Patch's new owner lays off staff in 1:39 conference call • Hacker News Board

Re: Patch's new owner lays off staff in 1:39 conference call

#11

Post by CompleteMoron » Wed, Jan 29, 2014, 8:01 PM UTC

Patch was kinda rocking at first for me - especially when I was over in Broooklyn. It was showing up in my feeds or when i went searching for stories in some states.

Then AOL got them and suddenly I saw no posts from The Patch on my feeds - for like all of 2013.

What happened?

Re: Patch's new owner lays off staff in 1:39 conference call

#12

Post by timmaah » Wed, Jan 29, 2014, 8:03 PM UTC

aabalkan wrote: post #3

What is Patch?

Site that the CEO of AOL founded before joining AOL. Then bought once hired at AOL and poured millions into before being forced to cutback/sell to keep his AOL job.

Re: Patch's new owner lays off staff in 1:39 conference call

#13

Post by mkr-hn » Wed, Jan 29, 2014, 8:03 PM UTC

I stopped using the local Patch when they broke the commenting system. I don't know what broke, I just can't comment, and no one else does either. The comments were the best part.

A lot of the bad news out of Patch seems to have started around the same time.

Re: Patch's new owner lays off staff in 1:39 conference call

#14

Post by mkr-hn » Wed, Jan 29, 2014, 8:04 PM UTC

xutopia wrote: post #7

I didn't hear of Patch until today. This seems like a private call between employees and someone responsible for HR. Why is this news? Is Patch a big name?

It's the only local news in some places.

Re: Patch's new owner lays off staff in 1:39 conference call

#15

Post by badman_ting » Wed, Jan 29, 2014, 8:05 PM UTC

jere wrote: post #2

I had a recruiter send me an email exactly 5 months ago today claiming "I've placed ten folks with AOL in the past year, and Patch is the most profitable and exciting division especially for the engineers." First time I've ever had to respond to a recruiter to tell them they were full of shit. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2013/08/09/layoffs...

Well, I guess you could call this exciting.

Re: Patch's new owner lays off staff in 1:39 conference call

#16

Post by oh_sigh » Wed, Jan 29, 2014, 8:05 PM UTC

aabalkan wrote: post #3

What is Patch?

Exactly.

Re: Patch's new owner lays off staff in 1:39 conference call

#17

Post by smackfu » Wed, Jan 29, 2014, 8:06 PM UTC

aabalkan wrote: post #3

What is Patch?

Hyperlocal news site. The idea is to have dedicated sites for small towns, usually with a single local employee writing all the articles. These towns are very underserved by other news sources, since traditional newspapers have cut staffs so much. Then when you have local traffic, you can sell ads to local businesses.

They shuttered a lot of the sites a few months ago.

Re: Patch's new owner lays off staff in 1:39 conference call

#18

Post by bchjam » Wed, Jan 29, 2014, 8:08 PM UTC

xutopia wrote: post #7

I didn't hear of Patch until today. This seems like a private call between employees and someone responsible for HR. Why is this news? Is Patch a big name?

In spite of the fact that some group of people lost their jobs, the audio track is kind of funny in the sense that this real HR department sounds like a parody of what tech people think of HR departments.

Re: Patch's new owner lays off staff in 1:39 conference call

#19

Post by rdl » Wed, Jan 29, 2014, 8:08 PM UTC

In addition to the "firing people by conference call is a douche move", her voice is an excellent argument against hiring any non-Australian with the high rising terminal mode of speech.

Re: Patch's new owner lays off staff in 1:39 conference call

#20

Post by aaronem » Wed, Jan 29, 2014, 8:08 PM UTC

CompleteMoron wrote: post #11

Patch was kinda rocking at first for me - especially when I was over in Broooklyn. It was showing up in my feeds or when i went searching for stories in some states. Then AOL got them and suddenly I saw no posts from The Patch on my feeds - for like all of 2013. What happened?

Sounds like AOL happened. As far as I can tell, they've never been all that comfortable with this new-fangled "inter-web" nonsense.