Ask HN: Where are laid off employees gathering?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34868560

by schience • 3 years ago

210 318 3 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I'm in SF. Besides the linkedin posts... is there a forum, discussion etc? I feel like I saw a thing/form launched on HN. Also - might be time for an old fashioned meet up!

nnurmanov2• 3 years ago

There is xgooglers community https://xoogler.co/, I think they hold meetings

schience3• 3 years ago

thanks.. I remember hearing about that in 2009 :) There must/should to be something thats more open to the thousands of people recently forced into the job market across many companies?

nnurmanov2• 3 years ago

I am not a part of that community, but I believe the purpose of the community is to help colleagues. They even have a jobboard!

flat-pluto• 3 years ago

Blind[1] is a decent community to get a glimpse into what employees truly feel about employers, get referrals and overall tech career advice. It can get rather toxic and troll-ey at times, but you can filter that out to focus on the useful stuff.

[1] https://www.teamblind.com/

dangwhy• 3 years ago

blind has to be the most toxic community in tech. I don't know if i can handle the mental damage for referrals and insider info on prospective employers.

kulahan• 3 years ago

Everyone on Blind is a Principal Engineer making $750k TC while only working 8 hours a month

cvhashim043• 3 years ago

Aside from referrals channel, Blind is terribly neurotic and toxic.

maximinus_thrax2• 3 years ago

At times? It's a cesspool of negativity and lies. Good content is the exception on Blind. Deleting that app is one of the best things someone can do for their mental health.

pm902• 3 years ago

I can second this.

I made the mistake of downloading it once big players started layoffs in hopes of getting in on the news before it hit. But that forum is toxic sludge for anyone’s mental health.

I don’t use it anymore. The only time I download the app is like glassdoor when figuring out if a company is ok or not.

cactusplant73743• 3 years ago

They are discussing this thread here: https://www.teamblind.com/post/The-Hacker-News-community-vie...

Partial archive: https://archive.ph/npoh6

As you would expect, it's horrible. The moderation is quite bad too. They'll ban you for just saying you disagree with someone depending on the topic.

Vibgyor52• 3 years ago

Does anyone have ANY recommendations for referral platform?

Cold application is fairly useless in today's age and time. A referral puts your application much ahead in the pool so that a human actually reads it.

Blind used to be a tolerable place until they made it exclusively US-centric. Importantly, I really loved their side product - Rooftop Slushie - where you could have resume reviews, interview prep, and get trusted referrals for a small sum. They seem to have closed that though.

sebzim4500• 3 years ago

Cold application is fairly useless in today's age and time.

Really? 95% of the people I've been involved in hiring have been cold applicants or via a recruiter (where normally those connections aren't made by referrals either).

zug_zug• 3 years ago

I'll go ahead and defend blind. It's absolutely negative to the extreme, but it gave me the heads up on a layoff and has all sorts of relevant information. I've come to realize I (we?) trust companies so little that many people would never even complain in a private direct message to a coworker -- pretty hard to commiserate if you're remote.

Most coworkers I know refuse to fill out any "how happy are you at work?" surveys or fill out max scores because they think (and I don't doubt them) that any and all information could be used by management to jeopardize their career -- basically they see their work an totalitarian information state...

pastacacioepepe2• 3 years ago

I've come to realize I (we?) trust companies so little that many people would never even complain in a private direct message to a coworker

We claim to live in democracies, while in fact we spend good part of our adult life in parallel societies where we can't even express dissent in private.

anon77254• 3 years ago

This right here. Blind contains a lot of noise but also some signal. Internal corporate comms are 100% noise and unless you have a trusted and informed coworker the grapevine doesn’t tell you much.

schience3• 3 years ago

Maybe I was thinking of this: https://layoffs.fyi/. The "list of employees" must be an opt in spreadsheets where people are posting their own info. Could be improved with a forum IMO.

zeptonaut22• 3 years ago

The closest thing to gathering I've seen is the consistency of posting on LinkedIn with the #layoffs and #opentowork tags. I've also seen a decent amount of activity in the ex-Googler community where former Google leaders (e.g. Laszlo Block, former head of HR) host Zoom discussions about what life's like on the outside and whatnot.

eldritch_4ier• 3 years ago

"what's life like on the outside" haha. It blows my mind how disconnected some people in tech are.

firstfewshells• 3 years ago

Each man for himself. I'm seeing a dog eats dog mentality.

PaulHoule2• 3 years ago

Past that, why do you want to hang out with other people who are doing poorly when you could be hanging out with people who are doing better?

galleywest200• 3 years ago

Being laid off does not equate to doing poorly. Some people just get cut because some people who wear suits to work seem to not care.

dudul• 3 years ago

Without going as far as "dog eats dog", I don't know if I would feel the need to socialize with laid off people if I got laid off. What would that serve? It's not like one of them is gonna be like "hey, we're hiring at my company!".

