HackerOne lays off 12% of its workforce

https://www.hackerone.com/ceo/company-update

by Techbrunch • 3 years ago

67 106 3 years ago

hackerone.com

mydriasis2• 3 years ago

This comes as disappointing news, as we've all built strong connections with our fellow Hackeronies.

Sorry my little Hackeronie. I'm afraid I'll be firing you now.

mkl95• 3 years ago

You're just another Johnnie Hackeronie now...

mikrl• 3 years ago

Hacky Doodle went to VCs

“make it lean and bony”

Fired 12% of staff

And called them hackeronies

nannal• 3 years ago

Does anyone else feel weird about these terms used for employees. Hackeronis, Twittarians, Redditites, coinbese?

rocketbop• 3 years ago

Not weird but I do think they’re embarrassing, degrading, insufferable.

malux852• 3 years ago

Feels like harmless fun to me

codetrotter• 3 years ago

Not really. They have a “cutsie” name for us at the company I work for too. I find it endearing :)

CoastalCoder• 3 years ago

Yes. I'm curious why companies do it.

I never pushed back on it because I figured I'd just come across as a killjoy.

frfl• 3 years ago

dont forget metamates

paulcole2• 3 years ago

No, it's part of how you show culture. I think Hackeronies is the best/most ridiculous I've heard.

I always say "____ employees" or "____ team members" because that's the culture of where I work.

mydriasis2• 3 years ago

Largely depends on the existing culture of the company imo. I imagine in some climates it might come off as tone-deaf or degrading, whereas in others it might feel unifying or endearing.

From an outsider looking in on this one... I dunno. Firing your beloved hackeronies kind of grates.

metalforever• 3 years ago

yeah its cult shit

cobertos3• 3 years ago

Slightly, it feels... hivemind-y? Working at a company I identify most with my direct colleagues/team, less so with wider orgs. Feels comparable to what I felt during high school "pep rallies".

Hackeroni sounds like a pasta, and I'm sure I'd meme the shit out of it if I worked there

Groxx5• 3 years ago

Fun for some, cultish for others.

There's not much middle ground between "try to have some fun at work because there's no reason not to" and "don't do something someone might take issue with". A completely sterile work environment isn't really any better, and for some it's definitely oppressive and worse.

Is it sometimes an intentional cult-building tactic? Definitely. Is it always? Heck no, people come up with in-group names all the time. Groups of all kinds develop their own terms and memes and whatnot, it's normal.

varjag• 3 years ago

Many years ago one my colleague remarked that HR appears to be a progression on a career arc from summer camp supervisors.

philip1209• 3 years ago

"Demonym" is a fun vocab word for these kinds of labels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demonym

mupuff1234• 3 years ago

I find it ok if the origin comes from ICs and used among ICs (still kinda weird, but less so)

It's when execs use it that it becomes idiotic and insufferable.

marcosdumay• 3 years ago

Every group of people creates some name to call themselves.

That said, management should really not be using those names.

duxup• 3 years ago

In small groups and organic kinda thing that the individuals come up with is fine.

IBMer back in the day felt natural and inoffensive. But it was also pretty generic.

Organizations of even moderate size and it gets slapped on like a label on your forehead by management… and it starts to feel weird and insincere…. and as they trend towards cutie affectionate names it gets really creepy IMO.

Personally I prefer a little more professional disconnection.

unsupp0rted• 3 years ago

Yes. It's in line with "our company is a family"... or at minimum "our company is a collective farm".

I'm not a Hackeroni or a Twittarian- I'm an adult individual who exchanges time and skill for money.

I get paid as long as I'm useful. When I stop being useful the company has no qualms about me not being a Hackeroni or a Twittarian anymore.

savanaly• 3 years ago

I don't know, every single layoff announcement on HN has this exact comment at the top of the comments, wonder if anyone else feels this way?

im_down_w_otp• 3 years ago

Founder conceit made manifest through a culture of overwrought branding & marketing? Workforce infantalization? Former summer camp coordinators turned HR executives?

joegahona• 3 years ago

I don't mind them. Some feel more forced than others. That said, there's a time and a place to use them. A layoff announcement is possibly the worst place to use them, perhaps second to a death announcement. "Today we are devastated to announce that longtime Hackeronie Phil Sludge has lost his battle to colon cancer."

icepat• 3 years ago

Far worse than Redditites. They use the term Snoos for their employees from some leaked email that came out during the Reddit strike.

andsoitis2• 3 years ago

How do you feel about someone calling themselves a xoogler?

