Evernote cuts 47 employees and shuts down 3 offices • Hacker News Board

Re: Evernote cuts 47 employees and shuts down 3 offices

#41

Post by jcrawfordor » Tue, Sep 29, 2015, 9:51 PM UTC

on_ wrote: post #29

Evernote is a note taking app in 2015. While slack and hipchat are somewhat iconoclastic, they have network affects and boost productivity. Evernote is competing with apple notes, google docs, whatever microsoft has, every password keeping app, a notebook, a text editor and using a blog. This is something that will likely happen to dropbox and box. You provide storage. Simple math will provide you with the cost of st…

Microsoft has OneNote, which might be a good cautionary tale in this area. OneNote was once the king of note taking, like back in 2003, and it's still a great product. But Microsoft focused too much on the Business market, I think, dropping OneNote from the Office Home packages, and that kind of killed it outside of the corp world.

Re: Evernote cuts 47 employees and shuts down 3 offices

#42

Post by JustSomeNobody » Tue, Sep 29, 2015, 9:51 PM UTC

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #22

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #10

I know that it is the common vernacular, but you didn't let them go, you fired them. Surely they would prefer to not go and continue to pay their mortgage. I'm sure it wasn't easy to fire them, but don't try and make the situation rosey. The folks who decided on the direction of the company decided wrong and now they have to fire the people who executed those decision. Edit: Would you all prefer the word "Terminated"…

"Fir[ing]" an employee suggests they did something wrong. These 47 people did nothing wrong outside of working on a product or products that are no longer relevant to Evernote.

No, it doesn't. Fired can mean termination w/out prejudice.

Re: Evernote cuts 47 employees and shuts down 3 offices

#43

Post by cristianpascu » Tue, Sep 29, 2015, 9:52 PM UTC

trollian wrote: post #35

cyberpanther wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My prediction, the next dead unicorn: Dropbox They are similar in that they haven't made anything note worthy in a while and their main product is really just a feature of bigger companies apps and services.

My favourite question to ask of start-ups: "have you built a product or a feature?"

Is it Steve Jobs that told dropbox founders this?

Re: Evernote cuts 47 employees and shuts down 3 offices

#44

Post by tajano » Tue, Sep 29, 2015, 9:52 PM UTC

cyberpanther wrote: post #17

egusa wrote: post #5

businessinsider had a great article on evernote here, "Evernote, the first dead unicorn", which really foreshadowed this: http://www.businessinsider.com.au/evernote-the-first-dead-un...

My prediction, the next dead unicorn: Dropbox They are similar in that they haven't made anything note worthy in a while and their main product is really just a feature of bigger companies apps and services.

Another prediction: Twitter.

2k+ engineers on staff without notable improvements to the core user-facing product in a while.

Declining signups, declining engagement.

Nobody stepping into the permanent CEO role.

I don't see how this ends well.

Re: Evernote cuts 47 employees and shuts down 3 offices

#45

Post by snowwrestler » Tue, Sep 29, 2015, 9:52 PM UTC

austenallred wrote: post #23

tempestn wrote: post #8

> Evernote’s strength is in its core: notes, sync, and search. That’s where we’re going to focus. Well, like many others, I've been wishing Evernote would drop all the auxiliary stuff and focus on their core product. Hopefully that's exactly what will now happen. Evernote has become an absolutely critical part of my life. Even though I use it for business (along with everything else) though, I have no use for the maj…

It would also be a huge plus if it didn't take 5 seconds to load every time I opened the app. Not sure how a company with so many competitors can survive long-term with its product in such a state.

Everything about Evernote seems to get slower and slower; I hardly use it at all anymore for that reason. Even the browser plugin to save webpages is glacial, and that was a big reason I started with Evernote in the first place.

Re: Evernote cuts 47 employees and shuts down 3 offices

#46

Post by eli » Tue, Sep 29, 2015, 9:53 PM UTC

cyberpanther wrote: post #17

egusa wrote: post #5

businessinsider had a great article on evernote here, "Evernote, the first dead unicorn", which really foreshadowed this: http://www.businessinsider.com.au/evernote-the-first-dead-un...

My prediction, the next dead unicorn: Dropbox They are similar in that they haven't made anything note worthy in a while and their main product is really just a feature of bigger companies apps and services.

File sync is a feature of the Google Suite, but Dropbox is much better than Google Drive. Dropbox gets a lot of subtle things right. Maybe in the long term you're right, but I'm not so sure.

I think Dropbox Teams is too expensive but I'm paying it anyway because I think it's that much better. (I think that's a sign they set the prices exactly right)

Re: Evernote cuts 47 employees and shuts down 3 offices

#47

Post by nemomatic » Tue, Sep 29, 2015, 9:55 PM UTC

Evernote's former CEO promised to focus on core features last year[0]. After 18 months with no improvements, the new CEO makes the same promise of focusing on core features. Seems like a sinking ship to me.

[0] https://blog.evernote.com/blog/2014/01/04/on-software-qualit...

Re: Evernote cuts 47 employees and shuts down 3 offices

#48

Post by lmm » Tue, Sep 29, 2015, 9:55 PM UTC

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #10

I know that it is the common vernacular, but you didn't let them go, you fired them. Surely they would prefer to not go and continue to pay their mortgage. I'm sure it wasn't easy to fire them, but don't try and make the situation rosey. The folks who decided on the direction of the company decided wrong and now they have to fire the people who executed those decision. Edit: Would you all prefer the word "Terminated"…

"Fired" or "terminated" tends to imply for cause which is something different from what's happening here. I'd prefer "laid off", but I think "let go" is pretty unambiguous.

Re: Evernote cuts 47 employees and shuts down 3 offices

#49

Post by 0898 » Tue, Sep 29, 2015, 9:55 PM UTC

cyberpanther wrote: post #17

egusa wrote: post #5

businessinsider had a great article on evernote here, "Evernote, the first dead unicorn", which really foreshadowed this: http://www.businessinsider.com.au/evernote-the-first-dead-un...

My prediction, the next dead unicorn: Dropbox They are similar in that they haven't made anything note worthy in a while and their main product is really just a feature of bigger companies apps and services.

I'm curious: why do you feel Dropbox needs to make something new and noteworthy? Why can't it just stick to its knitting, and continue to offer something that works and people find valuable?

Re: Evernote cuts 47 employees and shuts down 3 offices

#50

Post by gherkin0 » Tue, Sep 29, 2015, 9:56 PM UTC

dasboth wrote: post #9

fwn wrote: post #3

I wish they would ditch the business focus and return to plain old "remember everything". Who on earth needs features like "work chat"?

Couldn't agree more. I remember when I first started using Evernote, the FAQs specifically said "you can't share your notes, that's not the point". Now it's all social and businessy, but I just want an easy and private way to organise my stuff!

> Couldn't agree more. I remember when I first started using Evernote, the FAQs specifically said "you can't share your notes, that's not the point". Now it's all social and businessy, but I just want an easy and private way to organise my stuff!

This[1] article makes the point that they realized they needed business users to make money, and they were trying to appeal to them.

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com.au/evernote-the-first-dead-un...