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Tell HN: Nearly all of Evernote’s remaining staff has been laid off

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Re: Tell HN: Nearly all of Evernote’s remaining staff has been laid off

#331

Post by pjmlp »

trallnag wrote: post #311
pjmlp wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically how I came around using it, was instead of having txt files, office files and a bunch of screenshots scattered around on the filesystem under the respective project directory, I started organizing such content inside Notes itself.

So you store all your documents within OneNote?

No, only those related to project delivery, that are kind of note taking stuff.

Documentation to be shared across the team is in Confluence or similar wiki platform.

Documents to be shared with the customer are in Office formats.

Re: Tell HN: Nearly all of Evernote’s remaining staff has been laid off

#332

Post by prepend »

belthesar wrote: post #79

I feel like Evernote is a prime example of the pains of trying to convert free users to paying users for the same features, something we see in many VC funded software from its era. Once you give something away, it's damn near impossible to take it back, even if you plead your case as honestly as Evernote did. Evernote was great. Honestly, it was worth paying for. But they gave away the farm too early, and folks feel…

I think it’s an example of trying to charge for things that are low value, and, more importantly, low cost.

Storing text files in the cloud is super cheap. And having an app to easily edit those files is super cheap.

It was free in the beginning because this is a “classic” software problem where it’s cheap to develop and close to $0 marginal dollars for a user.

When Evernote started charging for dumb features and locking in my notes, I switched to one of many free, open source, or very cheap alternatives.

I think Evernote’s problem is that it should have just stayed a 1-2 person company. They ramped up costs, then pushed up prices, and customers mehhed out.

The lesson here is to do something valuable or do something cheap. But don’t do something not valuable and expensive.

Sync is nice, but notes can be easily synced everywhere by layering on top of Dropbox or iCloud or whatever. I don’t want custom Evernote sync and I especially don’t want to pay as much as Dropbox for it. Id rather just pay for Dropbox and then toss in a bunch of files.

Re: Tell HN: Nearly all of Evernote’s remaining staff has been laid off

#333

Post by sipos »

ArnoVW wrote: post #266
slg wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Evernote CEO Phil Libin announced at the recent Le Web London conference that the company will soon set up a protected fund and include a legally binding guaratee that users’ data will be maintained for 100 years That almost sounds like a threat to commit a crime in certain jurisdictions. A lot has changed regarding how we talk about data in the last decade.

In legal terms Evernote is not "data controller" but "data processor". They are not responsible for ensuring conformity with retention rules.

As far as GDPR is concerned, I think they are a controller if they are processing data to provide their service they run to customers. The control how that service works, and are not processing data on behalf of a controller explicitly under their written instructions. If they were a service used by a company like this, they would be a processor. The rertention period here is presumably until the user closes their account or deletes the data from it, possibly plus some period to allow for Evernote to delete it, and the basis is performance of the contract created by their terms of service, or consent. If so, they don't have to delete it until they are instructed to bny the user. They would have to probvide for a way gfor it to be deleted by the organisation they setup to retain it when setting that up though. That organisation would be a processor, unless an explicit relationship with the customer was created with them (which I would expect there would be as part of the user accepting using it), in which case I think it would also be a controller. Either way, they would be responsible for deleting the data when the customer wants it deleted because either they would be as a result of their relationship with the cuastomer if they were a controller, or because it would (have to be) be part of the terms of the processoring agreement with Evernote.

Re: Tell HN: Nearly all of Evernote’s remaining staff has been laid off

#334

Post by stevage »

belthesar wrote: post #79

I feel like Evernote is a prime example of the pains of trying to convert free users to paying users for the same features, something we see in many VC funded software from its era. Once you give something away, it's damn near impossible to take it back, even if you plead your case as honestly as Evernote did. Evernote was great. Honestly, it was worth paying for. But they gave away the farm too early, and folks feel…

For me, it's an example of a company building an app that did a thing well, but not a thing people would pay for. And then switching out the app for this monstrous platformy enterprisey catastrophe that I sure as hell never wanted, and being told to pay for it.

