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Patreon laying off 20% of staff

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Re: Patreon laying off 20% of staff

#111

Post by prepend »

happytoexplain wrote: post #101
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…

What if he actually cares, and this is him being honest? I know it's not usually true, but this is Jack Conte, not Mark Zuckerberg. Maybe he's one of the few CEOs who still has a human brain. I know I would feel legitimately horrible and sympathetic if I had to lay off a bunch of people.

I don’t buy that he cares.

Patreon is profitable. He doesn’t have to fire anyone to continue operations. He just wants more money.

If he cared about them as beautiful people, he wouldn’t fire them.

It’s one thing if you’re bleeding cash and have to cut. Another when you discover a cheaper way to do things and don’t want to retrain and grow in new ways where you’d need people.

Patreon CEO is full of horse apples.

Re: Patreon laying off 20% of staff

#112

Post by dodger-dog »

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…

Of course the public relations is all spin. Corporations do not have feelings. Individual managers may feel one way or the other. It is likely those feelings are highly rationalized by how the change affects them individually. Will they make more money? Will they take on added duties without an increase in money?

Some may wax la philosophie politique at times, but we tend to do that in the abstract when things are at an arms length.

At the end of the day, people made a choice between a corporation and a narrow group of stakeholders over employees and the downstream community influence of their buying power, likely a large group and certainly a different group.

You could argue in the long run it is better for society for companies to make these decisions, and many times that may actually be the case. But, in this one instance, when you place it all on the scales, they were not doing it to save a company or make its products and services more competitive in the market. There was nothing "existential" about it. They wanted to go from one profit level to a higher profit level for a certain group, and that is just what they did.

Re: Patreon laying off 20% of staff

#113

Post by SetTheorist »

K0balt wrote: post #70
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…

It’s because, and I say this as a person who has made these calls, some leaders do feel a genuine responsibility for the people that work for them. Perhaps too, the ones that don’t, want people to think that they do. But as a founder and CEO by far the most emotionally taxing thing I have ever had to do is cut staff for the good of the company. You want to treat people the way you would want to be treated if you were…

The "realities" being that increasing profits for a few people is more important than the lives of the people doing the actual work?

Re: Patreon laying off 20% of staff

#114

Post by SetTheorist »

K0balt wrote: post #70
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…

It’s because, and I say this as a person who has made these calls, some leaders do feel a genuine responsibility for the people that work for them. Perhaps too, the ones that don’t, want people to think that they do. But as a founder and CEO by far the most emotionally taxing thing I have ever had to do is cut staff for the good of the company. You want to treat people the way you would want to be treated if you were…

The "realities" being that increasing profits for a few people is more important than the lives of the people doing the actual work?

Re: Patreon laying off 20% of staff

#115

Post by smelendez »

nozzlegear wrote: post #65
josefresco wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At the same time, the market in which we operate has undergone profound change over the last 6 months. I guess this is the "reason" but obviously they aren't elaborating. It's odd they picked "6 months" - what changed in "the market"?

What market is Patreon even in – the "facilitating crowdfunding for anyone looking to create things" market? There's not much competition there and I can't imagine it's profoundly changed in the last 6 years, let alone months.

Six years ago was a long time — summer 2020.

Substack is a huge competitor that has grown dramatically in that time. Beehiiv is another competitor that just launched a bunch of new features. Porn and sexy content is now on Onlyfans, which was just becoming mainstream during the pandemic.

More recently, some podcasts have started focusing on YouTube and may be less interested in the paid-elsewhere subscription model.

Re: Patreon laying off 20% of staff

#116

Post by maxehmookau »

> First, the people who work at Patreon are special, beautiful humans, through and through.

If you're calling me "special" and "beautiful" and removing my ability to pay my mortgage in the same sentence through no fault of my own, you can absolutely get in the bin.

Fundamentally weird behaviour.

Re: Patreon laying off 20% of staff

#117

Post by ricardobayes »

ryandrake wrote: post #96
Ekaros wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make me always question what is going on in these companies. They are essentially a middle man reoffering payment providers services. Host some content. Lot of time just links to external platforms. There is some marketing but not really that much. They really should be running sustainable service for like tenth of that many employees... If even that. Most of the people don't care about them just the creators on thei…

I never understand these replies. Has nobody ever worked for a medium sized, yet global-reach company? I think a lot of HN has a very narrow view of how many different roles are required to run a company bigger than a local diner. Feels like a weird confirmation bias where “I only see a dozen engineers around me every day, therefore companies only need engineers to function.”

Whatsapp had 55 employees until the buyout (of reported 19B).

Re: Patreon laying off 20% of staff

#118

Post by jackb4040 »

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?

Twitter does not work at all lol

Re: Patreon laying off 20% of staff

#119

Post by KronisLV »

danlitt wrote: post #91
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…

If we are going to be honest we should be completely honest. "We want to increase our profits and hence we choose to lay people off."

> I am the person responsible for that decision, and I take that with the utmost seriousness.

I also somehow didn’t hear that the leadership is taking a pay cut either, if money is so tight.

Re: Patreon laying off 20% of staff

#120

Post by prepend »

engineer_22 wrote: post #62
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…

> Why these melodramatic posts ? Morale. It’s important that the remaining employees are psychologically secure. They’re trying to make sure they know the company isn’t in jeopardy and that management has them in mind. Some research supports this https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228120426_Survivors... In my /opinion/ a personal address, one on one assurances from a trusted manager, this might be more effectiv…

This type of BS wouldn’t make me psychologically secure. It would make me afraid because I can’t trust what leadership says.
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