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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

#361

Post by stenuto »

cadamsdotcom wrote: post #330
stenuto wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you! There aren't any end-to-end open source video host solutions out there from what I can tell. DIY ffmpeg + a CDN is a great way to go. But quickly erodes when you want all the other niceties that are table-stakes today (like storyboards, subtitles, chapters, etc.). I'll have all the niceties, but I plan to differentiate mainly on performance and quality. - Higher quality compression (via AV1 encoding) - Fas…

Sounds good. I’d suggest niching down and talking to some customers to see who genuinely cares about those things - as they might turn out (tragically I know) to be things only techies care about. Fair warning.. when we hear talk to customers we are tempted to reply “I talked to customer in my mind and they love my thing!” But unfortunately customers in our minds don’t have money :) There’re either customers out ther…

Yup, good points! Thank you. I'm building a pretty generic tool for now and hoping a couple of niche use cases surface here soon.

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

#362

Post by mindslight »

fsckboy wrote: post #350
mindslight wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as long as people engaged in a market make their own choices, then money is a direct measure of happiness on the margin That is a big if which is straightforwardly false. This idea of market participants' choices being entirely free rests on the efficient market fallacy [0]. Whereas the reality is that even the structure of a market itself creates friction. One of the main points of business schools is learning how…

> This idea of market participants' choices being entirely free rests on the efficient market fallacy in an inefficient market, you can still choose to transact or not, and you will only do so if you feel you will benefit. in an efficient market, the net benefit across society will be higher, but nothing in what I said requires an efficient market. so you are simply wrong.

No, you cannot necessarily to choose whether to transact or not. For life's necessities (eg food, shelter) this is straightforwardly obvious. And you are making this claim in the context of the employment market, which is one step removed from that.

But even in the general case your argument still does not make sense. When we talk of a business providing societal utility, we don't include the business owner themselves in the integral. For example your assertion lets you conclude things like a casino owner who has made a pile of money but impoverished the community has made society better.

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

#363

Post by johnnyanmac »

epolanski wrote: post #345
johnnyanmac wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To summarize what I put in another response: I personally care less about holding the multi millionaire into account (though I wouldn't mind it at all) and more about making sure employees over such deals aren't lied to and then have lives upended at the drop of a hat. Workers and customers do not in fact "know what the fate's gonna be" and that's the problem to address. I won't repeat the same usual solutions again,…

> Workers and customers do not in fact "know what the fate's gonna be" and that's the problem to address. 1. Bending Spoons model is known, everybody knows as soon it's announced 2. The company belongs to the shareholders and founders. It's them making the decision.

1. we're on a tech forum and can quickly link to other discussions on the company. Many employees may not even be aware there was a change in management. If they were, their statement outright lied to them saying they still wanted to continue to grow. Meanwhile, many Vimeo clients won't know about this for months or even years. So no, not everyone knew.

2. And I'm saying a cooperation shouldn't be able to make reckless decisions like "lets lay off most of our workforce" withotu reprecussions. Like most civilized societies outside the US do. Thats's what the bulk of my previous response is about.

What are you arguing? That you can do anything you want to something you own? That's not true for nearly anything in modern society.

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

#364

Post by aetherson »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #229
philipallstar wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The owner got a big pay package from the sale on top of usually being one of the more highly compensated employees at such companies. What do you mean by "the owner didn't get paid"? >No one wonders why loyalty is dead. I see you missed the recent narrative of "Gen Z is lazy" and "most managers avoid hiring Gen Z" out there. I assure you many managers are baffled, bit blame the (relative) children instead of seeing h…

Yes, the owners were paid by the sale. The argument by other people was that the sale shouldn't happen, or vice versa that the sale should happen only to people who were committed to continuing to spend the company's money on supporting employees who are stipulated to not be adding much value (and, thus, are not willing to pay much for the company).

Guys, I totally get it. Nobody likes to be laid off. I was laid off a month ago. But the money that is being soaked up by employee who are, again, stipulated to be not doing anything productive goes somewhere else. This may be a tragedy for an individual person, but it's good for society overall.

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

#365

Post by johnnyanmac »

Nextgrid wrote: post #106

I am surprised so many people don't understand the business model of Bending Spoons or are bewildered by it. In conventional infrastructure and product development you need engineering staff to build the product; once the product is built you need very little engineering. If you build a house you don't keep the builders on payroll once it's built to keep "building" it - you may need maintenance staff but that's it -…

> Builders and electricians and tradesmen either work as contractors and take that into account

okay. Salaries office workers don't work on contracts. If they do, they know an end is in sight and renewal is not guaranteed. If companies want contractors, they should just do that.

Meanwhie, I'm sure your parents' generation for many industries expected to find one job and make a career around that company, maybe doing 1 or 2 hops based on circumstances. It was highly unusual to lay off everyone at the drop of a hat. This is not normal, and I don't think we should normalize it.

