Y’know, they were going crazy over the top implementing unnecessary features… Maybe they actually did have too many employees doing useless things, but they should’ve instead had those employees focus on performance instead
You hit the nail on the head.
I see this so many places - nobody asks “how big does this company need to be”? This is the problem with public companies - they are caught in an endless growth trap. Private businesses at least get to a point where a) growth has to happen sustainably because often there isn’t endless money available to invest and b) once you’ve got one private jet, as owners, do you really need another?
Reddit was no different. Maybe it would have been better for us all if it was a much smaller team and just careful tendered like a garden that had filled its plot.
But isn’t Reddit still private?
Well yeah, but we both know they are behaving like a company heading for an attempted IPO.
But that’s why I don’t think the private vs public company distinction is what matters. When it comes to private, there’s a whole class of private equity owned companies that some people won’t even consider working at because of the reputation their cost cutting and flip mentality is. It’s not a black and white private good public bad because only one has public share holders and exchanges.
It’s definitely not as simple as my quick comment on Lemmy pretends, agreed.
You think you could put “improved performance and fixed bugs” on the brochure but if it’s not something with ~A.I. then it’s not gonna help sales.
Probably trying everything they could to get more $$$ but it didn’t work out so… bye.
Unity, Google, Discord. All within a day or two of each other.
For every number of employees laid off, a VP level employee must be fired. Those employees didn’t hire themselves. Someone came up with the idea.
If companies don’t do this they’re not attacking the root of the problem.
They coordinate to create a glut and push all their wages down. Computer touching wagies and so socially stunted they’ll never form effective union. If they did, they would jusy defect out of greed.
Programmers are already ridiculously overpaid lol
Computer touching wagies and so socially stunted they’ll never form effective union.
The industry is so niche, the technology is so heavily customized, and the people so idiosyncratic that I think forming a union shouldn’t be that hard. The real dampener is that the pay for these jobs is always far above the median. Five years of experience and you’re reaching towards six figures. Ten years and you’re well over the line. And in Silicon Valley, the sky is the limit. A master’s or phd in your field means you’re looking at $200k, $300k, $400k…
If there’s a big drop in wages (and considering the real estate prices in the neighborhoods where these businesses exist) something’s got to give. Maybe you get unions. Maybe you just get a bunch of businesses collapsing on themselves Twitter-style and forcing people back into the “indie company-in-my-garage” model. Maybe everyone becomes contractors.
But this isn’t sustainable in any serious sense.
and considering the real estate prices in the neighborhoods where these businesses exist) something’s got to give. M
I work in aerospace, we got unions back in the 70s and never let them go. For what the job actually is, it pays pretty good.
Aerospace pay is good, but it used to be a whole lot better. The salaries definitely haven’t kept up with executive pay, even if they’re multiples of the regional average. I’ve got a friend who went into aerospace and bemoans how he’s living solidly middle class in a field that used to put you squarely into the top 5% income bracket. Funny to see someone complain about earning a quarter million a year, but when buying a starter home costs twice that…
Oh I make 3 times less than that. But I slack off in a proportionnal manner !
Plenty of slackers in the aerospace industry. Don’t let that hold you back.
Also twitch. Yuck…
Probably some great devs on the market for anyone hiring though.
Yeah, no
All devs must go through at least a year of unemployment according to these mofos
Bold of you to think that the VP level employees don’t get big raises in exchange for laying empoyees off.
I think it’s an unfair and naive assumption to think VPs all keep their jobs. I’ve seen some pretty nasty game of thrones plays by executive leadership during layoffs due to consolidation of teams and remits. Someone might get a bonus that doesn’t deserve it, but someone is going to get let go at a high level (albeit with a generous severance not offered to the rest of the employees).
Also, when new senior leadership comes in, it’s not uncommon for them to let heads roll at the leadership level to fill out the team with folks they know or trust. I’m not shedding a tear about where those folks will go on to find similar employment, but I think there’s a misconception about how safe those positions actually are.
I guess I’m jaded because I’ve seen far too many times where it’s the worker bees, the people who actually put the work in and get things done, getting the sharp end of the stick. I would be surprised if the 17% of employees Discord laid off actually included VPs.
I hear you. You are going to see a lot more worker bees than VPs laid off in part because there’s a lot more worker bees than VPs.
per https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/discord-layoffs-citron-overhiring-gaming-18603308.php
The notice, required when companies perform mass layoffs, said the employees would officially leave Discord on Feb. 2. Dozens of engineers are among the casualties, as are several trust and safety employees, product managers and data scientists, according to the notice.
Depending on how the structure is laid out and what product areas were cut, I’m guessing up to the director level would be impacted.
Discord went the way of Skype, it’s just a bloated fustercluck now. I don’t use it often, just once a month or so to keep up with a group of old friends, and every time I fire it up it has a new update bringing features I don’t give a rats ass about.
