HN Explorer

Ask HN: Who has been laid off?

391 points by etxm ↗ HN
There is a monthly “Who is hiring” post, but I thought it might be helpful to have a laid off post with unemployment rates rising.

Share your experience and what you’re looking for.

332 comments

[ 5.4 ms ] story [ 240 ms ] thread
buildawesome
Do you think the 'Who wants to be hired' post accomplishes this or are you looking for companies who are laying off workers?

linked below!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22749306

aerovistae
I think that is very centered on your qualifications and what you're looking for. There's next to no discussion there. This kind of reads like an invitation to talk about the company you left and the difficulty of being laid off.
flyinfungi
17.5% salary cut. Gonna have to get a new security job :-/
chrisjc
25% here, plus taken on 2-3x workload (not related to the furlough situation).

Edit... btw, 2-3x workload doesn't mean that i can actually complete 2-3x workload.

blackflame7000
It would appear someone doesn't like you either at your company or god perhaps. No one treats people they care about like that
chrisjc
Sometimes it's just circumstance and timing... There were good intentions around what happened.
beckingz
Executive: Everything is important! Executive: Why aren't you finishing everything?
chrisjc
Fortunately they are very understanding...
dominotw
I found this forwarded layoff referral list

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HvI7axSIXsQRQH0IJ2GG...

not sure what the source is.

treyfitty
Most of the names are Indian... is it safe to assume contractors are the ones being laid off first at the moment?
dominotw
or source is an indian website ?
adriancooney
Interesting. It's a private document so it's hard to pull any stats out. I did manage to get the top ten companies (back of the napkin hack so take it with a pinch of salt):

  amazon | 13
  thumbtack | 10
  student | 8
  wework | 8
  wayfair | 6
  google | 6
  uber | 5
  cisco | 4
  oracle | 4
  adobe | 3
Surprised to see Amazon at the top. I thought they were the best poised against this. Again, it may not be signal of a wider problem but interesting nonetheless.

There was also an interesting row from a senior (VP level) at WeWork that would lead you to believe that they aren't in a good state ("f'ed"). Again, take it with a pinch of salt since we can't verify any of this data.

mywittyname
Amazon is almost certainly using this opportunity to "trim the fat." Not saying these people are bad developers, but Amazon seems to require a very specific personality type.
meheleventyone
Isn't this more reflective of Amazon running right on the wire operationally and needing to fire people to stay there? Why would they need an excuse to trim the fat from a purely fit point of view?
mywittyname
Nearly every large company has those merely competent people that they can't really justify getting rid of from a performance perspective, but these people are a bit too comfortable and the company feels like a new hire is likely to be more productive.

A downturn provides great cover for the company, since they can get ride of a bunch of these people en masse with minimal legal fuss. HR and Legal can be prepared and do it as efficiently as possible. Plus, it will look good on the balance sheet for the next quarter (if that's important to the company).

dominotw
they have thousands of people. 13 layoffs is probably any given week.
anonazon69420
Can confirm

I was hired originally as a contractor but was converted to full-time as I had a competing offer, I was fired despite exemplary performance for a very "at will" reason. After getting some legal advice I may comment further but they're actively firing folks and not converting good contractors. If you're still at the company watch out.

MivLives
I wonder if the Wayfair people are just still unemployed from their layoff in Feb.

I'm seeing a bunch of interns in there too which is kind of interesting.

demarq
I got picked up by an Amazon recruiter just before the outbreak. I was really tempted but I'm now glad I took the time to think about it.
rsanek
You can get to the raw data, even for private documents, by downloading as csv/xlsx.
gvb
There was also an interesting row from a senior (VP level) at WeWork that would lead you to believe that they aren't in a good state ("f'ed").

That is a good summary of WeWork: "SoftBank, which is run by the Japanese billionaire Masayoshi Son, announced on Thursday it was terminating a $3bn share tender rescue deal hammered out last October to save WeWork from collapse."

