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Grindr Loses Nearly Half Its Staff To Strict Return-To-Work Rule (nypost.com) 164

Posted by BeauHD from the 50%-off dept.
Nearly half of LGBTQ dating app Grindr's workforce has quit after the company enacted a strict two-day-per-week in-office requirement -- and furious staffers claim the mandate was in retaliation for their campaign to unionize. From a report: Last month, Grindr informed employees that they had two weeks to decide whether they would relocate to a "hub" office location and work on site two days per week or terminate their employment, according to the labor group Communications Workers of America. Through the end of August, about 80 employees -- roughly 45% of Grindr's 180-person workforce -- had left the company due to the mandate, union organizers said.

Grindr offered a severance package for employees who could not or would not comply with the relocation requirement -- a move that the group described as an attempt "to silence workers from speaking out about their working conditions." "These decisions have left Grindr dangerously understaffed and raises questions about the safety, security and stability of the app for users," said Erick Cortez, a member of Grindr United-CWA. "It is clear Grindr wants workers to be silenced and deterred from exercising our right to organize, regardless of the expense."

Grindr employees had announced their intent to unionize on July 20 through CWA, but the labor drive has yet to receive formal recognition. The company announced its return-to-office mandate on Aug. 4. The CWA has filed a formal complaint on behalf of Grindr employees with the National Labor Relations Board, alleging that the company's actions amounted to unlawful retaliation. "It is unimaginably disappointing that dozens of our colleagues have had to leave their jobs because Grindr management did not want to sit down with workers and respect our right to organize," Cortez added. A Grindr spokesperson said in a statement: "We have full confidence in our team and their ability to continue to drive the business forward and make the world and lives of our users freer, more tolerant, and more just. We are looking forward to returning to the office in a hybrid model in October and further improving productivity and collaboration for our entire team."
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Grindr Loses Nearly Half Its Staff To Strict Return-To-Work Rule More

Grindr Loses Nearly Half Its Staff To Strict Return-To-Work Rule

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  • Say what? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Thursday September 07, 2023 @07:18PM (#63830856)

    These decisions have left Grindr dangerously understaffed and raises questions about the safety, security and stability of the app for users

    What the hell are you people doing to the software on a daily basis that a few people leaving would "compromise" the software this much? Are you randomly changing lines of code to make yourself useful? Are you making changes to production?

    Every time I hear crap like this it only reinforces my belief that programmers* a) are not the great magicians they claim to be, b) are not worth the exorbitant salaries they claim they need, and c) make changes solely for the sake of justifying their existence.

    * The same for so called web "designers". If you're fiddling with your site every other week you need to be kicked out the door.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by godrik ( 1287354 )

      To be fair, it is not "a few people leaving", it's "half the workforce leaving".

      For large web applications, just keeping the application up and running while patching the security flaws in the crazy amount of dependencies modern web frameworks have could very well be the full time work of a small team.

      Now maybe we need to rethink how we do webstuff to decrease maintenance overhead, but at the moment, keeping things running is not free.

      • Re:Say what? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Frankie70 ( 803801 ) on Thursday September 07, 2023 @07:59PM (#63830964)

        Twitter seems to be doing fine after laying off much more of it's workforce.

        • See how brightly it burns?

        • Twitter seems to be doing fine after laying off much more of it's workforce.

          If that really happened, Twitter laying off more than 50% of its staff, you'd think that would be newsworthy enough to generate a story on Slashdot. Yet, there has never been a story on Slashdot about Twitter laying people off after Musk took over. I'm thinking you read about that on a different news source.

          • My only news source is Slashdot. What is this Twitter? I heard on Slashdot that there was a Threads that sucked or something. It that a twitter? Maybe I could read about it under Technology. I'll do a search. I'll be back when the search works.

            • Oh how you smirk, at the slashdot/twitter/X shadow news ban since Elmo bought the farm. Just look at my news submission history. (Doesn't Twitter/X do something with software and data centers, along with legal implications anymore? News for Nerds would appreciate being kept up-to-date.)

        • Do you actually use it? It degraded enough to break my sister-in-law's addiction to it.

        • Twitter seems to be doing fine after laying off much more of it's workforce.

          Spoken like a man who doesnt use twitter.

          Twitter was a mess for months after the takeover. Functions would just randomly stop working for a day, entire continents would lose access for a period of time (Presumably the local AWS region catching on fire) and in some cases that was because the only person who knew how that thing worked had been retrenched.

