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Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

blog.patreon.com

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Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#201

Post by tester756 »

noirbot wrote: post #109
bilsbie wrote: post #101

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.

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.

Discord had small engineering team and they outperformed

Teams, Google's VoIPs, Skype, Ventrilo, TeamSpeak, Zoom

Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#202

Post by UncleMeat »

hedora wrote: post #193
noirbot wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of them? Can you give an example of a 5 person competitor competing with a large company? And of those, how many of them can only do that because they're outsourcing most of their needs to some other company people regularly complain is bloated?

Craigslist has 50 employees, which is closer to 5 than 500.

And its lunch is slowly being eaten by facebook marketplace.

Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#203

Post by madamelic »

jrockway wrote: post #163
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've been survived a few layoffs that work this way. How many times have you been laid off?!

There are probably a large number of HN readers that have weathered the dotcom bust, the 2008 financial crisis, and the 2022 financial crisis. If you were born 1980-ish and you haven't been laid off 3 times, congrats!

Or just work in startups.

It's pretty easy to get laid off a lot if you work in startups. You join and know there is a ticking clock in the background. If you don't, you probably should.

Every startup thinks they are the 1 out of 10 (because why wouldn't they, you have to.)

Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#204

Post by tester756 »

flavmartins wrote: post #174
TulliusCicero wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing how consistently HN people underestimate the workload involved in basically any software product, and how often this blog post is relevant: https://danluu.com/sounds-easy/ > I can't think of a single large software company that doesn't regularly draw internet comments of the form “What do all the employees do? I could build their product myself.” Products are nearly always more complicated internally tha…

People who say this have never worked in an enterprise, global software company. Or if they did, they may not be working on key projects. Just SCALE ALONE is enough to expand a group of engineers a significant amount. A personal project is fine to run 1 AWS or Digital Ocean instance to run the application, database. But global distribution that has to support tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even million+…

>People who say this have never worked in an enterprise, global software company.

On the other hand

How much friction there's between decision makers and people writing code in those companies?

How much time is wasted on meetings, teaching new people every month, etc, etc?

Sorry, but I really can see scenerios where 5 skilled engineers with domain knowledge can outperform 25-50 that need meetings to agree on everything

Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#205

Post by phpisthebest »

r00fus wrote: post #155
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.

This viewpoint seems very domain/market dependent. Retail usually explodes during winter months, for example.

Yes replace your likely 6-figure dev job with a $15/hr job stocking the shelves at walmart...

Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#206

Post by rchaud »

davezatch wrote: post #92
dougmwne wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Putting your money where your mouth is. Resignation and public, in-person apology like they do in Japan.

Better yet, refuse to take a bonus, not that the board should award one. If the board awards one anyway, contribute 100% of it to helping laid off employees.

Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#207

Post by LegitShady »

Ekaros wrote: post #160
rmah wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

Shouldn't point 2) be start paying the pile of money back? Or allow investor to sell the whole thing to someone else who just want to live on dividends.

The investors don't want their pile of money back - that would just be a loan, they want your business to go to the moon so their equity becomes much more valuable than their investment. The investors will call for more investment and faster growth, so they can find a window to sell for big money.

Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#208

Post by avg_dev »

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 am sure this says more about me than anything but if a company lays me off there is zero chance of me exercising options in that company.

Edit: I read the link and it appears to apply to RSUs as well. What I said about options is true but RSUs, different story. I’d sell those for sure.

Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#209

Post by remram »

davezatch wrote: post #92
dougmwne wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Removing that meaningless sentence, or replacing it with an apology.

Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#210

Post by dahfizz »

gabereiser wrote: post #190
jrockway wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are probably a large number of HN readers that have weathered the dotcom bust, the 2008 financial crisis, and the 2022 financial crisis. If you were born 1980-ish and you haven't been laid off 3 times, congrats!

This, I've been laid off about 6 times, only once because of my own accord (and I freely admit my fault there). I've left a company 2x that count. I started my career in 1999. What a year to start...

In 23 years you have worked at 18 companies? Has this hurt you during interviews?
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