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
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."
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
That seems like the point of the company demonym, got to drink that kool aid. What I find personality disingenuous (or perhaps even insidious) is the push to make everyone feel like they are an integral part of a group and then treat them like disposable objects when it’s more convenient at that moment.
Exactly. When I work, I work for myself; for money and mental stability. A company-wide identity feels like something I can't accept calling myself. It's too broad, vague, and the identity itself is defined/controlled by the company/HR, with little input from those labelled as such (at least in the orgs of size I've been at). It removes a lot of individuality from my own thoughts/mind, as I would have to consider "how I reflect on the organization" (as I was taught in Catholic school) to the detriment of my own expression.
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.
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.
> 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".
There’s a whole Earth between no fun and clown fiesta.
> 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".
You don't see the middle ground between "make no one uncomfortable" and "make everyone uncomfortable?" It seems to me you're viewing this completely in black and white and then insisting that it really is black and white in actual reality, when in fact what you need is a better TV.
(To strain the turn of phrase to its breaking point.)
e: I mean, shit, even in the false dichotomy of "make no one uncomfortable" and "make everyone uncomfortable" there is middle ground: making everyone a little bit uncomfortable vs making everyone extremely uncomfortable.
No, I'm saying that hackeronies does not make everyone uncomfortable / is not necessarily cult indoctrination. Stuff like that can and does arise naturally in groups of people (and can also arise as a control mechanism).
You're saying there are pure non-creepy fun actions for everyone that a business can do. I'm saying it's too gray to make that assertion, not too black and white. So I'm curious what you think is perfectly safe for everyone.
Note that I'm reading '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",' as a general assertion on your part - now I'm thinking maybe that's not what you meant. In that case some of what I said might not apply.
that said:
> You're saying there are pure non-creepy fun actions for everyone that a business can do.
I didn't say that. I don't think you'll please everyone with team-building exercises and frankly some people find the entire concept distasteful which is fair enough. That doesn't mean that all team-building stuff is equally bad (or, equally good).
We're probably on the same page then. And I completely agree that there are better and worse options.
I mean that "fun harmless in-crowd things" can be disturbing from the outside - context and intent matters. A strange in-crowd name is pretty far down the "there are harmless causes for this" side of things imo. Using it in a layoff announcement is probably not the best place though, unless they honestly think the laid-off feel good about it. A large enough package might achieve that tbh, but that's obviously rarely the case.
I'm honestly not sure if there exists a thing that a business can do that its employees would enjoy that will not be interpreted as creepy by some. Everything excludes someone somewhere somehow, the most you can do is target your crowd as best you can... and people commenting on a forum are not in that target audience, so I find the obsession over the name here to be pretty dumb. (Not claiming you're obsessed, just that it's the majority of the comments here so far)
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.
"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!
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.
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.
You can't be fired from Linux, and if you contribute to the codebase, you do own it under the terms of the GPLv2. (Idk if Linux does copyright assignment but even if they do, it's still GPL).
Whereas a company can tell you to fuck off for literally no reason, give you nothing, and shove you out onto the street with no healthcare and no salary, and then sue you if you if you try to do anything about it.
Founder conceit made manifest through a culture of overwrought branding & marketing? Workforce infantalization? Former summer camp coordinators turned HR executives?
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 :)
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.
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.
At my first job in 1994, at a grocery chain of all places, they just called us "associates". Professional and to the point. I don't understand this desire to brand my association with a company. It's really weird.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In the context of our current work culture, yes I think I agree with that. But I think that's a symptom of how dysfunctional our current work culture is.
edit:
> Can you tell us more?
I literally can't actually, at least not as a reply to you, because dang has once again limited my ability to post on HN. Too many left-leaning folks here already, I guess. Here is what my reply would have been:
> If you're happy with the wholly adversarial relationship between employee and employer along with management practices that pit people against each other etc then more power to you. If you think this results in the best outcomes both in terms of working conditions and also productivity, then go off king. I don't think anything I could say here would convince you otherwise, anyway.
...and now I'll be exiting this conversation as I've been given no other choice - see ya!
Nobody is happy with the relationship between employee and employer being adversarial.
It's just a consequence of what each person wants out of the relationship. The employer wants to extract as much labor as possible for the minimum price. The employee wants to extract the maximum price for minimum labor.
Many employers have an unrealistic expectation that their employees will have the same passion as they do about the product/company. What makes it especially heinous is that the employer will become wealthy off the labor of the employees, and then be upset when the employees want a piece of the pie.
Even in context of an ideal world where people work for ideas, not money, it should be acceptable to have mercenary attitude. We’re all different, after all, but we should respect each other’s motivations.
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.
It is a bit more nuanced than that, on both sides, you should always look at the full situation.
There's many things, like stability, and how the firm treats you that SHOULD be considered. But they should be considered, as benefits, and given a value.
I faced this on my last job search. I ended up declining a FAANG to goto a small firm. No regrets when the FAANG laid off a few months later like I predicted they would.
... Always watch out for yourself. Money isn't the only thing that matters. Relationships matter etc.
But as always: Business, is business, nothing personal.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Sorry my little Hackeronie. I'm afraid I'll be firing you now.