I think it speaks volumes to the downward trend of Apple these days.
or the print business.
No no no, clearly it's all because of Apple. All other print magazines are thriving!!! /s
Macworld lays off most staff
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Re: Macworld lays off most staff
#42They could have shuttered the print magazine and kept the staff on to write for the website. Like all the other tech websites out there. Wonder why they didn't do that.
Re: Macworld lays off most staff
#43They could have shuttered the print magazine and kept the staff on to write for the website. Like all the other tech websites out there. Wonder why they didn't do that.
They are. But many of them are now freelancers instead of fulltime.
Re: Macworld lays off most staff
#44This might be a good case study for dying traditional form of online media. Credit goes to random dance of Google SERP. As per Alexa, search traffic (for macworld.com) is gone down from 50% to 30% of total traffic, in three months. Google decided to do a (un)fair distribution of traffic.
Niche content companies should remain lean to survive.
Re: Macworld lays off most staff
#45Re: Macworld lays off most staff
#46Today is a great time to be a writer. There are virtually no middlemen between you putting together a sentence and millions being able to read it. There are countless communities where you can find people to give you good feedback to hone your craft.
Unfortunately, that also means it's a really terrible time to be a writer for a living. Like every job that is (a) creative and (b) can be distributed digitally, almost all of the money is falling out of it.
Re: Macworld lays off most staff
#47I think it's worth noting that they let staff cover the event yesterday, and then surprised (some of) them with a layoff today. Classy.
I don't see anything unclassy about laying off workers after a big event. I'm assuming there's a decline of work after a big event, so if they're financially hurting a decline would be the correct time to have layoffs.
oh please, seriously?! decline of work :)
Re: Macworld lays off most staff
#48Today is a great time to be a writer. There are virtually no middlemen between you putting together a sentence and millions being able to read it. There are countless communities where you can find people to give you good feedback to hone your craft. Unfortunately, that also means it's a really terrible time to be a writer for a living. Like every job that is (a) creative and (b) can be distributed digitally, almost…
If you're trying this seriously, consider Patreon. I support some obscure stuff, and that obscure stuff is currently trending between "lucrative hobby" to "middle-class job pay".
You still have to put in the work in the first place, of course, but I think the situation is slowly swinging around to being able to make a living at it again. But... not everybody is going to be able to make a living at it, and that's just not going to change, ever.
Re: Macworld lays off most staff
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Or waited a while after?" Perhaps they think that there is a money tree that you just shake to pay employee salaries. I think a comment like the parent (or perhaps that attitude) comes from a failure to realize that in the traditional business world business needs to operate at a profit. There is no runway like the startup runway. Business and life isn't fair and it's not about hurt feelings. And you can't let perso…
While I see your point, I cannot agree with you. Business is not separated from the people that form it. Yes, good businesses are profitable. Yes, if it weren't for the profits, there should be no businesses. But from my point of view, when you hire someone to work for you, you have some moral (if not legal) obligations with that person. You could say that laying them off was "good, financially". Maybe it was even th…
So you think that the company should sacrifice in a way that hurts them but doesn't benefit their employees. Sounds like a highly rational thing to do.
If they can't afford to keep their employees the thing for them to do would have been to lay them off between events, which would have meant before this last event. Not a few weeks after this event. If they could have afforded to lay them off a few weeks after this event it would have perhaps been better for both parties for them to wait until the next big event and then lay them off, which would have looked exactly the same as this.
Consider that the past few weeks may have been the extra time MacWorld was gracious enough to give them, while at the same time helping themselves so that they may be doing well enough to provide some of their former employees with freelance work.
Re: Macworld lays off most staff
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I see your point, I cannot agree with you. Business is not separated from the people that form it. Yes, good businesses are profitable. Yes, if it weren't for the profits, there should be no businesses. But from my point of view, when you hire someone to work for you, you have some moral (if not legal) obligations with that person. You could say that laying them off was "good, financially". Maybe it was even th…
What moral obligation do you feel was neglected here? Surely hiring someone doesn't create a moral obligation to never lay them off if you can't afford to pay them anymore.
As I said, I don't have the specifics so I can't judge the Macworld case.
Assuming it was an unexpected layoff right after a very demanding day of work, I can see some wrong things there.
First, you should inform people as soon as you made up your mind that you were going to fire them. Letting them work (a lot) and just after that letting them go is wrong. Is using them. Explaining the reasons for the layoff is the moral thing to do. Hiding it with an obvious intention of exploiting people's work without hindering their motivation is wrong (for me, but moral is usually a pretty subjective field).
A simple way to assess that you're up to no good is to see how the employees treat and refer to you after you let them go. And in this case, the twitter action does not feel very amicable to me.
Again, I don't know what really happened there at Macworld. But if someone is laid off and ends up feeling mistreated, maybe, just maybe, we should give him some credit and not directly assume that the business is right and they are just chronic complainers.