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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

#111
post #6

Not sure that it's such a great business decision to lose almost half your staff, and probably moreso the higher-performing ones with other options. I'm guessing that this was intended to reduce the headcount without paying severance, which sounds attractive to the average MBA brain with zero ability to think through long-term consequences.

> " 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…

1-2 years for first few years in the industry, possibly a decade. Older employees tend to stay much, much longer.

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

#112

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

Which is kind of ironic because in the last 3 years after the company was returned from Chinese ownership back to the States, pretty much all employees were new and all worked remotely. So the "Return" part is misleading a reader thinking that the employees were working from a office pre-pandemic. That's just not the case.

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

#113

> 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.

Tech is special because the fixed costs are extremely low compared to other industries.

In manufacturing you have to make those massive interest payments on capital every month, which dwarf your labor costs by a wide margin.

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

#114
post #6

Not sure that it's such a great business decision to lose almost half your staff, and probably moreso the higher-performing ones with other options. I'm guessing that this was intended to reduce the headcount without paying severance, which sounds attractive to the average MBA brain with zero ability to think through long-term consequences.

> probably moreso the higher-performing ones with other options

They probably didn't get the memo that other companies tend to give some leeway, unofficially, to higher performing employees when enforcing RTO so the whole thing is for weeding out, and nothing else.

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

#115
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…

This sounds like the expired beer of dating apps.

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

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being that the job market is currently favoring employers over employees, I'd say they'll likely have no trouble finding new staff that has no problem with working in the office. They still have enough staff to get the new folks trained up. This would have hurt them a few years ago, but not now.

You're overlooking the main issue with firing half your staff: you've just lost a huge swath of your institutional knowledge. That's what turns your living codebase into legacy code. A new hire, even a fantastic code ninja guru rockstar 10x unassailable god king new hire, is going to have to spend a lot of time learning your codebase. Even when they are at a level when they can productively dig through it to do bugfi…

I agree - but I think this decision was made pretty consciously. As in, they did internal equivalent of PE buyout. Accept you're not growth company, get rid of large portion of the staff, cut all new developments and prospects, rest of remaining stuff just supports existing business. And extract all the wealth from this position that you can.

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

#117
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Great.

"Elon Musk says Twitter’s ad revenue is down 50% and cash flow is negative" https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/15/business/twitter-cash-flow-el...

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

#118

> CEO says firm is smaller than ideal but positive for margins Sounds like "quiet cutting"[0] to me, only I'm guessing the CEO's target was slightly less people quitting. It's remarkable how quickly startups have become aggressively anti-worker. 0. https://www.wsj.com/articles/first-it-was-quiet-quitting-now...

Getting paid a high salary and having a percentage of people not do work is not a realistic expectation to have.

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

#119
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think I even find it a little disturbing that fees paid to Apple and Google are higher than salary paid to staff. Well it's 30% of their revenue right off the top.

Which implies that staffing is less than 30% which means .... where is the other 40% going?!?!? Edit: unless advertising spend on the platforms is being counted ...

Cloud

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

#120

> 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.

marketing, transaction fees, hosting fees, licensing/saas fees, outside legal/consulting, rent, insurance, marketing, marketing, marketing.
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