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Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

blog.patreon.com

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Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#111

Post by MisterBastahrd »

unity1001 wrote: post #91
MisterBastahrd wrote: post #86

Earlier 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.

Recruiters would fill that gap readily enough.

My comment comes directly from my experience in the past as a recruiter. We saw a 60%+ downturn in the hiring market From Nov 15 - Dec 31 regardless of how the hiring market was performing in general, and then they would spring back to life after Jan 1 when everyone was back in the office. It takes more than a hiring manager to hire employees.

The slowdown comes from all the moving parts who need to be in place in order to facilitate the transition of an employee to an org.

Think of your average tech hire who needs to (a) go through orientation just like everyone else, and (b) is going to take a week or two just to get his work environment and credentialing set up so he can work with the servers. I'll put my experience on that side of the desk working with dozens of clients against any anecdotal one-offs who got hired late in the year.

Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#112

Post by micromacrofoot »

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?

Not only that, it's an image of text. It's incredible that this is still how we're sharing information online in 2022.

Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#113

Post by staunch »

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.

This is exactly how to handle a layoff: do it 3-6 months earlier than required and give the laid off employees that money as severance. Waving the equity cliff too is very generous and good of them.

Everyone should note the companies that do brutal layoffs with little/no severance. It's a major red flag because it shows incompetence and/or a lack of ethics.

Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#114

Post by NoFactualActual »

julienb_sea wrote: post #69
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.

He's taking responsibility for over-hiring relative to the needs of his business, and taking corrective action for the long term health and viability of the business. This is the right thing to do. Yes, it sucks for the people who lose their jobs, but unfortunately some risk is always involved in an employment arrangement. It would be far more unfortunate if Patreon overspent to the point that their business had to c…

> He's taking responsibility...and taking corrective action for the long term health and viability of the business.

Maybe this is just a language thing, but in my world "taking responsibility" involves some action to personally shoulder the pain of the layoffs beyond saying "my bad". I'd expect it'd at least begin with resignation in this case. Just like you can't just announce "I declare bankruptcy" to shrug off debts.

Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#115

Post by didgetmaster »

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?

There are plenty of companies that have been highly successful at growing way beyond their first product or service. If Apple had stopped with PCs, we wouldn't have iPods, iPhones, iPads, etc.

The danger is when a startup seeks to grow just for growth sake. Hire way more people than we really need so we attract investors by showing rapid growth is their modus operandi. That approach has actually worked enough that many companies are willing to travel that risky road. But that road is also littered with casualties.

Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#117

Post by codegeek »

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.

One thing that is not clear is if they will actually Pay for COBRA or just provide COBRA coverage. Employers can provide the coverage for COBRA but are usually not obligated to pay for it. Also, cost of COBRA out of pocket can go upto 102% of the total premiums (yes the 2% can be admin fee added by the employer if they choose to do so)

Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#118

Post by o_1 »

What's the growth from graphtreon vs these layoffs. Most top patreons have quadrupled or more monthly earnings from 2020. This could just be a netflix style "thanks for the hardwork, goodbye".

Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#119

Post by Sivart13 »

cronix wrote: post #73
browningstreet wrote: post #22

Patreon's handling of expired cards is terrible.. people I know who used Patreon just lose subscribers because the flow for fixing an expired card basically doesn't exist (or didn't, maybe it's been fixed since). Those people left Patreon and won't be returning. Their new engineering staff could fix that, for one.

Interesting. I haven't had to enter new data for any subscription service when a cc expires for years now. Somehow the new info gets relayed to the service without my input.

Certain credit card providers have a (paid?) service where companies like Patreon can poll for the updated details of any of the cards they have on file.

My card didn't automatically update and I can confirm that the site gets weirdly broken.

Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#120

Post by ajkjk »

NoFactualActual wrote: post #114
julienb_sea wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's taking responsibility for over-hiring relative to the needs of his business, and taking corrective action for the long term health and viability of the business. This is the right thing to do. Yes, it sucks for the people who lose their jobs, but unfortunately some risk is always involved in an employment arrangement. It would be far more unfortunate if Patreon overspent to the point that their business had to c…

> He's taking responsibility...and taking corrective action for the long term health and viability of the business. Maybe this is just a language thing, but in my world "taking responsibility" involves some action to personally shoulder the pain of the layoffs beyond saying "my bad". I'd expect it'd at least begin with resignation in this case. Just like you can't just announce "I declare bankruptcy" to shrug off deb…

The post includes tons of details about complicated things Patreon is doing to help out the people affected. Do those count for nothing to you? It feels like you are insisting not on "support" or "generosity" but on "sacrifice".
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