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Patreon laying off 20% of staff

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Re: Patreon laying off 20% of staff

#141

Post by IshKebab »

chrisss395 wrote: post #103

I see others mentioning the severance package being decent for a US company. I'm glad they received something, but I'm sorry, can we stop calling this decent? It's markedly lopsided when a company can one day decide to lay off a large portion of their workforce and think 4 months is anywhere near acceptable. The average time to find a new job is significantly longer, especially depending on role and seniority. I'm ti…

> The average time to find a new job is significantly longer

Is that really true?

https://standout-cv.com/stats/how-long-does-it-take-to-get-a...

They found 3.8 months which sounds realistic. I can't imagine the average being significantly longer (like 6+ months?).

Re: Patreon laying off 20% of staff

#142

Post by Grombobulous »

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…

I think what you’re describing is only a fraction of leaders and possibly a small minority of them.

This concept is especially not applicable to profitable companies who have layoffs anyway.

Hyper-optimization and AI adoption isn’t actually a business requirement if your business is making a profit. Plenty of businesses refuse to play that game and still make themselves a good living.

Founders who want to claim emotional connection to their employees should think about things like converting the company to full employee ownership rather than thinking of themselves as a paternal benevolent dictator.

Re: Patreon laying off 20% of staff

#143

Post by linkjuice4all »

stronglikedan wrote: post #128
ryandrake wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It reminds me of that meme template. “I feel responsible for this layoff.” “Responsible enough to mitigate it or lay yourself off?” “Well, no, not that responsible…”

What an illogical and unrealistic meme template that is...

Yes, much like the “we’re all family but we’re reducing headcount by…”

Treat people like professionals: admit that you did a bad job but that you’d rather protect yourself and not give up any of your salary/benefits and instead you are going to layoff your “family”.

Re: Patreon laying off 20% of staff

#144

Post by mattbrewsbytes »

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…

You can have cutesy names for employees and a culture with mission statements/purpose, etc. but when it comes down to it, if you're doing layoffs no collection of words is going to appease those that are let go and no collection of words is going to appease those left behind. "Teammates" is probably less cutesy than other companies but still evokes some sort of "we're all in this together" vs. straight up employees when in fact they aren't all in it together, at least not the execs.

There was an interview with Jay Leno I saw recently and he was talking about his NBC deal where he was going to be getting $30mil/year but they had to cut staff to do that so he decided to cut his own pay/raise to keep staff. That type of move by someone at the top is rare or never happens with CEOs. I think Nintendo might be the only case I can think of where I heard something like that happening. That type of move evokes an "all in it together" type of team vs. a clear delineation of CEO/executives and employees.

The melodrama is performative because they have to maintain the mask/facade that they are "teammates".

Re: Patreon laying off 20% of staff

#146

Post by prepend »

jackb4040 wrote: post #118
yonisto wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It works as well as it ever did. Or the same level of not working.

Re: Patreon laying off 20% of staff

#148

Post by datakan »

morkalork wrote: post #104
datakan wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't true. You usually do layoffs when you anticipate financial won't be good in coming quarters. If you wait until they aren't good then you're too late and the damage is done. This is why layoffs happen so frequently during "good" quarters.

It's wild how there isn't officially a recession but many companies are acting like there is

Recession isn't the driving factor. Many companies will actually increase staffing during recession to "grow" out of it. My former company used to go on merger and acquisition sprees during deep recessions so they would be well positioned when it was over.

People really need to look at this stuff more strategically. The knee jerk reactions are not productive.

Re: Patreon laying off 20% of staff

#149

Post by rchaud »

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…

So why not send this out as an email? What purpose does a public proclamation serve?

Re: Patreon laying off 20% of staff

#150

Post by Barbing »

ryandrake wrote: post #57
natbennett wrote: post #20

Patreon just does this every few years. At least Jack Conte didn’t post a video of himself crying about it this time.

Kind of tone deaf of him to post a somber layoff message below his open-mouth laugh-smiling profile picture.

It was small enough I didn’t mind.

The page-blocking newsletter modal wasn’t disabled - boo.

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