SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices • Hacker News Board

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#61

Post by cmrdporcupine » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 5:17 PM UTC

dna_polymerase wrote: post #56

ohsnapman wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's up with reductionist posts like this every time a company announces layoffs? Scaling out a global business takes a lot more work than it does to run a no-SLA side project. And you hire people to build out businesses that don't yet exist. When you've overreached, or targets are consistently not being met, you re-org, or, if that isn't possible, you scale back.

> What's up with reductionist posts like this every time a company announces layoffs? I hate people like this. "Oh I could build that in like a weekend with Go and React no need for 100s of devs..." Those statements only come from people who never built something even remotely in this size and have no idea how complex this stuff becomes when done proper.

Glad you hate people like me, that's very inciteful :-)

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#62

Post by cookiecaper » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 5:18 PM UTC

jonbarker wrote: post #40

cookiecaper wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

File hosting is just not a profitable enterprise. This pattern should be familiar by now: gain prominence by giving away tons of stuff to draw in users, and then clamp down when the bill comes due, resulting in a hard pivot that alienates the users. The truth is that users are not loyal. If you are offering something for free, they will be happy to take it, and they will have no qualms about moving on when you stop g…

Isn't facebook basically file hosting with a bunch of links?

Facebook is infrastructure. It provides the connections out to your personal network. Facebook's staying power comes from its ability to say "This is the best way to communicate with your personal network at any time". "File hosting" is just one subelement of that, because one of the things that you may want to share is a file.

Couldn't the whole internet be generalized as "file hosting with a bunch of links"? A "file host" is a company whose primary purpose is for you to upload a file and give the link to someone else; they're a middleman that exists only because a more convenient/direct means of distribution to the intended network isn't available. This does not make the company nearly loud enough to establish its own identity/user base.

Facebook has always been its own repository of people intelligence. It was never just an "upload your photos here". Such platforms, like Photobucket or Imgur, sometimes prosper for a while, until the communication channels that reach the intended audience directly offer something easier. (imgur is going down now as reddit introduced its own image host last year)

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#63

Post by greglindahl » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 5:19 PM UTC

Shivetya wrote: post #37

dustinmoris wrote: post #22

They also laid off the entire New York team and at least some individuals in Berlin: https://twitter.com/pje_txt/status/882977097232338947 https://twitter.com/katalunia_/status/882992899893460993 > Well, SoundCloud just laid off all of its New York engineering > Literally the entire payments and subscriptions team, ads-eng, monetization engineering, everybody > Not really clear to me how the execs think this company…

have someone lined up to buy them and removing duplicated jobs to make themselves more appealing?

Normally such layoffs are made when an acquisition closes.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#64

Post by connorzwick » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 5:20 PM UTC

aaronlevin wrote: post #19

SoundCloud employee here. If you are hiring, please reach out to people from SoundCloud. The decisions of who to let go were not based on performance. A lot of amazing people, both attitude and technically.

Thanks Aaron - we're aggressively hiring for iOS and Android at Speak (YC W17) in San Francisco.

Speak is an AI English tutor that has spoken conversations with users who want to become better at speaking English -- so audio is core to our experience. If you were on the mobile team at Soundcloud we'd love to talk - email me personally at connorzwick gmail.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#65

Post by seddona » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 5:20 PM UTC

aaronlevin wrote: post #19

SoundCloud employee here. If you are hiring, please reach out to people from SoundCloud. The decisions of who to let go were not based on performance. A lot of amazing people, both attitude and technically.

We (circuithub.com) are hiring for Haskell roles in London. Open to folks with some functional experience, scalaz etc.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#66

Post by thomasbarton » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 5:21 PM UTC

aaronlevin wrote: post #19

SoundCloud employee here. If you are hiring, please reach out to people from SoundCloud. The decisions of who to let go were not based on performance. A lot of amazing people, both attitude and technically.

hi - feel free to drop a resume at thomas(@t)returnly.com - java, ruby, and docker - https://returnly.com/

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#67

Post by Randgalt » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 5:23 PM UTC

jinder wrote: post #16

Soundcloud started dying when they decided to be more like Spotify and less like the independent music discovery service they started out as. Now they have an app and experience that is not particularly good at either.

Exactly - I'm a hobbyist musician and have all my music there. But, the last year or so they've been focusing on podcasting, etc. and, as you say, it's not good at any of that. For people like me, they haven't offered any new features in a long time.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#68

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 5:23 PM UTC

lukashed wrote: post #52

phreeza wrote: post #15

Their Github org seems to have gone from 45 to 37 members. Not sure what that means, do they only have 37 devs? https://github.com/orgs/soundcloud/people https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Lo9slf... edit: now it's at 35... ouch

I wonder why they decided to remove them from GitHub already [1] when they were given a 90 days notice [2]. [1] https://twitter.com/pje_txt/status/882983954059595776 [2] https://twitter.com/pje_txt/status/882981765064871937

[deleted]

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#69

Post by ryandrake » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 5:24 PM UTC

jinder wrote: post #16

Soundcloud started dying when they decided to be more like Spotify and less like the independent music discovery service they started out as. Now they have an app and experience that is not particularly good at either.

I've worked at a few places that died this way. CEO: "We're #1 in $NICHE. But growth is the only way, so we need to compete in $BIG_MARKET." [months of de-focus later] CEO: "We're only #10 in $BIG_MARKET and now we totally lost $NICHE!!" Resume writing ensues...

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#70

Post by gorkonsine » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 5:24 PM UTC

pmoriarty wrote: post #9

For me as a music producer and consumer, one of the most frustrating changes recently made my Soundcloud has been their cancellation of groups, which used to be a decent means of discovering new music related to kinds of music you already like. Once groups were cancelled, the listens on the songs I post to Soundcloud plummeted to virtually nothing, and I really don't bother to upload my music there anymore, nor to go…

This shows why the modern trend of not buying music and just subscribing to streaming services is so short-sighted. The companies are all basically fly-by-night, and can change their product in a heartbeat, leaving you with something substantially different from what you're used to.