          It still kind of is a mess. I'm pretty regularly logging in to see the wall not u

          • Twitter is gone, it's now Ex. If you think of Ex as a new and inexperienced startup, then it's actually doing pretty well.

    • Re:Say what? (Score:5, Informative)

      by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Thursday September 07, 2023 @08:31PM (#63831024)

      These decisions have left Grindr dangerously understaffed and raises questions about the safety, security and stability of the app for users

      What the hell are you people doing to the software on a daily basis that a few people leaving would "compromise" the software this much? Are you randomly changing lines of code to make yourself useful? Are you making changes to production?

      Every time I hear crap like this it only reinforces my belief that programmers* a) are not the great magicians they claim to be, b) are not worth the exorbitant salaries they claim they need, and c) make changes solely for the sake of justifying their existence.

      * The same for so called web "designers". If you're fiddling with your site every other week you need to be kicked out the door.

      Several points.

      1) It doesn't matter how mature your software is, half the workforce leaving means that you're going to lose critical expertise in sections of the codebase. This means the remaining devs are more likely to create bugs and less likely to be able to fix them. Remember, it has a lot of libraries and infrastructure and they have theor own vulnerabilities that are constantly being discovered. Keeping the platform secure means constantly responding to these new vulnerabilities.

      2) Software doesn't exist in a vacuum, a big web based app like grindr is going to be under constant attack, ddos, hacked credentials, etc. You need good IT staff to respond to those attacks.

      3) For any app with a lot of users, particularly a dating app, there's going to be support requirements. Some of that will just be user questions, some of that it going to be dealing with dangerous or predatory users. You need a certain ratio of support staff to keep the bad apples in check.

    • I work for a small software company. Between myself and our other developers we don't do web site stuff, but just keeping up with changes, bug fixes, security fixes, etc., in the various SDKs and APIs we use from other vendors is a full time job by itself for several people. Try creating a web site with a lot of traffic and then don't touch the code for a month or so. See how long it lasts.

    • Programmer salary is not based on need. What programmers "claim they need" has nothing at all to do with it. It's based on supply and demand in the labor market.

      Employers are the ones who think they need programmers. And lots of them. More than are available in the market. So employers must bid against each other to convince the programmers to work for them, and that drives salaries up.

      There were periods in our lifetime when the market shifted and demand for programmers fell precipitously (such as the

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        It's best to avoid companies that react to market conditions with lay-offs and low salaries.

        You will end up working on some ancient, poorly documented code that you grow to hate. All the vital institutional knowledge is lost, and nobody gives a shit about the next guy because they figure it's probably not going to be them. Bodge on top of bodge, no coherent architecture or plan.

        It's best to avoid software from such companies too. Avoid ones that are too heavily into Agile as well.

    • If they're like most online services, the majority of employees are probably reviewing profiles/content for TOS violations.

    • These decisions have left Grindr dangerously understaffed and raises questions about the safety, security and stability of the app for users

      What the hell are you people doing to the software on a daily basis that a few people leaving would "compromise" the software this much? Are you randomly changing lines of code to make yourself useful? Are you making changes to production?

      You must not work in the industry or you must have only worked for tiny startups. When you are their size, you're constantly having to patch working code and add continuous metrics for performance and monetization. These apps are data collection platforms, so a lot of the logic in there is probably deducing behavior of their users for marketing purposes. Even if they're not changing visible features or adding new ways of collecting or analyzing data, they're in a constant battle with bots and attackers.

    • What the hell are you people doing to the software on a daily basis that a few people leaving would "compromise" the software this much?

      You sound like an executive! Apparently, you think software maintains itself, or maybe you think that once software is released, you can walk away because it's "done." That's not how it works in the real world.

      In the real world, any non-trivial construction must be maintained, or it quickly disintegrates. That's true whether it's a house, a road system, or software.

    • These things are rarely "Half the workforce" Thanos style. Its "Well the marketing guys are still all here, but the entire deployment team quit" or whatever.

      This might blow your mind, but websites aren't "Nest of PHP on a VM" anymore, and havent been for a long time. Theres usually a full devops deployment system, something like a Kubernetes system coordinating all them containers (and those are not "Log into the backend and click deploy" type systems) , or a giant mess of lambda nodes that can take months

    • Or was the code so poorly written and rushed into production in the first place that it needs continuous hands-on maintenance to keep it's hard disks from filling and thus shutting down it's function?

