>> Fireside Chat How did this term make it to the buzzword bingo? What does it even mean?
Come sit on my lap and let me be patronizing
Stack Overflow reduces global workforce by approximately 15%
171–180 of 193 posts
Re: Stack Overflow reduces global workforce by approximately 15%
#172I 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.
Imagine you’re on the CEO career path. What behaviours are you going to exhibit in order to pad your resume for the next position? You don’t really care about the company or the people who work there, you care about the next CEO position that pays more.
I’m just thinking about the big tech companies and which CEOs would think long term.
Out of the big 6 tech companies, Facebook, Amazon, and Netflix are still run by their founders.
Microsoft is not run by a founder, but it’s run by a company man with deep understanding of their culture and market.
Apple’s CEO is not really technical, I don’t think he has a clue about what customers want, but at least he’s efficient and understands the operations side. But I do think he is more numbers and investor focus than Jobs was. He does know his weaknesses and it seems like he defers to his VPs - a good thing. I think he at least cares about the company.
Google has never been able to execute outside of advertising so I’m not sure whether it would matter if the founders were still in charge.
Re: Stack Overflow reduces global workforce by approximately 15%
#173don’t understand the complaints. this is a quarterly news update. hence the tone. there’s nothing wrong with it.
the defect is that the layoffs are just a paragraph in passing. on its face it appears highly insensitive, but come on. i’ll give benefit of the doubt that it was dealt with internally much better. it only gets an inch of print in this report because it’s a very small factor in the general news of the company.
actually the main defect here is that the HN title is highly editorialized.
Re: Stack Overflow reduces global workforce by approximately 15%
#174SO has really become a toxic place which is run by politically correct people. Just look at this corporate speak blog. I don't understand how the corona virus would impact them so hard they have to cut jobs, seems like a bullshit reason to just cut people off imo. Every company should be prepared for bad times. I have no sympathy for the management. They have obviously done a poor job.
The only thing SO was ever good at was SEO. They muscled their way into the niche that Usenet was filling and did a worse job of that to begin with.
Re: Stack Overflow reduces global workforce by approximately 15%
#175>> Fireside Chat How did this term make it to the buzzword bingo? What does it even mean?
it’s a quite famous US historical reference.
Re: Stack Overflow reduces global workforce by approximately 15%
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
eps. given the fact that this site is a product for developers, i.e. people specifically allergic to marketingspeak.
It's cute that people think this way, but probably not wise. How hard do you think you are to bullshit, when you go around telling people how to bullshit you? How do you think so many startups sucker so many skilled engineers into doing so much for so little and odds-on getting screwed at the end of it? How did Stack Overflow bullshit you (probably) and me (for sure, years back) and a million other people into collec…
Engineers are susceptible to a very different brand of bullshit, which is why there is often tension between engineering and business management.
Re: Stack Overflow reduces global workforce by approximately 15%
#177I do not have data to back this claim. But the tone of this blog post makes me feel that, the new CEO is an incompetent person who decided to use the vehicle of the covid virus to announce job cuts that he has planned a long time ago. With the crap ton of marketing buzz in the post, and the casual mention of the layoffs, I don't think the CEO or the new board seem to care all that much about the laidoff employees. Ag…
Aren’t they mostly furloughs?
Re: Stack Overflow reduces global workforce by approximately 15%
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> Just why every beautiful startup must make their owners billionaires while getting ruined? That's literally there in the definition of a VC-backed business model. You get a lot of money now, in exchange for some amount of ownership and expectation that the business will grow , whether it makes sense for it or not. The investors want a return on their investment, so they absolutely will push the business past the po…
I feel like putting a talking head in charge of SE risks limiting growth. SE is a business that benefits greatly from leadership that understands their core demographics.
I'm sure they still still grow, because SE is an incredibly useful product. But I think a bad leader poses a serious risk of constraining natural growth by pushing monetization too hard and driving away organic growth.
Re: Stack Overflow reduces global workforce by approximately 15%
#179Could not finish reading through it. Could have kept it straight to the point rather than convoluting with unnecessary details.
Would it be uncharitable to suggest that perhaps that was the goal?
Re: Stack Overflow reduces global workforce by approximately 15%
#180He could have stopped with everything before...
“Despite the impact to our Talent business...”
Why mix in a lay-off announcement with a marketing spiel?