Hacker News Reader

Comment by Yhippa | Hacker News Reader

A long time ago I read an article about companies would actually use rumor and gossip to signal to it's employees that layoffs are pending without actually explicitly saying that. In theory you should be able to use signals to predict things.

In practice I've seen friends completely blindsided by layoffs and I've dodged many a bullet but still didn't see it coming for the other people. I think it can be real difficult to predict these things other than to use your gut if you think something's afoot and be prepared to act preemptively.

View on HN

There's usually signs, if you're sufficiently attuned to see them. Another thread on HN a few days back led me to write a blog post about one reliable type of "warm up the résumé" indicator:

http://jasonlefkowitz.net/2013/05/introducing-lefkowitzs-law...

Not only food, but office supplies. Very true.

But it's important that the Variation is indicative. Like if you get baller snacks for a year and lame snacks start coming in, that's a very bad sign. But if you've always had lame snacks that's not a bad sign, your company is just frugal.

"... if you’re in a client-services business, when you visit your clients, make sure to go with them to grab a beverage from their break room before your meeting".

So true. Another good point is to ask to use the restrooms even if you don't really have to go.

I interviewed at one place where I was told over and over how well the company was doing and how the owner loved racing his Porsches at the local road track. Then I saw the restrooms, which looked like they hadn't been updated or fixed in twenty years. I figured out where the money was going... and it wasn't to employees.

Sure enough, the offer came in and it was a lowball. That confirmed my theory.

It's interesting that you mention the Porsche thing. I've always found looking in the company car park on the way into a job interview a pretty reliable measure of how a company is doing and in particular how it treats its staff. Seeing reserved spaces for senior management full of high end executive cars and SUVs, and then a handful of unreserved spaces for everyone else full of much older vehicles without a single high-end or enthusiast model is not a good sign.

Or, even worse, a row of empty spots reserved for senior management...

Keep in mind that restrooms are often the one part of an office that a company can't upgrade because they're under the control of the landlord and not the tenant. I've worked at a number of companies where we were doing fine, but the bathrooms were terrible because the landlord never, ever updated them from the original build.

The company can move offices. His point is correct.

I guess I could have added this to the original story, but the company owned and built the building themselves. In the late 70s. And the interior apparently hasn't changed since.

That is what the bad companies will always say, even when it is not true.

Landlords will happily allow the tenant to pay the cost of renovating the bathroom. Good companies understand that certain basic creature comforts for employees are a cost of doing business, and it is very little money in the long haul. Penny-pinching here is a bad sign (unless it is a very early start up, or the company anticipates moving offices within a couple years for some reason).

At Kaleida, the upper management stopped showing up for work all at once, because they were under non-disclosure not to say anything about the impending layoff, and didn't want to encounter anybody in the hallway who wanted to chat.

Oh Kaleida... I must have been the one person anywhere who liked ScriptX.

I liked it! It lives on in MaxScript, the extension language for 3D Studio Max, written by John Wainwright, one of the architects of ScriptX.

Here's something I wrote about MaxScript: Automating The Sims Character Animation Pipeline with MaxScript http://www.donhopkins.com/drupal/node/30

If management can use the rumor mill to convince people to leave for new jobs before a layoff, then the company doesn't need to pay as much severance.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com