      I have seen more than a few PROPER production environments where code maintenance required one-half to one-tenth the amount of programming staff that was required to develop the programs in the first place.

    • Incredible isn't it? Devs work on one product, testers work on one product, there's only ONE peoduct and it's already out there and doing very well.... meanwhile some in IT are out there supporting tens of different applications of vast complexity. Sure, I get that working conditions are important and especially work/life balance but what are these devs doing all day?

    • Are you randomly changing lines of code to make yourself useful?

      Your question has been redirected to Management.

      Are you making changes to production?

      Your question has been redirected to Management.

      Every time I hear crap like this it only reinforces my belief that [I have never written a software product].

      There, fixed that for you.
      If you had even a smidgen of a clue of what it's like to create and maintain a body of software via 2nd party, you would be kissing the feet of programmers worldwide. Even maintaining a pet projects, when it's under constant attack by users and losers alike, can be a nightmare.

      That you think creating reliable software is easy is a testament to how hard developers have worked to promulgat

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      These decisions have left Grindr dangerously understaffed and raises questions about the safety, security and stability of the app for users

      What the hell are you people doing to the software on a daily basis that a few people leaving would "compromise" the software this much? Are you randomly changing lines of code to make yourself useful? Are you making changes to production?

      Every time I hear crap like this it only reinforces my belief that programmers* a) are not the great magicians they claim to be, b) are not worth the exorbitant salaries they claim they need, and c) make changes solely for the sake of justifying their existence.

      * The same for so called web "designers". If you're fiddling with your site every other week you need to be kicked out the door.

      Critical bugs don't operate on a time table.

      Beyond that, it's more than just programmers (although you can bet the most useful people left), but content, compliance and a dozen other functions. Especially when you're operating an application designed for gay people to use in the most puritan developed country on earth, you have people gunning for you from every angle.

      Also it was 80 out of 180 people that left... That is going to affect your ability to do anything.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by shibbie ( 619359 )
      The 45% were the skilled developers who could easily find other employment. The rest are managers who lack the skill or are slackers (in BTTF nomenclature) for whom this is the best job they could get. The skilled engineers leave it well maintained but the minute you need a new feature, well, witness X's name change and how long it's taking to scrub Twitter assets.

    • What the hell are you people doing to the software on a daily basis that a few people leaving would "compromise" the software this much?

      Standard business. Everywhere I've ever worked, at least 1/3 of the people fell into a category I call "what the hell do they do?" And not just miscellaneous jobs here and there, but even in a software or hardware development team there is always a segment of people who don't seem to really do anything. There are always people who seem to only have high paying jobs because they must have deep blackmail on an executive This is just a normal part work life.

      Are you randomly changing lines of code to make yourself useful?

      You mean "Agile."

      Are you making changes to production?

      You mean "continuous delivery."

    • Not everyone is a goddam SWE.

  • The song, Grinder has become hilarious years later,,, Never straight and narrow I won't keep in time Tend to burn the arrow out of the line Been inclined to wander Off the beaten track That's where there's thunder And the wind shouts back Grinder Looking for meat Grinder Wants you to eat
  • By any standard, the content on Grindr is some of the most sex-forward and raunchy stuff you can put in any app store and not get your app banned. It's an app used predominately for quick hookups, and I'd guess 50% of the content and pictures shared were either pornographic or extremely sexually suggestive. This puts it in the same category with porn pretty much, which is well known to be a dodgy industry that isn't so great to work in.

    The mistake here was the employees thought that somehow because of t

    • The fact that you can describe promiscuity and union busting as "sleazy" doesn't mean they actually go hand in hand. Purity culture and union busting can co-occur too. There's an industry union for sex workers in the UK.

      Every mid-to-large tech company is worried about unionization around now. Grindr isn't unique.

  • ANY company that has half the people quit because they want them to show up in the office 16 hours a week should have that right. If you say it's because of a union, then the union demanding the workers should NOT show up 16 hours per week is making unreasonable demands.

    Does it "fix things" if it's company X? No, it doesn't. But, it apparently makes good headlines.

    A lot of companies are requesting people show up at least twice per week. Some are requesting more than that. Does that make them all evil?

