jbkiv

Not really. But the current crisis brings back memories. And a lot of similarities, unfortunately.

Sure, but at some point if you really care, there is nothing you can do. And I also knew (and they did not know) that to make that happen, I would have to leave myself shortly after.

So you understand...Thank you. I learned plenty of lessons: make money, don't over hire, be frugal, don't bend to pressure for fancy gigs and out of control travel expenses. Plenty of lessons for sure. I have sympathy for Founders who will find themselves in that kind of situation. That miserable sense of failure to your people. Good luck to all.

Different point of view: I was a Founder and CEO during the dot com era. The company survived and became successful ($2B revenues today).

It may be unpopular, but I will give you a different view, the one from a Founder/CEO.

After the dot com crash no VC could figure out the good from the bad in their portfolio companies. I was starting to get conflicting opinions from my board (4 VC’s and me, the Founder). “Become a BtoB company, a BtoBtoC company,etc,...”.

Some VC’s offered a bridge (and declined at the last minute), others claimed they were running of money, others did not know.

A white knight came in the form of a bottom feeder. Those kinds of sharks are circling around your company right now. Vc’s are just happy to unload their portfolio companies to them, so they can save the face, some employees, and maybe the company.

Anyway, the deal came with a caveat: I had to fire 40% of the staff and I had to quit after that to make room for “professional management”.As a Founder I had hired every single engineer, every single marketing rep. This was a very difficult one to swallow, but I had no choice.

The night before I did not sleep. I was up at 5 and drove early to the office. I stopped multiple times as I was sobbing and could not drive (I wear glasses).

Mid morning I called an all hands meeting. Got up the steps to talk to everybody. There was silence, as everybody sort of knew by then that something was brewing.

As I was reading to talk, I started crying. Everybody was watching me in silence.

As I was getting myself together I explained the situation, that we had a way out but that 40% of them had to go. One engineer raised his hand and said “I’ll stay with no pay”.

Then a second one.

I started crying again. Folks would come to me and say “we’ll be all right” and I would reply “thank you”. When asked what the structure would be, I said I did not know. I knew that after the layoffs I would be silently asked to leave.

A lot of people moved on, did well, got better jobs over the years.

So, be kind to your Founders, and all the early employees who worked for months and years with no pay because they believe so much in what they were working on.

In the past 5-10 years, we have seen a lot of excesses, super expensive office spaces, unbelievable perks and salaries, $30K conference room tables and unlimited money printed by VC’s and later stage investors. Well, maybe this is it. If you get laid off don’t be angry, don’t blame others, and move on. Don’t take that personally.

As for me, I never fully recovered from the worst day of my life, and that was 19 years ago. :-(

Thanks for clarifying :)

Hello Sankalp, I am starting an online community for financial services professionals. They have decimated by this crisis. If you have any draft of your paper, I would love to read and maybe we could learn from others' mistakes. Thks. jb at kivfinance dot com

It may just be simply too late. Everybody was still partying all over California 6 days ago

I notice you are in Italy. Warm thoughts to you all

Could not agree more. Folks who landed in the job market as star CS majors 5-10 years ago are not ready for that. High salaries, large amounts of funding, massive commercial rent level in San Francisco. This is going to be hard. But as you say a lot of great, lean companies will emerge.

Not sure where you are but healthcare companies in the US decline to cover companies if they don't cover most, if not ALL employees, just to avoid discrimation

Nope! but that reply was intended for a different post, sorry :-)

Can't agree more.

Thank you. No this is not an unpopular opinion. yes, global depression. Veteran of dot com crash here. You are spot on. I can't believe that some folks still don't realize what is happening.

Advice: stay where you are now in the cushy job

Hiring remote workers at scale is super complex if you want to comply with local laws (and you must). Hiring contractors is easy but if your contractor should be indeed classified as an employee you will be in trouble one day or the other. You have to set up a legal entity in that country/state, provide workers' comp, health benefits, unemployment, comply with various laws on leave, vacation, medical, etc... This is quickly a nightmare and it is why true good remote companies hire only in handful of states/countries.

Agree, I had to lay off 40% of staff during the .com crash, that was terrible. In 2008 we did not suffer much as our hiring was super conservative by then (I had learned).

Everybody should be terrified and cut expenses RIGHT NOW: don't buy a fancy car, pull the kids out of private school, cancel vacations, don't buy a house, don't enter into any kind of commercial lease (you'll find plenty of cheap leases).

If you are into consulting (front end, back end, ML, devops, ML) offer to cut your rate 50% if you can get a 12 month contract, right now.

Don't blame the virus. Sure it does not help but a lot of startups were barely viable businesses under oxygen (=VC rounds, always looking for dumb money for the last rounds). Don’t be picky (I don’t like the office culture, the market you are in, etc)

As they say get a mortgage, you’ll start enjoying your job better. Get several kids and you’ll start enjoying your boss/the founders/the market your startup is in as well.

I love that hack! Very clever

Thank you for stepping in Edwin, much appreciated!

Agree, What would you say would have been a better outcome? Google? Facebook? Microsoft has changed quite a lot, and in a good way.

Great find, thank you. I ended up playing with the tools they provide. I always loved solving optimization problems and this page ia a gem, I did not know it existed.

Congrats! How do you handle discrimination in your case? I'll give you an example: 50% of your employees are young and healthy and they opt out of the health plan offered and go with Savvy. How do you handle the remaining 50%, assuming that some of them are older, have cancer, or have kids with disabilities, diabetics or whatever. Would ANY health plan accept to cover only the sick and old? This is based a concept called mutualization. I'll be interested by your point of view, or if any of your clients came across cases like that?