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Tell HN: Nearly all of Evernote’s remaining staff has been laid off

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Re: Tell HN: Nearly all of Evernote’s remaining staff has been laid off

#392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're on Windows, OneNote is almost impossible to compete with. Even though it's part of the Office suite, it's a free, stand-alone download. The phone apps are free, and you get 5GB of free storage. Then, for less than the cost of Evernote, you can get a O365 subscription and get the Office suite and 1TB of storage. Even though OneNote is basically a loss-leader, it's extremely powerful and flexible. It's been a…

It is a shame Microsoft had basically abandoned OneNote The android app still can't change fonts after 5 years of development. It is pure insanity how little MS cares about their best product They made it brilliant at the start and since then stated they won't update it anymore.

I seriously wish you couldn't change fonts in it. OneNote itself defaults to 11pt Calibri, but the web clipper outputs 12pt Verdana because fuck you. And if you change the font to Verdana, page title font changes from 20pt Calibri Light (IIRC) to like Verdana 20pt which is comically heavy.

Plaintext based notes apps are a blessing in that regard: Since they only store the text, your pages actually look nice and consistent. I have a ton of web clippings in OneNote which are ugly as hell because of font inconsistencies.

Re: Tell HN: Nearly all of Evernote’s remaining staff has been laid off

#393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is the key issue here. There are a lot of VC funded start ups that have a good product and a solid market fit, but they were never supposed to become 500+ employee companies. If you have a product that works and makes a good profit, and you can maintain it with 10 people and extend it with 5 more, sometimes that just is the company. In this context I think it is important to note that Ycombinator was fou…

> If you have a product that works and makes a good profit, and you can maintain it with 10 people and extend it with 5 more, sometimes that just is the company. C'mon now. With that attitude, how are you ever going to get imploded on top of the Titanic, or buy a social media company so you can smash it against the wall like a toddler with a toy truck? You want to live a comfortable, happy life, with happy employees…

Yeah! I feel like I'm reading a script of an episode of the TV show, "Silicon Valley"! (ANY episode, lol!) * Pied Piper FOREVER! *

Re: Tell HN: Nearly all of Evernote’s remaining staff has been laid off

#394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dropbox never took away anything they gave for free though. In the beginning they handed out extra space like candies, and the accounts that got it at the time still have it.

I dropped Dropbox with extreme prejudice (was a paying customer) when they decided to dictate which Linux filesystems I may use. Will never use them ever again. Randomly demanding I drop everything and re-engineer my stack is an invitation for me to re-engineer them out of my life.

> when they decided to dictate which Linux filesystems I may use

That’s an odd framing. How about “when they didn’t support the filesystem I use”?

If some software is only available on Windows I doubt anyone would say that the vendor is trying to “dictate what OS I use”.

Re: Tell HN: Nearly all of Evernote’s remaining staff has been laid off

#395
post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’re both right because the original poster left out competition. It’s one thing to take free back, it’s another thing to do it when people can easily replace your product without paying. Dropbox doesn’t have a competitor that is free to use. At least as far as I know. You can get your disk space in a lot of ways, some bundled with other products you may use making it appear “free” but even if you host your…

> Dropbox doesn’t have a competitor that is free to use Google drive?

Google drive and Dropbox don’t really have the same functionality. Google really wants you to use a web browser; in my experience the filesystem integration has always been flaky. Whereas Dropbox directories that appear in the local filesystem are really solid.

Re: Tell HN: Nearly all of Evernote’s remaining staff has been laid off

#396
post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is super-important. Sometimes the grass is greener on this side of the fence. VCs want to get you to grow rapidly because the only way to move the needle on their returns is to blow the roof off. However as a founder, this is proof you can have a great business and a great quality of life by keeping costs relatively low, the team relatively small, just cranking out code and having fun.

As a founder you probably don’t get wealthy either and a lot aren’t really satisfied with a $150k/yr total comp/benefits for their successful lifestyle business.

It was pretty nice to exit my startup for hundreds of millions of dollars. Yeah, I don’t think I’d like to settle for $150k. YMMV, but I suppose a lot of folks are taking a calculated risk and swinging for the fences.

More power to em, if you prefer software be a certain way write it yourself.

Re: Tell HN: Nearly all of Evernote’s remaining staff has been laid off

#398
post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is super-important. Sometimes the grass is greener on this side of the fence. VCs want to get you to grow rapidly because the only way to move the needle on their returns is to blow the roof off. However as a founder, this is proof you can have a great business and a great quality of life by keeping costs relatively low, the team relatively small, just cranking out code and having fun.

As a founder you probably don’t get wealthy either and a lot aren’t really satisfied with a $150k/yr total comp/benefits for their successful lifestyle business.

Imagine not being "satisfied" with a ~85th percentile wage[1]. Anyone who earns more than $150k/yr should be forced to spend 6 months every 5 years working a minimum wage retail job. They can keep earning their normal salary in escrow until they're done with their "get some damn perspective" temp job.

[1] https://dqydj.com/average-median-top-household-income-percen...

Re: Tell HN: Nearly all of Evernote’s remaining staff has been laid off

#400
My Evernote use peaked in 2013-2014, during a whirlwind postdoctoral fellowship. Man, I loved that thing. So simple and responsive. It was a real tool of thought, and I used it for everything. From then on, it got worse and worse every time I "upgraded", and I basically stopped using it since 2016 or so.

Yesterday I "upgraded" at its urging, against my better judgment, and was greeted with a lovely surprise: no local notes anymore. Only cloud sync. The justification for this was basically "less capability is actually good for users", phrased in more or less that way. It seemed like the developers were blinking torture at me.

Evernote was a big blackpill. My bitterest realization that technology doesn't necessarily progress, and many products are just trapped in a cycle of tragedy.

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