Socialize with people who have a job.

LanceH• 3 years ago

Other people laid off are looking and might find something for you. They are looking for companies actively hiring.

People who have a job 1. don't have time during the day and 2. only know about their company since they aren't looking.

I would guess that even if someone had my exact skillset, I would be better off teaming up with them in the search than avoiding them. We could identify more jobs and there is a good chance one of those is looking for more than one person.

cvhashim043• 3 years ago

People have networks. It’s important to leverage different networks and get help.

asdff7• 3 years ago

On the other hand, when you are laid off and looking for people to socialize with, your other laid off friends will be the most available. Nothing like taking advantage of things like discount matinee rates, happy hours you never were able to make on time with a job, or speedy efficient trips through town without traffic when you are already generating no income.

inglor• 3 years ago

Here (Israel tech scene) there are a ton of initiatives to help people who were impacted by the recent layoffs. Lots of mixers with companies that are hiring, free tutoring/help and meetups. Certainly not perfect but it's very far from "dog eat dog".

plussed_reader• 3 years ago

Such is the way in an unorganized labor market.

malfist• 3 years ago

Perhaps we should organize....

culopatin• 3 years ago

So like it’s always been in the job market?

cvhashim043• 3 years ago

One thing I appreciate about our industry is people tend to be generally helpful or atleast give you parting advice with no strings attached.

bart_spoon• 3 years ago

That definitely wasn’t the case for me. I was laid off with 30% of my company several months back and the support was absolutely enormous. Tons of people reaching out on LinkedIn, leads being passed around from coworkers both laid off and still employed. I went through the interview process and had offers from 4-5 companies within 2-3 weeks. Many of my colleagues had similar experiences.

dokem• 3 years ago

They're probably either working a new job, job hunting, or vacationing. If I got laid off I'd probably grab a beer with a couple employees or fellow ex employees. Maybe grab a couple numbers. Then.. adios. Don't make it a bigger thing than it needs to be.

jjgreen• 3 years ago

We're sitting in the park, drinking Thunderbird and arguing with the pigeons.

agent281• 3 years ago

Uh, can I get one of those layoffs?

bink• 3 years ago

Careful. I hear the pigeons use the British Parliamentary style of debate rather than the American style.

pelagicAustral• 3 years ago

That's funny, there are no pigeons where I live. I recently came back from holiday and I enjoyed looking at them and analyse their seemingly erratic alas scavenging behaviour all along. I even felt sorry for the not-so-well-groomed ones... We don't think enough about pigeons... oh well... back to work.

yellow_lead• 3 years ago

Reminds me of the movie 'A Beautiful Mind' - https://youtu.be/GmlSSSN7C78?t=14

calacatta• 3 years ago

If you can make it to Texas they'll buy you a one-way ticket to the coastal metropolis of your choice

tricky• 3 years ago

Drinking Night Train and yelling at clouds over here...

neilv2• 3 years ago

Lost original lyrics to Little River Band's "Reminiscing":

    o/~ We'll be sitting in the park
        sipping Thunderbird till dark
        debating pigeons

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBETVhHpcPk

neilv2• 3 years ago

1m51s

urbandw311er• 3 years ago

Hello fellow Brit

worldsavior• 3 years ago

Ughhh...the dream...

hk1337• 3 years ago

That’s fine but if the pigeons start arguing back, you should probably leave.

throwawaaarrgh• 3 years ago

It just occurred to me that so many people were laid off, we could start the world's largest software co-op (and arguably one of the largest tech orgs, period). We could build software products that every industry needs, that every worker owns a part of and can vote on org-wide decisions.

Literally everyone you need was laid off... Tech people, business people, marketing, sales, etc. We just need a forum and some volunteers to organize. We all know what products companies/individuals would pay for, because we used to build/buy them.

(there are lots of different kinds of co-ops, and I'm not suggesting any particular model other than a worker owned organization where the workers own and control the company)

janalsncm2• 3 years ago

What products would companies/individuals pay for?

quacked• 3 years ago

Yeah the difficulty isn't even thinking of a good idea, it's reconstructing the enormous legal barriers, government contracts, and relationships with private capital that the existing tech companies have cemented over decades.

nanomonkey3• 3 years ago

Creating an open market for compute, labor and goods that would compete with AWS, Amazon and the gig economy would be a good place to start. These groups skim a large portion of companies/individual's profit.

hankish13• 3 years ago

My org is starting with B2B SaaS products. If you can move these into a cooperatively managed framework you drive long term value while also building networks with successful businesses. It's a major opportunity because so many B2B SaaS platforms are super overpriced. The client companies are basically overpaying in order to pay back the VC investors. If you start out without any of that overhead you can offer a completely different funding model.

icapybara• 3 years ago

Why should they all do this?