To use your metaphor, this is more like you are working on the 3rd room of some house and suddenly you are kicked out. Contractors take this into account, but you as a salaried worker just need to bite the bullet. This is companies having their cake and eating it to.

>the old situation was never sustainable to begin with.

Tell that to the trillion dollar tech companies.

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

#366

Post by aetherson »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #201
WJW wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was like that with WeTransfer too. Fine company that had been profitable for years, but with little hope of getting ever 10x bigger again. I used to work there and had already left by the time of the acquisition, but all the old colleagues I've spoken to said the same. The main business was throwing off gobs of money and there were SO MANY failed projects to try and find new revenue streams. Everyone who was not b…

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…

I mean, if your argument is, "Bending Spoons made a bad investment," then sure, okay. That's not implausible! Companies make bad investments.

But I don't really see what overall lessons there are here.

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

#367

Post by fsckboy »

mindslight wrote: post #362
fsckboy wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This idea of market participants' choices being entirely free rests on the efficient market fallacy in an inefficient market, you can still choose to transact or not, and you will only do so if you feel you will benefit. in an efficient market, the net benefit across society will be higher, but nothing in what I said requires an efficient market. so you are simply wrong.

No, you cannot necessarily to choose whether to transact or not. For life's necessities (eg food, shelter) this is straightforwardly obvious. And you are making this claim in the context of the employment market, which is one step removed from that. But even in the general case your argument still does not make sense. When we talk of a business providing societal utility, we don't include the business owner themselve…

>No, you cannot necessarily to choose whether to transact or not.

I didn't say you could, pay closer attention or you will not be able to understand arguments or learn anything.

What I said was, "as long as people engaged in a market make their own choices, then money is a direct measure of happiness on the margin."

however, your mistake does contain a germ of reinforcement to what I said: if you cannot choose to participate in a transaction, you will be less happy, i.e. allowing sellers to offer choices and buyers to make choices will increase happiness in every type of market.

before you make another mistake and go shooting off, I didnt say people will be happy, I said they will be happier, but happier is an unmitigated good.

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

#368

Post by johnnyanmac »

gitgud wrote: post #179
Nextgrid wrote: post #151

Earlier 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.

There’s also the much more common case of a competitor coming in with a similar product that has a few more features matching the customers’ requirements… which explains the endless product development treadmill that companies find themselves on. Software doesn’t win by being “finished” it wins by out competing other software

Yeah, if Youtube was "finished" we wouldn't have had Youtube Red, Youtube shorts, Youtube music, etc.

And yes, I am making a good case for mature software with those lovely examples. But clearly they wanted more widgets and they kept engineers who can deliver those widgets. This wasn't some unsustainable thing for Youtube as the top comment argues. And that's how most software businesses work as of now. If you remain complacent, you're slowly dying to competition. Because the demand for more still exists.

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

#369

Post by johnnyanmac »

Nextgrid wrote: post #355
wavemode wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Potential revenue growth is only as finite as your ideas (and ability to execute on them). Just look at Google. They could have stopped writing new software at any point and been just fine. But in the long run they'd have missed out on trillions of dollars. As with everything in business, it comes down to risk/reward. Not every risk pays off, but some do.

But for every outlier that can perpetually keep unlocking new revenue streams with more features, there's probably 100 companies that burn themselves out trying to do the same and end up sold for pennies on the dollar. The key is knowing when to stop. Unfortunately permanent employment does not provide an incentive for anyone involved to speak up when they think it's that time.

>for every outlier that can perpetually keep unlocking new revenue streams with more features, there's probably 100 companies that burn themselves out trying to do the same and end up sold for pennies on the dollar.

Okay. Most businesses also fail. Is that a reason for existing ones to stop growing?

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

#370

Post by johnnyanmac »

f33d5173 wrote: post #141
wavemode wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The economics are different because the industries are fundamentally different. Software is never "finished" the way a building is finished. More features can always be added to software. If those new features create new product lines and attract new revenue, then the software engineers' salaries are more than paying for themselves. But, this obviously carries risk, that the new thing you develop won't be worth as mu…

The businesses they acquire are ones whose revenue has not appreciably grown in many years. They are being sold because the prior owner does not believe they can improve the business any more. Any profit bending spoons earns they can run off and invest in another business if they like. They don't bother investing in the businesses they purchase because they believe, like the previous owner believed, that there is no…

>Any profit bending spoons earns they can run off and invest in another business if they like

And the ones who helped make Vimeo what it is? left out in the cold to fend for themselves.

This is why loyalty is dead. Maybe if this billion dollar aquisition benefitted the workers there'd be less hard feelings, but that's not how capitalism works.

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