Ask HN: Should I tell my colleagues there's a plan to make them redundant?

I understand your fear, but I think you should tell them.

Regarding your colleagues and your fear of (not) finding a job. I understand it, but I think it's a bit short sighted. And if anything, if you do the right thing, these guys can help you find your next job or bring you along with them. If they find out you were hiding this from them, you're burning this bridge and potentially lowering your chances of finding a job.

Just some 2 cents guy-from-the-internet advice. I was never in a similar situation, but lost my job a few times (and it was always for the best, in hindsight).

The only thing I would potentially worry about though is whether you did something illegal by accessing this document... Or if you can get into trouble with your employer. If the plan is to make you redundant, you don't want to give them an even more appealing option to fire you, do you?

I was in a similiar-ish situation.

I was a manager and told to make redundancies, because we were 'overstaffed' (which we weren't) I couldn't do it. They were my friends. Who do you choose? The young guys who can walk into another job straight away but are the best workers? The guy with a wife and kids who was pretty lazy and would have struggled to get another job? The guy who just remortgaged his house to pay for his divorce? etc.

So, I told them. They went to the directors, and the directors denied it. Then everyone thought I was a complete ahole for 'making things up' and the directors were furious with me for telling them.

So, my advice, for whatever it's worth is take care of yourself first. Run, don't walk, run. Get yourself another job, soon as you've done that, then you can tell them if you want.

But telling them before you've taken care of yourself is trouble, your bosses will be mad and that could get you axed a whole lot faster than you planned for, and your co-workers may not believe you and if they do, you'll all be applying for the same jobs so you lose out.

Edit: An afterthought though, is don't quit too soon, you don't want to miss out on potential redundancy pay!

I can't tell you how to handle this, and I have never been in a similar situation before (closest being having to disable accounts for the other person on my team) but here are two thoughts:

Firstly, You don't know for sure what will the client do - with a high probability they will do just like you've said, but I'm not sure it is your obligation to force their hand so to speak, by making that possibility public. Also, if you decide to proceed with telling your coworkers I'd first think whether your employer can accuse you of disclosing what, in their mind, may be confidential information - you're part of the organisation, and "I found it by accident" may not be a strong enough argument to protect yourself from getting reprimended or even fired.

However, I think what's more important in your case is your wife's insistence on you not telling anyone. If I were in your shoes I'd probably try talking to her some more, explaining how not telling your coworkers is affecting your wellbeing, and that will probably become a bigger issue the closer to the April deadline it gets, as your uncertainty grows. I’d even suggest that you together talk with some close and trusted friends, or even a professional, to try and make some sense out of the situation. If you can't reach an agreement, I'd probably suggest siding with your wife - the knowledge you've acquired, while somewhat heavy, is nowhere heavy enough to put it over your own family.

In the end, I can only share my sympathy - It's not an enviable place to find oneself in. I just hope that, whatever you decide, you’ll be able to make peace with that and move on.

If any of them read hacker news they will probably know soon enough. How many tech teams of 9 are there in the Cotswolds that have an Indian parent company?

Alison's "Ask a Manager" blog usually has sound advice

for example: https://www.askamanager.org/2017/11/should-i-tip-off-my-cowo...

maybe some other relevant discussion here: https://www.askamanager.org/category/layoffs

I've been in a similar position in the past, where I had already been made redundant, but had been brought in to another team on a trial basis with a few other devs.

While getting my machine set up in their office, I had been given elevated Dropbox privileges, and I noticed a file with a name like "temp-dev-interview-approach". It was a document saying they were only going to hire one dev, and that it would be me.

I went through a similar dilemma, and I didn't tell them. I hinted heavily at it being an option, and pointed out the reasons why I might be the person to stay on (most experienced, worked on the larger client that was coming over), but no one caught on. I literally dragged them to a user group one day and mentioned redundancies to a mate of mine that was hiring, and despite him offering an interview to all of them, only one took it. To make things worse, I was told this by the MD a few months later. He also told me to not say anything until he had told the others, which he'd do soon. A day passed, and I kept shut around my co-workers, until they were all told that they wouldn't be there past the end of the month - and that I had been told yesterday.

