Coinbase acquires Earn.com - <AUTHOR> https://news.earn.com/earn-com-joins-coinbase-a282a36411d2 <comment><USER4> 21.co, now named Earn.com raised 100M dollars, but the rumor is A16Z used that money to directly buy BTC for their VC fund without making too much noise.

Coinbase didn't buy them for 100M, but the VC's at A16Z might be sitting on a billion dollars if they invested in BTC when 21.co was started.

Anyone else hear about this rumor?

<comment><USER5> This explainantion doesn't make sense. You're alledging a16z funded 21.co with $100M, then took it all back to buy Bitcoin?

If that's the case earn.com would own the BTC, which would mean Coinbase acquired all the BTC held by earn.com

Unless there is something I'm missing, this almost certainly did NOT happen

<comment><USER6> "21.co had been started as 21E6, a bitcoin mining company with a sizable data center footprint and a monthly bill to match. The company was set up to return mined bitcoin to its shareholders"

[https://medium.com/@balajis/the- turnaround-2d145589d814](https://medium.com/@balajis/the- turnaround-2d145589d814)

<comment><USER7> Uhh... wow. He's former A16Z so he would likely have devised 21 while he was working there. Seems totally plausible to put the invested cash into BTC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I signed up for earn.com with the expectation that anyone wanting to message me would have to pay first. Then they sent me spam from ICOs without paying me. Worse than useless. Their previous hardware mining ASIC product was also poorly thought out and ultimately a colossal waste of money.

I'm thinking the people claiming that there are other motives behind this deal are probably right.

<comment><USER9> Looking at their home page, they say, "Paid email is already one of the first truly useful applications of the blockchain."

Does that make any sense? If I wanted to set up paid email, how does a blockchain help? It seems technically unnecessary.

And if I really wanted user adoption, why woulnd't I just pay people in their local currency instead of trying to get them to take part in something much less directly useful to them?

<comment><USER10> >>Does that make any sense? If I wanted to set up paid email, how does a blockchain help? It seems technically unnecessary.

By accepting cryptocurrency payments, you can accept email from anyone in the world. With the traditional finance system, there are legal obstacles to where a payment system can operate.

Also, using a traditional financial intermediary would mean that all the users of the winning paid-email service would be locked into using the same financial intermediary, which would then have significant power over its users owing to its network effect.

<comment><USER9> This is a solution in search of a problem. Most people barely want to accept email from people they are likely to do business with. What American is excited to get email from some stranger who literally doesn't have two nickels to rub together?

Also, you're just wrong about traditional financial intermediaries. It's easy enough to provide a few different ways to transfer funds. Or to do it over a relatively open network like e-check or wire transfer, where there's no lock- in possible.

<comment><USER10> >>What American is excited to get email from some stranger who literally doesn't have two nickels to rub together?

I don't know, but tying the expansion of the email system to the reach of the US financial system seems quite limiting and archaic, and totally contrary to the international and open nature of the internet.

>>Or to do it over a relatively open network like e-check or wire transfer, where there's no lock-in possible.

Making a wire transfer to use email? That'd be ridiculously expensive. You'd need a payment system built on top of the bank wire system, and it would need to be truly international in scope, and open, which no trusted third party based financial system is.

<comment><USER9> > tying the expansion of the email system to the reach of the US financial > system seems quite limiting and archaic

The important word here being "seems". Seeming is a thing that happens in someone's head. So the fuller version is "seems to an anonymous person who has tied their identity to a particular technology and a specific political vision".

It does not seem like that to me. Or to 99.9% of companies, who start out tying their companies to the reach of a specific national or regional financial system and then move happily beyond it.

In practice, starting with the use of the US financial system provides much more reach than Bitcoin, which has a much smaller user-base, something more like Bolivia or Switzerland, and whose "residents" do much less of their economic activity through that financial system than those in developed nations do.

<comment><USER10> >>In practice, starting with the use of the US financial system provides much more reach than Bitcoin, which has a much smaller user-base, something more like Bolivia or Switzerland, and whose "residents" do much less of their economic activity through that financial system than those in developed nations do.

Of course but that's pretty disingenuous, because it ignores the obvious: that those pushing this track see cryptocurrency becoming mass adopted over the coming years.

Their point is that cryptocurrency's potential reach is far greater than any centralized legacy financial system's.

Their other point is that it's more consistent with the open and decentralized nature of the internet.

>>So the fuller version is "seems to an anonymous person who has tied their identity to a particular technology and a specific political vision".

Are you sure that's not you?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I been following 21.co since the early days, when they pivoted into Earn.com I lost trust in the whole company. Then they started spamming me about someone trying to pay me to read some message, which I never did lol. Honestly this has been one of the shadiest investment of the a16z group, to my knowledge, as a "spectator". Not sure exactly how they went from 21.co's mission to Coinbase, I must be living in a dream-world.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is too bad. I remember learning about 21.co (later earn.com) and being excited about the idea of using a pricing mechanism to eliminate spam and increase the quality of my inbox. This core idea is a big part of what I'm working on right now [1].