Apocryphon2• 3 years ago

Because it’s there.

powera• 3 years ago

Isn't this more-or-less what the GNU Project and Apache are?

asim• 3 years ago

I always surmised that this was the only way to compete with Google and others. Even if you had 10k engineers, heck 1000 engineers who did it, it would be a formidable force. But actually doing it. That's the hard part.

sahila• 3 years ago

The number of engineers isn’t the limiting factor competing against google, it’s the innovation/talent. While most engineers even at google aren’t working on hard problems, there’s a few who’re solving distributed computing/gfs/page rank/etc and those individuals are definitely not being laid off. The others use their tools to solve business problems.

hankish13• 3 years ago

We're actually doing it right now at Quorum1, fwiw. It has been hard, but it's working. Maybe join us and help make it work even better? >> https://wiki.quorum.one/blog/what-is-quorum1

DicIfTEx• 3 years ago

We have CoTech in the UK, and they have a decent forum: https://www.coops.tech/

iLoveOncall• 3 years ago

£10.3m of revenue for 211 workers is absolutely terrible though.

revskill• 3 years ago

Cool idea. Let's use technologies to beat "sharks".

In my ideal world, those who only have money, should work for highly skilled techies.

nanomonkey3• 3 years ago

Loomio [https://www.loomio.com/] would be a great forum, cooperative decision making tool for running such a group. The next step would be building out any tools that are not covered by loomio and the likes.

inadequatespace• 3 years ago

Do you have experience with this tool?

mywacaday• 3 years ago

I had to go check and see if that was a basecamp product, style looked very similar on first glance

harshalizee• 3 years ago

I always thought having a "guild" like Hollywood does or something similar would be a great boon to empower tech workers.

Of course, it wouldn't be 1:1 mapping, but a collective tech union-like open institution would go far in leveraging against hostile employers.

CEOs get golden parachutes on signing. It's time tech workers start demanding what their exit package looks like in case of layoffs/reductions against their will. I know a lot of this is wishful thinking, but in the face of an increasingly bleak economic landscape, we may need something like this sooner than later.

JohnFen7• 3 years ago

I always thought having a "guild" like Hollywood does or something similar would be a great boon to empower tech workers.

Maybe. But remember that the Hollywood guild system also acts as gatekeepers keeping people out of the system.

brodouevencode• 3 years ago

But a guild minus the dues, bureaucracy, political infighting, barriers to entry, and corruption.

twblalock8• 3 years ago

Like quite a lot of guilds and unions, the actor's guild started out by defending workers rights against a restrictive system (in that case, the Hollywood studio system) but has evolved into a gatekeeping and rent-seeking organization that primarily enriches its senior members and hurts everyone else.

We really, really don't want that in tech. Tech is one of the few segments of the economy where skill trumps credentials and connections for people entering the field. As a result, tech benefits from a lot of talent that would be ignored by more traditional methods of filtering candidates.

And what would tech workers gain? Unions don't stop layoffs -- look at the past few decades in the auto industry for proof. Unions would also negotiate standard pay packages that might be attractive to low performers, but would hold high performers back. Plus, severance packages are already legally mandated for layoffs in the places where the majority of tech workers live.

filmgirlcw2• 3 years ago

I don’t think the production guild system works in tech. In Hollywood, guilds and unions are necessary and work, in part because most people in the guild are independent contractors. Each production is its own thing. And that assignment could last a day, a few weeks, a few months, or years (depending on your contract/position), but it’s not an ongoing concern.

Whereas in tech, that isn’t the case for the majority of the employees at large companies. Yes, you have consultants and contractors, hit the vast majority of people at Google or Microsoft or Facebook are full-time employees, not hired on a project by project basis.

And that changes both the incentive structure and the organizing power. There are other unions that could be better parallels to trying to organize tech — but I don’t think the Hollywood guild system is the one to try to copy. You’d need to have specific unions covering each company (even if many companies were still affiliated with the same umbrella union) and carve outs and contracts for each company or even subgroup of workers inside a company. You couldn’t just do a blanket SAG-AFTRA style guild for everyone at every company when most of the employees are not on contract but full-time. It just wouldn’t work.

actualwitch• 3 years ago

I've been thinking about how IT union would look like, because IMO the reason it still hasn't materialized is that it needs to be dramatically different from the unions every other industry has. For one, I think it should be remote only, highly automated and the main offer would be to create a platform to discuss problems that arise, collectively make a choice and then enforce it through the hands of union members, if people sabotage the process they get kicked away. Have a way to prove that you are indeed a current member, things like that.

janalsncm2• 3 years ago

The biggest barrier to unionizing in tech is immigration. A union is able to collectively bargain by restricting labor supply. If outside workers are able to work the same job, the biggest weapon a union has is taken away.

xwdv• 3 years ago

This is a pipe dream. The only thing laid off workers care about is making money, not wasting time working for free.

hankish13• 3 years ago

It's not a pipe dream! We've got a collective structured in exactly this manner with over 100 people, growing by ~1 person per day and things are going great! Join us and see, if you're interested. :)

Chyzwar• 3 years ago

Sounds like Anarcho-syndicalism[1]. I am rooting for you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-syndicalism#:~:text=An....

lucidguppy• 3 years ago

We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week. But all the decision of that officer have to be ratified at a special biweekly meeting. By a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs,--

matchagaucho• 3 years ago

Tech Co-ops backed by crypto contracts representing fractional equity ownership are emerging.

