Twitch.tv Lays of 400 Employees • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitch.tv Lays of 400 Employees

#101

Post by ilyt » Tue, Mar 21, 2023, 1:31 AM UTC

lanza wrote: post #89

ryandrake wrote: post #58

> Like many companies, our business has been impacted by the current macroeconomic environment, and user and revenue growth has not kept pace with our expectations. In order to run our business sustainably, we’ve made the very difficult decision to shrink the size of our workforce. Let's just take a moment to admire this paragraph. > "our business has been impacted by the current macroeconomic environment" There's th…

> Wait, I thought revenue was growing! How is that not sustainable? If you just leave costs where they are and let revenue grow, you are by definition sustaining/growing the bottom line. Come on man, if you don't understand how a business can be showing signs of unhealthiness while still increasing revenue then don't post. That's such a trivial superficial analysis of reality. I'm not going to pretend to know or unde…

Or, the investors want their returns. If you don't understand how perfectly healthy business can be gutted just because investors want better number on next year's sheets and don't care about long term then don't post.

Re: Twitch.tv Lays of 400 Employees

#102

Post by aaomidi » Tue, Mar 21, 2023, 1:33 AM UTC

gretch wrote: post #33

aaomidi wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GOOG/alphabet/reve... https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/META/meta-platform... Is it?

uh yeah it literally is? click into your own links? Google has their 3rd worst quarter for YoY Quarterly growth out of the last 12 years. Facebook has 3 consecutive quarters of negative yoy growth

Right so you’re talking about the first and second derivative rather than the value.

Re: Twitch.tv Lays of 400 Employees

#103

Post by EricDeb » Tue, Mar 21, 2023, 1:33 AM UTC

klysm wrote: post #60

ryandrake wrote: post #58

> Like many companies, our business has been impacted by the current macroeconomic environment, and user and revenue growth has not kept pace with our expectations. In order to run our business sustainably, we’ve made the very difficult decision to shrink the size of our workforce. Let's just take a moment to admire this paragraph. > "our business has been impacted by the current macroeconomic environment" There's th…

Because we’ve set up the incentive structures to make growth the most important thing. Shares increase when you grow - the revenue barely matters to the people in control

This is mostly because capital gains is taxed less than income.

Re: Twitch.tv Lays of 400 Employees

#104

Post by kibwen » Tue, Mar 21, 2023, 1:34 AM UTC

lanza wrote: post #89

ryandrake wrote: post #58

> Like many companies, our business has been impacted by the current macroeconomic environment, and user and revenue growth has not kept pace with our expectations. In order to run our business sustainably, we’ve made the very difficult decision to shrink the size of our workforce. Let's just take a moment to admire this paragraph. > "our business has been impacted by the current macroeconomic environment" There's th…

> Wait, I thought revenue was growing! How is that not sustainable? If you just leave costs where they are and let revenue grow, you are by definition sustaining/growing the bottom line. Come on man, if you don't understand how a business can be showing signs of unhealthiness while still increasing revenue then don't post. That's such a trivial superficial analysis of reality. I'm not going to pretend to know or unde…

We should be holding the president of a multi-billion dollar corporation to a higher standard than a random HN commenter. If Dan Clancy wants to lie to our faces with this egregiously milquetoast corpo-speak, he does not deserve serious or good faith analysis of his words. He's bullshitting us, plain and simple, and I see no reason to smile, lick my lips, and ask politely for seconds.

Re: Twitch.tv Lays of 400 Employees

#105

Post by sokoloff » Tue, Mar 21, 2023, 1:49 AM UTC

misssocrates wrote: post #91

ryandrake wrote: post #58

> Like many companies, our business has been impacted by the current macroeconomic environment, and user and revenue growth has not kept pace with our expectations. In order to run our business sustainably, we’ve made the very difficult decision to shrink the size of our workforce. Let's just take a moment to admire this paragraph. > "our business has been impacted by the current macroeconomic environment" There's th…

Why don't they just say what happened? "We got drunk on cheap money"

Or "while the Fed had the punch bowl out, we drank heartily like everyone else; when they took it away, we grabbed out coat and headed home to sleep it off a while..."