One thing that 21.co never really figured out was a killer use case, or how to best connect buyers with highly-targeted sellers in this "attention" marketplace. It just seemed like a cool way for startup CEOs to get better quality emails and direct the money to the charity of their choice.

[1] [https://www.fizbuz.com](https://www.fizbuz.com)

<comment><USER13> Actually, the one-to-one emails were only a small part of their business model. Earn has become popular among crypto companies for doing paid mass email campaigns.

If you are on the site as a user it's obvious. You get a lot of paid messages if you sign up for the right lists. Not sure if it will scale, but interesting use of crypto.

This is kind of a silly site, but it's one of the few articles I can find on the topic. [https://sludgefeed.com/earn-com-becoming-go-to-crypto- advert...](https://sludgefeed.com/earn-com-becoming-go-to-crypto-advertising- platform/)

<comment><USER12> You're completely right, but what a waste.

Instead of solving the spam problem and giving marketing/sales/recruiting people better tools, they just incentivized people to sign-up for mailing lists that they probably didn't care about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I thought earn.com (formerly 21.co) was a clever idea and I signed up. Once or twice a quarter I would get an item incoming and I'd usually read and/or fill out a survey.

Lately it's frequent noise from ICOs (though perhaps I deserve it because I recall opting in to a cryptocoin interest group on earn.com).

<comment><USER15> There is nothing interesting coming out of cryptocurrency space other than ICO spam

<comment><USER16> How did this become religion on HN?

Interesting things in crypto-blockchain tech, today:

* Origin

* NuCypher (disclaimer: I'm on this team)

* Loki

* New version of web3.py / other python tooling becoming mature

* Trustless Quorums

* Distributed validation

I can go on and on. But I just don't see how anybody can think that these are uninteresting times for this tech.

<comment><USER17> I've checked NuCypher's homepage and I find a bit strange to have that much emphasis on the blockchain on your homepage and at the same time only 5 occurrences of the word "blockchain" in your 21-pages whitepaper. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER16> Two things:

1) The whitepaper describes the nature of our network and how Alice and Bob use it. It does not describe (and isn't meant to describe) node operation except as Alice and Bob need to understand it. We'll have an additional node operation whitepaper that describes the smart contracts in more detail. We - and I know this may sound strange - decided to build our cryptography and network first and foremost rather than race to build "something, anything, as long as it's blockchain."

2) Do you think that the whitepaper insufficiently describes how Alice and Bob use the blockchain? If so, do you have suggestions for how we can do this better? I think our whitepaper is pretty solid, FWIW. If you are Alice or Bob, I think this gives you exactly the understanding of the blockchain application that you need.

<comment><USER17> Thank you for the clarification. Re 2), I didn't read the whitepaper in full but rather grep'd "blockchain" to understand how you used it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> At first they were 21.co and they invited developers, startup CEOS and investors under the premise of much larger per-response rewards ($100 for investors, $20 for CEOs, etc). Since then, they've been sending mostly $1-$2 spam from Tokens and ICOs. The payment is in Bitcoin, so cashing out also takes a big chunk of the earnings. Coinbase sounds like a nice landing spot for a team that likely dreamt bigger than that.

</comment><comment><USER19> Here is Balaji's own writeup of the company's trajectory: [https://medium.com/@balajis/the- turnaround-2d145589d814](https://medium.com/@balajis/the- turnaround-2d145589d814)

<comment><USER20> This is an incredibly well spun tale of reducing cost and restructuring a revenue producing, albeit a super cash burning, business into a more efficient one.

This post is a glorified PR humblebrag, and the truth of the matter is that if they really did complete a turn-around, it would be stand alone business worthy of the incredible cash infusion that the VC community injected in to it. Ultimately it's likely a loss (perhaps a very large one) on the books for the investors involved, and pieces like this are just lipstick on the pig.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Nothing to see here. Just another highly connected businessman making a ton of money on a startup exit.

</comment><comment><USER22> This sounds like a acqui-hire, highly doubt that Coinbase would have paid 200-300M (representing a 2-3x investment multiplier) - BTC or otherwise?

</comment><comment><USER23> Looks like Balaji (Earn CEO) is joining Coinbase as the CTO. So this is potentially a straight acqui-hire.

</comment><comment><USER24> > Over the last several years, the primary way most people have obtained > cryptocurrency is through buying it, with many of these transactions > facilitated by Coinbase. With this acquisition, we allow users to also earn > crypto by doing things they already know how to do — like replying to emails > and filling out surveys.

Ick. Who'd have thought the future of technology would look like shitty direct marketing scams?

<comment><USER25> Everyone in adtech. Especially those that understand blockchain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I get spammed by ICO offers every day almost from these people. Stopped logging in to claim my dollars since it is too much hassle to complete that captcha every time. Endless pictures of road signs and busses and roads...

</comment><comment><USER27> Just curious about Earn and the use of Bitcoin (questions are not related to Coinbase nor the announcement):

What's the downside of just using fiat money? Why need to use Bitcoin (or any crypto)?

