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Twitch.tv Lays of 400 Employees

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Re: Twitch.tv Lays of 400 Employees

#141

Post by selimthegrim »

dangus wrote: post #120
lanza wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The truth of the matter is that companies aren't monetarily incentivized to avoid layoffs. Layoffs cost almost nothing. Companies aren't required to pay full salaries or provide any healthcare/benefits for any reasonable period of time after a layoff. I think even the 3 month notice period from the WARN Act is a pretty crap amount of time to provide for employees who have been terminated. For a software company espec…

I discovered the iPhone’s four hour call limit while on hold with the Louisiana unemployment system

Re: Twitch.tv Lays of 400 Employees

#143

Post by Supermancho »

slg wrote: post #35
gretch wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because their income comes from advertising. Because the economy sucks in general, companies in all industries are being more careful with where they spend their marketing budget. You can see this reflected in the revenue of other advertising companies as well such as google and meta.

>Because the economy sucks in general But to be clear the economy does not currently "suck in general" hence the confusion over blaming "the current macroeconomic environment". These companies (including advertisers) are trying to get out in front of an economic downturn that hasn't yet materialized. And if it does materialize, all these companies will have a hand in causing it due to their reduced spending and layof…

> But to be clear the economy does not currently "suck in general"

To be clear, what you say has little effect on reality. The decreased discretionary spending, housing market approaching a complete freeze, layoffs (those not being publicized in the news), inflation impacting every vertical, and the various shuttering businesses (survived covid, but died anyway), are what makes it "suck". This is not quantitative, but it is the sentiment.

Re: Twitch.tv Lays of 400 Employees

#144

Post by bg24 »

dangus wrote: post #120
lanza wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The truth of the matter is that companies aren't monetarily incentivized to avoid layoffs. Layoffs cost almost nothing. Companies aren't required to pay full salaries or provide any healthcare/benefits for any reasonable period of time after a layoff. I think even the 3 month notice period from the WARN Act is a pretty crap amount of time to provide for employees who have been terminated. For a software company espec…

"The truth of the matter is that companies aren't monetarily incentivized to avoid layoffs."

Very nicely put. Fixing this will help lot of employees.

Re: Twitch.tv Lays of 400 Employees

#145

Post by [deleted] »

dangus wrote: post #120
lanza wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The truth of the matter is that companies aren't monetarily incentivized to avoid layoffs. Layoffs cost almost nothing. Companies aren't required to pay full salaries or provide any healthcare/benefits for any reasonable period of time after a layoff. I think even the 3 month notice period from the WARN Act is a pretty crap amount of time to provide for employees who have been terminated. For a software company espec…

[deleted]

Re: Twitch.tv Lays of 400 Employees

#146

Post by Panzer04 »

dangus wrote: post #120
lanza wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The truth of the matter is that companies aren't monetarily incentivized to avoid layoffs. Layoffs cost almost nothing. Companies aren't required to pay full salaries or provide any healthcare/benefits for any reasonable period of time after a layoff. I think even the 3 month notice period from the WARN Act is a pretty crap amount of time to provide for employees who have been terminated. For a software company espec…

You want to make it even harder to get a job? The better the benefits you mandate for firing/leaving employees, the more onerous companies become about bringing on more manpower (and eventually, lower wages as a whole since they have to fund an additional 10% or whatever whenever someone leaves).

You're arguing that companies should implement these measures at the cost of just hiring people? "Companies would actually have to try and make an educated choice about whether or not to hire someone." - Isn't it already a meme that people get 3-6 interviews just to get hired at some places nowadays? and you want to make that worse? Maybe I'm reading that wrong, but employees aren't the big losers in situations where companies are doing layoffs - companies are. If they had more disciplined hiring practices they wouldn't be hired (or, more likely, wages as a whole would be slightly lower because of reduced demand) These kinds of benefits aren't free, and I don't think it's unreasonable that employees bear some responsibility in terms of saving up or whatever if they have to be let go.

