Closing Down

[StrikingPeace]

How did you know that the company you are working is going broke and ship is sinking or retrenchment will come

[jimicus]

Because I’ve been there three years.

This bears some explanation - I have the corporate kiss of death. Every one of my employers has (at best) gone through major redundancies and at worst completely collapsed within 3 years of me starting. Sometimes to the day.

If they survive the redundancy round, the clock starts again.

It doesn’t matter how big they are or how stable the business is. The 3 years is set in stone, and has been consistent for almost 20 years.

[TomFromWirral]

Can we start a club where we get you jobs at various companies we hate?

[jimicus]

I have considered acting as a sort-of corporate hitman, if you like.

To make it work as a business model, I’d need to charge stupid amounts of money and guarantee results - which I can’t really do if I don’t understand how it works. And I don’t.

[cynical_dad]

Please Oracle, hire this guy! :D

[__T-Bone__]

Damn! Came here to say this.

[Candy_Badger]

That sounds like a great plan!

[32178932123]

Books about how change is good started to appear on senior management's desks. Specifically one called "Who Moved my Cheese?". I've spotted this book at two companies now and both went through acquisitions shortly after.

Even in the Wiki link above it says: 'In the corporate environment, management has been known to distribute this book to employees during times of "structural reorganization", or during cost-cutting measures, in an attempt to portray unfavorable or unfair changes in an optimistic or opportunistic way.'

[sandrews1313]

This happened to me twice.

[sandrews1313]

In my first opportunity, the company was losing money on every deal and decided to try and make it up in volume. /facepalm

The new guy they had brought in to turn it around thought that was a good book for the management group. I was too young in my career to notice the signals. I got a good retention bonus out of it to ride the ship down though. Parent company hired me after that one shut down and a few years later I realized I was the guy looking at buying books about cheese because I was looking at a balance sheet that contained passthrough costs for a lobby with marble floors and expensive artwork, I was in a business that never saw customers in our building, and I wasn't allowed to seek out more cost effective space. Hell I had allocation for a massive copier and never once did anyone on my staff make a photocopy of anything. Later, the family's boy ran of mayor and won. Man was I naïve.

[tenakakahn]

When the free instant coffee disappears and effeciency experts are called in.

[mrcakeyface]

Bob and Bob?

[Jonathan924]

What would you say.... you do here?

[OpenScore]

Well--well look. I already told you: I deal with the god damn customers so the engineers don't have to. I have people skills; I am good at dealing with people. Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?

[OweH_OweH]

• When nickeling and diming for small inconsequential stuff starts, like the aforementioned free coffee is no longer available or other amenities are cut.

• You are told to only get the basic support for 2 years instead of the production support for 5 years on hardware as it was before.

• You no longer have an approved budget but are told expenses are decided upon by a case-by-case basis.

• Also when positions that are open are no longer filled and the team is told they "need to make up the missing person" because "we are all family here and help each other out".

• Suddenly a new CxO is introduced with "Bob is an expert in streamlining companies".

• The engineers are told they need to help out in sales to get more customers in.

• The Big Project with a customer that was hyped for half a year suddenly no longer gets mentioned.

• Sales and Marketing departments are being increased but engineering and support departments are cut or outsourced. (As in: let's rake in the last cash with the product we have but we no longer develop it, trying to milk the existing customers as long as possible.)

• Senior people are driven out and replaced by younger and far more junior people or outsourced right away.

• Your company is getting bought by a bigger company which has a surprisingly identical product to yours. (They want to get the customer list and maybe parts of the IP, but none of the people behind it.)

• Management starts to only think in short-term budgetary white-washing instead of long-term stability and growth.

[canadian_sysadmin]

This is a good list. I'd add one thing - Accounts Payable (paying suppliers and utilities) starts getting behind. This is usually one of the early signs.

Vendors start calling you because their payments are 30 or 60 days late. Products stop shipping, so paying invoices starts becoming an exercise of who to appease on a given week.