<comment><USER10> Fiat means giving the payment processor significant leverage over the paid email service.

Fiat also means the email service couldn't be global, because Trusted-Third- Party-based payment processors can't operate globally owing to the global regulatory patchwork.

Contrast that with Bitcoin(Cash)-based international remittance, or Ethereum- based token sales, which are accessible to people in every country in the world.

Email is an open and global protocol, so cryptocurrency is a good fit for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I signed up for this platform early on but never felt like it was anything more than a convoluted engine for getting me to transact with spurious ICOs.

<comment><USER28> And an aggressive spam producer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> So begins the conglomerate

</comment><comment><USER30> Earn.com has become a glorified airdrop platform, but even so they've got a good team there that are good additions to Coinbase. Maybe the most expensive acqui-hire?

Either way it's a huge nod towards tokenized attention economy projects by one of the biggest players in the space.

</comment><comment><USER31> The coolest part about Earn.com is you could send a message for $100 to VCs like Marc Andreessen, when I finally finish my app I will be using Earn.com to find testers that have blogs that can spread the word

</comment><comment><USER32> Interesting how there is no keywords for 'security' and 'privacy'. Seems like a good acquisition to implement tracking of people's financial activity.

</comment><comment><USER33> As someone with an formal education in Art despite a background in Tech, I'm growing more and more disillusioned with currencies beyond actual Legal Tender... I almost agree with the 1792 Mint Act's attachment of a death sentence to the devaluing of our coins (silver and gold in particular). Money is at best Artwork and even then it's only by devaluing it that it gets passed around like it's nothing. What is Bitcoin's value other than a secure means of Bank transfer again? It just seems like a means of reinforcing what from a religious context would be called Simony. Show me the Money.

</comment><comment><USER34> There is probably a non-block chain way to replicate this

<comment><USER35> > Earn.com allows senders to pay users for replying to emails and completing > tasks

There was quite few sites with same idea 15 years ago. Back then it took me some time to understand that no serious business wants to show ads to people paid for watching them, since only people without significant income sign up for such programs and the incentive for fraud is high.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I launched veropost.com a while before earn.com pivoted. Didn't get much love, I hope now people can see the value proposition.

<comment><USER36> yes that was the problem SV trolls downvoting

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> They started spamming me three days ago but I have no idea where they got my email from...

</comment><comment><USER38> Wow, that was fast.

</comment><comment><USER39> I am now seriously worried about Coinbase after this baseless acquisition.

<comment><USER40> It's not baseless -- they want to help perpetuate the ecosystem and use cases for people to get utility in acquiring any incentivized crypto-assets. The same utility described on Earn.com however is possible by paying people fiat currency, instead of paying someone something then making them have vested interest in it maintaining a certain value or increasing its value (at the cost of society).

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> "Joins" isn't in the thesaurus for "was bought by"

<comment><USER42> Separate but related events?

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> So I'm copying and pasting part of someone's comment I saw on mobile - <USER2> has since been flagged and removed for including their referral URL - <USER3> I wanted to reply to it.

They said: "I've earned around 0.0060 BTC so far (~$50), mostly through airdrop offers -- without taking into account the airdropped crypto itself."

What I wanted to reply was, no, you earned ~$50 if you sold it off immediately, however otherwise you earned "~$50" MINUS whatever "profit" earlier adopters earned, the wealth unreasonably/unnecessarily reallocated weighted toward the earlier adopters; e.g. that could be $50 minus $30 because you're paying for/legitimizing/realizing/covering the difference of their purchase price and their sale price. They know of course they can't dump it, however they don't care if the Pyramid-Ponzi scheme takes 10-20+ years to allow them to realize $100s of billions, or even potentially trillions of dollars, worth of "profit."

<comment><USER43> By this logic, it would be fair to say:

'When I get my paycheck, I earn my salary MINUS whatever "profit" my employer made from my work.'

This is disingenuous by ignoring risk and presupposing that (in this case) I have the same reach/clout/contacts/sales and marketing channels as my employer.

<comment><USER40> I don't think that's a fair comparison at all.

The profit your employer makes from your work isn't coming from an increase in demand [in the use of a transactional layer] causing the perceived value of a crypto-asset [USD] to go up, and therefore they also are profiting from that increased value -- that'd be "double-dipping" profit in a sense if that's the case, if they're also making money on the increase in demand of the currency.

Profit from what someone is willing to pay above actual cost vs. "profit" derived simply from an increase in perceived value because of demand are two different things; this is why I put profit in quotes to differentiate.

If you're paid in USD, USD being relatively stable and balanced with other fiat currencies, then you're not going to profit from fluctuations -- there are currency traders of course, however banks and governments try to limit this. It would be great to have a single global currency, where everyone is aligned, however

If you held onto your paycheck and didn't cash it for 5 years (assuming the check is still valid then), and the USD went up by 400% -- once you cashed it, that 300% difference in your buying power that you're depositing is getting covered by everyone else now (for no more work done by you). At the surface of it, does that sound fair? And that cash they were paid, it wasn't an investment.

