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Twitch.tv Lays of 400 Employees

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Re: Twitch.tv Lays of 400 Employees

#191

Post by Rastonbury »

pcorsaro wrote: post #108

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 n…

I'm curious if you own any stocks, did you own then sell any tech companies or after covid up to mid 2022?

Re: Twitch.tv Lays of 400 Employees

#192

Post by shapefrog »

machinawhite wrote: post #170
justapassenger wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can understand layoffs when your business is running at a loss, not when it's growing. Do you revisit your personal budget only once you run out of money, or once your income changes?

Do you also employ people and managers and use your personal budget solely to make profit instead of buying food? Stop the weird analogies

You gotta spend money to make money.

Re: Twitch.tv Lays of 400 Employees

#193

Post by inglor_cz »

vineyardmike wrote: post #178
chongli wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do we fix that? Require companies to pay a large severance? Then companies will be heavily disincentivized to hire in the first place due to the risk.

If we required companies to pay a massive severance, then it would disincentivize hiring to an extent . You'd still need to hire as your business grew, it's unavoidable. If you made hiring more risky, companies may keep their employees for longer, and treat them better since hiring was a gamble. Why hire someone, who could be a liability, when you can retrain an existing employee and invest in their future with you .

You would move to a different jurisdiction. US has plenty of those.

Looking at places like France or Italy, where protection of existing employees is very strong, yes, it makes companies wary of expanding. It also motivates automation, which might not be a bad thing.

Re: Twitch.tv Lays of 400 Employees

#194

Post by WeylandYutani »

ilyt wrote: post #101
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…

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.

The investors that made the business want to cash out? How dare they!

Re: Twitch.tv Lays of 400 Employees

#195

Post by WeylandYutani »

vineyardmike wrote: post #177
hossbeast wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which principles would you like the companies that you are invested in to maximize ahead of stockholder value?

While I think the original comment on a CEO, a peasant, and a gun to be crass, I want to note that society wasn't always valuing "shareholder value" so much. First, I want all companies, regardless of who invests in them, to hold some level of social responsibility to the society around them. Sometimes layoffs are necessary, and companies can't maintain excess costs forever, but there's some value to society to maint…

This is fucking twitch.tv not something society should actually value. I'd be angry if doctors or teachers get fired.

Re: Twitch.tv Lays of 400 Employees

#196

Post by blippage »

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…

I'm not keen on the whole US model of "mandated psychopathy".

From what little I hear, the Germans seem to have found as good a balance as ever is likely to happen. There is good worker protection whilst industry is still being strong economically. Perhaps we should be looking at the way they do things.

Formerly in the UK, the chocolate-makers Cadbury was founded by a Quaker who had a strong sense of social responsibility motivated by Christian convictions. They were a profitable company who were taken over by Kraft.

Re: Twitch.tv Lays of 400 Employees

#198

Post by ThunderSizzle »

yunohn wrote: post #185
camhart wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just want to say, investors getting returns should be a goal of every for profit company (whos taken investor $$). Thats why investors risk their capital. That capital is responsible for the growth of most major tech companies. Its responsible for most jobs at tech companies. Not saying this is an excuse to treat employees poorly. They're just as vital as the capital (employee hours is often quite literally whats b…

Having money should not be worth more than doing the work. Same goes for landlords.

Then don't take the money. You don't need seed money to make a business. You can just spend all your time instead.

You might get to the point where you'll value that money more. Or not.

Re: Twitch.tv Lays of 400 Employees

#199

Post by argiopetech »

tyingq wrote: post #64
hronic379 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

>I applaud twitch for providing more cash flow to all of us, via capital gains and/or dividends. That's only the math if the layoffs have zero "impact" on the product.

The problem is, you can't tell a priori what the impact will be. It could be positive. It certainly could free funds for future positive changes.

Re: Twitch.tv Lays of 400 Employees

#200

Post by thenerdhead »

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…

Everyone is going through two things. Correcting irresponsible hiring over the last couple years, and a strategic inflection point. While the former has mostly happened, the latter is going to continue to happen until new business models are found.

It is very common to see new CEOs at this time to “make things more contemporary” and with that is the redundancy of roles and even people who may not adapt to the new culture.

Much of the business speak here is trying to say “we’re reducing our workforce to make room for new roles and new people who will match our new strategic direction”. Every company is confused internally and need strong leadership to get through it.

Literally all ordinary rules of business go out the window and people are firing from the hip right now. Pun intended.

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