ThrowawayR2• 3 years ago

It's no weirder than Linux users sporting Tux (the penguin) logos and getting excited about Linux desktop marketshare or Rust advocates referring to themselves as rustaceans. People are tribal.

f4c39012• 3 years ago

"Twittarians" sounds lofty, a knowledgeable group. "Redditites" sounds like a mob, possibly armed with sticks. "Coinbese" sounds... like a mindless herd? But "Hackeronis" is just patronising, considering their audience why are they not simply "Hackers"? That can't be a bad word in their context!

smsm422• 3 years ago

Human brains are wired for kinship relationships. There are studies that find that just assigning people to random groups activates in-group/out-group dynamics. There's no wonder corporate HR wants to plug into this wiring and use it to improve group cohesion and morale.

carabiner• 3 years ago

We're not like old, stodgy companies. We're cool and fun!

lays off swaths of workers unceremoniously
cuts back on perks
bans political topics and other non-work conversation
starts rigorously evaluating employees, "it's not stack ranking" but it's just as bad

Hang on, maybe old school professional office culture had a reason... To make people focus on work.

JohnFen7• 3 years ago

bans political topics

Boy, I sure wish that my current employer banned such conversations in the workplace. They make things really tense and uncomfortable.

frays• 3 years ago

Did this company name-based nickname for employees start from Google calling their employees Googlers in the early 2000s?

I don't think companies like Walmart, McDonalds, JPMorgan, etc have nicknames for their employees. Does anyone know when this all started?

codingdave• 3 years ago

I got my first job at IBM in 1994. We definitely got called us IBMers at that time, although it was typically used informally, not in layoff notifications.

JohnFen7• 3 years ago

No, it predates Google by at least several decades. But in the Olden Times, these were usually in engineering companies, and came from the employees themselves. Engineers having a laugh, and making a bit of fun of their employer.

At some point, though, some companies started adopting such language in official communications. In my opinion, that's when it becomes cringe.

bink• 3 years ago

They really missed the opportunity for HackerOnesies.

lbrito• 3 years ago

There's probably some HN reader that already scooped up the hackeronesies.com domain and is currently making several thousand per month selling programming-themed baby clothing :)

wiseowise7• 3 years ago

Hackeronie

Not even an iota of professionalism.

Should’ve written the firing letter in the following style:

Hackeronie, I'm vewy sowwy to infowm yu dat due to cuwwent economic challenges, ouw company has been facing diffwicult times. As a wesult, we have to make some hawd decisions, and unfowtunately, we need to wetch yu go.
We tweasuwe youw contwibutions and effowts to the company, but fow ouw sustenance, we must wemode ouw stwuctuwe. Pwease know dis decision was not made lightly, and it in no way wefwects yu peawsonally.
We hope yu undewstand the situation and yuw suwvivaw as well. We wish yu the best in finding new oppowtunities, and if ouw conditions impwove in the futuwe, we would be mowe than happy to weconsider yuw. Thanyu fow yuw time with us, Hackeronie. OwO

cobertos3• 3 years ago

An owo in a firing letter, ooohhh noooo.

*notices your lack of employment*

aloer• 3 years ago

Hackeronie pasta merch. Heard it here first

oxfordmale• 3 years ago

The Godfather has over cooked the Hackeronie and made a bologna out of the company. Unfortunately we need to to dissolve 12% of our Hackeronie brothers and sisters in sulphuric spaghetti sauce to hide the incompetence of the Chief Hackeronie Officer.

photochemsyn• 3 years ago

The employees of corporations should have at least as many voting rights over the executive decision making process as the shareholders and investors in the corporations do.

That's just basic logic.

throwaway5959• 3 years ago

“Hackeronies” kill me.

yeck2• 3 years ago

And why not just go with _hackers_?

wiseowise7• 3 years ago

Zoomer culture. Old farts won’t understand.

arberx• 3 years ago

The obtrusive chat bot pop up on the site that makes a sound is why I hate the current state of frontend design/ux.

NotYourLawyer• 3 years ago

Firefox lets you disable those sounds.

gotoeleven• 3 years ago

Also they are changing their name to Hacker0.88

yeck2• 3 years ago

Maybe `< HackerOne`

amne• 3 years ago

I hope you take responsibility for you statements and wipe this coffee off my screen .. just like their CEO said he will for his actions.

zingababba• 3 years ago

Gotta get that white power following somehow I guess?

rurp• 3 years ago

We can check the Layoff Message Bingo square for having a cringey cutsie name for employees,

strong connections with our fellow Hackeronies

pcthrowaway• 3 years ago

You're the second person in this thread to misspell "cutesie" like this... or is "cutsie" a regional spelling I'm not aware of, or another word altogether?

jjgreen• 3 years ago

https://www.spudart.org/comic/cutsie-battle/

blitz_skull• 3 years ago

Don’t forget: cutesy!

