Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a large contingent on hacker news that still thinks it's some kind of moral failure to fire people
it's not immoral to fire people. it's immoral to lie to people. very few people can do the mental gymnastics required to equate " we look forward to realizing Vimeo’s full potential as we reach new heights together " to "you're all getting fired." at some point in the now far-distant past CEOs used to make heartfelt speeches and memos to a soon-to-be-downsized staff about how hard decisions had to be made and blah-bl…
Tell HN: Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday
271–280 of 522 posts
Re: Tell HN: Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Software is never "finished" Software may never be finished (in your opinion) but the budget of any customer is finite. If you keep reinvesting your revenue forever into "engineering" the product there's going to be a time where a competitor comes in with a finished product matching your customers' requirements and snatches him from you by both charging less and making a profit.
The number of customers is, effectively, infinite though. YouTube continues to be engineered and continues to grow. It could have, realistically, been finished over a decade ago. But they repeated branch out into new markets with new features, and that seems to work from them.
Re: Tell HN: Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn't even say it's "technically" the truth. It's just the truth. Nothing in the statement even comes close to implying that there wouldn't be layoffs. Hell, one of the quotes even mentions "focus", which if anything is a euphemism or hint for downsizing in these kinds of statements, not the opposite.
A reasonable person, when told "Company A is buying and will operate Company B," would interpret that as "all of Company B" including its assets, liabilities, cash, property, patents, AND employees. They would not think "Well, ackshually, they're just buying the corporate entity itself, which doesn't technically involve keeping the employees..."
Re: Tell HN: Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is just how capitalism works in a competitive environment: it allocates capital as efficiently as possible. I despise their business model, but it is what it is.
It really doesn't have to "be what it is". We can strive for actual change. But everyone's still too cushy for that, it seems.
Re: Tell HN: Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
For a hosting space like Vimeo, I'd be surprised if this gave them 5 years. And remember, they acquired Vimeo for over a billion dollars. This isn't like some B2C 5-10 dollar a month service. Video hosting is notoriously expensive and paying clients will quickly see other alternatives if they see smoke. These are already people with specialized needs that the main market leader (Youtube) cannot fulfill. They are "act…
> These are already people with specialized needs that the main market leader (Youtube) cannot fulfill. Isn't this just a bigger reason why these people won't leave? Assuming the acquirer isn't dumb enough to remove the core benefit that comes from their highest paying customers, they will keep providing those, and those customers won't churn. And I think this is a safe assumption, considering it's the primary goal a…
There's also a lot more competition with Vimeo than there is with YouTube. So options exist to find.
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But I'll break down my thoughts further. I'm familiar with the scene (a lot of artists use Vimeo for their portfolios, as well as working with clients on NDA content), but not intimate. So I'd love someone for me to call me out here. But:
There's 2 lenses here. Your lens implies Vimeo is the best service in this niche space, that reducing down the staff count to a skeleton crew will keep it as the most competitive option, and that as long as this isn't disrupted that it'll be business as usual. And we'll be charitable and assume this doesn't enshittify. Those are all valid points. I'm much less charitable, but I can still work in this lens for the sake of argument.
The lens I'm looking in is more at the type of person using Vimeo, not the type of business Vimeo runs. Compare this to Evernote. It's a lot closer to Twitter or Facebook, where remaining users will use it simply because "it's familiar" more than for any competitive edge. It has everything you need, and even if costs rise, we're still talking about one lunch outing per month. It's a "sticky" product benefiting from previous goodwill and marketing.
The people on Vimeo aren't "sticky". They are closer to the type of person who leaves Windows for Linux because Microsoft keeps pissing then off. In fact it's more like they are Linux users who jump around from distro to distro because they already forsook the market leader. They are "actively" on the move and aware of the tools they use. Given that Vimeo is a highly premium service when you use Enterprise, you need to be active. You don't want to be on a sinking ship and have your work crash with it.
So I see two roads here. Some users will stay "stuck" because maybe nothing else does compared to Vimeo. Or because some larger pipeline relies on Vimeo and it's beyond their control. Then some users will be either leaving to another service, or actively keeping an eye out for competitors in the near future. That's what I see as "different" here.
Now, taking my charitable lens off: I do think there will be a lot of small issues pushing people off, and then a few huge ones. Small things like site performance degrading as they scale back server, and worse support as they slash labor. Then the larger things will truly push people, like a price hike, change in monetization models, or failing to honor any deals made pre-bending spoons. Or even a huge data leak. Those things, big and little, break the foundation of a trusted business.
Re: Tell HN: Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
it's not immoral to fire people. it's immoral to lie to people. very few people can do the mental gymnastics required to equate " we look forward to realizing Vimeo’s full potential as we reach new heights together " to "you're all getting fired." at some point in the now far-distant past CEOs used to make heartfelt speeches and memos to a soon-to-be-downsized staff about how hard decisions had to be made and blah-bl…
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I'm so tired of the investor driven economy.
Re: Tell HN: Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday
#277Why isn't Vimeo listed on the Bending Spoons website? https://bendingspoons.com/products
> Some of our most popular products
Re: Tell HN: Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday
#278Yes bending spoon will stop growing these companies and stop add features. These role will be just replaced by engineers and employee in Italy, where bending spoon is form, and where people cost many times less than in the US. Italy is like a higher quality India in a sense.
> Italy is like a higher quality India in a sense. It's attitudes like this that rub decisionmakers who aren't of European heritage the wrong way. Italian tech salaries [0] aren't significantly different from Indian tech salaries [1], especially in major hubs like Bangalore [2]. If companies like Google [5], Broadcom [6], and Nvidia [7] can afford to pay EU level salaries in India and decided to heavily invest in hir…
Re: Tell HN: Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hourly rates are inherently risky for clients - you're asking them to part with money with no guaranteed outcome, so there's a natural ceiling where the financial risk becomes untenable regardless of your expertise and reputation. Clients don't buy hours though, they buy solutions. They have problems costing them money or preventing revenue and they'll pay a percentage of that value to solve it. When you price based…
OK so in this case how do you set the price? Based on the final solution to be delivered? Can you give one (or a few) concrete examples by any chance? I am not sure if I fully understood what you meant exactly with your (detailed) reply.
“This is the price for me to do work I don’t want to do, but will do, if you make it impossible for me to say no.”
It’s not about justifying the rate, that’s the wrong way to think of it.
Re: Tell HN: Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday
#280Yes bending spoon will stop growing these companies and stop add features. These role will be just replaced by engineers and employee in Italy, where bending spoon is form, and where people cost many times less than in the US. Italy is like a higher quality India in a sense.
> Italy is like a higher quality India in a sense. It's attitudes like this that rub decisionmakers who aren't of European heritage the wrong way. Italian tech salaries [0] aren't significantly different from Indian tech salaries [1], especially in major hubs like Bangalore [2]. If companies like Google [5], Broadcom [6], and Nvidia [7] can afford to pay EU level salaries in India and decided to heavily invest in hir…