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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

#491

Post by listenallyall »

reaperducer wrote: post #315
listenallyall wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd question why your "head of Communications" isn't already aware of alternative vendors for important pieces of their domain. After all, companies go out of business, get bought out, change pricing all the time. And Vimeo was bought out months ago - this person didn't start researching then, just in case? I'd suggest the CEO start "looking for alternatives" for this employee.

I'd question why your "head of Communications" isn't already aware of alternative vendors for important pieces of their domain. I don't like the guy, so it's not like me to defend him, but perhaps because he's busy being the head of the Communications department, instead of a tech nerd? My company produces thousands of pieces of communication each year in many different forms. Video is a small part of what his depart…

You said: I mentioned the Vimeo thing in a meeting this morning, and the head of Communications immediately said he's going to start looking for alternatives.

And now you're saying he might have a "cronjob" constantly searching for alternatives? Well then your original point is neutered, he's not going to "start" since he's already been looking.

And video is only a small part? Not an "important piece"? Well then why should Vimeo's owners manage their company based upon what low-level users think? Again, you've minimized the point of your original post to irrelevancy.

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

#492

Post by BryantD »

Animats wrote: post #261

Is there a solid source for this? Vimeo laid off most of their operation in Israel recently.[1] At least according to "www.calcalistech.com", which seems to be some minor news source in Israel. Their comment was that the office was damaged in a recent war. Rebuilding may not have been worth it. Their headquarters is in New York. [1] https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/sjtjgbabzx

As always, claims like this should come with the WARN Act notice record. There's only been one notice in NYC in 2026 (visible at https://dol.ny.gov/warn-dashboard) and it's not Vimeo or Bending Spoons. I don't see one in Q4 2025, either.

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

#493

Post by randito »

dzonga wrote: post #470
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 -…

Vista Equity operates along a similar model for SAAS cut wasteful spending, find a way to increase revenue - milk the SAAS for a few years - then either sell it off or shut it down - or it can keep running as a lean cash generating machine Vista Equity rotates operators within its holding companies

I've been through a Vista Equity acquisition. It was not pretty -- they slashed, consolidated and basically ran their one-size-fits-all playbook. The brought in their crew -- which is totally expected -- and then bought other companies in the same vertical. Of course, they all had different tech stacks.

(like ya said, operators is the right word. it felt icky)

At least for the first year, the acquired teams were able to run more or less the same but with new hyped-up-overly-aggressive Vista hotshot managers and then the sh*t-from-above just started raining down.

Also, they hired the worst sw architect / person I've ever had to work with. He wasted so much time and money.

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

#494

Post by hobbified »

BryantD wrote: post #492
Animats wrote: post #261

Is there a solid source for this? Vimeo laid off most of their operation in Israel recently.[1] At least according to "www.calcalistech.com", which seems to be some minor news source in Israel. Their comment was that the office was damaged in a recent war. Rebuilding may not have been worth it. Their headquarters is in New York. [1] https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/sjtjgbabzx

As always, claims like this should come with the WARN Act notice record. There's only been one notice in NYC in 2026 (visible at https://dol.ny.gov/warn-dashboard ) and it's not Vimeo or Bending Spoons. I don't see one in Q4 2025, either.

Most of the ones with a "date posted" in Jan 2026 have a "date of notice" two to five months ago.

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

#495

Post by FormerBandmate »

rswail wrote: post #468
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 -…

This is the same business model that Computer Associates used successfully in the 1990s, so it's not new to IT or technology. The primary difference now is that the transition from bespoke IT on premises environments has been subsumed by the cloud hyperscalars and an entire hierarchy of products that use that infrastructure in a higher level of composability than in the past. Products like SAP will continue to requir…

The thing about this business model is that it inevitably falls apart when things break.

Bending Spoons doesn’t care (yet), but they’re not at the point where stuff has proven unsustainable

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

#496

Post by Etheryte »

wavemode wrote: post #294
Etheryte wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not really sure this argument makes sense. Plenty of software I've built is finished, it does the thing I need it to do and I haven't touched it in years. Adding features just because is not a useful way to spend anyone's time, doubly so in a business context.

