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Tell HN: Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday

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Re: Tell HN: Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday

#211

Post by nasaeclipse »

taurath wrote: post #183
whalesalad wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things happen. Times change. It's just as important to know when to throw in the towel as it is to know when to persevere.

These are the things that happen - taking a company and strangling it to make a 10% short term return. It’s like of funny, we give corporations personhood, but the type of person that can be owned by another person, or murdered for profit

Imagine what would happen if we tried these actions like we do for real murder trials.

"CEO John Doe is found Guilty of maiming Company B to the point of bleeding it dry of its funds, resulting in bankruptsy. Due to person-hood laws, we sentence you to life in prison. Thank you for your attention on this matter."

Re: Tell HN: Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday

#212

Post by kelnos »

bradleybuda wrote: post #61
nness wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this model. Such significant layoffs would indicate that there is no real appetite for expansion or growth. Their goal might be be to acquire, dramatically cut costs, and then run the product for as long as they can at a profit before breaking it down and selling it off (or hope for a buyout by a bigger player.) But that wouldn't make sense — customers of a depreciating SaaS product surely churn af…

HN: VC is a cancer, businesses don't need to grow forever at all costs, products can be finished, what we need is sustainable small companies Also HN: No, not like that

It shouldn't be surprising that different people on a discussion site have different opinions about the same thing.

Re: Tell HN: Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday

#214

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

joelthelion wrote: post #205
epolanski wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called butt cigar investing or corporate raiding. They acquire startups and companies without a huge growth potential but modest cash flow and little profits. They cut the operating expenses to the minimum and jack up the prices to sky rocket profits till their mathematical models will tell them they will profit on the investment. Rinse and repeat.

Have there been any serious legal efforts to make this less profitable? It's very clearly detrimental to society.

Private equity (what's being described here) has more political influence than "society" because money.

Re: Tell HN: Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday

#215

Post by IshKebab »

ragall wrote: post #112
Recursing wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My best guess is that a part of it is replacing US (or in this case Israeli) devs with much cheaper Italian/European ones, earning ~a quarter of their US counterparts and working longer hours, as Bending Spoons has an extremely competitive hiring process, and is probably the highest paying tech company in Italy

Actually they're paying very competitive salaries. For example: https://jobs.bendingspoons.com/positions/67c6dc18c70c531d6db... .

I can't see any salaries there but presumably they're going to be competitive for Europe, which is roughly half the competitive salary in America.

There are plenty of competent devs outside America. I can't see any reason why you'd want to pay American salaries if you're a global company.

Re: Tell HN: Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday

#216

Post by dangus »

wanderer2323 wrote: post #180
whalesalad wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things happen. Times change. It's just as important to know when to throw in the towel as it is to know when to persevere.

[flagged]

It sucks that people get laid off, but there are a whole lot of finished low growth products like this that have bloated teams.

I don’t really see any lying going on. Which statement was a lie?

Re: Tell HN: Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday

#217

Post by epolanski »

sinoue wrote: post #195

Bending Spoons did the same thing with Evernote. Laid off US staff. Closed their Redwood City offices and hired a dev team in Italy to take over.

Small correction, they didn't hire a dev team in Italy to take over. They are an Italian company with their own engineering.

Re: Tell HN: Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday

#218

Post by philipallstar »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #204
aetherson wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And honestly this is probably fine. If the main business can't grow and there have been a few years of attempts to produce complementary businesses with no success, that's a good sign that the business should be moved into a "return money to owners" model.

Sadly, "return money to owners" ends more like the owner selling off the company and leaving all the workers under them in freefall. And people wonder why loyalty is dead.

Well, the workers already got paid for their time; the owner didn't for their time and (more importantly) risk.

No one wonders why loyalty is dead.

Re: Tell HN: Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday

#219

Post by Invictus0 »

cowsandmilk wrote: post #206
hi_hi wrote: post #172

From the previous press about the aquisition: BendingSpoon CEO: "At Bending Spoons, we acquire companies with the expectation of owning and operating them indefinitely, and we look forward to realizing Vimeo’s full potential as we reach new heights together" Vimeo CEO: "We are excited about this partnership, which we believe will unlock even greater focus for our team and customers as we continue to strive towards ou…

Nothing the bending spoons ceo said isn’t true. They are still operating Vimeo.

There's a large contingent on hacker news that still thinks it's some kind of moral failure to fire people

Re: Tell HN: Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday

#220

Post by dbbk »

nradov wrote: post #50
nness wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this model. Such significant layoffs would indicate that there is no real appetite for expansion or growth. Their goal might be be to acquire, dramatically cut costs, and then run the product for as long as they can at a profit before breaking it down and selling it off (or hope for a buyout by a bigger player.) But that wouldn't make sense — customers of a depreciating SaaS product surely churn af…

Vimeo isn't really SaaS though.

Of course it is?
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