All that being said, I'm not against a couple of months of wages/warning, just realize there are costs to this (really, I'm probably arguing most against 3-6 months - that sounds like a really long time to me; It feels like a couple of months should be sufficient in most cases).

Re: Twitch.tv Lays of 400 Employees

#147

Post by narcraft »

kneebonian wrote: post #112
ryandrake wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why didn't they do it a year ago? Or two years ago, or three? It would have increased profitability at that time, too. How did dozens of already-profitable companies all suddenly decide together to cut costs within 6 months of each other? I wish they would be more specific than the "macroeconomic environment" excuse. I swear these CEOs are like soccer players running around the pitch, just waiting for Mister Macro…

That is preposterous the big tech companies would never do anything like cullouding with one another to depress salaries and reduce expenses, that is absolutely insane and conspiracy minded, I mean they super swore pinky promised they wouldn't do it after that one time Google and Apple did.

Are these depressed salaries the $200k+ ones they were giving for entry level devs?

Re: Twitch.tv Lays of 400 Employees

#148

Post by [deleted] »

Panzer04 wrote: post #146
dangus wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The truth of the matter is that companies aren't monetarily incentivized to avoid layoffs. Layoffs cost almost nothing. Companies aren't required to pay full salaries or provide any healthcare/benefits for any reasonable period of time after a layoff. I think even the 3 month notice period from the WARN Act is a pretty crap amount of time to provide for employees who have been terminated. For a software company espec…

You want to make it even harder to get a job? The better the benefits you mandate for firing/leaving employees, the more onerous companies become about bringing on more manpower (and eventually, lower wages as a whole since they have to fund an additional 10% or whatever whenever someone leaves). You're arguing that companies should implement these measures at the cost of just hiring people? "Companies would actually…

[deleted]

Re: Twitch.tv Lays of 400 Employees

#149

Post by Panzer04 »

savingsPossible wrote: post #135
listenallyall wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or two years ago, or three? Because 3 years ago (2020), their average concurrent viewer count increased from 1.26 to 2.12 million and average monthly streamers grew from 3.6 to 6.9 million. Both nearly 100% growth. Then the next year they both grew by about 30%. The company, for good reason, probably thought they needed more people -- more support staff, more payments to process, more server admins, more HR people…

You can be reasonable from your point of view, and still be evil and nasty and selfish. I'll bite the bullet: damn maximizing profits. It's a bad, inhuman goal. You got people creating things other people enjoy and are making money. That is more than enough, more than most people get. When you maximize profit at the expense of your workers, instead of just keeping it sustainable, you are acting like an evil, nasty, s…

Maximising profits might come at the expense of the worker, but it benefits the economy as a whole. The reason maximising profits is such an excellent goal is because it indirectly leads to maximising profit per worker (especially in lean times, when there's less cash to go around and you focus more on efficiency as opposed to revenue). The highest net benefit to society comes from having the highest possible productivity per person. Layoffs suck, but they also improve business efficiency since in general the less productive workers are laid off. It's a bit harsh to say, but those freed-up workers eventually end up somewhere else, where hopefully they fit in better, be more productive etc.

A big reason other systems fail is because they don't focus on that metric. There's no feedback loop from per-person productivity, resulting in either stagnancy or even degradation in living standards.

Re: Twitch.tv Lays of 400 Employees

#150

Post by SOLAR_FIELDS »

sigstoat wrote: post #122
peyton wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last guy fucked up and overhired. Now this guy is fixing it. What do you want him to say?

> What do you want him to say? there's nothing that makes the HN comment section happy about these corporate communications. if some CEO literally fell on his sword in personal apology to these folks, they'd gripe about the blood stain.

At least one scenario doesn’t seem to support your analysis.

When the Groupon CEO resigned, he basically did something like that and it was actually pretty well received by this community: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24453681

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