They are a logical evolution of the Digital Nomad movement from years past (some emerged from Upwork).

However, each member is expected to be an independent LLC and handle their own country-specific revenue withholdings and taxes.

hankish13• 3 years ago

Yep, this is definitely happening, I'm part of one such group. There's a whole community of decentralized worker collectives working on doing the hard work of getting these models to function.

twblalock8• 3 years ago

We all know what products companies/individuals would pay for, because we used to build/buy them.

Why wouldn't the traditional approach of starting a company to sell those things work?

Co-ops have never been a successful software business model. Not even once that I can think of.

That model seems to work ok for open source, but since you are talking about building things people will pay for, I'm not seeing how it would succeed.

whatshisface18• 3 years ago

A co-op can mean a lot of things, but in particular it means an employee-owned business. For all of the reasons not to get behind the idea of a company without a billionaire at the top, the Hobbesian faith in the monarch could be the worst one.

The functional difference between a co-op and a normal business could be as small as having a board that is informed (because the shareholders are employees and naturally very informed), and that doesn't go for the usual extreme comp levels at the top.

kentrado• 3 years ago

Co-ops have never been a successful software business model. Not even once that I can think of

Igalia is a co-op of software developers. Seems to work well for them.

iepathos• 3 years ago

Quite a few successful web3 companies are decentralized anonymous organizations (DAOs) which are essentially co-ops with more automation and anonymity.

aaronax2• 3 years ago

Tessitura and NISC are successful.

robswc4• 3 years ago

I just don't understand the incentive and it seems like it would end up as a race to the bottom, no?

Perhaps maybe its a good starting point for developers or those just wanting smooth sailing... but for others... why stay in a "system" with a low ceiling? They could take a risk and create a startup and earn much more.

We all know what products companies/individuals would pay for, because we used to build/buy them.

Regarding this. I _wish_ it were that easy. If it were, I would just spin up a consulting business, lol. Its probably the case SDEs know more about what the client needs than the client itself does... but getting them to pay for something new is incredibly difficult.

I guess at the end of the day, I don't believe you could throw 100 talented people in a room and just expect results to start happening. I would love to join this as an experiment though.

whatshisface18• 3 years ago

With the way investors handle things these days the ceiling for founders is a lot lower than you think.

AndrewKemendo8• 3 years ago

Because you get to set the pace for whatever you are doing as a group instead of someone else setting the pace for you

That's the difference

Do you want to work for the desires of wall street or do you want to work for the desires of your friends and community around you?

You can't do both and have investors unfortunately.

marcusverus• 3 years ago

It's hard to imagine such an organization working out over the long term. The incentives are all wonky! The more you contribute, the more you sacrifice by joining a coop. The less you contribute, the more you gain. I for one can't think of a less attractive idea than taking a product idea that I love and turning ownership and creative control over to a group of strangers.

And that's probably why these things are so rare. After all, it would take a helluva lot of drive and energy to bring such a thing to life--probably much more than it would take to start a company in the usual way. If you were capable of building such an organization, why not retain creative control of your ideas and make millions at the same time?

Making millions doesn't have to be a selfish act, by the way. If you want to help people, money affords you the opportunity to do so in any way you please. Horray, effective altruism!

Meanwhile, if you start a software co-op... who exactly are you helping? Software developers, who get a chunk of profits instead of a measly 150K? Software consumers, who're likely business owners? Folks who have money to pay for software?

whatshisface18• 3 years ago

The more you contribute, the more you sacrifice by joining a coop. The less you contribute, the more you gain.

How do you think co-ops work? Are you imagining a flat organizational structure like Valve Software? An open source project plus invoices? Those are all interesting ideas, but co-ops presently work like employee-owned business and usually have managers and compensation structures that fit the obvious way those things work. HN's tendency to GPT whenever exposed to something it doesn't know about is driving me nuts today. :-)

hankish13• 3 years ago

The coop that I'm a part of (Quorum1) has been using game theory to play out just those scenarios. We've been at it for two years and you're right it's been like 10x as difficult as starting a normal company (I'm a serial entrepreneur and have started lots of traditional companies too). But we think the payoff is worth it, plus doing things differently is just straight up more fun, so there's that.

What we're finding is that if you start with the right culture and balance the incentives very carefully you can basically create a magnet-like mechanism where the more people join the network/coop, the greater the value derived for all members and the greater the opportunity cost for the remaining hold outs to not join.

danuker2• 3 years ago

A co-op doesn't mean everyone must share profits equally.

