It’s weird these companies grow this big. How many software engineers do you need to monthly bill a list of people and transfer it to a different list?
That’s like a single person saas.
Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff
101–110 of 456 posts
Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff
#102Every 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?
I've wondered this as well. Look at Uber, how are they not profitable? How many more engineers/general personnel do they possibly need to hire?
Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Just wanted to throw in my $0.02 here as well. I've been hired in November/December twice in my career without issue.
Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff
#104Earlier 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,…
> Nobody looks like they are going to lose their livelihood over this We don’t know everyone’s unique situation, even if they did go beyond what most companies do.
No. That's not the social contract for employment. It's dangerous to think it is. There's a mutual need from both parties. When that need changes, both parties are free to respond. Forcing a company to keep someone would be just as bad as forcing someone to stay.
What we also don't know is the companies financial situation. Keeping people on when they can't be afforded can be a way to make a company completely collapse. I was in two startups that would have collapsed completely, without layoffs, around the time of the last recession. This is why the "keep x months of salary" are rules you strictly follow.
Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff
#105Feel like the real story is a bunch of competitors are eating their lunch.
Who are those competitors? The subject company is tho only one I know of like this. But I am not really active in the creative space so I'm ignorant.
Youtube and Facebook both offer monthly subscription plans for creators.
Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff
#106Feel like the real story is a bunch of competitors are eating their lunch.
Who are those competitors? The subject company is tho only one I know of like this. But I am not really active in the creative space so I'm ignorant.
Subscribestar, which I'm much more of a fan of since they have more common sense rules around NSFW art.
Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff
#107As an insult to injury this was announced on his Instagram. So professional! /s
It was announced on the Patreon blog, the poster chose to link to Instagram (annoyingly, for those of us not on Instagram).
https://blog.patreon.com/a-note-from-jack
I assume OP expected the blog post to be taken down or changed, so they captured it and linked to the capture instead of the original. I feel like the protocol for this should be to make a capture, post a link to it as a comment in the thread, and link to the original in the post.
Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff
#108Structural inflation is primarily driven by blue collar wages. Going to be a lot of white collar casualties on the way back to 2%, given that rising discount rates hits them first
Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff
#109It’s weird these companies grow this big. How many software engineers do you need to monthly bill a list of people and transfer it to a different list? That’s like a single person saas.
If I had a nickle for every time someone on HN claims that a sizable company could be replaced by 1-5 devs, I'd have enough money to start a competitor to most of them that did it better with more devs/staff, as evidenced by the general lack of 1 person saas companies out there that solve more than a very niche problem.
Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff
#110Every 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?
Because if you stop at #2...
1) you won't attract any follow-on investment capital;
2) your original investor will be angry that you're sitting on a pile of money that is doing nothing;
3) you will likely grow slower than your other competitors. in some markets, this is death, in other markets, this is fine.
Patreon had nearly 500 staff before layoffs. Now has about 400 staff. You may have a hard time understanding what all those people do, but I suspect they're all quite busy.