Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

blog.patreon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 456 posts

Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#81

Post by DrBoring »

behnamoh wrote: post #20
bo0tzz wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your quoting suggests that you think what people on onlyfans and patreon do aren't "real jobs", but in fact to succeed in those spaces needs very hard work.

> but in fact to succeed in those spaces needs very hard work. But that doesn't make it a job. You could do hard work in moving a mountain but that's not a job. Needless to say, earning money off of your looks (something you didn't work hard to gain in the first place) doesn't qualify as hard-working job.

> earning money off of your looks I'm assuming your taking about the sex workers of OnlyFans. I find your attitudes a bit dismissive and offensive. These are real humans with real feelings that you're talking about with such little regard.

Plus, I earn money off of my natural intelligence. I didn't do anything to gain it in the first place, I just happened to have intelligent parents.

> doesn't qualify as hard-working job

Two questions:

1. Why doesn't it qualify as a job if they are earning income?

2. Why should someone have to "work hard" to earn a living? If have a high-value easy-to-sell product, then why work harder than you need to?

Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#82

Post by kevstev »

seibelj wrote: post #26
subsubzero wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard the same, Meta for sure, and a few folks at Goog have told me as well they are coming. For google this will be the first time they have ever done layoffs in the company history(2009 had 200 folks leave so not really layoffs so to speak) so that tells you the scale of this tech downturn.

You can't have your stock down 60% YoY (META) without consequence. There is a whole lot of fat at both of these companies (and really all large firms that never had any bad quarters) and a reckoning has to happen

You absolutely can. Stock price is really meaningless as far as the day to day life of a company is concerned- if your cash flows haven't changed, and the market has just decided to shit on you for a bit for irrational reasons there are no consequences other than maybe looking into whether a buyback makes sense.

Equity markets are often irrational and wrong. IE Covid- essentially every stock was down significantly in March of 2020, not realizing that some businesses will actually benefit from the pandemic.

That said, your statement about fat at these companies is true, and its probably been long past time that they clean out some dead wood.

Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#84

Post by toomuchtodo »

unity1001 wrote: post #64
q7xvh97o2pDhNrh wrote: post #53

This bit from the employee announcement about how they're handling equity vesting [1] is worth highlighting as a pretty classy move, all things considered: > We’re waiving the one-year equity vesting cliff for all departing employees so that everyone has an opportunity to be a shareholder, regardless of your tenure. [...] All departing teammates will qualify for an extended option exercise period of 5 years, and we h…

They say there's 3 months of pay, healthcare, mental care until the end of the year too. And they contracted a placement company to hook people up with new jobs.

Decency demonstrated, and hopefully recognized at large regardless of the criticisms of the business strategy and execution.

Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#85

Post by rovingEngine »

Groxx wrote: post #41
codegeek wrote: post #23

A blog post was done other than Instagram: https://blog.patreon.com/a-note-from-jack "but as the world began recovering from the pandemic and enduring a broader economic slowdown, that plan is no longer the right path forward for Patreon" So basically, they overhired to meet demands during Pandemic and now as less people are using the platform (??), there is no need for the 17% of people. Interesting.

> In the US, teammates leaving Patreon will be given three months severance plus an additional two weeks for each half year of tenure beyond the first year. Pretty decent IMO. > You’ll also receive COBRA health care coverage through the end of the year. Odd that that doesn't match the pay period, but oh well.

This is close to three months, and many health plans renew at the beginning of each year, which accounts for the slight difference.

Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#86

Post by MisterBastahrd »

unity1001 wrote: post #49
darth_avocado wrote: post #15

What does “taking full responsibility” even mean? Like people lose their livelihood and you can get away with “I take full responsibility”. Taking full responsibility mean taking a pay cut or stepping down or basically taking consequences for yourself first before others have to.

Nobody looks like they are going to lose their livelihood over this: https://blog.patreon.com/a-note-from-jack 3 months' of pay + longer depending on tenure at the company. Healthcare until the end of the year. Mental care up to 6 months. They contracted a placement company to place the laid off staff to other companies in the sector. A lot of those people will already get hooked up by a company within a week or so,…

Mid-November through December is a hiring no-man's land due to the accumulation of end-of-year vacations and family trips. Most of these employees have about a month and a half before the shutdown begins and they are stuck scrambling to try to find work in the new year.

Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#87

Post by colinmhayes »

seibelj wrote: post #26
subsubzero wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard the same, Meta for sure, and a few folks at Goog have told me as well they are coming. For google this will be the first time they have ever done layoffs in the company history(2009 had 200 folks leave so not really layoffs so to speak) so that tells you the scale of this tech downturn.

You can't have your stock down 60% YoY (META) without consequence. There is a whole lot of fat at both of these companies (and really all large firms that never had any bad quarters) and a reckoning has to happen

Mark is completely unaccountable to investors. He can do whatever he wants as long as he has good faith reason to believe it will benefit shareholders.

Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#88

Post by [deleted] »

ArchOversight wrote: post #52

This is somewhat meta, but linking to an instagram post is terrible, I get immediately redirected to a login page and can't even see the content on Instagram. I do not have an instagram account, nor do I want to create one just to see this. Was there no better place to link to?

[deleted]

Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#89

Post by unity1001 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #84
unity1001 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They say there's 3 months of pay, healthcare, mental care until the end of the year too. And they contracted a placement company to hook people up with new jobs.

Decency demonstrated, and hopefully recognized at large regardless of the criticisms of the business strategy and execution.

I agree. Tech companies should never really break off with former employees. Any former employee is a future potential employee that you can re-recruit when the time comes. Also, talent is difficult to find. Which makes people the center. Whatever you build, you will build it with people. So you need people. Be them new employees, be them former employees.

Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#90

Post by loosescrews »

subsubzero wrote: post #21
seibelj wrote: post #10

I've heard rumors that Meta and Google have massive layoffs coming as well. Good luck out there

I've heard the same, Meta for sure, and a few folks at Goog have told me as well they are coming. For google this will be the first time they have ever done layoffs in the company history(2009 had 200 folks leave so not really layoffs so to speak) so that tells you the scale of this tech downturn.

I have heard that the 2009 layoffs were limited to recruiting. If these layoffs occur, they may be the company's first engineering layoffs.

I find it surprising that they are considering layoffs. There have been a number of articles about Sundar's concerns over productivity [1,2,3], but layoffs have a tendency to reduce moral and productivity.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32515458 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32322131 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32816105

Post reply on HN