Two weeks after staff at queer dating app Grindr unionized, bosses ordered employees back to the office. Nearly half the app’s workers refused and have been laid off.
Grindr’s Return-to-Office Ultimatum Has Gutted a Uniquely Queer Space in Tech::Two weeks after staff at queer dating app Grindr unionized, bosses ordered employees back to the office. Nearly half the app’s workers refused and have been laid off.
Seems like the RTO was rushed and mishandled for some reason. I can only guess they wanted to punish the unionizers or just do a major layoff without calling it a layoff.
Shortly after Arison was hired as CEO in October, Twitter users unearthed tweets he’d written expressing support for conservative politicians, many of whom had expressed anti-LGBTQ+ views. Robin was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt after he told staff he would change, but says the recent alleged union busting has broken that trust.
They hired a rightwingers as CEO, and even if he changed his mind on social policy, he's still obviously a Republican on fiscal.
This is a way to get rid of highly paid people since the labor pool for tech ballooned after twitter fired everyone.
He's hoping for a short dip, then replacing everyone for cheaper salaries.
The second part, I think people don't pick up on that often enough. These return to office pushes are soft layoffs. They get to do a layoff without paying severance or even unemployment.
I can only guess they wanted to punish the unionizers or just do a major layoff without calling it a layoff.
Maybe, but this way you have no control on who leave, which probably are the people you would like to keep since they are the most valuable people you have and being good they could find a job that accomodate their WFH request.
It's amazing how many of these big companies are suddenly coordinated on this return-to-office push. Do they all get together at their bunker/mansions in New Zealand to discuss these evil plans?
Probably Davos. But seriously, all those billionaires follow the same social calendar, and that includes stuff like Davos, the Monaco GP, Warren Buffett's party, etc, and I'm sure they all do get together to talk about stuff like that. The billionaires have class solidarity. Remember that time it came out the biggest 3 software firms had an agreement not to poach talent from each other, keeping wages artificially low?
Remember that time it came out the biggest 3 software firms had an agreement not to poach talent from each other, keeping wages artificially low?
Look at the line HR ALWAYS uses in salary negotiations. "We pay market rates"
The market rates never go up above market, because that would disrupt the same low wages they currently pay. Unless your role is indispensible in bringing in business (connections to other people who control market share or otherwise generate sales) your wage will consistently drop. The high earners are all commission and perfomance based.
"Worker" professionals like IT, mid-low tier HR, Finance, etc all get paid the same year after year at rates that rise way lower than inflation. It's common to see highly compensated individuals who make the same 1 million dollar salary year after year but their bonuses are a percentage of performance which is way above and beyond that base salary.
Bonus %s are always bigger the higher you go up in an org based on performance too, even for middle management. Why would that be? 10% of 100k is only 10k, but 50% of 500k is 250k. Screwed both ways per usual.
I mean, Andy Jassy did say a few weeks back that this is the stuff that CEO's have discussed together. It's a fucking stupid statement for a CEO of a huge company to make, because it points towards obvious collusion, but we are where we are.
I read this as grindr loses 50% of its engineering staff because of dumb management decisions. Honestly the RTO was probably just a cop out to their dwindling user base.
It seems like the playbook for any company that wants to downsize now is to mandate RTO. That way, they can justify firing people with cause.
In the past, they had to move their operations to Bumfuck, Nowhere and request that employees move, so that those who don't move can be fired easily. RTO mandates are a godsend for such companies now. Cause to fire without cost!
Ever since we found out that Grindr has been tracking their users' locations at all times and then selling that data to private companies, Grindr has been dead to me.
I've found that grindr is trying to be more like tinder and less like the hookup app that it once was. Personally, I've been using Sniffies for hookups...haven't touched grindr in like 2 years 💅🏻
Fascinating! This is after Grindr's push to try to make them sound more like a networking app. A bunch of ads masquerading as journalism over the past few weeks.