If you're paid in USD, USD being relatively stable and balanced with other fiat currencies, then you're not going to profit from fluctuations -- there are currency traders of course, however banks and governments try to limit this, they decide how much the other currencies are worth in comparison (the exchange rates). It would be great to have a single global currency, where everyone is aligned, however not through reallocating wealth weighted to the earliest adopters -- you're taking advantage of the majority of society then.

The issue is whether reallocating resources/wealth unreasonably/unnecessarily is acceptable or not. I argue it's not. The incentivized structure is one way to get people working together, collaborating - at least to begin with - however at a certain "tipping point", let's say it's 50% -- everyone who adopts or must adopt the incentivized crypto-asset then is covering/realizing the cost of everyone who bought before. E.g. Their buying power is shifted weighted towards the earlier adopters, and if this is allowed then there will be a point where they will be forced to adopt it (and early bad actors are heavily incentivized to reach this goal).

One problem with incentivized crypto-assets is that USD isn't destroyed, instead it's being exchanged - given to someone in return for a digital crypto-asset. If USD was actually destroyed or rather transferred into a crypto-asset blockchain, that would be solving part of the problem.

If you see problems with what I'm writing, I would greatly appreciate hearing more of your thoughts - rarely do people engage with this line of thought on here, I seem to get enough downvotes though (to counter the upvotes I initially get).

<comment><USER44> It seems you have a problem with other people having large pieces of pie, rather than the more important point that all people that have pie have it grow.

<comment><USER45> Let's hear you say this next time you try to run a political campaign against someone who can outspend you a thousand times over.

You'll lose, and they'll have everything they need to take whatever scraps of pie you have on your plate.

<comment><USER40> Interestingly my comment here - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16867880](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16867880) \- ties into the concern you voiced.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


AVIF for Next-Generation Image Coding - <AUTHOR> https://netflixtechblog.com/avif-for-next-generation-image-coding-b1d75675fe4?source=rss----2615bd06b42e---4 <comment><USER2> An interesting takeaway from the comparisons shown is that AVIF seems to be much better about getting rid of detail without creating artifacts. It's particularly evident in the second example photo, where the original has a lot of detail in the texture of the paint on the door. AVIF drops most of that detail and gives it a smooth, almost airbrushed look. It's obviously missing a lot when you compare it to the original side-by-side, but on its own it doesn't look immediately repulsive.

To me, this absolutely screams "mobile," as on a small screen you probably wouldn't be able to see much of that detail even if it were technically present. I wonder if in the future we'll see some sort of mechanism for progressive image loading that allow the client device to choose its own level of compression, possibly based on server-provided hinting or something.

<comment><USER3> That'd be interesting to have different quality levels for different display resolution densities. There is a huge difference between looking at a 4k wall display where each pixel is 1-2mm, and a 6" QHD display where each pixel is ~.1mm (160mm/1440 pixels).</comment></comment>


Google Calls Oracle Patent Suit Baseless And An Attack On The Java Community - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/13/android-oracle-java-lawsuit/ <comment><USER2> I don't like Google's current modus operandi. It's not the first time that they seem to do whatever they feel like, and when eventually someone sues them they start: "But the Internet is open! Think of the open Internet", or "You are killing the open java community" (paraphrased, of course).

Apart from using the word open in every other sentence, I don't see how that's an excuse: if you are doing something illegal then don't do it. Don't bring the "kids" (i.e. the community) in the battle.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this really an "attack open-source Java community"? Google doesn't use the JVM and none of this seems aimed at OpenJDK. It just seems the reasoning is really weak and can be countered with Google isn't supporting the JVM with Android.</comment>


Indian IT, "You're Fired" - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/indian-youre-fired-our-chairman-sorry-way-we-you-mohan-k- <comment><USER2> I've never understood the ways that modern companies handle layoffs- call people into a meeting room one by one, tell them they're being let go, then escort them out of the building. It's not just that it's cold, but it builds a huge cloud of oppression for everyone else.

I just watched this happen to a friend, and the guy who was sitting next to him is now saying "I could be next, better start talking to recruiters". Do the companies think we're all going to cut contact with the friend and valued coworker? Of course not, we're going to be buying them a beer in a couple hours.

I don't know what a better way would be, but I'd sure like to see some innovation in that space. Something less cold, something more human.

<comment><USER3> I think it's mostly an American thing. In Poland (and probably other European countries), under a normal work contract, you are told in advance about being laid off, at least two weeks I think. It gives you enough time to look for another job, and it gives you time to pass your work to your coworkers. No one really does retaliation here, it's all done in a mostly peaceful atmosphere, the laid off employee is trying to finish what he started and pass on the work to the person that will replace him.

<comment><USER4> In Switzerland it's usually 2-3 months notice, for both sides. Depends on what's written in your contract. But escorting people out after firing them seems very harsh and overdramatic to me. Never heard of such things in Europe.

<comment><USER5> Rationally, the company is trying to avoid employees stealing IP, corrupting files, and sabotaging work. But the social signal it sends is "we don't trust our employees, respect them as people, or value their original contributions to our business. They are just replaceable cogs in our machine."

