Flock's Employees Are Demoralized and Quitting as Backlash Mounts
Flock is rolling out a voluntary severance program
Flock, the surveillance camera startup, is offering voluntary severance as public opposition takes a toll on staff morale. Hacker News commenters predict a rebrand or subsidiary shuffle to escape scrutiny, comparing it to Axon's name change from TASER. Many note the bipartisan anger is unusual, since Flock provides no direct consumer benefit, making the surveillance feel more immediate and threatening.
How could those innocent employees have predicted that helping to build out a surveillance state would make them unpopular?
- wyrdcurt
Related from a couple days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49762835
- andix
My prediction: they are going to change their name and move a lot of their business to multiple subsidiary with different names. Until nobody notices anymore it's all one company formerly known as Flock.
- dkobia
Axon which is already well established is quietly stealing Flocks market share while avoiding all the scrutiny.
- neilv
Facebook had a good idea for hiring and retention: pay the highest, and that will boost college students' perceptions of how cool you are.
Facebook got a lot of mileage out of that, running long after public scandals confirmed the early hints of possible sketchiness, back when Google was an attractive alternative.
Though I don't know that's still necessary. The job markets are different now, since there's not many tech employment options that aren't either sketchy or reviled. Anti-AI-worker sentiment seems high lately, outside of HN circles -- much more widespread and negative than I recall any kind of perception of pre-AI tech workers -- yet there aren't a lot of non-AI employment options.
So, some Flock employees might want to leave, over ethics, social status, or company internal culture, but... if they end up at a AI company, they might soon still be seeing a lot of social negative feedback anyway.
("Hi, nice to meet you. ... Me? Oh, I work on, uh, software. ... Yeah, AI is really disrupting things in my field, too. It's been a bit rough, but we're hanging in there.")
- epochbtc
Flock somehow stumbled into a business model that both the left and right politically-leaning groups in the US can join together in hating. That's not easy to do!