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Comment by NikolaNovak | Hacker News Reader

This.

I know that HN zeitgeist, weirdly, in some strange way likes to be "interchangeable cogs in a machine" (focus on standard easily employable tech stack, avoid learning company-specific stuff, change jobs frequently, be easily replaceable); but in a LOT of companies leaving with no notice puts everybody (coworkers, management, business, client - real human beings) in a crazy bad spot.

Many large companies have a checkbox on whether a leaving employee is rehireable. I've seen enough people leave then come back, that it may not always be as ok as it seems to burn those bridges - not to mention that in some ways industry is surprisingly "small" - people move and bad reputation spreads. If Bob asks Fatima who worked with James, should he hire him - you can bet this'll come up. And if that feels like a low hypothetical risk - it's a lot higher than risk of rescinded offers.

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> likes to be "interchangeable cogs in a machine"

This is totally a response to the employer side. When companies are laying off people en masse with little regard to either performance or years of service rendered, they reveal themselves to regard their workforce as interchangeable cogs. We are living in a market that encapsulates the adage, “your company will let you go without a second thought.”

My understanding of why companies cannot purposely show that they take perf or years of service into account has more to do with labour law than a lack of caring. You cannot take into account perf in a layoff - if you did, you are not allowed to call it a layoff, AFAIK.

That doesn't sound right at all. You would want to lay off the bottom performers, it isn't a lottery. Imagine if a company said 'we need to get rid of 20% of our labor cost' and just ran a random number generator and got rid of the people who's number came up.

No, you want to get rid of just enough of the top performers to significantly lower labor cost while keeping enough that they feel safe. You can shed as many of the bottom performers as you like without worry. Gotta make those top performers do 2x the work for one paycheck.

Companies absolutely take perf and years of service into account for layoffs. It’s not always the same process or formula but those are popular terms in such a formula, along with pay, location, role.

And that is a reason to turn yourself into indispensable cog, not the best replaceable there is.

> And that is a reason to turn yourself into indispensable cog, not the best replaceable there is.

For centuries, organizations have been adjusting themselves to ensure that all employees are as easily replaceable as they could possibly be, not to mention outright powerless.

I recommend watching the Netflix documentary "American Factory". If I recall correctly, there's a low-level manager who tried to turn himself indispensable at the expense of the company's workers and he showed a lot of surprise once he himself was fired.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Factory

"Indispensable" people leave for greener pastures or get laid off anyways. This happens all the time. A company that has too many indispensable people is a company that has too many single points of failure.

Apparently nobody cares, because both consumers and employees keep flocking to the same soulless behemoths en masse to get their fix and their CVs padded.

Also, employees will dump their employer the second they can. Let’s not pretend this is a one-way street.

> (...) but in a LOT of companies leaving with no notice puts everybody (...) in a crazy bad spot.

Do you think gratuitously firing employees doesn't leave them in a bad spot?

How come that a family needing to pay rent and make ends meet doesn't benefit from the same level of concern you're giving to a manager having to go through the trouble of replacing an employee?

Just because many companies behave poorly does not mean there is not a code of reciprocal obligation between workers and companies. If a company lays someone off and gives them no severance, you would judge that company more harshly than if they had given them severance. Similarly, if a worker leaves with no notice, people judge them poorly. When you break the rules people judge you.

> Just because many companies behave poorly does not mean there is not a code of reciprocal obligation between workers and companies.

What code are you talking about? Either you're referring to worker protection laws or collective bargaining agreements. If you're not referring to either of those, you're just projecting personal expectations that no one meets.

> If a company lays someone off and gives them no severance, you would judge that company more harshly than if they had given them severance.

Your frowns don't pay a man's rent.

> Similarly (...)

There is absolutely no similarity. At all. If a worker gets fired, he loses his livelyhood. If an employee quits, a few employees have a to-do item in their task queue.

You're talking as if companies don't hire people dedicated to hiring and firing.

> but in a LOT of companies leaving with no notice puts everybody (coworkers, management, business, client - real human beings) in a crazy bad spot.

Not my problem.

Luckily for them, I stay because I practice overemployment.

I mean, it is your problem if you like any of those people and expect them to maybe be part of your career network in the future. I know I'd have a hard time considering referring someone who gave zero notice when quitting. Sure, it's just business, but that's some pretty anti-social behavior. The person who had to stay behind to clean up the mess you left is unlikely to ever want to help you in the future, or take your call if you want to hire them onto your team at some point

You can certainly make it less abrupt in other ways - let people know beforehand or such, but if I showed up on Monday and one of the other senior folks on my team just was gone with no notice and didn't talk with me again, it would be hard to just treat that as normal.

There’s this one cool trick I learned where labor solidarity means telling coworkers ahead of quitting but not managers. Also not everyone needs “their network” to get jobs. This employee karma from fucking management I’m always threatened with has never been real in any industry I worked in.

There's definitely ways you could do it well that don't make a mess - telling your coworkers ahead, or at least the ones who would have to take your workload. Or subtly making sure to knowledge-share before you leave.

I'm saying this from experience of people doing things as mundane as just moving to another team within the company with little to no notice. Yea, it "fucked management", but I also had to spend 3 months dealing with the mess they left behind, and inherited half-working code that they clearly had neglected because they knew they were about to leave.

Labor solidarity isn't just "I screwed capital so it's all a positive". You have to... I dunno, support your fellow laborers. I certainly don't think it's some moral failing to have abandoned a job with no notice, but implying that this is just "fucking management" is missing how much it can really pile stress and bad conditions onto the fellow employees you leave behind.

Maybe it's never bitten you, but I know if any of the folks I've worked with who have disappeared with no notice from my team asked me to work with them, I'd be having a hard time trusting them. Maybe they don't care, and they think I'm some corporate stooge or whatever, but when you're totally fine throwing me into the machinery of capitalism to advantage yourself, what would stop you from doing that again?

People leaving teams sucks, which is all you seem to be describing.

What do you do to management when they hurt you this way (firing/reassigning team members without notice)? How do you fight the corpos? What are some techniques you've come across to cause pain for management that somehow doesn't harm labor? Why aren't your complaints just the voice of management saying that I harmed you (when another way of looking at it as that I liberated myself. Are refugees "throwing their countrymen into the machinery of tyranny"?)?

About as anti-social as saying "thanks for your time, today will be your last day, and there will be no severance."

Yes, which is... anti-social, right? And which you would judge a company for?

>> Not my problem

That is a personal choice and perspective you make, comfortably from a throw away account.

Honest question, what is overemployment? I never heard that term before.

Work two or more full time jobs at the same time remotely. Each company assumes I am exclusively their own employee.

Ok, your choice. You do know that you risk loosing both if they find out? And in my neck of the woods they will, since full time employment pays into social security and employers receive feed-bavk in the form of their respective contributions.

Nothing I'd recommend, and just for loosing employment, but also for mental health.

All that of course goes for two full time jobs. One full time job and some side jobs are acceptable. And unfortunately for some a necessity to make ends meet.

The mental health thing only matters if you are personally vested in your work and care about what you do.

A lot of the overemployed don't. They are trying to walk a fine line and do the absolute minimal required to remain employed at each job. They also care a lot less about being fired from one job since they a fallback.

Again, personal choices. We all rationalize our own morality :-). You can probably tell how I feel about that level of deception, but as long as you're not in my circle of coworkers or friends, have fun :-).

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