Does anyone know which departments/roles saw cuts?
Hopefully most of their scummy sales department
Yelp lays off 1000, furloughs 1100
191–200 of 317 posts
Re: Yelp lays off 1000, furloughs 1100
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
The first person who gets laid off is going to immediately call The New York Times, TechCrunch, Bloomberg, etc. with probably-incorrect information about the layoffs. So PR wants to be out ahead of that. The real world doesn't have atomic transactions, so you have to pick between that scenario and one where some people are worried about their job for a few hours.
> The first person who gets laid off is going to immediately call The New York Times, TechCrunch, Bloomberg, etc Why do people do this? What do they get out of it? They don't pay for tip-offs do they? Seems unethical anyway.
Here is a better question. Why not do this?
If you got fired, you don't really own the company anything anymore.
Re: Yelp lays off 1000, furloughs 1100
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please explain.
Yelp is accused of predatory practices on business owners including pushing them to sign up for a paid subscription to hide negative reviews on their Yelp page. Otherwise, you are vulnerable to their algorithm which hides/shows reviews that are often less than favorable. Yelp reviews are now overtaking business' own pages on Google searches leaving businesses with less option to control, let alone, curate their brand…
Is there any evidence of this actually happening?
Re: Yelp lays off 1000, furloughs 1100
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even 150 blows my mind. Years ago I worked for one of the top 10 EHR software makers (at the time - maybe even now, I haven't looked) and we had 1/3 the number of engineers on that system.
It's funny, as soon as you have a system that has to take into account human behavior and variety of possible inputs/states, it gets massively complicated if your goal is to try to have people not be dissatisfied with it. (and if you're trying to do it right -- or alternatively, NOT making the right decisions about that goal). People just don't behave like you think they will/should. As an example: a retail transacti…
> As an example: a retail transaction database. Or a calendar booking system. That should be really simple, right? Just record who ordered what, when they received it, who sold it, etc. Who reserved the room, who to send invites out to, simple?
I am not sure people downvoting me understand what all goes into an EHR/practice management software. Calendar booking? Yep. Billing. Oh hell. Don't get me started on the byzantine mess that medical billing is! Then there's charts with icd-9/10 hell. And then everyone you sell it to wants their own charts a little different. Patient records, insurance, I mean, it goes on. The database had several thousand tables. It was insane.
Re: Yelp lays off 1000, furloughs 1100
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The first person who gets laid off is going to immediately call The New York Times, TechCrunch, Bloomberg, etc Why do people do this? What do they get out of it? They don't pay for tip-offs do they? Seems unethical anyway.
Here is a better question. Why not do this? If you got fired, you don't really own the company anything anymore.
> Why not do this?
Because what do you get out of it? They don't pay you for a tip. Why do free work for a media conglomerate, even if you didn't care about the ethics?
Re: Yelp lays off 1000, furloughs 1100
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even 150 blows my mind. Years ago I worked for one of the top 10 EHR software makers (at the time - maybe even now, I haven't looked) and we had 1/3 the number of engineers on that system.
The problem is edge cases take a shitload of work via pareto principle. And if your company is small, edge cases can be ignored because they affect 1-2 users. When you're serving millions, those are thousands of users. You might be the only entity in that industry at that scale and have to custom build everything.
I remember hearing the variant that ran "The first 20% of the program takes 80% of the time, the remaining 80% takes the other 80%."
Re: Yelp lays off 1000, furloughs 1100
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
The first person who gets laid off is going to immediately call The New York Times, TechCrunch, Bloomberg, etc. with probably-incorrect information about the layoffs. So PR wants to be out ahead of that. The real world doesn't have atomic transactions, so you have to pick between that scenario and one where some people are worried about their job for a few hours.
> The first person who gets laid off is going to immediately call The New York Times, TechCrunch, Bloomberg, etc Why do people do this? What do they get out of it? They don't pay for tip-offs do they? Seems unethical anyway.
Why does anyone talk to a journalist when they don't get anything out of it or advance their interests? People like to tell their story, especially when aggrieved.
Re: Yelp lays off 1000, furloughs 1100
#198How bad will their data be after this crisis? If 30% of restaurants/bars don't survive, updating their data is going to be a challenge.
I feel like that is the least of their problems
Re: Yelp lays off 1000, furloughs 1100
#199While job losses will pile further misery on the economy, I hope that means there are now fewer ad sales people trying to shake down local businesses so that they offer Yelp protection money to keep their ratings positive. Companies like this always start with a noble purpose, before the pressure to monetize causes them to ruin what was once a valuable service.
For Yelp it seems like it's more of a failure to innovate and grow beyond their initial review site concept. The idea was good, but easily challengrd by others who bring additional utility to the table like OpenTable and Google Maps.
I don't see it that way. It's a review site. There is no need for it to innovate beyond that, nor is there any basis for thinking that reviews should be enough to take a company public.
If they're doing that, then you know that the end goal is ads, ads, ads.
Re: Yelp lays off 1000, furloughs 1100
#200While job losses will pile further misery on the economy, I hope that means there are now fewer ad sales people trying to shake down local businesses so that they offer Yelp protection money to keep their ratings positive. Companies like this always start with a noble purpose, before the pressure to monetize causes them to ruin what was once a valuable service.
I see it differently: Yelp has built a platform that has a large audience. If you don't pay for certain things then you don't get visibility in their platform. Everyone from Google to Capterra does some version of the same thing. You can call it "shaking down" local businesses but no one is entitled to positive or even fair promotion on someone else's platform.