Combine that with a lot of long term and expensive real estate leases with nobody working in the buildings... f'ed.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/apr/02/wework-foun...

1MoreThing
There's lay-offs and then there's "I got fired this week." Does this document tell the difference? Because those numbers look about right for an industry that does have some involuntary turn-over week to week.
amznthrowaway5
Yeah it's around the time that the yearly 5-10% stack ranking based forced attrition causes people to get fired. Don't think it has to do with COVID.
supercollision
fwiw most of the the Google rows look to be consultants, contractors or vendors. Amazon had fewer with details but tentatively had full-timers.

though IIRC at least a couple of the FAAMNGOs try to keep C/C/Vs from portraying their jobs as being employed by the contracting company. Perhaps Google doesn't or perhaps it's more for linkedin than arbitrary spreadsheets or resumes.

jbreckmckye
Just been put on furlough with likely redundancy at the end of the national lockdown period. Absolutely devastated. My job was hard and the pace relentless but the work was extremely stimulating and my colleagues were absolutely fantastic people.

(It was also a Haskell gig, which is a real rarity.)

Right now I'm just licking my wounds and waiting for the lockdown to end. I'm not sure if it makes sense to start a new job right now - the UK furlough scheme is essentially guaranteed income until June. Starting a new job would waive that, so unless you're actually losing money on furlough I think it's a bit unwise to jump companies.

3pt14159
I'm sorry to hear that dude.

Haskell is a demanding language, so you're almost certainly a pretty senior dev. If so, consider volunteering to help organizations during the downtime. Worst case, if you can't get that dream gig back it will certainly make your resume stand out when you're looking for your next thing. Best of luck.

Ididntdothis
Where can people volunteer with tech skills? Is there a demand for it?
typest
helpwithcovid.com. I believe there is quite a bit of demand on some of these projects.
goodcanadian
https://crowdfightcovid19.org/

This is aimed at scientists, but my wife is on the list and tells me that they are looking for UX designers and software developers.

Delk
Any idea what kinds of software development skills they're looking for?

I guess if they're also looking for UX designers, they aren't looking for just data analysis code?

goodcanadian
I don't have much information. I was told frontend and backend.

Edit: given the subject matter, I imagine there is demand for data analysis expertise, but that is my own speculation.

erikbye
While not what you meant, if people with coding skills have free time, it is greatly appreciated if they contribute to open source projects that are widely used. A lot of OSS are critical components in many systems we rely on daily, your contributions can have more value than you can even imagine.

It would be great if all devs could keep this in mind, but especially the ones that are about to get some time off (if life does not get too stressful for you).

petercooper
Sorry to hear that. And I agree with your conclusion. However, it could be a good time to work on a side project (for no money) if you have any ideas, especially something that might help get another gig after the furlough. Best of luck and stay safe.
HPsquared
It might make sense to look now - at the end of the scheme, there will be a huge flood of people all looking for jobs at the same time.
PopeDotNinja
Hang in there!

What are y'all doing w/ Haskell? Is it regular ol' programming and someone just picked Haskell, or is it a use case where Haskell shines exceptionally well?

noir_lord
> so unless you're actually losing money on furlough

Also UK and I am losing money as it's 80% up to 2500 pre month if your employer doesn't top it up, so for me that's a large pay cut, that said given the way things are I'm happy to take that cut knowing I'll still have twice what I need to cover the next 3 months before I have to touch my savings.

