I could probably understand why they did this,as hiring will be non existent for the upcoming months,but pages upon pages of BS about core values,culture, viruses,and whatever else comes along just left bad taste in my mouth.
Stack Overflow reduces global workforce by approximately 15%
151–160 of 193 posts
Re: Stack Overflow reduces global workforce by approximately 15%
#152SO is gonna be gobbled up by Github Issues altogether.
The only certainty with Stack Exchange, is that it's going to end up in the belly of one of just a few possible tech companies: Microsoft, Oracle, Google, Salesforce, etc. They'll slash most of the communities away (even if they initially lie about their intentions and pretend they won't do that) and keep the focus on the tech part of the network. Knowledge services are not great businesses, they're almost entirely i…
Codidact (https://codidact.org) has been born out of all the recent (and not so recent) drama over at SE. It is looking to do exactly the things you describe.
Re: Stack Overflow reduces global workforce by approximately 15%
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
You think mean comments are a SO or reddit problem? The fact that anonymous online discourse gets rude and heated has been known since the days of usenet. There was even some of this on BBS forums, but that was a more civilized time, likely because we knew the people we were talking to were within our local calling area in most cases. None of this is new. It's a humanity problem, not a technology problem.
> None of this is new. It's a humanity problem, not a technology problem. When you put it that way though, maybe technology can address it by somehow humanizing the communication more. I bet people are researching ways to do this.
FWIW, StackOverflow have (as mentioned in the blog post) deployed a machine learning system for detecting unfriendly comments.
Re: Stack Overflow reduces global workforce by approximately 15%
#154Can one of the many commenters decrying this as "bullshit business-speak" explain to me what is so terrible about this? I'm genuinely asking.
My theory is that this is a good example of why HN discourages editorializing in titles. The current title here ("Stack Overflow reduces global workforce by approximately 15%") sets you up to think that this is a layoff announcement by SO. But from reading the first paragraph, I think this is just an externally-facing quarterly update on the business overall. I suspect that nothing about the layoffs here was news to anyone in the company, and they had plenty of internal communications around it already. And even here, the language about layoffs seems fine to me:
This has been a tough week at Stack Overflow, and taking care of each other is more important than ever right now. Like companies large and small, we have had to make difficult choices in order to reflect the market conditions. This week, we reduced our global workforce by approximately 15%. Most of the affected employees were furloughed, except for employees and contractors in regions where furloughs were unfortunately not an option. These actions primarily affected sales and customer success teams within our Talent business, which is dependent on the hiring environment.
We made these decisions with great care and only after assessing and leveraging all other options. We’ve paused all non-critical hiring, suspended our travel budget for all of Q2 and Q3, and cut marketing and software costs significantly.
Reducing our headcount was a painful but necessary decision, of no fault of the employees affected, and one that I take full accountability for as the CEO. We did this in order to ensure that we can serve our customers and community in the long-run.
What is the problem with that, specifically?
The rest of the post reads like a perfectly normal update, written in a slightly formal tone, which seems appropriate to me. If you're running a business with hundreds of employees, tens of thousands of customers, tens of millions of readers, and other stakeholders like partners, vendors, and investors, you probably are going to be a little more formal with your tone. It takes uncommon skill to write the kind of updates that Buffet or Bezos manage to pull off. Just because this is anodyne doesn't make it "bullshit" or this guy "incompetent" or "an asshole".
Can someone point out anything specific that they found so off-putting about this quarterly update on the business?
Re: Stack Overflow reduces global workforce by approximately 15%
#155> This is a key moment in our company’s history, as the whole world is dealing with significant uncertainty. Know that you are not alone. We are facing this situation together. Our goal is to stay focused on living our core values and actively connect with teammates, our community, and our customers. The phrase "We are facing this together" must sound really hollow if you're one of the people who has been laid off...
85% of us are in this together.
(Until next round.)
It is hard to imagine a company like SE being more relevant once people can meet again.
Re: Stack Overflow reduces global workforce by approximately 15%
#156I will totally fulfill that HN clichee of people in disbelief that any tech company has employees... But: TIL they have 250 of them. It's a fully automated site, huh.
Every site with user-generated content has an army of employees of various sorts, trying to make sure it doesn't descend into a morass. The natural un-moderated state of any community site is complete and total garbage.
Except on StackOverflow all of those are unpaid voluntary community moderators. There are less than ten people being paid by SO in community facing positions as far as I know. Also, they recently fired two of their most long-standing community managers.
But StackOverflow (the company) is more than just public Q&A, and in fact public Q&A is not primarily how they make their money. Job ads and SO for teams seem to be the main revenue sources.
Re: Stack Overflow reduces global workforce by approximately 15%
#157I understand they had to do it (I'm sure we—their users—understand), but I can't understand the need for bullshit business-speak. Just say, "Due to circumstances you all familiar with, business is slow, so I have to let go of some people from X department." Putting up bullshit like this is like adding insult to injury. Especially, since their user demographics are mostly people who don't like bullshit.
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Re: Stack Overflow reduces global workforce by approximately 15%
#158Pretty tone deaf.
> We are facing this situation together.
Well, approximately 85% of you are.
Re: Stack Overflow reduces global workforce by approximately 15%
#159I understand they had to do it (I'm sure we—their users—understand), but I can't understand the need for bullshit business-speak. Just say, "Due to circumstances you all familiar with, business is slow, so I have to let go of some people from X department." Putting up bullshit like this is like adding insult to injury. Especially, since their user demographics are mostly people who don't like bullshit.
I worked for a company with a horrible PR/communication department. The CEO was making a clear, precise, sometimes intense statement. Gave it to PR. Then the CEO dealt with other stuff. The weak communication department had meetings after meetings, internal drama shows, delegation games and then a) either nothing was communicated at all b) business b#llshit speak came out. Communication is just as strong as it's weak…
Do you know of any corporate PR & communication primer? Extra credit for wisdom on how to assess someone's PR-fu.
Your comment makes me now realize I have no idea what "marcom" actually is.
I've worked with two superior marketing people in my career. One was also superior with "marcom" (short for marketing communications, their term). I just got lucky. I have zero idea how I'd find, recruit another.
I've worked with some messaging people for activism, politics. Most notably David Domke [1]. But again, other than seek out a recognized expert, I have zero idea how to judge someone's efforts. While some of the notions may transfer to other domains, I'd just be guessing.
[1] Previously http://www.com.washington.edu/domke/ Currently https://commonpurposenow.org/david
Re: Stack Overflow reduces global workforce by approximately 15%
#160I understand they had to do it (I'm sure we—their users—understand), but I can't understand the need for bullshit business-speak. Just say, "Due to circumstances you all familiar with, business is slow, so I have to let go of some people from X department." Putting up bullshit like this is like adding insult to injury. Especially, since their user demographics are mostly people who don't like bullshit.
When Spolesky brought on this guy, I was shocked. He had no profile or activity on Stackoverflow. He wasn’t even a developer and his resume indicated he was just generic management talking head. Given how much Spolesky emphasis “product person” to be in charge as opposed to white label MBAs, none of that made any sense. I’d to only imagine he was cashing out and part of the deal from investors was to place this guy w…
I'm shocked that people continue to be shocked that this happens under Capitalism.