Layoffs hit Quora • Hacker News Board

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#41

Post by manigandham » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 12:52 AM UTC

codingslave wrote: post #23

Any company that relies on SEO content is basically going to disapear. Google search and their new NLP technology is just extracting the question and answers from content like that on Quora, significantly reducing their page hit volumes. Not only that, other lower ranked content can be verified to be "true" using neural network based NLP, meaning that the value of content has gone down. Google stole the business of q…

They can (and do) put their content behind a login sometimes to prevent this. Either way Google only gets answers as long those answers exist somewhere so I doubt Quora and its alternatives are going away. The site should be rather cheap to run as well (although it's easy to mismanage millions these days).

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#42

Post by hinkley » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 12:52 AM UTC

kiba wrote: post #11

hinkley wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find out Quora is still running every time I make a search query and get pages full of useless answers. Oh, here's a bunch of Quora links. I'm screwed.

Perhaps people shouldn't make startup with something as difficult to make profitable as question and answers type content, and instead leave it for an organization that is oriented to that mission. That way, something like quora would grow more valuable instead of becoming more useless as they attempt to make money out of a squeezed lemon.

I want to be the person who is sympathetic to people being laid off, instead of making light of the situation.

But Quora grinds my gears so hard that I can't separate the two.

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#43

Post by zerkten » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 12:53 AM UTC

Like others I'm amazed that Quora still exists. In my experience it's accessible to people outside the programming bubble, but eschewed a lot of deliberate choices that StackOverflow made back in the early days. The result is that it's more of a question and opinion site, than a question and answer site.

There isn't anything wrong with this differentiation in some ways, but it has driven the company further down the SEO path and they don't seem to have tried other things. It feels like SO has built up a recruiting business, tried many times to get their Q&A software into companies with varying success, really managed the costs of their business, and invited public scrutiny of their tech. I can only imagine how much Quora are hemorrhaging from running costs and bad tech choices.

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#44

Post by AndrewKemendo » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 12:53 AM UTC

arexxbifs wrote: post #9

> a 10-year-old question-and-answer startup Has the word "startup" simply replaced "company"? I'm thinking we should at least draw the line at a full decade.

Startup at this point is effectively shorthand for a company that is growing but doesn't have a firm business model

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#45

Post by manigandham » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 12:57 AM UTC

rossdavidh wrote: post #35

Years ago, I would occasionally answer a question on Quora, which usually seemed like a real question from a person trying to figure something out (for example, software career questions). In recent years, oddly, even the questions seem fake, as if somebody somewhere is being paid to come up with questions. Why would I spend time to answer if not even the person asking seems to really care? Perhaps, I am not the only…

That's because they started paying people to post questions, which is completely absurd since the real value is in the answers.

Unfortunately, as predicted by pretty much everyone, it led to a massive influx of generic, repetitive, and trivial questions spammed endlessly to the top writers who have now stopped contributing. Most questions are just spam sinkholes in an endless battle by fake accounts for top position.

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#46

Post by charlesju » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 12:59 AM UTC

codingslave wrote: post #23

Any company that relies on SEO content is basically going to disapear. Google search and their new NLP technology is just extracting the question and answers from content like that on Quora, significantly reducing their page hit volumes. Not only that, other lower ranked content can be verified to be "true" using neural network based NLP, meaning that the value of content has gone down. Google stole the business of q…

I think there is a symbiotic relationship here. Google still needs to feed enough traffic into their main training sets so it can keep training. If these training sets were to fully die (or become stale) then the Google NLP would be equally useless. So Google has an inherent desire to prop up Quora, if anything.

Anecdotally, Quora has taken a top spot in SEO alongside Stackoverflow for a lot of my searches (and Reddit). I think that over time this will improve actually and I don't think this layoff is because they are doing poorly, rather the opposite, I predict they're doing well enough to go IPO soon and need to clean house.

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#47

Post by irjustin » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 1:01 AM UTC

I've said it in a few other posts but post WeWork, a lot of the big D, E, F companies are expected to hit profitability/break-even soon.

Some other threads are talking about Google stealing a lot of the content. That's definitely true for weather, flights, but things like long form content is still long form. I would argue these layoffs aren't a function of the GMachine at work, but more generally all the big tech firms with lofted valuations are being 'called in'. Every week, I see at least 1 large name running lay offs here on HNews.

The bubble at the 1B+ vals has started to correct. Firms are expecting people to prove their worth. Lots of times this means IPO and then trading on a multiple of earnings. Many of these guys aren't even near net positive so it's very scary.

I expect 2020 to be the year startups have a lot of trouble at the Series C.

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#48

Post by ausjke » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 1:02 AM UTC

manigandham wrote: post #41

codingslave wrote: post #23

Any company that relies on SEO content is basically going to disapear. Google search and their new NLP technology is just extracting the question and answers from content like that on Quora, significantly reducing their page hit volumes. Not only that, other lower ranked content can be verified to be "true" using neural network based NLP, meaning that the value of content has gone down. Google stole the business of q…

They can (and do) put their content behind a login sometimes to prevent this. Either way Google only gets answers as long those answers exist somewhere so I doubt Quora and its alternatives are going away. The site should be rather cheap to run as well (although it's easy to mismanage millions these days).

no, I left my door open to share my indoor library with neighbors does not mean you can take them away, google is supposed to help me to locate those original content, it should stay as a search engine to keep fair play of original content providers.

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#49

Post by winkeyless » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 1:03 AM UTC

So they overestimated what Quora really could be and burned way more money? Or is Google suffocating smaller tech companies?

Content curation doesn’t scale as well as search algorithms. It reminds me of Yahoo and other portals who relies on editorial staffs (not meant it in a bad way).

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#50

Post by manigandham » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 1:07 AM UTC

Quora is a site that is somehow successful despite its product development decisions. They seem to constantly make the site and community worse with every update.

There's still a decent amount of amazing valuable answers from real verified experts but the experience of using it is horrendous and I've completely stopped trying to write anything anymore.