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

Re: Evernote cuts 47 employees and shuts down 3 offices

#361

Post by mrmondo » Wed, Sep 30, 2015, 12:03 PM UTC

lepht wrote: post #181

mrmondo wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you submitted it as a feature request to their support? I get the feeling they just don't have enough people asking for it.

Markdown support has been a common feature request for years, with many feature requests in their forums as well as entire blog posts from fairly prominent bloggers – just try googling "Evernote markdown support". I've had the strong suspicion for a long time now that they simply aren't listening to these sorts of feature requests that don't tie into their enterprise/business focus – at least since about 2013.

They just tweeted me back saying: "We don't have full markdown support, but check out this post for an update on where our editor is going: https://blog.evernote.com/blog/2015/09/22/the-future-of-writ...

Re: Evernote cuts 47 employees and shuts down 3 offices

#362

Post by Pxtl » Wed, Sep 30, 2015, 12:05 PM UTC

I use evernote for shopping lists and logging my workouts - not exactly mission-critical stuff. It is buggy and I frequently find my last amendment reverted. I cannot imagine using it professionally.

Re: Evernote cuts 47 employees and shuts down 3 offices

#363

Post by PhantomGremlin » Wed, Sep 30, 2015, 12:06 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #327

PhantomGremlin wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is very helpful. Now their business model makes sense. I wonder why they don't even mention Simperium on their home page? It's not even mentioned under Help. It's a secret? They even have a a perfect opportunity to mention it. E.g. in Simplenote Help they say: Q: How does syncing work? A: All notes are synced between your device ... they automatically and wirelessly show up in the other locations I guess they wa…

> I guess they want us to hypothesize that magical "Data Fairies" do this syncing? No, they hypothetize that the average user wants a high level description, not to read about servers, incremental sync protocols, etc.

They could have added this sentence, more or less:

   The secret sauce underlying this syncing is
   Simperium, a service for developers to move
   data everywhere it's needed, instantly and
   automatically

One extra sentence would have overwhelmed the average user? Bah.

Re: Evernote cuts 47 employees and shuts down 3 offices

#364

Post by Pxtl » Wed, Sep 30, 2015, 12:08 PM UTC

curiousjorge wrote: post #234

Nursie wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something that came pre-installed on my last phone and couldn't be removed, and obnoxiously kept updating itself and asking for more permissions. No idea what it does, that annoyed me too much to ever find out.

that explains it. I feel like a lot of these startup companies cater to SV because outside of SV people are completely unaware or unappreciative (doesn't see any disruption in note taking move along). Makes me wonder how many SV unicorns will flop next year. My prediction is Twitter and Hoosuite.

Twitter? The media darling twitter, that is used by every celebrity, artist and PR person? Of course not.

Re: Evernote cuts 47 employees and shuts down 3 offices

#365

Post by coldtea » Wed, Sep 30, 2015, 12:10 PM UTC

PhantomGremlin wrote: post #363

coldtea wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I guess they want us to hypothesize that magical "Data Fairies" do this syncing? No, they hypothetize that the average user wants a high level description, not to read about servers, incremental sync protocols, etc.

They could have added this sentence, more or less: The secret sauce underlying this syncing is Simperium, a service for developers to move data everywhere it's needed, instantly and automatically One extra sentence would have overwhelmed the average user? Bah.

That doesn't provide any more information to the average user -- which I thought was what was being asked for here. What's "Simperium"? Just a name they don't know to them.

Re: Evernote cuts 47 employees and shuts down 3 offices

#366

Post by jmadsen » Wed, Sep 30, 2015, 12:13 PM UTC

kasey_junk wrote: post #25

jmadsen wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more than common vernacular in English. "Fired" implies wrong-doing on their part. "Laid off" or "let them go" means the company couldn't afford to pay them, or didn't need them anymore. It leaves no black mark against their name.

I've always found it striking to note how laid off has migrated over time. When my grandfather got laid off, there was an expectation that he would come back to the same job with the same company some time in the near future. When I get laid off there is no expectation that my job will come back.

that's exactly right - factories in town use to lay off workers seasonally, then call them back in later.

Can't put my finger on when exactly, but during one of our recessions they stopped getting called back, and then companies started to realize once the local union was busted they could hire new workers at a fraction of the price, and...here you are.

Re: Evernote cuts 47 employees and shuts down 3 offices

#367

Post by greyman » Wed, Sep 30, 2015, 12:21 PM UTC

everly wrote: post #66

austenallred wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Agreed; Google Keep has become my preference for immediate note taking. I think a major factor in Evernote's long-term survival is the friction of switching to a competitor (in conjunction with getting a lot of early traction with power-users).

What I find missing is a native Windows client. For me, "immediate" note taking means that I just hit ctrl-alt-N (or click Evernote icon in a tray), and I am immediately writing. In Google Keep, you basically need to visit a webpage, which is just not immediate. Or you use it only on mobile device?

Re: Evernote cuts 47 employees and shuts down 3 offices

#368

Post by johannes1234321 » Wed, Sep 30, 2015, 12:22 PM UTC

encoderer wrote: post #151

Why did they have so many offices?

"The three offices that closed were in Taiwan, Singapore, and Moscow, according to a company spokeswoman. While the Moscow office was more development-focused, the other two were concentrated on sales and marketing. All of its Asian operations will be relocated to Seoul, South Korea, although it will maintain an office in China." http://uk.businessinsider.com/evernote-layoffs-2015-9?r=US&I...

Mind that "an office" can be only one or two persons doing some local marketing work or do some specific feature implementation.

Re: Evernote cuts 47 employees and shuts down 3 offices

#369

Post by gaurangagrawal » Wed, Sep 30, 2015, 12:27 PM UTC

jason_slack wrote: post #106

I was an Evernote Premium customer and enjoyed multi-device syncing and private notebooks. I had my own account, paid for out of my own pocket for a year. The company I worked for also decided to used Evernote and I could see our "Team" notebooks, right along with my stuff. When the company stopped using it, not only did I lose the "Team" notebooks, it took all of my personal data with it. I lost everything. Support…

I haven't experienced this so far but after reading about your experience, I just took backup of my evernotes.

Re: Evernote cuts 47 employees and shuts down 3 offices

#370

Post by thanatropism » Wed, Sep 30, 2015, 12:27 PM UTC

yorak wrote: post #299

lukefreiler wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently lost nearly a days writing - but apparently they only do a back-up every 8 hours, and I was off by one (I don't write in Evernote anymore, lesson learned). They did try to placate with 3 months free (after being a paying customer for years), but I'm just amazed that with the ~$300M of VC they've raised, they still haven't caught up to the real-time sync of Google Docs of 8+ years ago. Hopefully their new f…

Somebody here at HN suggested using Zim wiki a while ago http://zim-wiki.org/ I've been using it ever since. It stores data in plain text files (dokuwiki markup) and in addition the folder structure is mirrored in the note hierarchy. Zim is open, cross-platform, can include Latex-formula, and is extendable with plugins written in Python. I really also like that it is a proper desktop application instead of some webap…

I used a lot of Evernote as well, but what killed it for me was how slow the mobile client was.

I didn't "switch" as much as I've started (inspired by Luhmann's Zettelkasten) a personal wiki of sorts in markdown files. I've been using 1Writer for iPad (as a separate app from Editorial and iaWriter, where I usually compose text), which already lists the files in a folder on the left-hand side of the screen.

I also have a script on a Linux server that watches for changes in that folder and auto-commits to a local git repo under increasing "version numbers".