Sadly this scenario is not uncommon even among bigger employers.
I was with a big investment bank abroad when after a few rounds of redundancies that I somehow managed to survive over the few months I was with them, we were finally told the situation was now stable and we have lots of work planned for the next few years.<p>Hooray. Tell wife, terminate nursery contracts for our kids in our country of origin, arrange moving our stuff to the country I was working in for good, commit to renting a new apartment for the next 12 months, buy airline tickets and lots of other expenses.<p>Then I get the news. The remaining few people are being let go.
No apology, no compensation. Just like that.<p>To some degree it's a game of luck, I guess, but I've been actively refusing their offers ever since. Fool me once...
Early in my career, I thought I was always doing someone a favour by making them a job offer. After all, I'm just giving them more options to choose between, right?<p>Later I learned people who end up out of a job won't see it that way. Especially if they've quit a secure job and relocated.<p>In my case I was on the fence about a guy I interviewed, I gave him the benefit of the doubt, it didn't work out and I had to fire him. Hiring someone just as you're about to have big layoffs is even worse, as the blame isn't shared - it's all on the employer.<p>Now when I hire, I do everything I can to avoid this sort of mistake :)
I used to work as a developer in a logistics firm.<p>For a short while it was going through some financial difficulties. It was no secret among the staff, many of whom were jumping ship. Those that weren't (myself included) were making plans to do the same.<p>Despite this the MD insisted on keeping the recruitment process going and carrying through with the graduate recruitment scheme. His reasoning was that he couldn't claim that his company was growing if it wasn't hiring. It was deception plain and simple, but for this particular MD morals were merely something he had once heard about.<p>Come the hour they did have to withdraw firm offers for both experienced hires and five graduates. It was particularly nasty for the graduates as they went through a ridiculously extensive recruitment process - including spending a weekend away at a woodland activity centre where they were forced to do team building exercises and climb a mountain in the dark.<p>Long story short, they kept the recruitment process going to make it look like the company was doing better than it was.<p>It was brutal, but the MD didn't care. He was probably more worried about where his next Merc was coming from.
As a layperson, I'm surprised this is legal.<p>First and foremost, why wouldn't you be entitled to whatever notice/pay your employment contract stipulates? Even in an at-will environment, I imagine if the contract says the employer must give you 4 weeks of notice, well, that's what they owe you.<p>Furthermore, at some point, hiring people that you have good reason to suspect you won't be able to employ must become fraudulent, no?<p>I'd talk to a lawyer unless the contract was never signed.
> The challenge wasn’t trivial and I spent the whole weekend working on it (~20hours)<p>For this shit alone they should be burned to the ground. Why do recruiters do these silly "homeworks"? Every time I hear this during a recruitment I'm like "ooooh, so you just do a mass-casting, and see who's the most desperate?". Nope, nope, nope...
I can't imagine that you don't get any compensation. Germany has good rights for employees. I would contact an attorney for employment law. Maybe you can get something. I mean you are in a very unpleasant situation.<p>All the best for you.
Having been in a similar situation myself I can sympathize. And knowing companies just get away with it helps you realize that you should never ever feel any loyalty towards an employer, potential or current.
This is disgusting behavior from Soundcloud upper management, they need to be held liable for breach of contract. How could upper management be allowing recruiting at the same time they are planning massive layoffs. Ridiculous.
Very unfortunate and hopefully there is a way for the victim to be compensated. I once worked at a financial instituion where they hired a bunch of contractors for a project which didn't have an approved budget. Somehow the budget was never approved and after a week or two all of the contractors were let go. Many of them moved from several states away and left previous jobs. I guess there is an increased level of risk if you're a contractor but I still thought it was pretty callous to hire 15+ people from all over the country if the budget wasn't a stone cold lock for approval.
OP got screwed eastern European style. Over here we have short sides of all three sticks: no job security, miserable salaries, and non existent social support. What's infuriating for me personally is that managers deciding to fire oftentimes are employed themselves by a subsidiary in a country with high job security (e.g. Germany, Sweden), playing with the EU's free movement of workers in a very nasty and exploitive manner.
