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Grindr Loses Almost Half Its Staff on 2-Day RTO Requirement

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Re: Grindr Loses Almost Half Its Staff on 2-Day RTO Requirement

#91
post #50

How many engineers does it take to lose chats, give bots unfettered access, not back up my messages, and spam me with low quality ads? It’s worth pointing out that the fees they charge for the premium subscription are absolutely outrageous. $20-$40 PER MONTH. I guess they just added a web client, which absolutely no one needs, that probably cost a pretty penny. Scruff makes a drastically better product at similar sca…

>I guess they just added a web client, which absolutely no one needs, that probably cost a pretty penny. I'd argue the opposite, they absolutely need a web client, as Grindr (and Scruff) are getting their lunch eaten by a new Seattle-based competitor that has no app store presence and fully embraces the freedoms that come with that, and is cheaper to boot.

But if you have a web client and app store apps, which are frontends to the same thing, doesn't that mean that your site is still constrained by the app store rules?

Re: Grindr Loses Almost Half Its Staff on 2-Day RTO Requirement

#92
post #84
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Higher-performing employees generally have more options than lower-performing ones, so they aren't desperate enough to go through a disruptive and expensive move in order to keep their job. For similar reasons, I'd expect senior-level employees to be over-represented, because they're more likely to have kids, a spouse, and an existing mortgage.

True but the switching costs are still quite high for higher performing employees and it seems like the pool of tech companies requiring working in an office presence is also gaining share (ie pool of companies to switch to without in office work is low).

Yes, as already predicted in numerous places we witness forming distinct styles of work with full WFH being in minority so the candidates who want to WFH need to be more competitive. If I wanted I could easily switch my job to an office-based one with a better pay; doing the some for a remote job is much more difficult (but well worth the effort!).

Re: Grindr Loses Almost Half Its Staff on 2-Day RTO Requirement

#93

> Staffing is the “single biggest cost” after fees paid to app distribution platforms like Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, according to Arison. This is a hilarious quote. It's a software company! What other major costs are there besides the staff to make and manage the software? I think I even find it a little disturbing that fees paid to Apple and Google are higher than salary paid to staff.

> I think I even find it a little disturbing that fees paid to

Isn't it pretty typical in many (most?) industries that dev cost is not the dominant part? Even pretty "pure" development like a movie or a game can have a bigger marketing budget than entire production cost, let alone salary only. Other industries R&D is often kept to 10-15% of costs (M&A complicates this).

Re: Grindr Loses Almost Half Its Staff on 2-Day RTO Requirement

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are they? Edit: as the saying goes, people don't want a drill, they want a hole. So if Grindr isn't a software company but a matchmaker that happens to write software (or CaaS/PaaS), then I don't know who truly is a software company. Microsoft is a productivity company, Amazon is a retailer & B2B services company, Google is an advertiser, and so on.

CaaS

PaaS

Re: Grindr Loses Almost Half Its Staff on 2-Day RTO Requirement

#95
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jokes on the people that stayed. The CEO should thank them for their sacrifice in working overtime constantly “for the good of the company.”

The people who stayed can give their two week notice next week and argue that they are way more critical now.

Unless they do it en masse, it won't work.

Re: Grindr Loses Almost Half Its Staff on 2-Day RTO Requirement

#97
post #76
post #62

Looks like the stock is up 11% on this news. Does this and the the staff cuts at X demonstrate you can take out significant numbers of engineer without drastically impairing the user experience? I doubt most tech execs would have the wherewithal to make this kind of decision but it's clearly the case that many big tech cos staffed up too hard during the pandemic with average salary per employee rising too much

It demonstrates that investors see expenses go down and therefore want to buy more stock. Whether it's because they believe correctly that Grindr is overstaffed, believe incorrectly that Grindr is overstaffed, or just intend to sell again before the consequences become clear is something that will only become clear in time.

Yeah, this is nothing new. Stocks always bump on layoff news.

Re: Grindr Loses Almost Half Its Staff on 2-Day RTO Requirement

#98

(1) You can't assume losing half of staff is a downside. RTO is a great solution for bloated companies which overhired during the pandemic. (2) On the flip side, RTO is only a lever for large tech companies who pay great salaries. Startups' advantage is that they can compete for talent by offering remote work that large companies are not willing to offer due to their large real estate commitments. You may just be bet…

> You can't assume losing half of staff is a downside. Said Elon Musk about Twitter. How's that working out for him?

Great.

Re: Grindr Loses Almost Half Its Staff on 2-Day RTO Requirement

#99

For anyone else confused, RTO = "Return to Office". First thing that came to mind for me was "Recovery Time Objective."

Thanks! I was familiar with RTO since my employer is doing it by gradually increasing required # days in the office.

But not everyone will know what it is .

Re: Grindr Loses Almost Half Its Staff on 2-Day RTO Requirement

#100
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> " with zero ability to think through long-term consequences" The median tenure in tech is one to two years before moving on to another team or company [1]. You need to say that what you care about is long term, but that's now how we're compensated (read: incentivised). Plus you're not there to see it anyways so there are really very little incentives to think long term. [1] some googling but couldn't find a great s…

It does not match what I’ve observed in the industry.

Also kind of insane. 1-2 years? In any large codebase or platform, it takes a year to become familiar with and touch a decent portion of it. Also, talk about never having to live with the concequences of decisions you've made in terms of long term support and maintenance. But I guess these are all rockstar developers doing the hopping around so that's not really their concern is it.
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