    • Re:Who it is does not matter (Score:5, Funny)

      by Powercntrl ( 458442 ) on Thursday September 07, 2023 @10:37PM (#63831226) Homepage

      ANY company that has half the people quit because they want them to show up in the office 16 hours a week should have that right.

      I guess you could say they didn't want to go back to the daily grind(r).

    • Is a company evil that demands something from their workers that has no reason rooted in the requirements of their work?

      If I demand you're wearing uncomfortable shoes while working, and these shoes are not mandated by some kind of safety rule, would you consider that evil?

      What if I demand you wear a silly hat that makes you look like a dork and I use it to make sure everyone in the office knows you're from a particular department?

      At what point is a pointless mandate evil?

    • Any company that has half the people quit is bad at capitalism.

  • The US is insane and the rest of the world just watches us and laughs. I've been living and working outside the US for years now and it floors me that every time I've spoke to a recruiter about opportunities state-side they're almost always apologetic when explaining that the job is not remote eligible. As if I'm entitled to such a thing.

    Nearly 50%? Good. Pre-covid people that wanted to stay at home rather than go to the office were either unemployed (congratulations) or self-employed (here's their oppor

  • I've used Grindr. It's crap for dating; but handy for getting laid if sex is all that you're interested in. But it's not a particularly complex or impressive app. Right now, I work for a much smaller startup than 180 people and only a few dozen of us are engineers and... I really don't know how to say this without coming off as braggadocious... but what we've built with many fewer than 180 people in many fewer years than Grindr has been around is much more featureful, stable, and, in my experience, all-a

    • I met my partner through gay.com. I think they've changed owners at least once since then. The idea that gays are just loaded with tons of disposable income is a myth. Most of these sites believe it though and think that by catering to gays they're going to make profit out the ass, but then the money doesn't come and the investors start getting blue balls.

      I think I might've over-metaphored that just a bit.

    • So you don't want to brag that what you've built is far less successful than Grindr? Noted.

      • I'm only commenting about the quality and features of the app and how many people it should take to build the thing, We're not even marketing yet; so I don't know what sort of flex you're trying to make. But when we go live, it will already be a higher-quality app than Grindr's.

        • Craigslist used to be an online hookup spot back in the day. The only thing that makes a better mousetrap when it comes to casual gay sex is having a critical mass of users so enough of them can match with each other.

          Legalities and ethical concerns aside, you'd probably have a better business model skipping the whole app thing and instead just cloning twinks. Those are always in high demand.

        • I'm only commenting about the quality and features of the app and how many people it should take to build the thing, We're not even marketing yet; so I don't know what sort of flex you're trying to make. But when we go live, it will already be a higher-quality app than Grindr's.

          Well of course it will - you started later. You're in a position to benefit from years of language and library development that existing apps can't due to the need to keep operating and making money. A couple of years down the line, someone else will be in the same position as you are now but in respect to you. You really shouldn't be surprised by what you've accomplished.

  • "We are looking forward to returning to the office in a hybrid model in October and further improving productivity and collaboration for our entire team."

    ...or at least the ones that are still left.

    I fully expect a few other companies to commit corporate suicide by turning the screws too hard before the C-suites learn their lesson, but in the end, remote work is here to stay, because:

    • There's no good reason for people to spend an hour driving into work when 95% of their work involves limited collaboration and 95% of so-called "collaboration" involves bulls**t large meetings that don't contribute meaningfully to productivity.
    • There's no good reason to live i

  • Such a missed opportunity to note that a whole bunch of workers refused to return to the grind at Grindr.

  • Losing 50% means losing the rest soon after (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Friday September 08, 2023 @02:16AM (#63831530)

    Ponder this: Even if you don't care that you RTO, you are now expected to pull double duty. You have to pick up the slack of one additional person because, well, you think you'll find a replacement any time soon with a 50% office mandate? Keep dreaming. And even if you do, you would need a few months to get the new person up to speed.

    Until then you are expected to work double shifts. For how much extra pay you ask? Got more such zingers?

    What do you think how long it takes 'til the rest of the remaining workers says "fuck this!" and throw in their towel, too?

  • There is a new burger app?

  • ...from Aruba.

  • Title should say âoeGrindr Loses Nearly Half Its Staff To STIFF Return-To-Work Ruleâ. Itâ(TM)s been hard on a lot of staff.

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