Despite the fact that I was sworn to secrecy, I felt like shit about it, and I think my co-workers lost a bit of respect for me for essentially sitting with them at lunch "worrying" about whether we were all staying when I already knew. I didn't really talk to many of them after they left. All but one moved into different careers, and the one that took my mate up on his job offer left quickly to become a creative lead.

Having experienced what I've experienced, which I'd consider a fairly shitty situation, I would 100% tell my co-workers if I could be sure that they wouldn't rat me out for it. Since a clients work is drying up, it sounds like you'll all have a fairly iron-clad reason to look for another job anyway, since experienced devs tend to have a feeling when a contract is about to wind down.

Don't disclose anything, this could affect any severance/redundancy you will receive, invite legal problems.

Will you receive X weeks of pay from your current company if they let you go?

I would start interviewing and try to get a start date setup that is a month out so you can possibly receive your exit package from your current company and then start your new job.

You said you've been looking for 4 years, reach out to your network, almost every development job I have found is by knowing someone at the company to give you an intro. So comb your network to find someone who works at a company with an opening you can fill.

If it's the company who purchased you's MO to acquire then off shore everyone knows this is a possibility.

If you need to tell someone, keep talking to your wife or another developer who doesn't know your team.

Your team is just a cog in a wheel to the company, they will swap you out for a less expensive cog, so you're going to need to find a new company.

They might offer part of your team to stick around during a transition period, that might give you a buffer/extra time to find a new job. Even if it's 2 weeks or 2 months that could help.

Good luck with the job hunt.

If you get fired for doing so, how will that impact on your redundancy?

Are your team good people? Could you trust them to keep it quiet, word in their shell-like, especially if there's an extremely stressful situation?

Can you afford the potential fallout of you disclosing confidential information?

If you were them, how would you feel if the roles were reversed, which is the question from your OP, and are you likely to end up working with them in future?

I wouldn't. When the layoffs happen, be there for them, give them recommendations letters and whatnot and do what you are able to in order to help them.

Telling them will only make them anxious and displeased with the work, possibly having negative consequences for you as well. They are all adults and ready to hear bad news when they do happen, I think you are overestimating the issue as well, those things always happen in the dynamic economy we live Today.

Now, if you ask me if I would enjoy not telling them and keeping it for myself, probably not, but sometimes we must be strong to not make the situation worse than it is. It is an unconformable situation to be in, you need to remind yourself that. Also, it is only internet advice from me, you can take it if you want.

I would tell them what they need to know, but no more than that, in case you broke any rules by reading the document.

They don't need to know how you know, and in fact no more than one person even needs to know that it came from you. Additionally, they don't need to know exactly when you found out.

Getting a head start on finding a job first is not unfair in this case - anyone looking for a job is competing with other people, and there's nothing wrong with using your good luck to your advantage in that competition. Just be reasonable.

Really, everyone in the tech industry should have a plan for this though, imo.

In my life I have modified the golden rule like so: "do unto others as they would do unto you"

I have found that my modification allows the golden rule to work in cases where the person you are interacting with is less moral or honorable than you are. In this case I would consider if one of your coworkers had this knowledge how likely do you predict that they would share it with you? If you come to the conclusion that they would I personally would feel honor bound to do the same. On the other hand if it is more likely that they would use it to their advantage you have no moral responsibility to do otherwise though you may hold yourself to a higher standard and decide to do so just the same. Your family comes first, but knowing my family they would prefer to live with a father who is honorable and kind in a refrigerator box than a father who takes the most expedient route at the expense of his character in return for material rewards.

I'll leave you with a few quotes from Aristotle on such matters that have helped me in that past so that they may help you find the best course of action for yourself. Good luck.

"All persons ought to endeavor to follow what is right, and not what is established."

"Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion."

"Man is by nature a political animal."

"Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others."

There's a Twilight Zone episode (Season 2, Episode 16) where a bank clerk can suddenly hear his every coworker's thoughts.

After he causes a $200k loan to get denied because he realizes the recipient would gamble it, he reads the mind of his old reliable co-worker Smithers, who is thinking about how he'll steal cash from the bank and escape to Bermuda.

