatively easy to create. Interactivity provides a literal new dimension to the information you can convey that makes some things easier and faster to understand than if you were to read them from a book. As a student, you can be handed a live simulation and experiment with it to "grow" an intuition for the subject matter. Nicky Case's explainers are a prime example of this in action.
A teacher is able to see where a student is making a mistake, why that mistake is happening and what else might be going wrong. A computer is a supplement to that. It will never be a replacement.
In over 15 years of receiving an education, i met several great teachers and a few excellent ones.
If you ask techies to describe education, it consists of memorizing trivia. And that fits perfectly well into computerized education.
It doesn't help that so many school systems do in fact look at it that way. That's why we've gotten more and more standardized testing. They want to know they're getting value for money, so they define value in ways they can measure cheaply.
Ed tech is a problem yes, because you get only 1 kind of content on a single platform. But in general, computers have given me access to so much more than a singular human interaction could.
I'll use an example (real one). "Linear Algebra" search right here on HN yields a few results and I especially liked the animated web book. Gilbert Strang's videos are well... Gilbert Strang's videos. 3blue1brown throws a fantastic perspective. Pavel Grinfeld is brilliant too.
I have so many options now, which didn't exist in 1995. And each of them is so different and great in its own way.
For many (not necessarily all) ed-tech startups, they don't.
They aren't looking to improve education, they are looking to leverage and scale a business. And for that, 'computers' is ideal.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2022/04/12/us/r...
I've only been in this industry six years at your average Java Spring SCRUM shop but I also find myself shocking at the claim 'a high percentage of programming jobs applicants can't actually program', like what do we mean when this gets said?
It’s no surprise that the average applicant’s skills are relatively weak.
My first job was at a company which had a poor interview process. Hire fast fire fast right?
1. One programmer spent nine month trying to implement a simple Java app that read data from a message queue, called a library, then wrote data to a message queue. There was an example program available that did the same thing but reading/writing to files. When he was fired deleted his code, then I implemented the app in one week, I had only 6 months full time experience, he claimed to have 30 years.
2. Another programmer ignores all directions and spent 6 months implementing a library that did the EXACT opposite of what the customer asked for. When he was fired we had to rewrite his entire code base because it was so convoluted and poorly written. In the post-mortem we concluded it would have been better to have just deleted his code base as well when he left. He claimed to have over 10 years experience.
3. Several programmers were hired for C programming jobs and didn’t know how to use basic memory and string functions like malloc and free.
4. One programmer was so obsessed with functional programming that he verbally abused other staff members for writing C code (this was required by management and the customer). When he was forced to write C he wrote his code as if it were lisp through massive abuse of macros. When he was fired his code had to be deleted.
5. Many programmers required large amounts of help with simple tasks. Operating on a Linux servers, using make files, etc. this was not such a problem since they came it at a Junior level, but it took massive amounts of time.
6. A programmer who could not touch type, but typed keys one at a time with only his index fingers.
7. A programmer who came to design meetings asking the same questions every week, and talking about running into the same problem every stand up. We would work with him to unblock him, then he would come back and say he had the same problem again. It was maddening and when he was fired we had to delete his code.
Just some examples (in the US btw). I’m not a huge fan of fizz buzz either, but you need some sort of test or you will get a lot of people who have done some tutorials and think they can go be a programmer now.
This seems pretty arbitrary.
In the government maybe, but in corporations you can get yourself fired in two seconds, not two years, two seconds. "Fuck you" "you're fired!!!" That's it. Two seconds. The whole thing is being on the knife's edge to being fired, they keep you there and move you with that knife's edge. That's the boss's point of contact with you, exactly like a mugger. They have no idea what happens if you're fired! No idea! No idea about the Turkish prison system, no idea about government assistance, no idea, they carefully protect themselves and tell people not to tell them.
Also keep in mind I was deliberately sabotaged in my curriculum, the whole standing up to torture thing I talk about if you read my comments, so if an interviewer asks where I worked in April 2009 I'm like, "There's no April 2009. Is that a reference to the Gregorian Calendar?"
So keep in mind, with my harsh words, I watched the shitshow from the cheapest seat.
I had a ten-year experienced candidate unable to write a function to sum an array of integers. Any language he wanted. Wasn’t that he didn’t consider overflow or something like that. Just couldn’t get started at all. I have no idea what he was doing for 10 years, but I gave him something easier than fizzbuzz and he blew it. If you’ve interviewed 100 applicants and never come across someone who couldn’t fizzbuzz, I think you’ve experienced well above the average.
Can you do fizzbuzz yourself? Write that email filter yourself, there's a fizzbuzz for you right there.
So let's take culture aside, you have to consider power imbalance between workers in both of those countries.
In India, 10 people will line up to take your job at a moment's notice regardless of the city and conditions.
Management won't begrudgingly agree to remote work if they have options and distrust workers (usually the case here).
I dont know about trust per say, but there is I think more of social resistance to co-workers who would be perceived as "not pulling their weight", which I think would contribute to work from home success here
That said I can not speak to the culture in India so it may be the same there, no idea
If you quit, you're giving up on severance or unemployment insurance benefits.
Holding salary as hostage until they move or resign.
The other possible outcomes are not providing experience letters, acknowledging employee worked, badmouthing, and harassing your next co-workers.
Also, many big companies here do contracts with clauses that charges a service fee and take salary or bonus back if the worker doesn't work there for at least 2 years.
If you leave soon, you might end up with negative pay.
There are lots of potential ways to force this.
A waste of time and resources. Fuel, road infrastructure, vehicles, parking space. All for what? so that people can waste their productivity in an open plan office, which is objectively the most distracting type of office plan ever devised, even worse than its predecessor, cubicles.
And when it's flu season, prepare to bring the flu home and make your entire family sick, because seeing people face to face from a close distance, including their nostrils and mouth from where pathogens come out, is a fantastic idea during a flu season. In fact, it is such a great idea, that we should do an all-hands meeting and bring all employees into the same space, all next to each other, so that we can maximize the odds of the flu spreading from person to person.
It is also great for companies, because helping people succeed based on superficial traits like their appearance or voice parameters instead of their productivity is definitively in the best interest of a company. That definitively helps companies succeed considering the customer doesn't care about how your employees look.
LOL, sure.
Hopefully it took the hint and is thinking very hard about the consequences of its refusal to work properly.