Whether I'll have a job at the end of whatever the lockdown period ends up been I've no idea, I think most likely I will but we'll have to wait and see, fortunately I'd been saving so I have enough to cover me from June well into next year in my "can access this money right now" account.

dillonmckay
Are you still having to work?
noir_lord
No, if your company furloughs you, you legally can't do work for them - the approach is if you work you get full pay.
barbegal
I see no reason why you can't start a new job, you can have another job and receive the furlough pay as far as I can tell [1]. This may be in breach of your first employees contract but as long as its a job in a slightly different industry few contracts would prevent you starting a new job.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/guidance/claim-for-wage-costs-through-the...

toiletduck
OVO are still hiring and planning growth this year: I'm not sure on the ettiquette of reffering people, but sounds like it might be of interest. Cloud first, lots of flexibility in teams running their own microservices and a preference for functional programming (although Scala is popular, haven't seen Haskell yet in production). https://grnh.se/a2f788601us
exdsq
I work for a remote company that writes Haskell and might be hiring at the moment. Email me if you're interested and I can share more details :)

edd [at] theoryof [dot] pl

gip
If you are looking for a (relatively short) contract gig involving a Haskell backend that needs to be update please contact me.
razki
Feel the pain. Same situation here, I'll be taking a 50% wage cut, coupled with the uncertainty after the government period if it goes that way on Monday.
Engineering-MD
It sounds like now is a good time to learn a new skill for a few months. It would be unwise to quit now as a new job would not qualify for furloughing and if the economy turns worse you would be let go without any income.
mu_killnine
I work for a very large player in the print industry (which is transitioning to 'multichannel marketing solutions provider').

I feel like my company has done the best they can (given our industry has already been under a lot of pressure prior to COVID) under circumstances. We're in groups of rolling furloughs so folks have not been permanently laid off. While laid off, we still are receiving medical benefits, which is great.

As a remote worker prior to all this, I haven't had to change much of my day to day and our infrastructure has handled the influx of remote workers (thousands) very well.

However, it also makes the prospect of moving to another company daunting. I worked on-prem for years and developed relationships with co-workers prior to moving off-site. I have a lot of anxiety about not being able to create the same relationships at a new company or having to commute again to a city center for work (something I really can't see myself doing unless absolutely necessary). It's a scary prospect and one I think is absolutely possible given the precarious state of my industry and the economy on the whole.

throaweyprimy
I’m in the print industry too.

Things are definitely uncertain at the moment. Our company was fairly small, and we were growing incredibly fast. COVID19 has cut our sales by 90%. As an industry with high fixed costs, this is devastating and I’ll most likely be laid-off in a coming weeks.

I spent years trying to get this company off the ground, and as soon as we picked up steam the market tanked.

I have my doubts about the long term recovery of the print market, so I think this is will be my exit from the industry.

alberth
My heart goes out to all who've lost their job (and those who's health has been impacted by COVID-19).

In case you want to get perspective of the huge US impact of unemployment, see this automated visualization.

https://t.co/G5k24nxJRS

hathym
Curve flattened.. Vertically.
pmiller2
I’d be more interested in seeing the actual unemployment rate presented like this, not the weekly claim numbers.
mercutio2
March numbers for overall unemployment rate have been published, but they’re wildly inaccurate because their reference date is mid-month, before most layoffs started.

So we don’t really know yet with precision, but it’s getting close to Great Recession levels.

Spooky23
No, it’s Great Depression levels. You can tell from suppliers.

I just got some equipment quoted with a 2 week delivery guarantee. A month ago there was a 10 week backorder due to Chinese supply chain issues.

The overall market is imploding. Once you see prices drop, that’s it.

qnt
The civilians labor force is about 165 million people, so we’ve added about ~5% to the unemployment rate in the last two weeks (say 9m increase in claims).

Unemployment peaked at around 25% in the 1930s depression. Rough calcs suggest that could be surpassed: https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2020/march/back-en...

dhimes
Jesus. That kind of off-the-chart result is why log graphs were invented. Your link really hammers the disaster home.
partiallypro
I have not been laid off myself, but I have a a friend that has been laid off, and an acquaintance that has taken a 10% pay cut. Separately I know 3-4 other people that have lost their jobs that are a degree apart, far more than in 08.
downerending
OT, but I've been getting a lot more feelers for (remote) jobs over the last two weeks. I'm not switching, but I hope that that translates into more work for those who need it.
codezero
Being forced to run a remote team of 10 has really opened me up to hiring people remotely in the future, hopefully others will come around as well.
pdimitar
Out of curiosity, what was stopping you before? Remote is quite prevalent for years now, especially in IT.
codezero
Just uncertainty. I am a pretty new manager, and fwiw it wasn't easy even when forced, but since the whole team suddenly also got a crash course, it helped a lot.
pdimitar
I'd advise you to not shy away from remote in general. Many people, apparently yourself included, think it's some sort of a grand transition. It really isn't. :)

