I certainly appreciate their openness, and like to follow their progress, but... ...could anyone explain to this naive commenter how it takes 90 (80 for that matter) people to run essentially a 'cronjob as a service' business?
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Buffer Layoffs
31–40 of 429 posts
Re: Buffer Layoffs
#32What does buffer do as a company?
I had the same question. I clicked on a few links that I thought would lead to the product description but they didn't. Eventually I realized that the domain was open.buffer.com. Once you go to buffer.com, you see the product description. From the homepage:
"The best way to drive traffic, increase fan engagement and save time on social media."
Re: Buffer Layoffs
#33Good for them for being transparent even when the company is struggling, but if I was an employee at the company I would be worried. The chart they provide of Buffer bank balance over time seems overly optimistic. It looks like they assume that the employees they fire added no value to the company - they assume the company will generate the same revenue even after cutting 10% of their employees. This is wrong, and would worry me greatly that the founders don't seem to recognize this. Of course I would be worried anyway because laying people off at a start-up is a really bad sign, anyway you try to spin it.
Re: Buffer Layoffs
#34I certainly appreciate their openness, and like to follow their progress, but... ...could anyone explain to this naive commenter how it takes 90 (80 for that matter) people to run essentially a 'cronjob as a service' business?
Your comment imply that you never worked in a company with larger customer base or in a company with sales department. I think this kind of comments is highly disrespectful to the team, given the the style how Buffer is managed and how transparent they are.
It’s not disrespectful if it’s a sincere question.
Re: Buffer Layoffs
#35What does buffer do as a company?
I hadn't know what they did either, but their homepage makes it abundantly clear: https://buffer.com/
They let companies and individuals manage & schedule social media posts across a few of the main platforms (At the risk of doing them a disservice in my explanation, but also saving whoever reads this a click).
Re: Buffer Layoffs
#36This may be a little cynical but:
"With our culture of bringing our whole selves to work and seeing team as family, with shared values we live by,..."
In the American business world, you are an employee until you aren't. Confusing being an employee with being "family" is a mistake, both for the company and the employee.
When times get bad, companies do what it takes to survive, including throwing employees overboard. That's just a fact.
Buffer may have thought it was different, but that flow-chart of how they decided who to layoff was entirely about how an employee can help the company, not how the layoff would affect the employee. That's not how normal families make decisions.
I have no problem with any of that, but anyone who thinks that way has another thing coming.
All of this isn't to say that Buffer was thoughtless or callous in how they handled it. From the outside, it looks like one of the better handled layoffs I've seen.
But still. Don't confuse your job with your family. It's a business relationship that is only maintained as long as it is in both side's interest to do so.
Re: Buffer Layoffs
#37>> We canceled our upcoming team retreat to Berlin. Savings: $400,000. Compared to all their other costs that one stood out the most. 500k savings laying off 10% of your workforce compared to 400k for a team retreat in Berlin. Is this typical?
That does seem astronomical. $4,000 per employee if they have ~100 employees like they say. Anyone think their salaries are absurdly high for some locations and positions? They've got Adnan working as an "Advanced Backend/Frontend Developer" in Sri Lanka, making only $65,104. This actually makes sense to me because Sri Lanka's cost of living is pretty low. But they've got an Advanced "Happiness Hero" which I presume…
That may be a customer retention role, in which case I think that's within reason.
Re: Buffer Layoffs
#38>> We canceled our upcoming team retreat to Berlin. Savings: $400,000. Compared to all their other costs that one stood out the most. 500k savings laying off 10% of your workforce compared to 400k for a team retreat in Berlin. Is this typical?
That does seem astronomical. $4,000 per employee if they have ~100 employees like they say. Anyone think their salaries are absurdly high for some locations and positions? They've got Adnan working as an "Advanced Backend/Frontend Developer" in Sri Lanka, making only $65,104. This actually makes sense to me because Sri Lanka's cost of living is pretty low. But they've got an Advanced "Happiness Hero" which I presume…
Yes, I agree with you. Unless I'm fundamentally misunderstanding what a "Happiness Hero" is, it appears they are paying a developer's salary for email support. $77k in Louisville, Kentucky would be about $135k in NYC.
$77k is not "extraordinarily" high for Kentucky without any context, but it would be very surprising for an email support role. In fact, I would expect $70k to be a very upper bound for technical support in NYC.
That said, there might be a very technical component of the job role that we do not have any insight on.
Re: Buffer Layoffs
#39>In short, this was all caused by the fact that we grew the team too big, too fast. We thought we were being mindful about balancing the pace of our hiring with our revenue growth. We weren’t.
>Reflecting on it now, I see a lot of ego and pride reflected in that team size number.
> In many areas, we grew the team more than was truly necessary for the time, more than was clearly validated.
I feel like we all experience this pull by vanity metrics, ego, etc. The level of honestly we've seen in this post will hopefully serve as a reality check for many of us.
>Both Leo and I have taken a salary cut of 40% until at least the end of the year. Savings: $94,000.
>Leo and I are committing $100k each in the form of a loan at the lowest possible interest rate, with repayment only when Buffer reaches a healthy financial position. Savings: $200,000.
This is an attitude and decision I saw made by the C-level during the financial crisis at a company with hundreds of employees. The C level took home $0 in pay and the staff took at 40% until they made it back to profitability, in order to avoid laying anyone off (this is Japan where reemployment would be incredibly difficult).
It shows maturity and commitment to the organization (i.e. your people) that is rarely seen these days in startup land. Much respect.
Re: Buffer Layoffs
#40What does buffer do as a company?
create resentment over compensation and lay people off it seems.