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

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 522 posts

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

#391

Post by johnnyanmac »

hi_hi wrote: post #283
csallen wrote: post #231

Earlier 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.

You want the truth? You can't handle the truth! :-) Those words weren't truth. Truth would have been to state the intent to fire employees in order to maximise profit. This was always going to be the outcome, and it was expected, why not just state it clearly? Again, when truth becomes a grey area that is to be manipulated for maximising profits that benefit a minority of privileged individuals, we should be concerne…

I don't like layoffs, but if the statement in September said "we are going to lay off most of our talent in January for blah blah blah corporate mumbo jumbo", it'd suck but I'd see nothing wrong with it. The employees get a 3 month warning to plan around, and the company can do whatever it wants from there.

But that's not the society we live in.

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

#392

Post by aetherson »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #379
aetherson wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>But I don't really see what overall lessons there are here. So many chains to keep up with. There wasn't really a lesson here. Just "Vimeo is not Evernote"? My wider lesson unrelated to this chain is that US at will employnent sucks and we need to overhaul it. You don't create a trusting career by treating employees like toys to discard.

The US has enriched a vastly larger number of software engineers through at will employment that Europe has through making it very hard to fire people who aren't adding value.

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

#393

Post by johnnyanmac »

aetherson wrote: post #390
johnnyanmac wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the owners were paid by the sale. the owners didn't have shares in their company? they weren't paid for their labor? They only get money when they sell off and are working for free out of a labor of love until then? >The argument by other people was that the sale shouldn't happen... I guess it wasn't in this chain, but my argument was focused on the human element. I don't care if the owners got a trillion dollars a…

The founders are probably not the owners of a large majority of the business. Most of the owners are not drawing any salary. Look, lying is bad sure. It would be better if they had been honest in November. But nobody here is actually arguing that the layoffs are fine, they're only mad about the comms.

>Most of the owners are not drawing any salary.

If they are founders and they chose to leave, that's their freedom to do so. Just like any employee you don't get a salary for leaving just because you used to work there.

if you're an owner who bought in, you already got your money. You got a steady profit from sitting there and operating a business at best. At worst you made a bad business decision. You're not owed profit.

So yes, they are both paid, or gambled and had a bad opportunity cost. That's life. I don't see it as justification for them to "deserve" their sale, even if it's legally their call.

>But nobody here is actually arguing that the layoffs are fine, they're only mad about the comms.

Many people in this discussion are in fact arguing that the layoffs are fine. to paraphrase a few

> "It's obvious if you know who Bending Spoons is"

> "That's at-will employment, it's fair"

> "they have to run a business"

> "most of the owners are not drawing any salary"

So yes, even if it's against their best interests there are still so many beholden to defend billionaires. And that is why I asset seemingly obvious points. What's your argument here again?

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

#394

Post by johnnyanmac »

csallen wrote: post #273
ryandrake wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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..."

If "reasonable person" means "someone with literally zero experience reading any business or acquisition news whatsoever" then I agree with you. Hell, the OP literally begins the announcement with, "As expected."

>"someone with literally zero experience reading any business or acquisition news whatsoever" then I agree with you.

Most people aren't entrepreneurs, and they may be an older folk who grew up expecting companies invested in employee retention and building careers.

Those "reasonable people" were lied to.

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

#395

Post by johnnyanmac »

akavi wrote: post #288
ryandrake wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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..."

Only if you believe the primary purpose of a corporation is to provide employment, as opposed to generating profit for its shareholders. (To be clear, I think the latter is both descriptively true and normatively good)

if corporations only exist to make the rich richer, maybe it's time to eat the rich. Corporations' outward goals used to be to satisfy their customers. That may have never been the internal case, but it isn't even pretended to be so nowadays.

Severely downsizing the company isnt a good vibe to a customer. I'd definitely be migrating off Vimeo if I did any serious business with them.

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

#396

Post by johnnyanmac »

ForHackernews wrote: post #270
ryandrake wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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..."

Any reasonable person who has paid attention to business news over their lifetime would not be surprised to see layoffs following a corporate acquisition.

> who has paid attention to business news over their lifetime

So, less than a percent of a percent of people.

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

#397

Post by johnnyanmac »

perlgeek wrote: post #263
csallen wrote: post #231

Earlier 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.

Try to be innovative without staff though...

Here comes the AI buzzwords.

I wish I was kidding. Their search result brings up

>Vimeo AI-Powered Video Platform

anyone who knew Vimeo pre-pandemic knows how eye-rolling this is.

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

#398

Post by johnnyanmac »

999900000999 wrote: post #203
hi_hi wrote: post #172

From the previous press about the aquisition: BendingSpoon CEO: "At Bending Spoons, we acquire companies with the expectation of owning and operating them indefinitely, and we look forward to realizing Vimeo’s full potential as we reach new heights together" Vimeo CEO: "We are excited about this partnership, which we believe will unlock even greater focus for our team and customers as we continue to strive towards ou…

Of course words don't actually mean anything. I've been through this myself once upon a time I was at a company and the way they described it is they just changed owners habitually. Within about 4 months of this ownership change they fired my entire office. Luckily I was already some place new.

So are we just going to acept that words no longer mean anything and carry on through life distructing of everything we navigate through? That isn't the only way.

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

#399

Post by cadamsdotcom »

stenuto wrote: post #361
cadamsdotcom wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sorry to say but that doesn’t sound very hopeful.

You need a customer my friend.

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

#400

Post by johnnyanmac »

solarkraft wrote: post #60
TheChaplain wrote: post #18

I have no hope for Vimeo. BS took over Evernote and I cancelled the subscription after a year. Their idea of value for the customer vs the price is not realistic.

Bending Spoons: Wow, they gave us money for a year!

spending X00 million dollars to get maybe $200 out of a user is certainly a flex.
Post reply on HN