<comment><USER6> >>>They are just replaceable cogs in our machine.

Which matches how most corporations see their employees

They are Human Resources, to be consumed like any other resource

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The Indian IT situation has reached somewhat of a breaking point, hence the current situation unfolding.

The real low level stuff is now being increasingly automated thus eliminating the need for cheap labor to do such tasks. At the same time the Indian firms never quite managed to broadly move up the value chain into more innovative and cutting edge areas, which is still very much the realm of local offices of their western customers. As a result there's an increasing oversupply of cheap but not all that good IT labor now flooding the market.

Fair or not there's also an increasingly negitive stigma in the west over Indian IT shops. Between growing domestic protectionism and the stereotypical "Indian help desk experience" that became the poster child for bad management decisions, I'm seeing a lot of firms bring even some of the lower level work back onshore--abeit to lower cost regions in their country (think Nebraska call centers now).

<comment><USER8> I have observed a different phenomenon: in the last 10 years, "startup culture" has swept over India. There is very little innovative or cutting edge being done in the US either outside of the universities (where many of the researchers are Indian) and a few big companies (Google, Facebook, et al -- who all have large engineering offices in India as well). Honestly, I find it easier to hire for skills like AWS, node.js, Kubernetes, React, Scala and TensorFlow in India than it is in the US.

You're right about call center work, but that's a different skill set entirely.

The biggest problem with the offshore model for development is that it requires a certain level of scale to be profitable. Large projects go great, as do small one-offs at established, large clients; but dealing with small customers/projects creates enough overhead to wipe out be benefits of offshore labor (or at least makes them less of an advantage).

You have to have fat margins on your projects to cover the training costs for your people -- if you don't give them training, they won't have time to learn anything new (and the time off of projects costs you far more than any training course would).

<comment><USER9> Though it is easier to hire people with skills in XYZ tech, it's important to note that Indian IT companies have bred a culture of knowledge purely on paper.

A civil engineer/Electrical Engineer/ Electronics Engineer / Industrial Engineer / etc, just out of college, joins a services company as a "developer" with a pay around 5000 USD a year, works for a few years on, say SQL, goes to the local "IT training institute" run by Mr. ABC with "X+ years of onsite experience", pays them Z amount of rupees, "learns" "T" tech for 3 or 6 months, gets a certificate, applies for a job in another IT company desperately looking for people with knowledge in "T", joins, struggles through and then rinses and repeats.

I have seen it personally.

Of course, not all of them are like that, but I am sure more than 50% are milled from the same process. That is why you get so many engineers able to do some specific things in some specific technology, but are scarcely able to innovate or think out of the box.

There is a whole slew of IT training institutes and hundreds of trainers, staff, photocopy shops, cafeterias, etc, which thrive on training an ever churning flow of "IT" engineers.

Add to that, an "IT" engineer expects to be a "Technical Lead" in a matter of 5-6 years, a "Team Lead" in a matter of 8 years and a "Project Manager" in about 12 years of experience. My numbers for the years maybe a bit off though.

Contrast this to developers in Europe or elsewhere, you have technically strong developers with decades of experience honing their skills in a myriad of tech and gathering a repertoire of programming techniques, tools, practices, etc.

<comment><USER10> >>Add to that, an "IT" engineer expects to be a "Technical Lead" in a matter of 5-6 years, a "Team Lead" in a matter of 8 years and a "Project Manager" in about 12 years of experience. My numbers for the years maybe a bit off though.

More than anything else, this is the most important reason. Indians for some reason have fancied middle management bureaucratic roles above real work almost forever. This is not just in IT, but the very economic ecosystem of India has this problem. We are talking about a country where even house wives do a distance education MBA course because 'Just in case... I would be a manager someday' kind of attitude.

Not one person wants to do any real work. And over long times its impossible to sustain growth without productivity.

So there will be a inevitable decline in the overall ecosystem at some point in time. But my guess is those who wish to do work will always have good projects to chase after.

The IT ecosystem on the longer run will resemble every other engineering services industry in India. Architecture, Mechanical, Civil, Electrical etc. Niche areas where good talent will be required and there will always be a supply. Noise, garbage and me too attitude people will largely be gone.

<comment><USER11> > Indians for some reason have fancied middle management bureaucratic roles > above real work almost forever.

One could argue they have the right idea. At most companies (tech or non- tech), the career advancement path for a software developer pretty much ends at "Senior Software Engineer". Some places offer a "Staff Software Engineer" or "Principal Software Engineer" but your career growth is pretty much over once you get there, unless you want to jump into management, where the sky is the limit.

<comment><USER9> You could move into roles like software architecture or software design, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> From the page:

 _At the meeting, Mr. Sikka also described how the company "released 11,000 jobs due to automation." Many small shareholders appealed to the board to consider the "human cost" of layoffs in the software sector._

That quote made me chuckle, since I have witnessed first hand the IT industry in the West face massive job cuts through Out Sourcing and that has been going on for decades now.