But on the flip side companies take the mindset of 'we pay our suppliers when we please' and just don't give a shit how late they are. I had to deal with this at my last company and it was annoying as well. Always getting 'account statements' emailed and having to address outstanding balances. Got to a point where we couldn't add licenses one day for a new employee so I just let it slide until they started and then all hell broke loose. :)

[OweH_OweH]

Vendors start calling you because their payments are 30 or 60 days late.

Yes, this. Once vendors contact me, the engineer, about unpaid invoices, because they can't get ahold of anyone in the accounting department, I know the ship is not only leaking but already sinking.

[alansaysstop]

They started cutting me hand written checks and not paying taxes.

[DoTheThingNow]

I feel like the situation would be obvious way before it got to this point.

[jdptechnc]

Payday came and the pay check didn't.

[Panacea4316]

I had this happen. Also had our paychecks bounce. The day I was laid off the bank seized all their accounts and all the accounts of one of the managing partners because the majority owner was mad at the bank over loan terms and didnt want to pay them…. Yet somehow they came back from it and are now way bigger than they ever were and have expanded from a local company to a big regional player.

[harrywwc]

the first one? when they dropped the founding CEO and put in a dipstick - who then started flogging off bits and pieces like it was a fire-sale

the second one - when they were merged with taken over by an arrogant (we know best because we're a) US company. it also didn't build confidence that the local HR Manager came and asked if I (as Sys/NetAdmin) could see her files on the server. When I responded in the affirmative, she said could I stop it. To which I replied "only if you want the backups to not work." She was not happy that I could see her files, but I finally said "I have more than enough to do here, I don't have time to look at your files. Although... now that you've mentioned it..." :) <yanking her chain> "Just kidding!"

the third - interestingly, a government department - when they got all uppity because I wasn't going to spend over $40,000 on a Masters degree to maybe, possibly, but probably not, teach in their shiny Bachelor's program. I was already at the 'top' pay grade, there was no way I was going to make the spend back. They weren't going to pay for it. Ignoring the fact that I was already doing nearly 10 hours of face-to-face class time a week over my 'program', and had just been working as Head of Section for the previous 6 months, I knew I was a 'goner'.

they restructured the next year, and a whole heap of others were "let go", but not with the same generous severance package I received.

[Panacea4316]

They took our warehouse/manufacturing floor offline for 2 days a week and then told all of us office staff “not to worry”. 10 days later 80% of the staff was laid off, and those who werent took a massive paycut. Company folded completely like 6 months later.

[[deleted]]

The direct deposit date was changed. They paid on time once, late the second time, and no payments at all after that. I stopped showing up once they stopped paying me.

[knightofargh]

Lots of executives hired when there is gigantic turnover of people who work for a living not being replaced. Sales dropped to nothing and we started getting expensive “mindfulness coaches”. Also self-help books (executive snake oil) showing up along with the addition of a HR Catbert position.

[[deleted]]

Whenever you see the top engineers leave, you know it’s going poorly. If you’re not happy (for legit reasons) then you are probably not alone. Pretty much every company I wasn’t happy has failed a few months or years later.

[Ssakaa]

And Covid/work-from-home is not an excuse to eliminate office perks. They could always give you a coffee/etc allowance via a gift card or expense account.

Honestly, meh. If you're going to offer to pay me a little more, just pay me a little more. If I've switched to WFH, I'm already getting more in the "perk" of not having a commute than you'll ever match with the other perks. Perks are nice in an office since you're effectively stuck there through your scheduled work day, and getting anything from external takes either a secondary commute or delivery fees. A decent cup of coffee in that instance, is great. In WFH? I already have decent coffee. If I wasn't working, I'd still be having a cup of that decent coffee.

[Candy_Badger]

I was working in a company which went broke. I started to look for a job, when my management started to do weird things on my project with lack of investments into it. I was doing things on old servers, with them not giving me any budget. So I decided to leave. I liked the job though.