Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

blog.patreon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 456 posts

Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#231

Post by throwaway675309 »

battery_glasses wrote: post #225
remram wrote: post #222

Patreon could have eaten OnlyFans' cake so easily, instead they seem to be struggling like everyone thought they would when they banned NSFW content in 2017. I don't understand why they thought that move would benefit them. I don't understand how Jack Conte is still CEO after such a stupid change or how he can say with a straight face that he's "taking responsibility".

I think its reasonable that a lot of creators don't want to distribute their work along side porn. Does Only Fans have any non-porn content? I really don't know because in my head Only Fans is a place for porn.

Patreon has a shit ton of NSFW stuff so I'm not sure if this decision was overturned or if it's just limited to actual live actor pornography.

Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#232

Post by [deleted] »

jrockway wrote: post #163
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've been survived a few layoffs that work this way. How many times have you been laid off?!

There are probably a large number of HN readers that have weathered the dotcom bust, the 2008 financial crisis, and the 2022 financial crisis. If you were born 1980-ish and you haven't been laid off 3 times, congrats!

[deleted]

Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#233

Post by throwaway675309 »

kradeelav wrote: post #106
gtfoutttt wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who are those competitors? The subject company is tho only one I know of like this. But I am not really active in the creative space so I'm ignorant.

Subscribestar, which I'm much more of a fan of since they have more common sense rules around NSFW art.

I don't think it has anything to do with common sense, from reading their guidelines it sounds like they just ban NSFW stuff all together.

Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#234

Post by rexreed »

I can tell you that many people I know are abandoning Patreon for their support of Russian patreons. This statement didn't help: https://www.businessinsider.com/why-patreon-continued-to-sup...

And their response is not so great: https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-us/articles/4553920132877-....

I'm sure the layoffs are not entirely related, but having this stance didn't help.

Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#235

Post by xhrpost »

PopAlongKid wrote: post #230
q7xvh97o2pDhNrh wrote: post #53

This bit from the employee announcement about how they're handling equity vesting [1] is worth highlighting as a pretty classy move, all things considered: > We’re waiving the one-year equity vesting cliff for all departing employees so that everyone has an opportunity to be a shareholder, regardless of your tenure. [...] All departing teammates will qualify for an extended option exercise period of 5 years, and we h…

> what they did here with the equity, especially the option exercise period, is a nice touch. But it's not all that great. Patreon is not publicly traded, so it seems likely that exercising any options will require cash up front, plus it will immediately trigger taxable compensation (income tax plus FICA). And how will the FMV be determined, if there is no public market trading? (ans.: usually just some number voted…

I believe the 90day limit for ISOs is just the time to get the tax benefits. You can still exercise after 90days, you just pay more.

Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#236

Post by PopAlongKid »

avg_dev wrote: post #208
q7xvh97o2pDhNrh wrote: post #53

This bit from the employee announcement about how they're handling equity vesting [1] is worth highlighting as a pretty classy move, all things considered: > We’re waiving the one-year equity vesting cliff for all departing employees so that everyone has an opportunity to be a shareholder, regardless of your tenure. [...] All departing teammates will qualify for an extended option exercise period of 5 years, and we h…

I am sure this says more about me than anything but if a company lays me off there is zero chance of me exercising options in that company. Edit: I read the link and it appears to apply to RSUs as well. What I said about options is true but RSUs, different story. I’d sell those for sure.

Patreon is not publicy traded, so your ability to sell any RSUs is very limited.

Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#237

Post by throwaway675309 »

behnamoh wrote: post #20
bo0tzz wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your quoting suggests that you think what people on onlyfans and patreon do aren't "real jobs", but in fact to succeed in those spaces needs very hard work.

> but in fact to succeed in those spaces needs very hard work. But that doesn't make it a job. You could do hard work in moving a mountain but that's not a job. Needless to say, earning money off of your looks (something you didn't work hard to gain in the first place) doesn't qualify as hard-working job.

"earning money off of your looks (something you didn't work hard to gain in the first place) ....."

If you have a cognitive aptitude for mathematics, you didn't "earn" that either - everything in some way or another is part of your birthright and privilege, both nature and nurture.

If you genuinely believe that the mind is somehow magically distinct from the same genetic system that gave you your physique, I'm afraid you're the delusional one.

Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#238

Post by sdenton4 »

jrockway wrote: post #163
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've been survived a few layoffs that work this way. How many times have you been laid off?!

There are probably a large number of HN readers that have weathered the dotcom bust, the 2008 financial crisis, and the 2022 financial crisis. If you were born 1980-ish and you haven't been laid off 3 times, congrats!

Ah, the safety of grad school...

Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#239

Post by kzrdude »

rexreed wrote: post #234

I can tell you that many people I know are abandoning Patreon for their support of Russian patreons. This statement didn't help: https://www.businessinsider.com/why-patreon-continued-to-sup... And their response is not so great: https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-us/articles/4553920132877-... . I'm sure the layoffs are not entirely related, but having this stance didn't help.

Their statement makes sense to me

Re: Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff

#240

Post by gamblor956 »

noirbot wrote: post #109
bilsbie wrote: post #101

It’s weird these companies grow this big. How many software engineers do you need to monthly bill a list of people and transfer it to a different list? That’s like a single person saas.

If I had a nickle for every time someone on HN claims that a sizable company could be replaced by 1-5 devs, I'd have enough money to start a competitor to most of them that did it better with more devs/staff, as evidenced by the general lack of 1 person saas companies out there that solve more than a very niche problem.

He's not wrong. Patreon's technical platform isn't cutting edge or unique and could be replicated fairly quickly by a small team in a month or two. Most of what makes Patreon what it is comes from the other parts of the company, i.e., the marketers, account managers, etc., that bring in the actual revenue.

Of course, that's also the reason why a tiny company can't just replace Patreon: it's not the tech that matters. It's the marketing and other people stuff that you just can't handle with a small team.

It's not a good sign that Patreon is doubling down on engineering and eliminating the positions that actually bring in revenue. That's a sign of a poorly managed company not understanding its value proposition. Keeping extra engineers on staff to create yet another cryptocurrency isn't going to save Patreon, but the absence of the two dozen plus marketers and account managers they just fired will be acutely felt as they go into the holiday season.

Post reply on HN