Now I don't blame Out Sourcing per say, as governments let that happen, but it is a bit funny when the Out Sourcing gets Out Sourced.

<comment><USER13> I agree with your comment. The author seems taken back by the callousness of the cuts, but this is nothing new in the United States or even in other western countries.

I think Indian IT firms have gotten a free ride for many years using labor arbitrage. Now that there's a whiff of protectionism in the air from the United States and cloud computing is surging things aren't so easy anymore.

<comment><USER14> > I think Indian IT firms have gotten a free ride for many years using labor > arbitrage.

Got it. So Apple building the phone in China or Cisco building routers in China is _not_ labor arbitrage.

<comment><USER15> No, they are all labor arbitrage. Manufacturing labor arbitrage is just a little more sticky since China has the production facilities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> As someone who worked for a team at IBM where we were forced to train our replacements in India, it seems odd that anyone in outsourcing would be surprised when those roles are further reduced by automation with little regard for the wellbeing of employees.

<comment><USER17> I don't know if this is your intention, but it is petty to blame someone, who is seeking legal employment, of conspiring to take away your jobs.

The decision to use labor arbitrage was taken by managements in developed economies. The workers didn't position themselves in a way that created the arbitrage.

It's silly, to say the least, when your reaction is "what did you expect would happen, when you decided to steal american/british/whatever jobs".

This is just the way the world is right now. The Indian IT labor market is only just catching up to the global reality.

<comment><USER18> Are you sure you're replying to the right comment?

Or was the thread poster's comment edited?

Your comment seems to add a little context that isn't there.

<comment><USER17> Many young people who get into IT here don't come in their first day thinking of the big picture, ie this is an outsourced position. For them it's just a job. So it's not odd for them to think their job has been further reduced. Though it may be the logical thing to think for someone who has all the context.

Also, English not being my native language, I had trouble understanding the tone of OP's comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Many comments here are laughing about the irony of the outsourced labor becoming irrelevant, but it should kind of be worrying. Organizations are lowering the number of jobs to the point that only the most skilled and experienced workers get jobs. If there are no lower level positions for people to take on, how will the masses work their way up and improve? How can our local and global economies improve for everyone when fewer and fewer people can get good jobs?

This goes for every country, not just India or America. If an economy improves on paper yet the majority of people see a decline in quality of life, what kind of destabilizing effects will that have on the area?

<comment><USER20> I don't see that. What I do see is a recognition that only in specific cases with well defined product boundaries does outsourcing development work reasonably.

On the other hand we see many companies recognizing that telecommuting and remote work, especially with things that have no end date (keep the servers running, fix the bugs, add these new features) have hidden costs. Those costs are often exasperated by time zone differences.

In areas where I have worked for the past decade, outsourcing is not looked fondly on because of the recognition that it means a loss of institutional knowledge and unending support costs.

There are many entry level positions open, just you need to be able to be in the chair.

<comment><USER19> > There are many entry level positions open, just you need to be able to be in > the chair.

This statement proves my point exactly. Either you need to be skilled enough to have the leverage to work remotely, or you need to be lucky enough to live in one of the few cities that happen to be growing economically at the moment. When economic growth and opportunity for the unskilled is concentrated to such a small portion of the planet and country, the rest of us suffer for it. It's a continued assault on the middle class of most of the world, and has profound destabilizing effects on those areas affected by these trends.

<comment><USER20> My previous job was in the north woods of the Midwest where there are fewer than 75k people living and the next nearest city of more than 25k is an hour drive away. There are several companies there, all hiring at all levels.

There are opportunities for entry level work everywhere. However, the demand for living in urban areas with culture events changes the equation to one where employers have the ability to pick and choose- and will do so for more skilled workers.

There is no luck involved in moving to a city where there are only two Starbucks's.

The asset that the entry level employee has is his or her ass in a chair. There is a lot of value in that and companies will invest in it. They don't want a contractor who will disappear in 6 months or a nameless person behind the account manager who changes every few months.

One just has to say "not everyone will live where they have their hearts set on."

You want to live in NYC? SF? Many people do and it will be harder to compete for limited spots.

That city in the north woods? A quick scan shows 20 open positions in the three biggest tech employers, half of which are entry level. Positions are paying around 150% median household income there.

<comment><USER19> You're speaking like someone who happens to live in or around one of the tech hubs of the Midwest. I also live in the Midwest, have several certifications, am 75% through an IT Bachelor's degree, and I have been unable to find tech- related work in the third largest city in my state. Just because your area happens to have work doesn't mean the rest of rural America does.

There's a reason political extremists were nearly our candidates in both parties. There is a widespread sense of economic instability due to large trends that are gutting the middle class and concentrating jobs.

<comment><USER20> How about Eau Claire? Duluth? La Crosse? Iowa city? Marshal? Wausau?

If there is an influx of people to an area (Madison, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Rochester), entry level will be harder to find. This extends to a reasonable commute distance away.

If you have your heart set on the larger midwestern cities, you will need to look harder for the jobs (possibility to less traditional tech employers) and places where there are not "fabulous" roles to fill (instead of entry level code ninja with free coffee, entry SDET in a boring government office).