I am thankful that people like you exist and are willing to take the plunge and then find out that it wasn't that bad. You're certainly doing a much better job than most managers I ever worked under.

codezero
To be clear. I’m not shying away from it and have always been open to it. I’ve had reservations, but I’m happy to say that being thrown into the deep end has made me and my team a lot more confident that we can make remote work for our team. :)
novask
I left voluntarily before I had something else lined up. We weren't really doing anything we were hired to do (pentesting), so I wanted something else. I got really restless and it's why I'll stay away from government contracting positions in the future unless desperately needed.

4 months ago this wasn't a completely bad idea as tech was known as a seller's market and taking time off to learn new things was normal.

It's obviously not realistic for the next year or so at least.

pmiller2
My company isn't doing layoffs (yet), but the next year or so is precisely what I'm worried about. I've been at my company for about 1.5 years, and, absent coronavirus, I'm very confident I'd be in no danger of losing my job.

Right now, taking the risk of jumping to a new company doesn't sound appealing. But, if this goes on too long, I'm sure we'll end up doing layoffs at some point. We're already on a hiring freeze, and there are a lot of cost counting and cost saving projects going on right now.

If layoffs do come, though I may be better off than my many coworkers on visas, a job search in the middle of a recession does not sound like any fun. And, layoffs can tend to come in waves, so, even if I make the first cut, there could very well be another round coming in a matter of weeks or months. In that case, I would rather not be around for the second wave of layoffs. I think this scenario is the only one in which taking the risk of switching companies makes any sense.

ghaff
>a job search in the middle of a recession does not sound like any fun

During the dot-com bust, I was very lucky. I had lunch with someone I knew just a few days after I was laid off for dot-com bust related reasons. And he ended up hiring me about a month later.

However, during the interim I was job hunting, including meeting with various other executives I knew and I don't think I had so much as a nibble. And, of course, at least at the moment, there aren't a lot of service sector jobs you can take just to keep some money rolling in.

pkaye
Just before the dot-com bust, I decided to return to college for my masters degree. This turned out to be a good decision because soon after the bust so many were clamoring to get admitted but I was already established in my studies and I had cashed out some investments to fund my education.
Scuds
I know of an MSP that laid off all their non-critical-infrastructure field staff, and even the (now remote, THANK GOD) helpdesk staff had a paycut.
graphicsRat
Made redundant last week. Company scrapped the project I was working on in order to cut costs. Industry FinTech
SamWhited
20% paycut here. This comes after being laid off a few months ago when Docker sold their enterprise version (sort of, the new company made us all offers but they have terrible benefits among other problems so most people didn't take the offer or only stayed long enough to find something else), so we're all a bit sad. There was then an immediate around of layoffs right after that (though thankfully my department wasn't affected).

At least we still have a job, and I'll take the pay cut if it means we don't have to make anyone else redundant, but I wish the employees had a seat at the negotiating table for any of this.

kamarg
> I wish the employees had a seat at the negotiating table for any of this

If the tech industry didn't seem to despise unionizing so much this could've been possible. Maybe that will change once the current disaster is behind us.

Yeroc
Unfortunately, in an economic environment like this a union won't help you. We're seeing many public services staff that are unionized laid off (in Canada) and I'm sure this is happening around the world. By the end of this it's quite likely this will look similar to the Great Depression.
kamarg
It wouldn't stop all the layoffs but that isn't the goal. The goal would be to give employees a vote when decisions are made on how to deal with the economic fallout instead of being the passive victims of whatever decision is arrived upon by upper management and the board.