Re: Twitch.tv Lays of 400 Employees

#106

Post by Madmallard » Tue, Mar 21, 2023, 1:52 AM UTC

varunjain99 wrote: post #63

ryandrake wrote: post #58

> Like many companies, our business has been impacted by the current macroeconomic environment, and user and revenue growth has not kept pace with our expectations. In order to run our business sustainably, we’ve made the very difficult decision to shrink the size of our workforce. Let's just take a moment to admire this paragraph. > "our business has been impacted by the current macroeconomic environment" There's th…

Well, a company doesn't exist to just be profitable. But to maximize profits (mostly). So it's certainly possible that cutting costs - even when profitable - can increase short-term and long-term profitability.

They don't exist to maximize profits. Publicly traded companies try to maximize profits in the short term. If it was over long-term they would be doing things people would generally like more.

Re: Twitch.tv Lays of 400 Employees

#107

Post by dehrmann » Tue, Mar 21, 2023, 1:53 AM UTC

onlypositive wrote: post #80

calderknight wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the companies have employees to try to make more money. When things are going really well in the economy it's easy for employees to create/capture lots of value, so the companies hire lots of employees to do that. But when the economy slows down a bit, suddenly it's a lot more difficult for employees to create value, so it doesn't make sense not to reduce the number of employees.

Yup, this is basically it. My team at work hasn't created any meaningful value in a year. We've shipped nonstop but the things were tasked to work on just don't work out or even if they are well received simply don't add up to our salaries.

This is going to get a lot of hate, but the common refrain about WFH is "my productivity is up." That might be true, but it doesn't mean you're producing the right things, and I've found that harder to do remotely.

Re: Twitch.tv Lays of 400 Employees

#108

Post by pcorsaro » Tue, Mar 21, 2023, 1:53 AM UTC

Every one of these companies doing layoffs says something like what's in this update: "user and revenue growth has not kept pace with our expectations." I find it really hard to believe that all of these companies assumed that growth during Covid was sustainable and would just continue into eternity. I have a small restaurant supply business. Our revenue was up almost 50% above our best year ever. We knew there was no way it was going to last forever. All of these companies just sound so disingenuous when they say their growth didn't keep up with their expectations. They knew this day would eventually have to come, they just don't want to come out and say that.

Re: Twitch.tv Lays of 400 Employees

#109

Post by dehrmann » Tue, Mar 21, 2023, 1:55 AM UTC

klysm wrote: post #60

ryandrake wrote: post #58

> Like many companies, our business has been impacted by the current macroeconomic environment, and user and revenue growth has not kept pace with our expectations. In order to run our business sustainably, we’ve made the very difficult decision to shrink the size of our workforce. Let's just take a moment to admire this paragraph. > "our business has been impacted by the current macroeconomic environment" There's th…

Because we’ve set up the incentive structures to make growth the most important thing. Shares increase when you grow - the revenue barely matters to the people in control

At growth companies, share price tends to track future revenue.

Re: Twitch.tv Lays of 400 Employees

#110

Post by listenallyall » Tue, Mar 21, 2023, 2:00 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #58

> Like many companies, our business has been impacted by the current macroeconomic environment, and user and revenue growth has not kept pace with our expectations. In order to run our business sustainably, we’ve made the very difficult decision to shrink the size of our workforce. Let's just take a moment to admire this paragraph. > "our business has been impacted by the current macroeconomic environment" There's th…

Leave costs where they are? Inflation likely causing many of their inputs to increase. Employees tend to want raises, bonuses and stock options. Health insurance basically always goes up. Customers demanding more features/quality (i.e. faster streams, 4k) while bandwidth/server costs rising. Marketing visibility often set via competitive bidding or auctions. They already reduced what they pay to their content creators late 2022.

> I can understand layoffs when your business is running at a loss

How do you know Twitch isn't?

> This is what I don't get

No, there's more.