My first tech job after graduating with a 4 year CS degree was customer support - answering phones. Then I did QA for awhile. Then a startup as a sysadmin / webmaster where the paycheck bounced. Two years after I got my first tech job, I got an entry level programming job at a tech company doing internal automation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "Indian software services companies are under tremendous pressure to continue to show growth in a slowing global market that is also experiencing increased protectionism in the west."

Maybe the managers in the west who made the decision to lay off entire IT departments and replace them by Indian companies started realizing that with the cost of the impedance mismatch in language and culture between a company and its IT deparment, off-shoring is more expensive than running a domestic IT department.

<comment><USER22> Its not the managers who made the decision. Its the shareholders, ultimately its capitalism that made this decision.

<comment><USER23> Shareholders, individually _or_ collectively, don't make such decisions... but they later collectively judge those who _did_. (Fairly or unfairly)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I personally don't have any issue in Indian companies firing people at will. But they don't give employees the same freedom.

All these IT companies have a 2-3 months notice period. This makes it difficult to look for another job. If they want to fire at will, I should be able to walk out at will as well. But if I do that, I will not get my resignation letter and service certificate (I am not worried about the final paycheck left overs). And I need these papers if I have to get another job.

<comment><USER5> Sorry, but if you were already offered the next job, does the next employer really care about a severance certificate? Why is a severance certificate important in India?

<comment><USER25> I'm not sure it really is - but it could be. I think it depends on the hidebound bureaucracy of the company you're applying to. It's been a while since I've worked in India (close to 20 years now). So things have most likely changed massively. When I was there I've known of folks who just quit and folks who gave a decent notice. Those that stayed the notice period got a severance certificate. Those that just quit didn't get one. I don't believe it impacted careers much. That time the notice period was 1 month, not ideal like the US 15-day notice but not too bad either (1 month was the pay period). When I left I negotiated the notice period down to 3 weeks. 2 to 3 months notice is oppressive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > Saying "You're Fired!" in a nicer tone is not likely "preserve the dignity > of the individual." The guy on the receiving end is still going to get the > same message: he's out of a job and has bills to pay.

I disagree. Sometimes layoffs are unavoidable, but you can fire someone with dignity. I think both tone and substance matter here.

For tone, management should be civil, polite and respectful. Acknowledge the employee's contributions to date, explain the larger context for the layoffs, express regret that they are leaving the team, and wish them well. Just because you're forced to deliver bad news doesn't mean you have to be brusque and vindictive. You give the departing employee dignity by treating them like team member you will miss rather than a minor, expensive annoyance.

Even kind words are cheap. Management should take substantive steps to ease the employee's transition out of the company. Earlier notice (weeks vs hours), severance pay, job search assistance, referrals, etc. all show the employee that the current employer does care about their personal well-being even as they depart the company.

<comment><USER27> Would you want management to do that if it's not sincere? What if your contribution has been poor or damaging.

I think we agree broadly FWIW.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> In Indian polity, withholding relieving letters is brutal. It makes it very hard for the laid-off person to get another job: one must present a relieving letter to be hired elsewhere.

Courts aren't a useful remedy for a worker with a family to feed: too slow and expensive.

<comment><USER29> Can you expand about these "relieving letters"? I didn't hear about those before...

<comment><USER30> You are supposed to get an experience certificate (that confirms how long you worked in that company) and a formal relieving letter (that confirms that you left under normal circumstances and your performance was satisfactory) from your previous employer. In addition to that you are also supposed to get payslips for the last three months.

Without supplying these it is very hard to get a job. Most companies also contact previous employers (through a third party) to confirm these details.

<comment><USER29> Thx for the info

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Let's just name it straight: all this brainwashing about values and being part of company is a con game by HR's. These con artists are not your friends, never.

</comment><comment><USER32> I don't agree with a lot of what Western companies have done regarding sending IT work to India en masse. However, there is a real human cost now of the lay offs. I believe many Indians have taken out bank loans to buy property and there is no safety net in place for employees who are sacked with no notice. So they are at risk of losing their home and the health benefits (for the whole family I believe) is tied to the employer. Overall a very sad situation where those outsourcing the work by the bucketload only looked at cost 'savings' at a point in time - never the social impact of their decisions.

<comment><USER33> Unfortunately most businesses operate to enhance shareholder value, not the broader social good. It's a sad day when people loose jobs, especially in a a callus manner described by the post, however, it is silly when these workers are surprised by this. It is simply a progression of their local economy.

<comment><USER19> This behavior is exactly why protectionism is on the rise in America. The economy has "improved" massively, yet few are reaping the benefits and most Americans are seeing a decline in quality of life. Protectionism would lower the labor pool available to companies, meaning workers would have more leverage and better pay, but at the expense of corporate profits.

Lots of economists say that protectionism is a net negative to our country, but I think they may have failed to consider the effects of capital concentration causing only a few cities and states in the country to actually benefit from globalization.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> What is the story about? I am not signing up for linkedin.com to read it. (They never honor "Do not email" requests.)