> Adding features just because is not a useful way to spend anyone's time, doubly so in a business context. You could make this statement about anything. "Building a new hospital wing just because is not a useful way to spend anyone's time", "Adding an extra drive-thru lane just because is not a useful way to spend anyone's time". The point is that it's not "just because", it's because you believe it can grow your re…

Hospitals expand because they either already don't or they project they won't meet demand. It's the same story with drive-thrus. These are things that are measured and analyzed. Adding features in the blind hope that more features equals more revenue is exactly how companies stagnate and burn. There's plenty of successful software products out there that are finished as far as the feature set goes, you'll find they power most of the industries outside of IT.

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

#497

Post by CadmiumYellow »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #363
epolanski wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 reckle…

I can assure you everyone knew exactly what was coming from the moment the acquisition was announced

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

#498

Post by input_sh »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #489
input_sh wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know whose thoughts you're trying to attribute to me, but I've been pretty up-to-date myself (while still keeping myself to a $20/month budget that I switch between providers every few months). Every generation has at best been a 5% improvement, and nothing revolutionary compared to the last generation. Absolutely no significant improvements between me selecting say Claude 3.7 Sonnet, Claude Sonnet 4, or Clau…

I'll grant that progress in coding hasn't been as impressive, although if you don't see a difference between Claude 3.7 Sonnet and 4.5 Opus (which is the actual SotA for Claude) I'd suspect a skill issue. I haven't seen miraculous progress in baseline code generation, but there has been a lot of progress in tool use. I can tell Claude CLI to install a complex package, for instance, and it will handle all the Python v…

> (which is the actual SotA for Claude)

Cool, how much of it can I use with a $20/month subscription? I'd reach the monthly limit within hours while gaining nothing. It's not that I never tried it, it's that I did and the difference is nowhere near worth 10x my money (nor even the wait time needed to get results).

> I'd suspect a skill issue.

There's 0 skill involved with asking a magic 8 ball to solve your problem for you. There's some skill involved with making it better for yourself consistently by cramming as much useful info as possible into the context window by writing very specific custom agents / skills / MCP servers / whatever, but I have yet to find a client that would pay me to spend an ungodly amount of time fucking around with my toolbelt instead of delivering results.

> Three or four years ago, models couldn't cite their sources at all. Two or three years ago, they started to gain the capability, but a large proportion of the citations would either be hallucinated or irrelevant. About a year ago, significant improvements started to emerge.

Let's translate that: You don't understand what they're doing under the hood when they "do that", you don't understand where that "improvement" is coming from, and I'm not interested in spending my time teaching you for free. For as little as €50/h, I'd be happy to! contact at my username.

> but the hype and promises we started hearing a couple of years ago are starting to bear fruit.

You're gaslighting yourself again in order to justify the price you're currently paying. Downgrade yourself back to $20 subscription, stick to it for one whole month, learn its limits properly, and then if you feel like you need to upgrade to a higher tier again, do so! Spoiler alert: it's gonna appear "significantly crappier" for about a week, and then after that week, you will get used to it and realise you've wasted a fuck ton of money on nothing.

> but to argue that no progress at all has been made is nothing more or less than moon-landing denial.

Where's that coming from? You're putting words into my mouth again. I specifically acknowledged small improvements, but I dismissed drastic improvements. Zero of what you said convinced me otherwise. For the love of all holy, use your own brain a little bit to actually understand the tools you're advocating for. Saying that you drank too much Kool-Aid would've been a severe understatement.

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

#499

Post by bovermyer »

ecshafer wrote: post #119
bovermyer wrote: post #98

Can someone give me some examples of private equity firms that aren't driven purely by avarice? I have a bet going with a colleague.

Your question doesn't really make sense. What business isn't driven by the goal of making money ultimately?

Non-profit organizations generally don't focus on profits, but they are usually classified as "businesses."

I suppose this is a matter of definitions. What do you define as a "business?"

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

#500

Post by bovermyer »

ecshafer wrote: post #478
hackable_sand wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What businesses are profit-driven? I would love to know so I can avoid them.

Every gas station, grocery store, convenience store, pharmacy, urgent care, every bank, every tech company, every computer manufacturer, most food production companies, most farms, every resource extraction company, every manufacturing company.

Any health care organization - from your list, pharmacies and urgent care - that is profit-driven is not holding health as top priority.

If an organization that should be focused on making people healthy is instead focused on how many currency units it can extract from other entities, there is (as they say) a misalignment of priorities.

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