The fact was that Smithers did have the thoughts, but they were fantasy, and not actual planning. By lowering the boom on him, the clerk gets himself fired.

In your instant case, maybe you were meant to find these documents. Maybe your employer got the quote but will end up deciding that the intangibles from outsourcing don't make up for the reduced expenses.

I wouldn't advise anything unethical, but the mindreader in the episode ends up blackmailing his adulterous boss, getting promoted, and getting the girl he was always too shy to get. Perhaps the question you should be asking is "how can I selectively divulge this information to get what I want?"

I'd edit out the personal identifiable info (the bullet point with your age in it) in case your post gets up-voted further.

It sure sounds like one way or the other your job at this company will be offshored.

There's no generic answer. It really depends on your role in your team, how marketable the others on your team are, and how trustworthy they are. Who they are and how solid your relationships are matter.

First consideration is trust. You can't tell anyone who can't be trusted not to rat you out. How much that matters depends on whether or not your accessing of that document was appropriate. Did you know any of them prior to this company? You don't have to tell everyone

Second consideration is how likely it is your colleagues are to be willing and able to help you find another position. Are any of them likely to be in demand and with potential to help you? Again, you don't necessarily have to tell everyone.

Your role on the team factors in too. Are you the lead who hired the other guys or are you a mid level guy who joined late?

Would it be possible to think of a way to keep your satellite office open? Think of some plan so that you can support new customers, or somehow widen your scope to get fresh work. Is there some geographical advantage to where you are so that possibly they would like to keep the office open?

It seems now like if you do nothing, the office will close for sure. But maybe there's a way to convince the parent company to keep you open and thus avert what seems like the inevitable.

Or maybe you could all group together and open a new consultancy for yourselves (then you have to let your colleagues know).

- just thinking a bit outside the box, as it's pretty clear the writing is on the wall - and if you've been looking for something new for 4 years already, it will be even harder once you're out of work.

”I recently found documents on a shared drive”

I guess you aren’t supposed to have access to those documents. That, I think, makes this scary from a legal perspective. If it came to it, could you convince a judge that you weren’t looking for stuff you weren’t supposed to know? And could you convince a judge that you had to read the files to find out you weren’t supposed to have access to them, and couldn’t have concluded it from, say, the names of the files?

If not, maybe you should forget about this as much as possible or even report this to management, and certainly don’t tell your colleagues.

It depends on how it is handled: are you currently crucial to maintenance; can the Indian team and the company run without you all? I for one would refuse to train my forced replacement; that is not my job description so that would need to incur a hefty redundancy sum. And yes, I would tell my colleagues. Maybe now there is still leverage: in a few months there is none and the more that demand a fixed and immediate sum to train replacements, the better. Unless you say anyone can easily take over; then I would still feel obligated to tell but it would have mostly downsides.

Any time you know something that others don't, you should act on it instead of blabbing it out.

In this case, this goes triple, because maybe you weren't supposed to be looking at the contents of that hard drive.

If you act on it (e.g. move on to a different job before the layoffs) nobody can suspect anything; maybe it was just your intuition (you deciphered the proverbial "writing on the wall"), or a better opportunity really did come along.

Absolutely do not tell anyone. If you're confident the information is true, start looking for a new job for yourself.

If you tell anyone now and are wrong, you're going to either get fired or forced out. If you tell anyone and you're right, you're just going to be the bearer of bad news.

Keep your mouth shut.

If roles were reversed, would you want to be told? I suspect you would.

But you need to weigh that against potential legal liability, and the possibility of you being terminated early if anyone finds out.

Don’t tell. Redundancy is par for the course in IT, so I wouldn’t even feel morally obligated.

One thing that jumped out to me is you've been trying to find another job for 4 years. That suggests to me you may be doing something wrong (I'd say you're certainly doing something wrong if you were on the US West coast, but I don't know what the sector is like in the Cotswolds, so I don't want to speak too strongly).

Read Lying from Sam Harris. It's a short read, you'll then know what to do.

The digital honor code in the pdf invites me to share it with others as long as I've bought it (which I've done twice). Send me a pm if you want it.

Let them know.

Are Indian developers good?