Ask HN: How does a tech person work well in a fire-all-developers style company?
Recently Travis CI was acquired by Idera, and it's been followed by widespread firing of developers. (Same thing happened with Sencha, same company.) The model is a large company that takes loans led by private equity, acquires companies, fires all developers, replaces them with outsourced development claiming they are 'investing' in the product. This is not only Idera; other companies do the same. HN discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18978251
Let's suppose you're one of the few remaining after this has occurred. You're a tech-literate manager, or one of the few developers left. How do you work effectively? If you wanted to change business strategy to persuade the value of developers knowledgeable in the product area, how would you? How do you respond when sales slow after seeing the results of outsourced development? How do you communicate with that kind of corporate leadership? How can you rescue the product that you've spent so much time on and love?
41 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 93.7 ms ] threadThe ship has sailed, it's time to move on.
We all have things we love, or responsibilities we feel.
I don't think that's fair at all. Idera acquires developer tools companies, and the tools are used by many developers - people here on HN. Let's suppose you built a tool used worldwide by your peers: would you just shake your head and go "yep, don't care"?
Have you read the tweets by the departing Sencha devs? They were desolate.
Yep, don't care.
The answers on this thread (along the lines of ‘don’t care, give up’) shock me. I see HN as an audience of passionate, tech-loving people - people who would not want to be in the position described in this question and people potentially with the passion and drive to do something about it.
If there are a lot of people in need of medical attention, the compassionate doctor stops working on the dead one, and saves those she can. We're all trying to tell you your patient is dead. You loved your patient, but it's too late, and now it's time to move onto another.
But that was a situation in which an earlier version was already open-sourced. You could consider reimplementing the system as open source, if IP rights and non-competes don't prevent it.
But accepting that the owners killed the system is likely to make you happier.
I've seen that. A wonderful talk.
> But accepting that the owners killed the system is likely to make you happier.
I understand. Nevertheless, I always feel there are options for making something better. This Ask HN is about how to do so.
You may love it too much to let go - you feel like you would lose a part of yourself if you leave. But if you stay and watch the thing you love being dragged through the mud day after day, is that going to be better, or worse? I suspect worse.
I suspect that you can't do anything to help. I suspect that you need to get out, because staying is going to destroy you. Staying (even at the price of being destroyed) to save others is noble. Staying and being unable to do anything to help isn't noble - just unwise.
If I were you I would find out who the key decision makers are of the company. What they are like and how they do things. Befriend them and lobby hard. Not thank it would do much if you are not already well connected. God pointy-headed bosses are worst.
Anyway, thanks for the heads up. Not that its going to affect me much as I use CircleCI and not TravisCI.
Start a company, get a few hundred million (or a billion+) of dollars together, and buy it.
> How do you communicate with that kind of corporate leadership?
At the end of the day in any situation, you have to learn to speak their language, which is informed by their values. These questions always boil down to "X doesn't have my values, how do I change that?" If you can't make your values align with theirs, the ship has sailed.
This law has been modified and partially canceled in 2014-2015, but people that has been hired before that date still benefits of this law.
EDIT: Look at third page (numbered 70), second column half way, to get a better explanation. https://preserve.lehigh.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=http...
Certainly you can expect yourself and your peers to be fired. I don't think laws matter - Idera has reportedly fired entire teams in the past in countries with similar laws. I recall hearing of two times that has supposedly happened. In those cases, the employees did not band together. Perhaps that's the advice: do so. Find a collective lawyer. Advertise and promote the company's activities towards you; make their actions publicly clear. HN here is a good place. Do everything you can.
At the end of the day, an acquirer is making an investment and hoping to make a profit on that investment. If you can help the company make money and do it more effectively than an outsourced partner you are likely to stay. You will need to put on your business hat and talk and walk the business walk to be successful.
Do you have resources on how to learn USA C-level and board-level corporate speak? And how to learn American corporate financing to understand their revenue reports and expectations?
That knowledge needs to be found and learned fast - now. Leaving and going to college is clearly not an option. Are there good reliable or solid online resources for that kind of material?
I feel it must be possible. The question is how. How do you survive well in such an environment?
They have no love of the product. They have no love of or loyalty to customers. They have one target, to make money, and they have their system for doing it.
The only chance you have of changing them is showing them that they can make more money doing it differently. And, because they have their system that they think works, they're not likely to listen even to that.
To make this more substantive: unless your dream is managing remote offshore teams (maybe it is?) who all lack the institutional knowledge of how the product works (so expect a lot of time teaching and rejecting code reviews), then I reckon your career would be better served by another company.
Work is a business transaction. That's all it is. You're overinvested.
2 choices: 1) Wake up, find a new job, before you get laid off too. 2) Wake up, find a job working on their product, before you get laid off too.
I worked for a company that had about 3000 employees. We were bought by a competitor. Layoffs came often as they tried, with some success, to convert our customers to their product. But many liked ours better. Eventually to kill our product and force acceptance of theirs, they laid off all the developers. The only ones not laid off were the cool aid drinkers who switched.
Myself, I was taken out when it went from 200 people to 100. The next year they closed our place. It put my career back a good 5 years.
Smart people left early on their own, not laid off, and found much better jobs.
All the while as we were being squeezed the place kept getting more and more depressing.
Another friend was in a company he loved on a product he loved. The parent company just outright killed the project. He and a few others quit and started working on the project. He worked another job to feed his family. He works 60 to 100 hours a week. Has recently found out the others are screwing him and if it takes off he gets nothing.
Moral of the stories: do not fall in love with a project so much that you cannot walk away.
2nd moral, get it in writing.
You won’t change the attitude of the company, they won’t bring development back in house - even if you had the best argument in the world the investors would block it.
From the comments it looks like you are desperate to stay, if that is right then you have a choice either accept it for what it is or leave.
The only way you could make genuine changes that you are looking to make is if you were part of the investment crew.
We have all seen this played out time and time again, either there will be no more updates or it will slowly turn to shit - if you stick it out and your name is “mr product” you will be associated with that shit, if the product is good today then run.