Just an endless series of features that I never wanted.

Re: Tell HN: Nearly all of Evernote’s remaining staff has been laid off

#335

Post by sokoloff »

rightbyte wrote: post #309
littlestymaar wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Seems like an extreme counter example. It is voluntarily ridiculously extreme, because the parent comment was itself ridiculously categorical. The thing is: most of the time, retro-active laws are dangerous tools that should be used rarely and with caution, but sometimes and when some people have been doing something that they knew was evil even though not technically illegal, it can make sense to punish them with…

Sure fair enough. That is the problem with many rules of thumb, where people interpret "all" and "always" to mean all and always. Especially evident in programming. E.g. "premature optimization is the root of all evil".

That’s one line everyone remembers snipped from somewhat more nuanced context.

Knuth said: "Programmers waste enormous amounts of time thinking about, or worrying about, the speed of noncritical parts of their programs, and these attempts at efficiency actually have a strong negative impact when debugging and maintenance are considered. We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil. Yet we should not pass up our opportunities in that critical 3%."

Re: Tell HN: Nearly all of Evernote’s remaining staff has been laid off

#336

Post by woodardj »

There's lots of discussion here about the pros and cons of Evernote, and a slew of alternatives, but this HN post is the only result online since February (when there was lots of news about a Bending Spoons/Evernote layoff), what's the source for this July update?

Re: Tell HN: Nearly all of Evernote’s remaining staff has been laid off

#337

Post by TooManyProjects »

bosie wrote: post #327
DeathArrow wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Obsidian's problem is Sync + Publish costs way too much, esp. when compared with competitors. You can sync for free using Syncthing or OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox free accounts.

On ios you can only do icloud though

I tried using iCloud to sync for a year and went back to Obsidian Sync. I’m not sure exactly what the culprit was, but frequently, I would find my ToDo note (which was used the most) would be stuck and fail to sync for days. Rebooting the stick machine would clear the issue. I was using two Macs and my iPhone at the time.

Re: Tell HN: Nearly all of Evernote’s remaining staff has been laid off

#338

Post by sokoloff »

pjmlp wrote: post #331
trallnag wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you store all your documents within OneNote?

No, only those related to project delivery, that are kind of note taking stuff. Documentation to be shared across the team is in Confluence or similar wiki platform. Documents to be shared with the customer are in Office formats.

In systems like that, I often find myself in the frustrating situation of “I know I saw a sentence with in it; which of the three systems should I search in? If I don’t find it, is it because the phrase was slightly different, or is there a fourth or fifth system I need to search?”

It’s maddening and is my several times per week experience.

Re: Tell HN: Nearly all of Evernote’s remaining staff has been laid off

#339

Post by neilv »

prepend wrote: post #332
belthesar wrote: post #79

I feel like Evernote is a prime example of the pains of trying to convert free users to paying users for the same features, something we see in many VC funded software from its era. Once you give something away, it's damn near impossible to take it back, even if you plead your case as honestly as Evernote did. Evernote was great. Honestly, it was worth paying for. But they gave away the farm too early, and folks feel…

I think it’s an example of trying to charge for things that are low value, and, more importantly, low cost. Storing text files in the cloud is super cheap. And having an app to easily edit those files is super cheap. It was free in the beginning because this is a “classic” software problem where it’s cheap to develop and close to $0 marginal dollars for a user. When Evernote started charging for dumb features and loc…

> I think Evernote’s problem is that it should have just stayed a 1-2 person company.

For the owners/shareholders of that particular 1-2 person company, do they wish it had stayed one, or are they glad it didn't?

Re: Tell HN: Nearly all of Evernote’s remaining staff has been laid off

#340

Post by rwmj »

DeathArrow wrote: post #306
goldpizza44 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what virtual Credit Cards are for... Each site gets a separate number and I can expire them as needed. Unfortunately, if they get popular vendors will figure out a way to detect and refuse.

If they won't be able to extract money from your CC, they will sue you since the've already billed you for the service.

I don't know why you're being downvoted - this could happen, especially if you're in the same jurisdiction as the company.
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