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Prisma laying off 28% staff

prisma.io

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Re: Prisma laying off 28% staff

#71

Post by marcinzm »

simplotek wrote: post #62
ushakov wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously they have a bigger vision for the tool and needed people to make it happen In all honesty, 100 people is not a big number, you need people like accountants, lawyers, office staff and so on

> In all honesty, 100 people is not a big number, you need people like accountants, lawyers, office staff and so on I expect the bulk of those positions to be people trying to get someone else to buy the products/services they're selling. In the end, it might really be just 10 guys doing the actual coding.

LinkedIn indicates 40-50 in engineering out of 164 total.

Re: Prisma laying off 28% staff

#72

Post by Terretta »

vijaybritto wrote: post #10

Comes as a shock to me when I'm literally reading their documentation on setting up sqlite with prisma for an internal project

Why? Do you worry the code will work 28% less well for your problem?

Stability is bliss. So many tools would be better if at some point they had just stopped glomming on.

Re: Prisma laying off 28% staff

#73

Post by phoe-krk »

Keyframe wrote: post #67
phoe-krk wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this responsibility defined? How is this responsibility measured? What aspects of the ex-Prisma people does this responsibility cover? What measurable and practical effects does this responsibility have when measured in one week, one month, three months, one year from now? If these targets are not met, what are the consequences of that? What are the means of enforcing that responsibility? I seriously think we…

You mean something like OKRs+KPIs, sales quotas, revenue targets, budgets…

All these that you mentioned are metrics for measuring responsibility towards the company and its shareholders.

I mean metrics for measuring responsibility towards the people, especially the laid-off ones - there seems to be absolutely none of these.

Re: Prisma laying off 28% staff

#74

Post by Keyframe »

rightbyte wrote: post #26

So I read their website and to my understanding, they make a DB interface layer, and have 100+ staff? How is this not a company of like 10 people.

It does sound a bit inflated. Over the years though I’ve learned that whatever your engineering gut instinct tells you, you need to double that amount and that’ll be the actual number of people and then double to triple that amount in order to account for vacations, illnesses, maternities, people leaving and also having a new stream of people being trained in (not to be in a situation where someone leaves and no one to replace) AND then also add 10% of support staff or budget for external. This all without sales, marketing, etc.. that’s how easy it is to get inflated numbers, while it all still makes sense.

Re: Prisma laying off 28% staff

#75

Post by harha »

epolanski wrote: post #49
danjac wrote: post #21

"I take full responsibility" is the new "our incredible journey" of failing tech company cliches.

"I take full responsibility" is always referred to the investors and shareholders. aka "I admit I have done a bad decision when I over hired and I'm correcting it". It's not a "I take full responsibility" towards the employees or customers.

Right, but the letters are typically directed towards employees.

Re: Prisma laying off 28% staff

#76

Post by marcinzm »

danjac wrote: post #21

"I take full responsibility" is the new "our incredible journey" of failing tech company cliches.

Based on LinkedIn they grew from 134 to 164 in the last 6 months. I get taking a bet in 2021 on the post-covid world being different but making that same bet in mid 2022 doesn't seem a good decision.

Re: Prisma laying off 28% staff

#77

Post by dtech »

bosie wrote: post #69
epolanski wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I take full responsibility" is always referred to the investors and shareholders. aka "I admit I have done a bad decision when I over hired and I'm correcting it". It's not a "I take full responsibility" towards the employees or customers.

Can you even take responsibility for something if you don’t face any consequences yourself? Like a surgeon killing a patient “taking full responsibility”…

Yes, that means that he takes full responsibility for a mistake, and it wasn't due to other staff, equipment, unforeseen events etc...

Re: Prisma laying off 28% staff

#78

Post by UncleMeat »

kvz wrote: post #51

> “those affected have already been notified via personal and work email” Even for remote staff, there are many more human ways of informing someone they are out of a job than shooting an email. Am I the only one who feels that way? Is it actually better to get an email an process the blow in async? Genuinely curious as I didn’t see this comment yet.

I think it is brutal and terrible.

I’m at Google and had reports get laid off. I don’t just have their personal contact information or whatever and neither does my team. No opportunity to easily say goodbye or thank them for their hard work or offer references or whatever. Just poof. A name on a dashboard.

Re: Prisma laying off 28% staff

#79

Post by winter_squirrel »

atdrummond wrote: post #38

If I ever had to layoff a double digit number of employees, I would also layoff myself. I couldn’t in good conscience externalize the impact of my bad decisions on employees whilst leaving myself unaffected.

As a counterpart, if you have to layoff that many people, is it really the right time to also put the stress of a leadership shift into the company?

I can see the argument for this triggering an eventual change, but having _both_ the chock of a CEO change _and_ 28% of the company being layed off at the same time seems unwise.

Re: Prisma laying off 28% staff

#80

Post by twelve40 »

atdrummond wrote: post #38

If I ever had to layoff a double digit number of employees, I would also layoff myself. I couldn’t in good conscience externalize the impact of my bad decisions on employees whilst leaving myself unaffected.

yes it's pretty bad, but this is not Google sitting on billions of cash and dedicated groups analyzing macroeconomic conditions, this is a small startup with a complicated product and a complicated unpredictable b2b sales process.
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