JohnFen7• 3 years ago

I've spelled it that way (and have seen it spelled that way) my whole life, but your comment made me look it up. I could only find it in one place:

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Cutsie

But my use of it predates the internet. I suspect this is a regionalism.

ilc3• 3 years ago

A company is not family.

A company is not your friend.

To quote Bob Seger:

"I used her, she used me but neither one cared We were gettin' our share" - Night Moves

That is a corporate relationship. Nothing wrong with it. But always keep it in context... if ya ain't getting your share, go get it elsewhere.

deciplex5• 3 years ago

Completely agree with this, but at the same time there is something deeply dysfunctional about our mercenary attitude toward our work relationships. For any given individual I think they have no choice to approach it this way, but I do hope we eventually land somewhere a little healthier, as a culture.

wiseowise7• 3 years ago

but at the same time there is something deeply dysfunctional about our mercenary attitude toward our work relationships.

Mercenary attitude is the healthiest attitude there is. It’s not hypocritical, it’s not elusive it’s what it is.

Legend24402• 3 years ago

Work is just a transactional relationship. I need money, they need workers, that's all there is to it. It ends if I find better money elsewhere, or they no longer need workers.

ilc3• 3 years ago

In reality: I am not that mercenary. Nor is the man in the song.

They both know the rules... and they both are enjoying the profits.

If a company wants to make a major commitment to me, I commit back. But note: commitments come in the form of money and actions. Not talk.

If the company wants to have a fling... I consult by the hour too. :)

JohnFen7• 3 years ago

What's dysfunctional about it? An employee-employer relationship is a business one, after all.

tamimio2• 3 years ago

Hackeronies

That’s a big red flag in any company when they start labeling their employees like that.

lsy• 3 years ago

Can you imagine sitting down to write an email announcing a layoff and deciding that opening with "H1" in place of "Hi" and calling people "Hackeronies" would be a great, culture-preserving idea? It's an extremely serious email and for the CEO to have not thought twice about whether this time he should just write "Hi" and refer to people as "our coworkers" says a lot about his state of mind.

wiseowise7• 3 years ago

It’s all a joke, you know? Oppsie woopsie, we made a boo boo.

CryptoBanker• 3 years ago

I'm pretty sure H1 Team is short for HackerOne Team, not Hi Team

nickserv• 3 years ago

It is expected that the reorganization will also affect employees in the U.K., the Netherlands, and other countries. After completing the relevant consultation proceedings, we will be able to inform all people involved with more detail. These processes will take longer.

Translation: we can't just dump people from one day too the next in these countries because of worker protection laws.

wiseowise7• 3 years ago

And thank god for it. As far as I know it’s near impossible to drop someone in the Netherlands without providing proof that employee did some weird stuff.

oplaadpunt• 3 years ago

It is also possible for economic reasons like reorganizations, but still, those will need a valid reason, and severence packages are mandatory. Just sacking people who don't have a temporary contract is impossible.

the_only_law• 3 years ago

This happened in a company my friend works at. He’s based in the Netherlands, but the company had a lot of US workers as well. When it came time for the layoffs, only the latter got dumped.

gnulinux• 3 years ago

Hackeronies

This stuff is just so bizarrely funny at this point it feels like a self-aware postmodern joke.

jiveturkey2• 3 years ago

huh. no substantive comments yet. overreaction to “hackeronies”. i like cute names like that. it also rubs the salt in the wound during a layoff so i further enjoy the irony.

does this mean the pentest industry as a whole is in decline? or did h1 over invest and is having a hangover now? or are competitors starting to drink their milkshake? or is shift left working?

i do also wonder how this affects their downstream contractors. “flours” to be consistent with their employee naming scheme.

thanks

dr_whom• 3 years ago

HackerOne is primarily a bug bounty company which is different from pentest (they offer that too but it's not well established). This is probably in response to other companies not having as big of budgets for bug bounty which no doubt took a hit with all these layoffs over the last year.

jiveturkey2• 3 years ago

thanks. indeed i was using the term pentest very loosely, too loosely.

HackerOne lays off 12% of its workforce

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