How about an internal market where people bid for tickets?

There are crypto projects facilitating governance of organizations. They could help both enforce and simplify keeping records. Example: https://aragon.org/

Edit: Earlier I suggested hiring people for internal-money, but that might be tax evasion. Don't do it without consulting lawyers in your country.

justeleblanc• 3 years ago

It's hard to imagine such an organization working out over the long term. The incentives are all wonky! The more you contribute, the more you sacrifice by joining a coop. The less you contribute, the more you gain.

If that were true, there would be no successful co-ops anywhere in any field of work. That's obviously not the case. Just look at this list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cooperatives#United_St... if you're from the USA, I'm sure you'll be able to recognize a name or two.

eat• 3 years ago

The more you contribute, the more you sacrifice by joining a coop. The less you contribute, the more you gain.

You could say the same thing to describe working for any corporation.

mrtrombone• 3 years ago

The company Torchbox (creators of Wagtail CMS) are an interesting example of an employee owned company. In their case it was a matter of the founders selling/moving most of their ownership to an Employee Owned Trust (as opposed to starting as a coop from scratch) - EOT is an interesting option in the UK with tax incentives to make it work.

https://torchbox.com/careers/employee-owned-trust

https://baxendaleownership.co.uk/torchbox-digital-agency-mov...

[edit formatting]

mxkopy2• 3 years ago

Horray, effective altruism!

Yup, there we go

AndrewKemendo8• 3 years ago

It's 10x harder because you are doing something counter-cultural and pro-social. The global economic system is structured to prevent you from doing precisely that.

The systems and processes for running a psychopathic corporation are laid out like the Netflix Paved Path for anyone who wants to play the game of "get as much as you can." This path will push you to build the most exploitative thing there is possible in order create maximum returns for capital (even if that becomes you). The end result is what you see: GE, Exxon, Amazon, Wal-Mart, BP Google, etc... an organization with no long term goal other than making money for investors. Is that your definition of "Working out over the long term?"

How about we build a real strong community where we're all owners and we have a say in how the process works, we share in the wins and the losses and don't screw anyone over ever. It's possible, yet somehow all of my fellow geniuses - despite all our ingeniousness - can't unpack this super simple problem that cooperatives around the world have been solving forever. Oh sorry, a few anecdotes about some failed ones and some old hippies that fight yet retain amazingly robust communities, means it will never work.

The systems and processes for "share everything from the beginning" - while working within the economic system that exists today - that's severely underdeveloped and needs thousands of former-capitalists like you and me to start putting the work in to change it.

Or you can build yet another private dictatorship cause it's "easier" for you.

groby_b• 3 years ago

Have you actually ever seen a co-op work?

why not retain creative control of your ideas and make millions at the same time?

Because there are (a lot!) of people who are more interested in an equitable work than extracting fortunes for themselves.

Because you "make millions" on the backs of the people you string along, and not everybody wants that.

Horray, effective altruism! You mean the thing that allows you to ignore any current problem in favor of pretend problems a hundred years out? And conveniently includes making yourself rich, which is of course only happening to fix said pretend problem. And, well, your life really pleasant on the backs of others, but that's a rounding error.
Meanwhile, if you start a software co-op... who exactly are you helping? One option here is helping an industry that's currently setting itself up for a marvellous collapse because it treats open source as an opportunity to extract only. (Until the maintainers give up, and then there'll wailing and gnashing of teeth)

Another side is helping people live a more sustainable live. There's nothing wrong with a co-op to e.g. ensure health care and pensions. While working reasonable hours.

Could this fail? Probably. Maybe even likely, because co-op folks tend to be a bit more idealist, which makes business survival a bit harder.

But let's not pretend there aren't a lot of people who wouldn't be willing to join a co-op, or that it generates absolutely no benefit.

aneeshnl• 3 years ago

Not sure of the co-operatives in software. I am from state of Kerala, India. We have a number of very successful and long running co-operatives.

1. Milma - Kerala Co-operative Milk Marketing federation. Virtually every household uses and trusts milma. It has been around for 53 years.

2. Indian Coffee House - It is a worker co-operative restaurant chain. Very successful and is around since 1958.

3. ULCCS - India's oldest worker co-operative. Operating from 1925, mainly in construction sector. It also has an IT wing.

moremetadata3• 3 years ago

we could start the world's largest software co-op

How would non-compete, confidentially clause contracts when when you work for yourself? Would the judiciary in that part of the world uphold them or strike them out like the judiciary of other parts of the world have done.

Tip, if you are female and married a rich bloke, move to the UK, prove your British citizenship and then get divorced in UK law courts!

Amber Heard knew the British law courts are biased against men!

whatshisface18• 3 years ago

How would non-compete, confidentially clause contracts when when you work for yourself?

You sign them with the co-op as the other party, same as any other business.

andrewmutz3• 3 years ago

We all know what products companies/individuals would pay for, because we used to build/buy them.

