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

Opera sends 90 out the door

translate.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 120 posts

Re: Opera sends 90 out the door

#81

Post by nafmo »

dagw wrote: post #14
btipling wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Difficult to make it out in the translation but if they laid off engineers good enough to work on Presto they must not be a technology company any more. They must be transitioning to something else entirely, as your technical team is an asset and browser engine engineering requires some skill so you if you had to downsize you probably wouldn't want to get rid of those guys. Although I guess they can't be cheap. But I…

From what I could gather from the article (i read Norwegian) they closed down the Presto department by offering everybody either a move to a different department (mainly mobile and desktop clients) or a severance package. At this point 50-70 people chose to leave. Since then they've also interdependently gotten rid of various other, both technical and non-technical people, for a grand total of 90. I just don't unders…

They did not offer everybody to move to a different department. They did offer a that to a lot of us, but not to everyone. Most of those of us left were offered severance packages (which were said to be voluntary, but AFAICT most of the people who got offered one in the first round took it).

Re: Opera sends 90 out the door

#83

Post by prumek »

cpeterso wrote: post #67
prumek wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think Opera is outsourcing development to Google? Just because something is using a framework doesn't mean they aren't using it to build their own thing on top of it. Your comment doesn't make sense. It's wild speculation based on an article with false statements.

Opera is switching to Chromium, which is a complete browser.

Using the Chromium framework doesn't mean that you are using the actual final Chromium UI. The CEO himself said they're building a new UI.

Re: Opera sends 90 out the door

#84

Post by prumek »

azakai wrote: post #71
prumek wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think Opera is outsourcing development to Google? Just because something is using a framework doesn't mean they aren't using it to build their own thing on top of it. Your comment doesn't make sense. It's wild speculation based on an article with false statements.

> What makes you think Opera is outsourcing development to Google? Just because something is using a framework doesn't mean they aren't using it to build their own thing on top of it. They are using Chromium as their browser. Chromium is a full browser, so basically almost all the work on Opera's new browser will be done by Google. That is why I said "outsourcing development to Google", but of course I didn't mean it…

You are misunderstanding what "using Chromium means." As I replied to cpeterso:

Using the Chromium framework doesn't mean that you are using the actual final Chromium UI. The CEO himself said they're building a new UI.

Differentiation doesn't take place in the browser engine. It take splace in the UI. Most people have no idea which engine they are using, and they don't care.

Re: Opera sends 90 out the door

#86

Post by [deleted] »

prumek wrote: post #62
gcp wrote: post #5

I thought their press release of less than a week ago said those people were supposed to improve WebKit :-) Can imagine that quite a few of those fired would have been tough to motivate, though. Nobody likes seeing their lifework put out and shot.

What makes you think they aren't goig to work on Webkit? Out of those 90 people who left or were fired, there were marketing, sales, etc. personell. Only a minority was probably an actual developer.

[deleted]

Re: Opera sends 90 out the door

#87

Post by prumek »

ferongr wrote: post #72
prumek wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your conspiracy theory kind of falls flat on its face, since former employees have in fact spoken publicly on this. What you can gather doesn't seem to be very useful either since the quoted number is correct. It's the number of employees reported by Opera to the authorities. But maybe in your conspiracy, Opera manipulates those numbers to lie to the authorities for some unknown, sinister reason? How is the current m…

That's assuming that what they said was said truthfully and not under the threat of a loaded gun. Opera the company shows signs of being on track be acquired (with the founder reportedly selling part of his shares to not have a majority stake anymore [1]) and management would probably like to minimize dissent and bad press. [1] http://gigaom.com/2013/02/12/opera-founder-sells-shares-pote...

What are you talking about? Loaded gun?

Are you seriously suggesting that the company is using threats of physical violence to shut former employees up?

Who cares about the founder? He previously said he wouldn't necessarily block an acquisition. And if Opera wanted to be acquired, why are they doing business like usual, and even buying up other companies?

Re: Opera sends 90 out the door

#88

Post by [deleted] »

wilhelm wrote: post #68
tatsuke95 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Those laid off are terrified to say anything publicly." I'm curious as to why? Norway doesn't seem like a place where people would fear their ex-employers.

I can only speculate, and I don't think that's particularly helpful. The 2010 downsizing was quite transparent. This time no ordinary employees seem to have the full picture of what exactly is going in.

[deleted]

Re: Opera sends 90 out the door

#89

Post by prumek »

tobiasbischoff wrote: post #52

By the way: Their year-over-year revenue is up 39% from Q411 to Q412. Most of their revenue is from providing browsing service to mobile operators around the world. very well secured by long term contracts and adjusting the rendering engine should not affect any of that business.

Actually, look at the Q4 presentation.

Operators are less than 20%. Desktop is the second biggest with nearly 30%, while publishing/advertising is the biggest revenue source with more than 40%.

Re: Opera sends 90 out the door

#90

Post by [deleted] »

prumek wrote: post #87
ferongr wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's assuming that what they said was said truthfully and not under the threat of a loaded gun. Opera the company shows signs of being on track be acquired (with the founder reportedly selling part of his shares to not have a majority stake anymore [1]) and management would probably like to minimize dissent and bad press. [1] http://gigaom.com/2013/02/12/opera-founder-sells-shares-pote...

What are you talking about? Loaded gun? Are you seriously suggesting that the company is using threats of physical violence to shut former employees up? Who cares about the founder? He previously said he wouldn't necessarily block an acquisition. And if Opera wanted to be acquired, why are they doing business like usual, and even buying up other companies?

[deleted]
Post reply on HN