Instead of instantly laying off as many people as possible, the union could have brought other proposals to the table to try and help both the company and employees. Maybe you delay 401k matching until the end of the year instead of paying it every paycheck. Maybe cut employee salaries and hours instead. The union at least gives the employees the chance to voice ideas on how to help the company and themselves make it through instead of finding out that 400+ of your coworkers were let go over Zoom via a two minute prerecorded message.

Spooky23
Unions sort by seniority and screw everyone else. Always.
SamWhited
Let's assume that's true (it's not always true, but let's assume it is): isn't this still better than sorting by "only execs get taken care of and everyone else gets screwed by default"? I'd rather have someone voicing my concerns even if the person who's been there longer gets taken care of more.
pdimitar
> 400+ of your coworkers were let go over Zoom via a two minute prerecorded message.

That's harsh and cold. Wow.

SamWhited
A union could have helped negotiated the amount the lowest paid among us was cut vs the amount execs were cut, for example. I don't know the details of this specific case, so I don't know if there was another viable option, but at least if we had a group of the workers who did know I would have some confidence that there really was no other way and this wasn't just management cutting everyone elses pay to avoid having to lose a couple million themselves.
imroot
Look at BoxBoat -- consulting company near DC. I know they picked up a lot of Docker Inc's PS stuff and had their own clients. They're all remote, so that helps.
boltzmannbrain
> I wish the employees had a seat at the negotiating table for any of this

Perspective from the other side of the table: I can't speak for every company, but we've worked day and night for weeks to figure out a plan that puts employees first and gives us a fighting chance to emerge from this crisis. It may not feel like it, but damn we fight for every single person's job. Paycuts w/o layoffs is a win.

SamWhited
That's great, and I'm sure our management did too, but I still wish they'd roped employees in and not just shoved a decision down our throats in a quick video call.
szatkus
We had a call on Friday exactly for this. We were asked if we want a paycut or laid-offs.
SamWhited
A friend of mine mentioned that their company also took them to 80% pay but also gave them Fridays off. I wish we had a union just so they could negotiate for something like this.
cammikebrown
I’m a bartender. At least 75% of my friends have been laid off. Not just bartenders, but servers, bussers, most cooks, managers, and everyone I know who works in hotels as well.
ttul
I'm sorry to hear that. What are you going to do to pass the time while you are laid off?
cammikebrown
I’ve been trying out various EdX classes on data science. Any suggestions?
m15i
Consider the free PDF of Chollet's "Deep Learning with Python" and/or www.fast.ai
disgruntledphd2
Noooooooooo....

I don't really have anything against Chollets book, but introduction to statistical learning is an absolutely fantastic introduction to the modelling part of data science.

Start there to get better intuitions, then practice practice practice.

It helps if you try to get data to answer your own questions, as there's a lot more motivation in doing that rather than Iris or MNIST.

ithrow
Just curious, how does a bartender ends up staying reading HN?
esaym
Was going to ask this too lol
MivLives
Speculation:

- Could be they have a hobby of computers

- Could be they are still in school

Not everyone who cares about tech news is working in the tech field.

ithrow
HN is way more geeky/nerdy than your regular tech news, hence my curiosity.
Loughla
Not really, it's just slower moving. For every 1 real geek tech post, there are two or three days of regular news things. I came here based on the slower, more thoughtful discussion. I'm in higher ed, not even close to tech.
kickout
Not in tech either, but I like reading and casually following the scene. Kinda funny watching the language flame-wars every so often
minimidge
Obviously, Haskell is the superior option here. Anything else is a travesty.
siberianbear
That's an interesting response. It seems to me that the flame level on this site is quite low in response to somewhere like Reddit. People argue here, of course, but usually it's in an informational sort of way and rarely devolves into "yer momma is soooo fat...." kind of discourse.
thisisbrians
Yeah, you're right. Civil disagreement is allowed here on HN; anything else gets downvoted into oblivion.
erikbye
How do you find HN compares to Slashdot?
kickout
Don't read slashdot (never seen it TBH)
coupdejarnac
Discussion on hn is higher quality. I'm an almost original slashdot reader, user id is 4 digits. I haven't browsed there in perhaps years at this point.
jopsen
The Microsoft bashing was better on slashdot though </joke>