I disagree. Knowing what to build is the hardest part of the tech industry. It's why the industry funds a constant stream of failing startups: it's the trial and error process of finding out what the world actually needs built.

Worker coops will work great for the successful products, but most are failures. Who pays for those?

whatshisface18• 3 years ago

Worker coops will work great for the successful products, but most are failures. Who pays for those?

The people who invested to start them. A co-op is just when the stakeholders get together to buy something (shares in the startup, in this case) instead of having a handful of not-so-informed and partially disinterested investors provide liquidity.

2devnull• 3 years ago

Wow, you just invented open source software.

zapataband1• 3 years ago

Can I contract for the co-op?

berkle4455• 3 years ago

Teaming up with a bunch of recruiters, product managers, and rest-and-vest engineers sounds like a winning strategy.

roguecoder2• 3 years ago

This is how some of the trade unions started, back in the day.

hankish13• 3 years ago

What a brilliant idea! Me and a bunch of other folks have been working for the last 18 months to create just such a professional collective, with the goal of expanding it massively. Lots of laid off workers are joining and everything is cooperatively-managed, self-organizing and transparent.

It's a combination of a professional network, a full service consultancy, a skills academy, and a startup incubator. We've got 105 members at the moment and are growing every day.

We've got more info here if you're interested >> https://wiki.quorum.one/blog/what-is-quorum1

andrewjmg• 3 years ago

quorum honestly looks fantastic. thanks for this!

huhtenberg• 3 years ago

To be very blunt - do you not have a concern that companies tend to shed less skilled, under-performing and generally not terribly useful employees first?

We had the same idea after the .com bust, though at a somewhat smaller scale. In our case however everyone got laid off. The startup I was in burned through its money, failed to raise more and was closed down by the VCs. All developers and several project managers then gathered for beers and decided to start what you have - a co-op of sorts. The idea was that everyone would fish around for gigs and share them with others, under a (naive) assumption that some people would get more than they could handle, e.g. the PMs.

Sounded good in theory, but in practice just two devs out of 20 were qualified enough to bid on projects that paid enough. The rest just kept sitting things out. Two months in, the whole thing fell apart.

Ultimately, the incentives are just not there. If there are two people of different professional levels, there's no reason for a more skilled one to associate themselves with another person. So the dynamics of the co-op is that it keeps shedding most qualified people, making it less and less competitive. If you managed to figure out this aspect - chapeau. But it's an extremely hard nut to crack.

AndrewKemendo8• 3 years ago

Yes! Happy to support. This is the only workable way to organize in the long run and is exciting to see this as the top comment.

Please let me know how I can help via the email in my profile.

FWIW I'm starting a residential trash/recycling cooperative to roll back the capitalistic accretion of all public works, so anything anarchic-syndicalist I will support however I can.

christkv• 3 years ago

Co-ops can work however they bring a lot of problems. My kids are in a co-op run school where I'm the treasurer (all families are co-op members). Only the teachers are paid.

There is so much drama and you always have a share of people who don't pull their weight and the resentment that comes with that.

Another thing people never remember is that depending on your country you are on the hook for your share of the looses incurred if the co-op runs with a loss. Your are not insulated from the losses in the same was as if you are just a shareholder.

bequanna• 3 years ago

I think that org might end up quite heavy with Product and HR Managers.

BaculumMeumEst• 3 years ago

they could call themselves the Loper Formers

elamje3• 3 years ago

I think this is an interesting idea, but the reality is that most people want jobs, not a new model for how to make a living. In tech, or startups, or interesting problem spaces.

Right now, the biggest problem is discovery, i.e. who is still hiring vs who just has stale jobs listed on their website. I'm working on making this list so it's much easier to discover the (literally thousands of Seed to Series B companies still hiring!)

See companies that are hiring: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1OeuaamkeOpMzlufPk6hY...

If anyone is struggling and is on the mid/senior/director side of their career (3+ yrs), I'm helping place people at my friends' Seed and Series A companies. VC money is still there but pumping into Seed/Series A companies with more upside now rather than insane B, C, D companies that have no profitability in sight. email me at j{at}markovmanagement.com if interested :)

pipeline_peak• 3 years ago

Literally everyone you need was laid off...

All the least valuable people were laid off…

bawolff2• 3 years ago

You have everything you need except a business plan and willing participants.

Kalium6• 3 years ago

I suspect you may quickly run into the basic problem that your worker-owners like getting paid. Which will be challenging to start with, given a lack of products and a sharply limited ability to raise funds.

epicureanideal• 3 years ago

I think most people are scrambling to find a stable source of income. Unless they have a quarter million dollars in cash, or a paid off house, the cost of living in major metro areas means they don't have the time and capital to start a startup with any reasonable chance of becoming profitable or raising money before they go bankrupt.

