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Layoffs hit Quora

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Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#101

Post by Ididntdothis »

city41 wrote: post #26
whalesalad wrote: post #3

It's genuinely hard to believe that Quora is still running.

I get where you're coming from. But I have to admit, I read my Quora digest email really often. I'm impressed how often I not only click through to read an answer, but enjoy the answer and find it valuable. Quora definitely does some questionable things nowadays, but I'd also argue they are still getting some key things right too.

I agree. Some questions in my digest are interesting and often get very insightful answers from people with first hand knowledge.

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#102

Post by codyb »

Mathnerd314 wrote: post #89
kinkora wrote: post #59

Not 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 i…

The Fed is pumping money, the yield curve inverted, job openings are flat/declining, people have been predicting recession for 2 years... the precise date of an actual recession is not declared until long after the fact, but I certainly wouldn't bet on the recession not having started already. And there are strong political reasons to avoid any mention of recession, so we might see economic indicators getting distort…

Alternatively

The fed is ensuring liquidity in the overnight markets via short term loans which are paid back the next day (no one seems to know why there’s less liquidity there, could be higher asset values require greater liquid reserves, or some form of capital outflow tightening usd liquidity due to the strength of the dollar, or something else?)

Unemployment is exceeding low, which means more jobs are filled, which means there are less job postings.

People have been predicting doom since the dawn of mankind and sometimes they’re right.

Not sure about the yield curve enough to offer any explanation or even what it means when you say it’s inverted.

Not sure who’s right or what signs are meaningful. Dimension reduction of a search space is a difficult problem. Lots of times people see what they want to see.

I can’t help but just throw my hands up these days and go back to ViM, if it was Vegas I’d split my money fifty fifty on doom and gloom and outstanding success.

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#103

Post by thrwaway69 »

codingslave wrote: post #66
plerpin wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered that Quora is failing because it's user-hostile? I do not visit Quora links on Google because I know it's going to tease me with a snippet and force me to login.

yeah I also think their machine learning is terrible. Their recommendation engine was so bad that I unsubscribed, it was completely overfit.

It used be alright but their noise factor has increased a lot since half a decade ago.

Before that, Quora felt like a small community similar to HN. They had founders and executives answering questions. They were still spamming email afair but not as aggressively as today and it didn't have what is x + 3 = 10?

I deleted it after I reached a million answer views from a sudden growth. The users that moved in completely destroyed the whole thing.

That day, I learnt acquiring users via heavy marketing or SEO may not be a good decision for a community. They are better as spectators or consumers.

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#104

Post by codingslave »

thrwaway69 wrote: post #103
codingslave wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah I also think their machine learning is terrible. Their recommendation engine was so bad that I unsubscribed, it was completely overfit.

It used be alright but their noise factor has increased a lot since half a decade ago. Before that, Quora felt like a small community similar to HN. They had founders and executives answering questions. They were still spamming email afair but not as aggressively as today and it didn't have what is x + 3 = 10? I deleted it after I reached a million answer views from a sudden growth. The users that moved in completely…

I think they panicked a bit and went with high growth strategies that ruined the integrity of the platform

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#105

Post by [deleted] »

[deleted] wrote: post #96
Mathnerd314 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Fed is pumping money, the yield curve inverted, job openings are flat/declining, people have been predicting recession for 2 years... the precise date of an actual recession is not declared until long after the fact, but I certainly wouldn't bet on the recession not having started already. And there are strong political reasons to avoid any mention of recession, so we might see economic indicators getting distort…

[deleted]

[deleted]

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#106

Post by OnlineGladiator »

thrwaway69 wrote: post #98
sillysaurusx wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it’s worth, I came to say the same thing, then saw you already did. It’s hard to disentangle the effect HN has on our thinking, though. Just because layoffs have popped up on HN, are we both imagining that it’s part of a global trend? Or do global tech trends inherently appear on HN? Hard to say.

I doubt on the later part. You might wanna check this thread out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025681

I read a few comments before I realized they were written in 2010, and not 2020. It's surprising how many of those predictions (easily most of the ones I read) seem completely applicable to the coming decade.

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#107

Post by thrower123 »

samantohermes wrote: post #62
kinkora wrote: post #59

Not 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 i…

These are signs of the upcoming global economic crisis. Companies funded by the FED are simply not sustainable.

In general, these seem to be Softbank companies, more than anything else, and ultimately, those are funded by Saudi petrodollars.

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#108

Post by _-david-_ »

plerpin wrote: post #65
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…

Have you considered that Quora is failing because it's user-hostile? I do not visit Quora links on Google because I know it's going to tease me with a snippet and force me to login.

Add ?share=1 at the end of the URL.

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#109

Post by babayega2 »

codingslave wrote: post #93
bawolff wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the R&D dept aspires to maybe do in the future is hardly the same as what they do in the present.

The extracted content on their search page is just the beginning. They are spending huge efforts to get better at it. Specifically, extracting information from multiple pages at the same time. Eventually it will mostly be a query interface that surfaces information for fact based queries.

Exactly. I have been recently just using the drop down to read a summarize answer to questions I have googled. No need to go further...
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