I'm still getting used to the idea that Microsoft might not be all evil. It's a weird feeling :)

dillonmckay
It is pretty bad now, low signal to noise ratio. Lots of trolling.
kls
It's been at least a decade or more since I have been on /. . It really seemed to have went down hill when the Bush election was going on, they did a lot of political coverage and it just ruined the feel of the site. People started exposing their political bent and the site in general just became more snarky.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
franksvalli
Doing market research for the Ballmer Peak
cammikebrown
I have a physics degree. It turns out a bachelor’s degree doesn’t help much, and I was too burnt out at the time to go to grad school. I took a few introductory programming classes and I’ve been trying to get back into it lately. Try talking to a bartender sometime, you may find out they’re not as dumb as rocks.
[dead] pstuart
> Try talking to a bartender sometime, you may find out they’re not as dumb as rocks.

AOC has done an excellent job in that regard :-)

xster
Though sad that she's now taking marching orders from Pelosi now https://www.nationalreview.com/news/aoc-drifts-away-from-act...
therealdrag0
I don't follow politics much. But I think it just underlines to get stuff done in many areas of life you need to be willing/able to compromise and build coalitions.
khrbrt
That article has very thin gruel for "taking marching orders from Pelosi": not endorsing some people and asking for civility in Twitter feuds.

Be skeptical of anything written by the National Review about progressives.

mostlysimilar
My bartender friends are some of the smartest, most capable, most hard-working people I know.
lb1lf
-Irrelevant, but I chuckled at your last sentence.

One of the all-time smartest people I’ve ever met worked a bar in Bergen, Norway; autodidact in anything which caught his fancy, he could give you a lecture on what brought down the Scythians, serve a new guest and striking up a conversation on advances in semiconductor fabrication with him, picking up where he left off the lecture on the Scythians before heading out to see if any of the patrons outside wanted anything, having a quick word on the Poincaré conjecture with the math postgrad having a beer in the backyard...

He had studied for a while at the university before figuring out that he’d have more time to study if he didn’t have to concern himself with exams, quit, kept his uni library card and got down to it.

hazeii
Norway's like that. Last time I was there the taxi driver taking us back to the airport knew more about the CUDA API than I do (not a terribly high bar, but still...).
glippiglop
I met a programmer many years back who had previously been a physicist at CERN. I'd never have guessed but I think he picked up the programming bug there. If you think coding is your thing then go for it and all the best to you!
seanmcdirmid
Not really surprising when you consider that the web was invented there (CERN).
cozzyd
There are very few physicists who don't know how to program.
sumofi
Hn is very it specific. I wouldn't thought that you find many bartenders here for the soul reason that those two interests or occupations are just different independent to intelligence.
[dead] _prototype_
AOC is not doing you guys any favors
joeblau
Super cool backstory. I also wondered what brought you here as well.
mrfusion
How’s the pay? What’s the process for becoming a bar tender? I always thought it might be a fun job when I retire.
avip
If you read this forum carefully you'll find it indeed contains constructors, truck drivers, firefighters, pilots, physicians, teachers... just to name a few from memory.

All these "non-developers" are priceless when discussions pop up which require domain expertise (which we developers usually lack)

[edit: they are also priceless generally speaking]

[dead] gazelle21
I use to read hackernews when I was working at Macdonald's non stop, it was the only thing that kept me sane.
lackbeard
I took a year off once and strongly considered trying to get a job as a bartender for fun because I enjoy making cocktails.
HeyLaughingBoy
I always found it interesting how many people have taught themselves programming.