I can imagine the news will say "aha, see, there weren't really that many who were capable of being entrepreneurs who were working at FAANG", but really it's just the same old lack of access to capital, and if they did have capital many of them certainly would and could.

poorbutdebtfree• 3 years ago

An organization of B and C players with socialist leanings will have a hard time competing in a free market. See any "worker owned co-op" coffee shop.

flappyeagle• 3 years ago

This is pretty rude. The people who were laid off were certainly not "B and C players". When large companies cut, it's often entire business units, so no performance or talent considerations are made.

Plenty of worker-owned coffee shops, book stores, grocery stores, etc are famously successful. Be more open-minded, ya scrooge.

jimmygrapes• 3 years ago

Just gonna throw this out there... perhaps those who were "let go" were not all let go because they were the best of the bunch? Not that such a thing should stop you, we all love a good rag-tag band of outcasts overcoming the evil empire story, but, you know.

conductr• 3 years ago

I think you’re overestimating the average complexity of software. Low-medium skills folks can probably build functional clones to 90%+ of the software people use daily. They could build a new product of similar complexity. Most enterprise software is a UI for CRUD operations. I doubt they’ll be developing firmware for space X or any type of advanced/mission critical systems. But there’s a lot of room to operate.

I say this as someone that regularly employs <$15/hr freelance talent. You have to manage them differently but they can produce just the same on the majority of tasks I need of them.

stevefan1999• 3 years ago

That's exactly how it worked for Brotherhood without Banners in A Song of Ice and Fire series. Except it doesn't work

gnramires• 3 years ago

Here's what I think can be more important than co-op (although I think co-ops seem like a good idea and I'd like to see more):

(a) Open governance model: the companies decisions has input from employees and users, even the general public (with care taken not to suffer attacks e.g. sybil attacks from false users)

(b) Ethical goal model: have a non-modifiable set of goals and ethical standards (improve the lives of everyone). Not maximizing revenue, but genuinely improving wellbeing of everyone. (this should have the benefit of attracting ESG investors)

(c) Cross-industry cooperation: open sourcing as much as feasible, and asking users and other collaborators for donations to maintain the project. Likewise, contribute financially to projects that are useful for the company. Basically, establish cooperation networks among open source, open governance and ethical companies.

kortilla4• 3 years ago

improve the lives of everyone

This is a really naive goal. It’s super trivial to twist almost anything into “improving the lives of everyone”.

ARandomerDude• 3 years ago

Probably around the water cooler with their new coworkers.

fergie• 3 years ago

Related question: are any actual software engineers getting laid off or is it just support/admin/management who work in the tech sector?

(I have been dealing with consulting contracts for software engineers lately, and was surprised to see that hourly rates are significantly higher than they were 5 years ago)

sempron64• 3 years ago

Yes, I know talented engineers from several companies that were laid off simply due to being unlucky enough to have ended up on the “wrong” project

richmond1111• 3 years ago

Or maybe they are not so talented after all.

pm902• 3 years ago

Software Engineers are being laid off for certain.

noman-land• 3 years ago

Yes. Software engineers. Senior engineers. TLs. Folks with 10 years at the company. No one seems safe. Except executives probably.

roland35• 3 years ago

The executives have already "suffered enough" with their stock compensation going down so much (eye roll)

_5o8e• 3 years ago

If you read between the lines it appears Eyal Manor maybe was laid off/fired?

https://archive.is/INZea

yeck• 3 years ago

Just a personal anecdote, but at my place of employment we had a wave of layoffs late last year. As part of the process 4 top-level execs "left", although I think saying they were "dismissed" is more accurate.

I am not certain, but it might have been nearly half the people at this level let go. And then there was a trail of layoffs all the way down the leadership chain. Of course the most people let go in absolute numbers are the individual contributors.

adamors• 3 years ago

Yes, I’m a senior engineer who was laid off. The company I worked for layed off 20% of engineering.

ryanSrich• 3 years ago

Yes. Google laid off several very high level engineers. Engineers that were likely making 7 figures.

peruvian• 3 years ago

Half the Engineering team at my company got laid off.

Zee2• 3 years ago

Yes, coworker had 30 years under his belt. We were let go together.

kmshultz• 3 years ago

Yes, DigitalOcean, who laid me off last week along with the entire writing/editing team for DO Community tutorials, also laid off some engineers, including most of the infra engineers, from what I heard. Not sure how they can get along without infra. Sheesh.

I think ChatGPT and the like is going to increase the efficiency of software engineers at all level, possibly obviating the need for entry-level coders.

dadrian• 3 years ago

Mastodon

flashgordon• 3 years ago

The problem is same as with any group of people coming together especially at scale. That of aligning incentives. 100k people or even 1k can create a pretty formidable force. But Who decides influences which problems to solve and when? Who holds said unit accountable and how? How do you split the rewards? This ends up devolving into yet another big company no? A good example is even in yc startup school you meet so many awesome cofounders and still it is so hard to just align on a problem to solve!

