Patreon laying off 20% of staff • Hacker News Board

Re: Patreon laying off 20% of staff

#71

Post by codegeek » Fri, Jul 24, 2026, 1:48 PM UTC

jadar wrote: post #61

codegeek wrote: post #42

The only possible positive thing out of this cringy article is that the severance is decent (for a US company). 4 months of pay and healthcare coverage through Year end. Everything else could have just been a couple of sentences. Companies need to stop doing this melodrama every time they decide to fire people. Everyone knows the goal is to make money and keep a company profitable for their shareholders. Why these me…

I tend to agree. But the devil's advocate in me says that then they'd be accused of not having empathy. That sort of thing might work in Europe — but for a US company, I think you have to pay some lip service to emotions.

"Not having empathy" may have made sense 20-30 years ago when mass layoffs weren't as common as nowadays. Nowadays, everyone knows how it works and how much they really care about the employees. Nothing is worse than someone faking empathy especially CEOs (and I am a small time founder/ceo myself even though of an extremely small company).

Re: Patreon laying off 20% of staff

#72

Post by andsoitis » Fri, Jul 24, 2026, 1:49 PM UTC

codegeek wrote: post #42

The only possible positive thing out of this cringy article is that the severance is decent (for a US company). 4 months of pay and healthcare coverage through Year end. Everything else could have just been a couple of sentences. Companies need to stop doing this melodrama every time they decide to fire people. Everyone knows the goal is to make money and keep a company profitable for their shareholders. Why these me…

> People would prefer honesty.

Coarsely, people prefer things that don't hurt their feelings or that don't scare them. Sometimes that's candor; sometimes it is indirectness. Complicating matters further, different people will have different preferences in the same situations.

Re: Patreon laying off 20% of staff

#73

Post by cwmma » Fri, Jul 24, 2026, 1:49 PM UTC

cybrox wrote: post #15

password54321 wrote: post #7

[flagged]

I don't know (I don't browse Patreon but just back some creators individually) but what would be the issue about that? Patreon is a content distributor and payment router between fans and creators, I don't expect or want them to police what creators do with that service.

They might not have a choice is the problem, there has been a pretty successful campaign to get credit card companies to cut off payments to anyone even remotely connected to this kind of stuff.

Re: Patreon laying off 20% of staff

#74

Post by ricardobayes » Fri, Jul 24, 2026, 1:49 PM UTC

codegeek wrote: post #42

The only possible positive thing out of this cringy article is that the severance is decent (for a US company). 4 months of pay and healthcare coverage through Year end. Everything else could have just been a couple of sentences. Companies need to stop doing this melodrama every time they decide to fire people. Everyone knows the goal is to make money and keep a company profitable for their shareholders. Why these me…

Appearances still matter, and IMO it will be really ugly if we all decide they don't.

Re: Patreon laying off 20% of staff

#75

Post by jadar » Fri, Jul 24, 2026, 1:49 PM UTC

codegeek wrote: post #71

jadar wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to agree. But the devil's advocate in me says that then they'd be accused of not having empathy. That sort of thing might work in Europe — but for a US company, I think you have to pay some lip service to emotions.

"Not having empathy" may have made sense 20-30 years ago when mass layoffs weren't as common as nowadays. Nowadays, everyone knows how it works and how much they really care about the employees. Nothing is worse than someone faking empathy especially CEOs (and I am a small time founder/ceo myself even though of an extremely small company).

Completely agree. That doesn't change the fact that people are fickle and want to have their cake even as they're eating it.

Re: Patreon laying off 20% of staff

#76

Post by cucumber3732842 » Fri, Jul 24, 2026, 1:49 PM UTC

jadar wrote: post #61

codegeek wrote: post #42

The only possible positive thing out of this cringy article is that the severance is decent (for a US company). 4 months of pay and healthcare coverage through Year end. Everything else could have just been a couple of sentences. Companies need to stop doing this melodrama every time they decide to fire people. Everyone knows the goal is to make money and keep a company profitable for their shareholders. Why these me…

I tend to agree. But the devil's advocate in me says that then they'd be accused of not having empathy. That sort of thing might work in Europe — but for a US company, I think you have to pay some lip service to emotions.

The media will spin whatever you do in whichever direction is maximally outrageous because that's what gets more clicks, eyeballs and ad bucks.

So just ignore them and do what's right.

Re: Patreon laying off 20% of staff

#77

Post by smelendez » Fri, Jul 24, 2026, 1:49 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #31

> A $1,500 stipend to replace your company laptop. It seems like a wild choice to give a specific figure as additional cash rather than just letting them keep their (wiped) laptop. That additional cash will be taxed (as should a laptop that is left with the ex-employee, but the used laptop can be valued and taxed as a used laptop rather than a $1500 cash payment [and frankly would often be, um, overlooked...). It see…

This seems more like a bounty for the laptop potentially full of company information, passwords, code, secrets, etc., which Patreon does not want out in the wild or to have to deploy lawyers to demand back. The carrot, rather than the stick.

Re: Patreon laying off 20% of staff

#78

Post by zamadatix » Fri, Jul 24, 2026, 1:49 PM UTC

codegeek wrote: post #42

The only possible positive thing out of this cringy article is that the severance is decent (for a US company). 4 months of pay and healthcare coverage through Year end. Everything else could have just been a couple of sentences. Companies need to stop doing this melodrama every time they decide to fire people. Everyone knows the goal is to make money and keep a company profitable for their shareholders. Why these me…

There is no way to fire a lot of people in a way everyone likes, only ways which suck more than others for different people. Whether you think they are dramatic is not one of the sucks they are very concerned with as you're one if the ones who will forget this layoff in a few hours

Re: Patreon laying off 20% of staff

#79

Post by leni536 » Fri, Jul 24, 2026, 1:50 PM UTC

KomoD wrote: post #40

cybrox wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know (I don't browse Patreon but just back some creators individually) but what would be the issue about that? Patreon is a content distributor and payment router between fans and creators, I don't expect or want them to police what creators do with that service.

> I don't expect or want them to police what creators do with that service. Well, they do actually. They have a lot of restrictions on what 18+ content you can publish. Like you can't publish "real" porn, or that's how I interpret this at least: > Works depicting sexual activity between real, adult participants are not permitted. https://www.patreon.com/policy/guidelines#adult-works

Uh, is narrowing it to "adult" really necessary?

Re: Patreon laying off 20% of staff

#80

Post by lukasm » Fri, Jul 24, 2026, 1:50 PM UTC

yonisto wrote: post #54

cmiles8 wrote: post #28

Honestly the most interesting thing to me here is that to took nearly 500 people to run Patreon.

I really don't get. Twitter used to have 7500 employees and now it is working perfectly ok with 1500~ What am I missing from business perspective?

no really, search is appalling, web version for mobile is full of bugs