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Comment by conjecTech | Hacker News Reader

This is the worst take I have ever seen. This company just raised $250 million. That is more money than 99% of companies will ever have in the bank. Being a "startup" does not given you license to wantonly play with your employees' lives and wellbeing. As the quote from Dalton above shows, there are norms around these things which companies 1/100 this size regularly abide by.

This is not normal behavior for any company, and you should run away from anyone trying to convince you otherwise. The people responsible should be treated like pariahs.

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They raised $260 million and had at their peak 1500 employees.

Think for a moment how far $260 million gets you when you have 1500 tech employee salaries in Seattle to pay. Plus operating expenses. Don't forget to add 15.3% for payroll tax. Median software engineer compensation in Seattle is 219k. Infrastructure and office space isn't free either. Seattle office space averages $43/sqft and the average employee space is 150-175 sqft.

That. Money. Is. Long. Gone. It's not a bad take, you just won't do basic math.

Raising $260M doesn't mean you're rich. The investors expect you to spend that money and otherwise why are you raising that much?

They spent 4 months looking for a buyer and had already shed 1000 employees before shutting down operations. It's not like current employees were clueless about what was going on.

Functionally there's little difference between operating up until now or giving 500 "chosen, lucky" people severance 3 months ago.

None of those factors are unique to this business. Somehow adults at thousands of other companies are able to handle this situation reasonably despite also having to pay rent and taxes.

I'm sure very few of the people whose continued work they were depending on for a sale would have stayed this long if they realized they were going to be treated like this.

Actions and comments like this are how you kill an ecosystem.

If your company is multiple funding rounds in and lays off two thirds of its employees in a day, you should be putting your applications out before the close of business day if you're in a situation where you need to make ends meet.

Just because you remained does not mean that your job is secure. This is strictly common sense.

Also I've had a pretty long career and I don't know of any company in this situation who paid 500 employees severance after ceasing operations.

I don't doubt that you've had "a pretty long career," but I wish you had spent a moment Googling before posting this take. I immediately found an example of a 250-person company paying employees severance after deciding to shut down operations. If it's possible at 250 employees, it's possible at 500.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/inside-qu...

Quibi was also a ludicrous company that gave streamers multi-million dollar up-front no-milestone deals and then shuttered.

They absolutely cratered within six months of launch.

I wouldn't use them as an example of how to competently operate a business. They literally gave all of the investors' money away. They operated more like a charity than a business and if I were one of their investors I'd have been suing.

Well said.

As if a month or two of severance, which I'd wager your average critic in this thread would promote as laudable, would do much of anything in the grand scheme of job security.

Given the upside of a company surviving, or even ultimately succeeding, as an employee, I'd rather try to help a good/fair company ride it out and survive than folding early to pay out a few months.

> Somehow adults at thousands of other companies are able to handle this situation reasonably despite also having to pay rent and taxes.

Are these thousands of successful companies? Or failed companies?

> Actions and comments like this are how you kill an ecosystem.

Sorry.

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