_448• 3 years ago

I created a discord server here for everyone to connect: https://discord.gg/TyQfcSZk

Hope this helps.

Vibgyor52• 3 years ago

Does anyone have any recommendations for referral community/platform?

GSCrawley• 3 years ago

Hey folks! I'm a member of just such a cooperative, worker-owned tech community / consultancy. It's still early stages but we're growing really fast! Let's make that dream a reality.

Check out the following link and if it resonates for you then shoot me a message on LinkedIn (https://LinkedIn.com/in/gscrawley) to discuss next steps and answer any questions you might have.

https://wiki.quorum.one/blog/what-is-quorum1

bilater• 3 years ago

I started a Discord if y'all wanna join: https://discord.gg/5k2HDF7J

tudorw• 3 years ago

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

pogopaule• 3 years ago

Hopefully somewhere here or at similar companies, solving some of the important issues of our times.

https://github.com/pogopaule/awesome-sustainability-jobs

wpietri• 3 years ago

Ooh, I like this. I would be happy to co-organize, say, an evening at Zeitgeist. Contact me via email or mastodon!

hankish13• 3 years ago

If laid off folks are looking for work or side projects, we've got a collective you can join. Based in SF but with members from all around the world.

More info here: https://wiki.quorum.one/join

whalesalad• 3 years ago

hopefully doing absolutely nothing and taking some time off

motohagiography• 3 years ago

I sort of thought this is what git was designed for. Need to signal your proficiency? Start contributing to projects and answering stackoverflow questions, but with a flag that says you are interested in new work.

yakireev• 3 years ago

this is what git was designed for

Well here we are, prophecy fulfilled: tech people who see no difference between GitHub and git.

29athrowaway• 3 years ago

SF is the worst place to be unemployed right now.

High burn rate, and opportunities are moving out.

Animats• 3 years ago

Pink-slip parties? [1]

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/pink-slip-parties-laid-off-t...

schience3• 3 years ago

Wow.. I didn't expect this many comments.. the amazing extended discussion about software collectives and communities.

Some things that looks in the neighborhood is #openforwork, Quorom1, Loomio, and the discord posted here https://discord.gg/TyQfcSZk

But I was looking for a simple meetup organized in San Francisco, and perhaps an online forum/discussion area. No business model, no guild.. just community. Would others join?

I've already committed the ultimate sin: registered a domain: openforwork.community. Nothing there yet.

To keep the good discussion juice going - what do you recommend for a forum? Last one I installed was Discourse. I think these days a slack/discord channel is what new communities do.. but..I'm old.. and a place on the internet with its own domain could work for this.

ricudis• 3 years ago

Where are laid off employees gathering?

I'd guess underneath bridges, in public open parks, backside service roads, and similar places.

elamje3• 3 years ago

See companies that are hiring: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1OeuaamkeOpMzlufPk6hY...

Add company here: https://forms.gle/abCCJ5ByvDFcyRP2A

If anyone is struggling and is on the mid/senior/director side of their career (3+ yrs), I'm helping place people at my friends' Seed and Series A companies. Email me at j{at}markovmanagement.com if I can help :)

ZephyrBlu• 3 years ago

Am I missing something here? There are only 4 companies in that spreadsheet...

elamje3• 3 years ago

Gotta start somewhere - would love for anyone to add some more.

BrianHutch• 3 years ago

I'm in a few Slacks where former employees have gathered. Not necessarily just in the most recent round of lay offs.

It is critical for me to keep in touch with like minded people not to mention to maintain friendships.

Slack is pretty easy and free as long as you don't care much about retention of old content.

bignoggins• 3 years ago

Rebound is an event for marketing professionals impacted by layoffs and economic uncertainty. Hear from experts, network with peers, and participate in interactive mentor sessions with marketing leaders.

Our goal is to create a supportive community where attendees can find resources, connections, and advice to help them navigate the job market. Join us!

See the line up of speakers, mentors and more here: https://www.experiencewelcome.com/rebound

telis2• 3 years ago

https://discord.gg/aheb8j9b

telis2• 3 years ago

Here: I reckon if you all put your heads together you could coordinate something.

I also suspect AI coordinated organisations are very close to being achievable.

https://discord.gg/aheb8j9b

sangyh• 3 years ago

for data science/ML folks, I created a small slack group with 17 ppl who are helping mentor and mock interview each other ..

if anyone is interested in joining, pls fill this out: https://forms.gle/CAbVhBYmc34EeBMM9

we have a notion page to help with introductions/interview scheduling and a slack to chat with each other.

nubela• 3 years ago

We wrote a post about ex-googlers who got laid off - https://nubela.co/blog/1-in-3-ex-google-employees-in-15-bill...

The gist is that 1/3 of them joined startups. A couple of them started new startups.

Ask HN: Where are laid off employees gathering?

Related Stories