Working at a company where the founder is so wealthy from a past exit can be really frustrating because they have little financial incentive to be running the company in a way that is in the best interest of the common shareholder (e.g. employees).
Layoffs hit Quora
51–60 of 283 posts
Re: Layoffs hit Quora
#52The team at Quora is really strong. Many ex-Quorans have gone on to start their own really successful companies.
If you or someone you know is affected, feel free to use this spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Hk4REpHkCCTS74MGGRNR...
Re: Layoffs hit Quora
#53Companies like Quora should provide at least three or six months of severance in cases of layoffs. There's no reason they can't. They surely knew three or six months in advance that they would likely be making this move.
As startup workers, we should shame loudly and publicly companies that don't provide sufficient severance packages. It's the difference between causing a slight disturbance in worker's lives and potentially huge financial hardship.
(Of course all employees should have a financial reserve. The fact is many people don't though. And even if they do, it hurts a lot to make them burn it down.)
Someone should make a blacklist of startups that did layoffs without sufficient severance. Maybe I'll get around to it.
Re: Layoffs hit Quora
#54Any 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…
Quora and Tripadvisor are totally different.
Tripadvisor has a great mobile app, and actually a mobile app makes sense, as I want to browse local results, filter and compare restaurants and activities easily.
As for quora, it's more like entertainment where I just want it to be part of my internet browsing experience, just like Reddit, where I don't want to load a mobile app just so see a result.
Re: Layoffs hit Quora
#55I used to enjoy Quora, but it lost its charm and I quit once my feed became mostly filled with questions such as:
- As a software engineer, what makes you roll your eyes every time you hear it?
- What did your mother say that made your jaw drop?
- What can I learn in one minute that will be useful for the rest of my life?
Those open questions just feel clickbait-y, with no real value added.
I occasionally see questions similar to the last one on HN (for example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21913129), it’s OK once in a while, but I hope it doesn’t become the norm. I think the HN userbase’s mindset and strong moderation guarantees that for now.
Re: Layoffs hit Quora
#56Any 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…
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Re: Layoffs hit Quora
#57Quora 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.
I can't decide whether I hope that whoever decided that iOS Safari users on Quora would get a blocking "F you; use our mobile app" experience after scrolling a short distance is included in the layoffs or will be allowed to stay on and continue the destruction of the company.
Re: Layoffs hit Quora
#58I stopped using Quora because Latin-American Political Right never, absolutely never, were censored, but if I would post something favoring Peron's Government, Allende's or the first Chavez, they would censor me. I was talking about political and social advancements, while they would be claiming that the dictatorships never disappeared innocent people, they never stole to their victims and a long etc.
Every year was becoming worse, it was like the US government explicitly put people to shape political comments against Latin-American governments. Community was getting worse. So many people like me just left.
Re: Layoffs hit Quora
#59Not sure if a bit of confirmation bias on my side but seems like there is a recent big uptick of layoffs at Silicon Valley companies? Popular ones like Quora, TripAvisor, Ebay, Mozilla, Uber, 23andMe, etc we hear about but among my own network, i am even hearing it from smaller startups & businesses.
Just wondering if it is just me but I am surmising that it seems to indicate a wider systematic.. issue? Maybe issue is not the word for it. Symptom is probably a better description and it feels we are at the precipitous of an incoming storm/crunch/etc.
Please tell me I am imagining things.
Edit: I guess my question is more are all these layoffs an indicator of an incoming recession or is it something more nefarious like the big tech (FAANG) are taking steps to widen their positions while they are still in a "strong" position to do so (e.g. google).
Re: Layoffs hit Quora
#60In the past few days, Quora, EBay, 23 and Me and TripAdvisor all announced layoffs. Coincidence or early sign of something bigger?
Don't forget Intel!