It’s bad, but not as bad as a making an offer to someone (me), having that someone leave the country to finalize get the work visa and finalize the move, and then cancelling the offer. That was not cool.<p>Oh good old times when I ‘trusted’ these mother fucking companies.
So I believe the CTO referred to in the article is Artem Fishman from Yahoo based on this article:<p><a href="https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/soundcloud-co-founder-eric-wahlforss-switches-role-as-it-hires-cto/" rel="nofollow">https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/soundcloud-co-founder...</a>
Honestly this is what scares me about moving countries to join startups and small companies (and even established companies). It doesn't help that I have 3 months notice at current job - plenty of time for the company to dissolve the contract.<p>In fact, a friend of mine did the very same thing (wanted to move to a Berlin startup two years ago) and also he was terminated before he arrived. Don't know how the financial side of the issue was solved though.<p>Regarding the notice period, regulations probably differ by country, AFAIK in some countries notice is period is gradually increasing, i.e. on day 1 it's measured in days, not in weeks/months. That complicates things a lot. When you move countries, the company is in much more comfortable position for the first few weeks.
This behaviour just further adds to my list of reasons I will not trust any company no matter how cool they might try to act. A company is ultimately only interested in itself. It's not your friend. The fact this guy was moving country just makes it even more disgusting.
This is unfortunate. I hope you find a new place quickly - having the rug pulled out from under your feet does not seem to make for a pleasant experience.<p>It's an interesting look into a management team convincing itself of a better financial situation then what the actual situation was, and makes you wonder how far down the chain any indication of impending layoffs / tight financial situation traveled. I must imagine the CTO would know himself, but perhaps he was given explicit affirmation that financials would be alright for hires like this, until all of a sudden it wasn't?
Don't give 20 hours of your life to a programming excercise for a job application, unless they are compensating you.<p>If your new employer sets your start date 7 weeks in the future, keep interviewing. You don't have a job yet.<p>I recently signed an offer letter with a firm that required a drug and background screen and a start date 2 weeks out. So knowing i didn't actually have a job yet, I kept interviewing, received two more job offers, and took the best one. i called the first company the friday before my monday start and told them i wasn't coming in.
The CTO who made the phone call appears to be Artem Fishman: <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/12/soundcloud-co-founder-takes-product-role-yahoo-alum-steps-in-as-cto/" rel="nofollow">https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/12/soundcloud-co-founder-take...</a>
You should definitely consult a lawyer as i'm guessing you have a german contract. Even if you haven't started but signed everything you have something called trial period (Probezeit) which has at least a two weeks notice for termination.
> In the evening, I finally received a response from the recruiter. She was on the sick leave without knowing any details about the situation. She forwarded me to her manager.<p>It's very likely the recruiter was laid off too.
long story a little bit short with details
1. OP quit his original job and applied for SoundCloud
2. OP passed the code challenge and interview and was recruited, its quite positive
3. OP is about to relocate to Berlin but
4. SoundCloud then announced the layoff and OP was one of them! Just before his contract is going to be activated
5. OP is now unemployed, alone in Berlin, frightened and hopeless
WHY on earth is this FLAGGED!? it is important to draw attention to acts of gross negligence, like this hiring at soundcloud, so that companies (1) see the impacts of such irresponsible behavior and hopefully do not repeat something like it (2) find help for him to get back on his feet immediately. i am a current soundclouder (iOS developer) but was not part of the interview process for him. i can vouch that the situation was awful well before he got the offer, and they mislead him. the hiring should have stopped long ago, and soundcloud has put peoples' lives off course in the short/medium term because of their reckless hiring when they were running out of money. shameful
And now this has been flagged? Why???<p>HN should really implement some kind of system where flagged posts would be listed, together with a reason (and maybe, why not, an appeals process).
Maybe the empathy is misplaced, but this seems like 90% of airing of the dirty laundry of Soundcloud and 10% of asking if anyone is looking for someone to hire. I think you could have done the latter without throwing Soundcloud under the bus _too much_.<p>Yes, they screwed you out of what was an accepted job offer, and you should definitely do everything in your power to get anything that was owed to you, after carefully reading the employment contract and researching your rights, however I'm sure that CTO (and the company as a whole) is not having a great time either. There was already cause for some reservations given the bad press that was circling the company... Shit happens.