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Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

blog.patreon.com

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Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#91

Post by unity1001 »

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #86
unity1001 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Recruiters would fill that gap readily enough.

Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#92

Post by davezatch »

dougmwne wrote: post #19
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.

That would be meaningless virtue signaling. Standard corporate speak.

What would non-“meaningless virtue signaling” look like to you? This seems quite decent as far as these things go.

Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#93

Post by lxe »

Every SV company:

1. Start a company that does a thing well

2. Hire enough people to do the thing well

3. For some reason, hire more and more people to do more and more random things

4. Hire more managers who hire even more people

5. You are now a complicated mess and can't get anything done

6. Run out of money

7. Fire people and write a sad post. Continue to collect hefty CEO salary.

Why not just stop at 2?

Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#94

Post by Shindi »

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #86
unity1001 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is pure negativity and not true. Hiring might slow down because of seasonality overall, but I was hired the last two times end of year. It's a great time to get new employees ramped up when things are slower.

A polite reminder that some companies are growing really fast and are even struggling with hiring.

Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#95

Post by rconti »

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…

I think how much compensation they end up with from their ex-employer is likely top-of-mind, actually!

Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#96

Post by preston4tw »

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…

I always thought it was awesome that a company to support creators was creator lead. I came across Jack Conte in 2010 before Patreon existed. He was a music creator on YouTube that made what he was calling Video Songs, songs with each instrument part video'd and mixed together, and selling his music collection through e-junkie at the time. He was one of the first creators I ever financially supported. Some of the videos are still up on YT: https://youtu.be/D2PwVkQBp5o

Despite not knowing Jack personally pretty much everything I've seen from him over the years has reinforced my generally high opinion of him. In this case as well. As lay-offs go Patreon seems to be trying very hard to do right by their employees.

Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#97

Post by iancmceachern »

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.

Agreed, its not ideal but there are things a company can do to put their money where there mouth is in this situation. This seems to be the new playback for doing it right. I appreciate that.

Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#98

Post by bombcar »

lovich wrote: post #47
bombcar wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say something like people are actually willing to pay the average or even the worst job-doer something resembling a living wage. If the stats from things like Patreon are to believed (and filtering out the "dead weight" of creators who don't post or have given up without closing their account) there's a serious "top 1% of creators make XX% of the revenue" problem. Which means that for a small fraction, it's a job…

Do you not believe working in retail or restaurants are real jobs? Because the vast majority of them are not paid a living wage in the US and have to rely on having multiple jobs or welfare. Walmart even teaches you how to sign up for welfare as an employee

Those are real jobs and should be paid a living wage or eliminated if that's entirely unfeasible. There can be arguments at the edges but I think people generally agree on that.

And even if you don't, certainly an "industry" where 99% of the people "employed" don't even make the poverty line or make back their expenses (patreon and only fans would fall here) wouldn't. (The people trying to 'make it big' are probably moonlighting as retail/restuarant anyway, just as all those who tried to make it in Hollywood did in years past).

There's certainly major abuses but the 1099 and "self employed" world is even more full of them than the W4 world.

Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#99

Post by ghaff »

mandevil wrote: post #72
Groxx wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I suspect its because of the way that COBRA works: COBRA would start for them on October 1st (their active employee insurance would cover them until Sep 30), so they are getting three months. I have never seen a health insurance that supported two week increments, so you couldn't do the 'two weeks for tenure' thing. You could, in theory offer an extra month per year beyond the first, but that's a lot of extra work an…

In spite of what some developers seem to think job hunting can be a many month process, especially over the holidays and in an environment where many companies are being very cautious about hiring. So no I don’t expect most will have jobs by January.

Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#100

Post by unity1001 »

lxe wrote: post #93

Every SV company: 1. Start a company that does a thing well 2. Hire enough people to do the thing well 3. For some reason, hire more and more people to do more and more random things 4. Hire more managers who hire even more people 5. You are now a complicated mess and can't get anything done 6. Run out of money 7. Fire people and write a sad post. Continue to collect hefty CEO salary. Why not just stop at 2?

> Why not just stop at 2?

Because your investors will never allow that. And without their money, you cant even reach #2.

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