I was at a customer site a few months ago installing some test hardware and the guy I was working with was their welder, having been an auto mechanic before and we got into a discussion about programming in Python!

The best interaction, however, would be the homeless guy I met who used to be a programmer.

pbourke
I once met an unemployed software engineer who went door to door selling magazine subscriptions.
kls
LOL might be too dated, for this crowd but man that movie was a classic to those that worked thru that era.
Spooky23
One of the best Microsoft stack Sysadmins (AD/Exchange) I knew back in the day was a former diesel mechanic who got badly injured in an accident and transferred to do help desk work. He dove in and really mastered it. Just a great guy who was great at training new folks.

Not programming but the other wacky transition was a Wall St guy who burnt out, started a subsistence farmstand in the country, married a hippie lady and sold vegetables, drove a school bus and plowed snow to get by. Really nice guy... when he died it turned out he owned a few buildings in NYC and was loaded to the tune of $20-30M, and his family had no clue.

tonyedgecombe
My plumber has written a ton of VBA in Excel to automate his business.
dropit_sphere
At one point I was working construction during the day and working on a visual programming language at night.

Needless to say, I have little sympathy for those claiming a talent shortage.

Ididntdothis
That’s bad. My work hours got reduced to 32 hours with corresponding pay cut. Not a big deal for me but I assume a lot of these people can barely make ends meet even while working. Let’s hope the unemployment benefits in the stimulus bill really work.
01100011
My brother tends bar at a golf course. They furloughed him until the end of April with pay. Hopefully he can go back to work after that.
avip
Isn't it a tiny bit optimistic to assume this "will be over" by end of April?
sjg007
Golf courses may be open to give people things to do as long as you maintain 6 feet social distance. In that case they may allow a bar to operate for to go drinks for the course. A lot of them have an attached kitchen as well.
McPhale
Half my team just got put on a 30-day minimum furlough (myself included). The other half has been reduced to working one week on and one week off. The car rental business is not in a good place right now.
lsavage
20% cut in hours from one of my contracts but I haven't lost any yet.
[dead] T3RMINATED
Java Developers got laid off, while C# Devs remain working.
topherPedersen
I landed my first job as full-time professional software developer doing React-Native development right before the Coronavirus pandemic struck. By the time I finished filling out all of the hiring paperwork, drug tests, etc., they reneged on the offer. Was pretty upset about it at the time, but I guess it's hit everyone else just as hard.
Ididntdothis
My advice is that if another offer comes up, take it even if the salary is not what you expect. If there really will be a big recession then very soon it will be very hard to find anything. You may end up unemployed for a long time and by the time things pick up, companies will prefer the new grads. In 2002 I made the mistake of being too proud to take underpaid work and it hurt me quite a bit.
notabee
This is also why people need to push back hard against the typical recruiter habit of asking for your old salary in order to lowball your offer. Many people go through struggles like this.
frenchman99
Answer to give the recruiter is "I can't say my salary, I signed an NDA, but I can tell you how much I want..."
hedora
Asking for previous salary is illegal in CA. Practice your poker face.
hackinthebochs
Where was the job located? It seems odd that you had to take a drug test for the job. I don't think I've heard of that happening in the tech field.
ativzzz
Tons of non-tech companies drug test, and they have lots of tech roles.
sidlls
It happens frequently enough outside major development hubs, especially on the east coast.
quicklyfrozen
If they have any government contracts they may be required to.
thwllms
10% salary cut. Other people at my company (large civil engineering firm) who can't work remotely have been transitioned to on-call, and about 1000 were laid off. Salaries for highly billable employees are currently unaffected.
fredley
[UK] Not me but my partner—classical music. Almost everyone is freelance, and everyone has had all their gigs cancelled for the next few months, leaving a lot of people for whom strings were tight to begin with in complete limbo. Performers obviously but also all the events, management, publicity, everything. The scale of it is almost incomprehensible, unless massive investment is made in the sector to keep it alive, it will just... die.
H8crilA
Or severely deflate. The instruments and people and equipment will still be there, just much much cheaper to get. Companies will be owned by defaulted bonds rather than stocks.
fredley
These aren't companies. Most are charities. The Royal Opera House will be fine, the hundreds of smaller music organisations will not.
H8crilA
I see. My point is they'll be different, regardless of the "incorporation format". I.e. the instruments and the people will still be there.