Now how to move the gaming community to Matrix or XMPP.
Why? Discord is still as functional as ever. Why would I move platform?
Because it locks you out from even seeing the mods and stuff if you don’t have an account. Old time forums were better.
Small company: yeah, we hired too many people, need to let go of 170.
People: such huge cuts, not touching them anymore
Large company: we’re laying off the entire staff of pre-Elon Twitter worth of employees in this one department because they didn’t make us enough money.
People: good, your product sucked anyways
I mean, I wouldn’t exactly call a company with 1000 employees “small”. It’s not the behemoth that something like Google is, but like… that’s a good chunk of people.
Before you do that, can you fix screen sharing on Linux?
I haven’t used Discord in a while so YMMV but I used to use WebCord and screen sharing worked pretty well IIRC. It uses an up-to-date Electron version which has better support for modern desktop Linux protocols. There are probably plenty of other alternative clients that just repackage the web app with better Linux support. There’s also gtkcord4 which is a native Gtk client, though definitely not as polished as the official client.
It does support it, but not the audio :/
Try vesktop!
Oh wow, it actually works! Thanks! But there are issues with EasyEffects (it’s being worked on) and low framerates during streaming (also being worked on). But it does work
Shocked that discord employed 1k people tbh.
I use Matrix already 3 years now
Definitely not getting linux video streaming now
Any alternative you would recommend? I’m mostly using it for video group call for dnd. Although convincing the group to change to yet another program would be the hardest part.
As far as self hosted I’ve heard a lot about matrix but haven’t tried it. Maybe I’ll give it a shot this weekend.
There’s also telegram, slack, etc if you want something else commercial.
I’ve convinced few of my friends to use Matrix and it has been a really nice platform and now I prefer it to Discord not only because it respects user privacy but also because it doesn’t have the nitro bs
That’s great to hear. Somehow everyone and everything is on discord now and I really am not a fan of it what with all the pop ups and flashing shiny things to buy lol.
I’ll try to get my smaller groups on matrix
Yeah I still have a lot of friends that just refuse to get off Discord but at least I got a few people to move like I said
Someone replied to me that you can run a bridge and never even know. I’m definitely trying it out now. Sick of all the nitro ads.
you can run a bridge. I forget that friends are on discord sometimes bc it’s so seamless, and they can’t tell I’m not sending messages from discord either. I do have to use the discord app for voip tho
Does Matrix have video calls by now?
They are just using an implementation of Jitsi for the time being. Long story short: Yes, but they are still working on it.
Only if you use Element. Seems like the new Element client is making it even better, but afaik no protocol level support: https://element.io/blog/element-x-now-with-embedded-voip/
MicrosoftRoblox ripped off Discord and branded it as Guilded GG. Features-wise for audio and game streaming, they offer higher quality than Discord for free.Is there any chance you’ll get your group of friends to move to
“MS Teams for gamers”?anything other than Discord? No chance.Edited: Correction that Guilded is owned by Roblox, not MS.
The inertia of “what we have works fine” is why I’m still using a lot of things.
Removed by mod
haha, I wish they had 17% of their workforce as linux devs
Shill element and we wouldn’t need to be in this situation people 😮💨
I love Element and it’s absolutely my platform of choice, but it’s years out until it can be considered a Discord competitor.
Still holding out for them to have a $10 a year tier with no added features. The $36 bucks a year entry fee is just too much.
Can someone here explain to me why so many free services directly jump to $3, $5 or $9.99 bucks a month? Why not $10 per year? Surely that’s better than nothing?
Just call it supporter tier and that’s it. I don’t want any icons or upload limits either. I just want to not feel like a leech. ;)
Because 5 bucks a month is making way more money than 50 cents.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Discord is laying off 17 percent of its staff, a move that CEO Jason Citron said is meant to “sharpen our focus and improve the way we work together to bring more agility to our organization.”
Based on Citron’s message to employees and my understanding of the business, Discord isn’t in dire financial straits, though it has yet to become profitable and is still trying to revive user growth after a surge during the pandemic.
In his memo to employees, which you can read in full below, Citron said Discord grew its headcount too fast over the last few years — an admission that has become quite common among tech CEOs as of late.
These cuts are Discord’s largest to date after the messaging app laid off 4 percent of staff last August.
They add to the layoffs that continue to sweep across the tech industry, including deep cuts at Google and Amazon just this week.
The company has been contemplating going public since it turned down a $12 billion acquisition offer from Microsoft in 2021, though I’m told it’s nowhere near close to doing so.
The original article contains 289 words, the summary contains 186 words. Saved 36%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
But no execs, I assume.
At least not without a golden parachute.
Here is your reward for fucking up