<comment><USER35> I don't have a LinkedIn account and I could read it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> 2015-16 Was a subcontractor for a US startup which acquired another startup. We had to document the old code base and reduce the cost of operations.

Worked for over 7 months. Then the founder decided it was not worth it. He fired all the remaining tech staff(acquired startup) and people who managed us.

When followed up for pending invoices, we got a email with threatening tone, that they are investigating all the contracts signed up and payments for fraud.

So not getting paid also happens in many cases.

In another case in 2008 a Bay Area startup got bankrupt and systems engineers brought the racks and expensive chairs from office, and they were doing yard sale

</comment><comment><USER37> The pathology behind the hypocrisy is the obsession with values we see in corporations today.

Let's be clear: work is something we do to provide for ourselves. It is a contract. That contract should not encompass a prescribed belief system, and that is exactly what 'values' are. In the past 30 years we've turned many work environments into quasi-religions where it is expected that employees adhere to particular sets of values or at least signal that they do. Doing your job well should be enough.

<comment><USER5> Organizations of people are defined by shared values and shared goals. Throw out the values and you throw out the bases for civil communication and conflict resolution within the organization.

<comment><USER38> I have never seen an organization subscribe to any set of values other than "do what will make the most profit". The only goal is to increase profit. This works out pretty well, because it pits my desire for profit versus yours, and encourages socially beneficial policies, because too-greedy profit seeking destroys further chances of profit. We do not have shared goals, we have the opposing goal of maximising profit in a largely zero-sum game. However, due to how the system is set up, we can collaborate and increase both our profits more than what we can do each on our own.

I don't see how anything else can be a working system. Everything else can be gamed by semantic manoeuvring from the side of the profit-seekers. The only way to make sure a given set of values are followed is to make them the most profitable course of action, ensuring via evolutionary mechanisms that only the ones abiding those values survive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Pretty unfortunate to see lot of comments with an undertone like Indian IT workers deserved this situation. It's not just a problem which can plague Indian workers alone. Lets focus on what can be done to mitigate this issue.

#1 Firing is an inevitable process but it should be a transparent process and employees should be treated with dignity. Firing an employee for cost cut shouldn't be any lesser than 30 days notice period.

#2 IT service industry costing method is flawed. Head count is inflated to increase project cost. Need to adopt a better costing model.

#3 Any form of automation which would result in job cut should be a board decision and not by the lower rung. The team which will get affected by the decision should be informed so they can be well prepared.

Jobs are getting fewer since we are optimizing and automating(don't forget AI) - all good but this shouldn't be at the cost of sustainability.

<comment><USER18> You aren't going to get a lot of support from the West.

We've been dealing with this kind of thing for years, because of labour arbitrage. Asking for help, advice, or for us to join you in some kind of organization now that it's affecting you is... kind of funny actually...

But, in all honesty, we'll be training you to train the machine models that will replace all of us eventually, so, maybe it's time for all of us to suck it up and get along.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Indian IT is making money by selling you, not software to USA; If you are sacked, hire a Criminal lawyer to get your share of Company Profits; [http://www.scbaindia.org/Web/aspx/directory_new.aspx](http://www.scbaindia.org/Web/aspx/directory_new.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER41> There is a silver lining for Indian IT in all this. Indiscriminate firing to meet quota is a forcing function for indigenous software companies to grow and thrive. Will there be enough work for all of them? Maybe not. Will it raise the quality bar for those who wish to persist in IT? Most certainly yes. This is not the end.

<comment><USER24> There is already insane competition for government and bank jobs (since these jobs are more or less guaranteed for life). I know so many people who did their bachelors in engineering degrees writing bank exams. These type of news will make Indian IT even less attractive.

Layoffs in IT sector lead to a dip in popularity of software engineers in marriage market: [http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/ites/layoffs-in- it-...](http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/ites/layoffs-in-it-sector- lead-to-a-dip-in-popularity-of-software-engineers-in-marriage- market/articleshow/59497476.cms)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> "Quit by 10 am, or you'll be terminated and no benefits or relieving letter will be provided"

This sounds like a horrible threat. What are labour laws in India like? Is the company abusing the legal system by forcing their employees to quit via threats? Why do they want them to quit instead of firing them?

</comment><comment><USER22> This is a blessing in disguise. A majority of the Indian IT workers were focused on working for outsourcing companies. Recently, I have seen the startup scene gaining momentum in India. This will stop India's brain drain as well bring in more revenues to the country directly.

</comment><comment><USER43> Requires login or wrong URL? Is there alternative URL? Doesn't work for me.

<comment><USER42> Same problem for me. I don't know why LinkedIn shows me login pages too. Someone else fetched the story for me:

[http://www.lick.moe/paste/2f6bbfa63965f2c539e4436a028cf90d](http://www.lick.moe/paste/2f6bbfa63965f2c539e4436a028cf90d)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Whats worse? "your fired" or "welcome, stagnant wage growth for 10+ years awaits you"</comment>