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Prisma laying off 28% staff

prisma.io

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Re: Prisma laying off 28% staff

#181

Post by cal85 »

Raed667 wrote: post #150
sofixa wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A company like Vercel needs significant infrastructure and the people associated with it, as well as supporting admin (HR, lawyers, accountants), proper customer support (for 24/7 coverage so that can be quite a lot of people), UI/UX people, documentation/education people, etc. etc. Of course also sales and account managers, presales engineers. Just because you think you can make their product in a weekend all on you…

They're valued (Nov 2021) at $2.5 billion. They seem to have +430 employees. At its core, their paid product is a thin layer over AWS and CloudFlare. I'm not saying I don't like the product, I'm saying this doesn't make sense to me.

I agree it’s odd, and I’m not sure, but it feels to me like a big chunk of their staff might be involved with building Next.js and also running the annual conference of the same name which gets a lot of attention. I think maybe they see this as their moat. Any product that is just a thin layer around AWS is in danger of being suddenly eaten by a competitor or an OSS alternative or AWS itself. For Vercel, owning one of the world’s most popular web frameworks, which just happens to be particularly optimised for their own platform (both the deployment DX and performance), probably gives them a decent moat in that it keeps a huge number of devs around the world familiar with and positive about Vercel.

Re: Prisma laying off 28% staff

#182

Post by 5560675260 »

simplotek wrote: post #143
beardedman wrote: post #139

I'd be interested to know the age (or any other) demographic of HN'ers commenting on posts like these. Lot of people sounding very personally slighted by companies trying to remain profitable (or just in business).

> Lot of people sounding very personally slighted by companies trying to remain profitable (or just in business). Do you really need to make an effort to figure out why employees feel slighted for being fired without notice, and specially by an employer whose profitability is not questioned? You made it sound like only unreasonable people would be bothered by being forced out of a job while having rent/mortgage and b…

It's the same industry where it's common wisdom that you should take a new, better offer every two years and change jobs. Shouldn't come as a shock that sometimes it work the other way.

Re: Prisma laying off 28% staff

#183

Post by robofanatic »

Patrol8394 wrote: post #178
danjac wrote: post #21

"I take full responsibility" is the new "our incredible journey" of failing tech company cliches.

If he takes full responsibility then it should step down. But hell no, why would he…all these sugarcoated emails make me sick.

Unfortunately there in no better way to say it

Re: Prisma laying off 28% staff

#184

Post by figassis »

kybernetyk wrote: post #19
decasia wrote: post #6

It gets to the point where it's hard to even know what to say about the nth tech layoff announcement. It's a good reminder, if we needed one, of how fragile the good times are, for anyone who is an ordinary professional working in an economy like this. I wish there were something more concrete we could do to support each other - like something more concrete than "sure I would recommend people from my network for jobs…

> It gets to the point where it's hard to even know what to say about the nth tech layoff announcement. Investors don't get free helicopter money, thus they can't pump money into startups/tech companies thus companies have to cut the dead weight. There will be more lay offs coming - because the free money economy is currently suspended.

This has always been true, in good or bad economies. But There was a culture of throwing money away with insane valuations and insane financing rounds. It always seemed to me that all those things that these startups were doing at $X rounds, could be done at $X/10. But they gave $X, and supported insane hiring, now they're firing people they should not have hired, some of which maybe have issues such as long term healthcare needs, debt, etc and could have gotten more stable jobs elsewhere had they known these companies didn't really need them but were just flexing. Seems to me that this "responsibility" should be enforced by some labor protection laws.

Re: Prisma laying off 28% staff

#185

Post by figassis »

beardedman wrote: post #139

I'd be interested to know the age (or any other) demographic of HN'ers commenting on posts like these. Lot of people sounding very personally slighted by companies trying to remain profitable (or just in business).

I don't think FAANG is trying to just stay in business. My point is not that they should not be laying off, is that they should not have hired this bloat in the first place, and responsibility should come from that. If you need to fire 10k people, as a CEO you should not get out unscathed from the decisions that let to having hired these people, especially if your company would remain highly profitable whether you fired them or not.

Re: Prisma laying off 28% staff

#186

Post by orra »

ljm wrote: post #111
orra wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course developers can be transitioned to do other types of development. Occam's Razor says: or the companies just want to rehire new people at lower pay.

Depends on the laws in your country. In the UK for example, if you make a position redundant and then immediately rehire for it, the laid off employee can take you to an employment tribunal for unfair dismissal, as the redundancy wasn’t genuine. Given that redundancy is a more complicated legal process it’s unlikely you’d use it for this purpose.

P&O famously fired a lot of people in the UK, a year ago, and immediately replaced them with agency staff.

This was widely considered to be fire and rehire, although the government position was that it was “just fire”. So companies are willing to skirt the intention of the law.

Re: Prisma laying off 28% staff

#187

Post by orra »

marcinzm wrote: post #128
orra wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wish there were something more concrete we could do to support each other Unionisation would help. We don't do ourselves any favours by not unionising. Almost all job security and employment rights were won by unions and strike action. No wonder unions are a dirty word—according to corporate America. Even when the jobs can't be saved, employment rights are helpful. The Google? Microsoft? announcement basically sa…

>Even when the jobs can't be saved, employment rights are helpful. The Google? Microsoft? announcement basically said, we've already fired some of the American staff, but in other countries were are merely starting the statutory consultation process. That means a longer period of pay. The American staff are also paid decently more than other countries. Is getting a 40% pay cut worth getting a few more months of pay b…

> Is getting a 40% pay cut worth

I didn't say we should get a 40% pay cut; that's a non-sequitur. I said we should improve working conditions.

Re: Prisma laying off 28% staff

#188

Post by gruez »

orra wrote: post #66
OJFord wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not at all uncommon in restructuring to be both (doing a lot of) hiring & firing - the current filled roles are out of whack with where you want to be, and not things you can transition people between because the skills/qualifications are different or whatever. E.g. if Microsoft decided to sunset its incredible GitHub journey, it would probably find itself with too many web developers. If it got out of Xboxes, t…

Of course developers can be transitioned to do other types of development. Occam's Razor says: or the companies just want to rehire new people at lower pay.

>Occam's Razor says: or the companies just want to rehire new people at lower pay.

Do you have any idea how much it costs to recruit replacement developers? Between the cost for recruiters, the amount of time spent on interviews, and ramp-up time for new hires, you'd need to lower wages by a significant amount (eg. 30%) for you to be able to get payback in a reasonable amount of time. Not to mention, if you're a startup, the loss of institutional knowledge will greatly hamper your ability to execute.

Re: Prisma laying off 28% staff

#190

Post by marcinzm »

orra wrote: post #187
marcinzm wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Even when the jobs can't be saved, employment rights are helpful. The Google? Microsoft? announcement basically said, we've already fired some of the American staff, but in other countries were are merely starting the statutory consultation process. That means a longer period of pay. The American staff are also paid decently more than other countries. Is getting a 40% pay cut worth getting a few more months of pay b…

> Is getting a 40% pay cut worth I didn't say we should get a 40% pay cut; that's a non-sequitur. I said we should improve working conditions.

Nothing comes for free. You compared the layoff conditions to Europe and I compared the compensation to Europe.
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