Unless people stop going to concerts/performances, well then the equipment goes to the basement.

closeparen
I like Ben Folds's perspective on the institution of the symphony orchestra as a celebration of civilization itself. The performing arts are all about groups of people coming together to pull off something greater than the sum of its parts.

But the unfortunate corollary is that you cannot just stack up the parts and have a successful production by magic. It takes a lot more than that. The institutions and structures currently doing it season after season have a kind of life of their own, and it's absolutely subject to decay and death. The ecological niche they occupy is extraordinarily harsh, so they're not easily replaced either.

Practically speaking: you need space and equipment. You need artistic direction with taste and vision to hire the right performers and designers and communicate it to them. You need skilled craftsmen to implement the designs, quick-thinking managers to wrangle the logistics, ambitious 2nd assistants to make the coffee. You'll need all this for months before you turn a dollar of revenue. Then you need marketers to bring in an audience, front of house staff to deal with it, professional schmoozers to pry open the rich ones' checkbooks (ticket sales are never enough).

If it turns out the creative vision was too safe, it'll be panned as boring and derivative. If you take a risk and fail, you'll also get eaten alive. So you have to take a real risk, and have it go your way, every time. At any point, one of the key people who held it all together by the seat of her pants could retire to take care of her sick mother. Or a crucial benefactor (public or private) could have a change of heart. Or Walgreens could snatch up the lease on your performance space. Or an influential critic could be in a bad mood. Any one of these things could be the end.

Please do not take performing arts organizations for granted. There are many once-grand theaters and concert halls in this country abandoned and rotting away. Even more that were simply erased. These things hang on to life by a thread in the best of times.

megous
People will sell their instruments if they'll depserately need money.
sandinmyjoints
Yeah, I've seen this too from the perspective of some friends in classical music. I don't think it will die in the sense that noone will put on or attend classical music performances anymore, but longtime institutions that were homes for it will go away, and performers will go into other work, so when all's said and done I imagine it will quite a smaller field than it was, fewer people in it, less money in it for anyone to make a living off of, fewer opportunities and performances. But who knows.
mabbo
> my partner—classical music

> a lot of people for whom strings were tight

There's a bad joke in there about tuning a little more flat, but I'll leave well enough alone and instead send my sympathies.

I have an acquaintance who was nominated for Juno[0], Canada's highest music award, and the entire award process is apparently dead now, no certainly no awards show. This should be her possibly hitting a new high point in her career- a big award can mean future opportunities- and instead it's all just on hold.

[0]https://junoawards.ca/2020-juno-award-nominees/

nostromo
I found this list on Reddit if you're looking for a full list of companies that are laying employees off, pausing hiring, or still hiring:

https://airtable.com/shrpj2r4Kjc4YoMu4/tbl8m95GiuWehnIiT?blo...

kubanczyk
Wow, much bigger than I expected.
Hamuko
My workplace had furloughs, but all of the developers were excluded from it. Guessing the management had enough trouble hiring developers as it was.
cableshaft
I haven't personally had a change yet, although things have been a little slow here lately, so who knows.

My wife, on the other hand, was reduced to 3 days a week at her job for the next 90 days, with a reduced salary to reflect that, so 40% reduction in salary. At least she wasn't in the group at her office that was furloughed.

So things are still tighter for us, although we're still a lot better off than most people right now.

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Havoc
No but making a intl job hop soon in the middle of this mess and a little worried that it'll not pan out (despite signed contract).

Current job - Auditor - no indication of slowdown. Entire firm has laptop/vpn/phone so essentially ready for this.