[HN Gopher] Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff
___________________________________________________________________
Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff
Author : jcalabro
Score : 352 points
Date : 2022-09-13 16:36 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.patreon.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.patreon.com)
| seibelj wrote:
| I've heard rumors that Meta and Google have massive layoffs
| coming as well. Good luck out there
| subsubzero wrote:
| I've heard the same, Meta for sure, and a few folks at Goog
| have told me as well they are coming. For google this will be
| the first time they have ever done layoffs in the company
| history(2009 had 200 folks leave so not really layoffs so to
| speak) so that tells you the scale of this tech downturn.
| seibelj wrote:
| You can't have your stock down 60% YoY (META) without
| consequence. There is a whole lot of fat at both of these
| companies (and really all large firms that never had any bad
| quarters) and a reckoning has to happen
| kevstev wrote:
| You absolutely can. Stock price is really meaningless as
| far as the day to day life of a company is concerned- if
| your cash flows haven't changed, and the market has just
| decided to shit on you for a bit for irrational reasons
| there are no consequences other than maybe looking into
| whether a buyback makes sense.
|
| Equity markets are often irrational and wrong. IE Covid-
| essentially every stock was down significantly in March of
| 2020, not realizing that some businesses will actually
| benefit from the pandemic.
|
| That said, your statement about fat at these companies is
| true, and its probably been long past time that they clean
| out some dead wood.
| oldgradstudent wrote:
| > Stock price is really meaningless as far as the day to
| day life of a company is concerned
|
| Not when significant part of your employee compensation
| is equity-based.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Mark is completely unaccountable to investors. He can do
| whatever he wants as long as he has good faith reason to
| believe it will benefit shareholders.
| q7xvh97o2pDhNrh wrote:
| That's genuinely anxiety-inducing to hear. I have several
| friends who have signed offers with Google, with start dates
| set within the next few weeks/months.
|
| Really hoping they don't start pulling offers. I can't put my
| finger on why, but somehow that seems like it'd be even more
| cruel than layoffs.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Pulling offers is always considered a _very_ bad look. I
| would be extremely surprised if Google did such a thing
| given the optics, but it wouldn't be the first time Google
| has surprised me with it's stupidity.
| loosescrews wrote:
| I have heard that the 2009 layoffs were limited to
| recruiting. If these layoffs occur, they may be the company's
| first engineering layoffs.
|
| I find it surprising that they are considering layoffs. There
| have been a number of articles about Sundar's concerns over
| productivity [1,2,3], but layoffs have a tendency to reduce
| moral and productivity.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32515458 [2]
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32322131 [3]
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32816105
| nostrademons wrote:
| 2009 layoffs were technically just a bunch of radio DJs
| that were hired into a product around revolutionizing radio
| and then had nowhere else to go in the company when their
| project was canceled. The recruiters let go were
| contractors, and Google just terminated their contracts.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| It's a fine message and generous severance, but people need to
| wake up to the reality that companies don't really care about
| them when making plans for the future. Was it really so hard to
| predict a minor ~15% downturn after a period of lavish,
| extraordinary exuberance? Conservative, controlled, measured
| headcount growth is just not a consideration, as we've seen time
| and time again.
| rblatz wrote:
| The broader economy was basically saying here is free money,
| grow the business at all costs, worry about growth then later
| we'll worry about profit. Now due to inflation the Fed has
| ended the free money era, and business plans have to change.
| Expect a lot more of these posts over the next few months.
| codegeek wrote:
| A blog post was done other than Instagram:
|
| https://blog.patreon.com/a-note-from-jack
|
| "but as the world began recovering from the pandemic and enduring
| a broader economic slowdown, that plan is no longer the right
| path forward for Patreon"
|
| So basically, they overhired to meet demands during Pandemic and
| now as less people are using the platform (??), there is no need
| for the 17% of people. Interesting.
| Groxx wrote:
| > _In the US, teammates leaving Patreon will be given three
| months severance plus an additional two weeks for each half
| year of tenure beyond the first year._
|
| Pretty decent IMO.
|
| > _You'll also receive COBRA health care coverage through the
| end of the year._
|
| Odd that that doesn't match the pay period, but oh well.
| mandevil wrote:
| I suspect its because of the way that COBRA works: COBRA
| would start for them on October 1st (their active employee
| insurance would cover them until Sep 30), so they are getting
| three months. I have never seen a health insurance that
| supported two week increments, so you couldn't do the 'two
| weeks for tenure' thing. You could, in theory offer an extra
| month per year beyond the first, but that's a lot of extra
| work and expense to go into, offering it, for something that
| I suspect will have very little pick-up. My guess is most
| everyone who is laid off today will have a job which will
| offer insurance by Jan 1st.
| ghaff wrote:
| In spite of what some developers seem to think job hunting
| can be a many month process, especially over the holidays
| and in an environment where many companies are being very
| cautious about hiring. So no I don't expect most will have
| jobs by January.
| rovingEngine wrote:
| This is close to three months, and many health plans renew at
| the beginning of each year, which accounts for the slight
| difference.
| codegeek wrote:
| One thing that is not clear is if they will actually Pay for
| COBRA or just provide COBRA coverage. Employers can provide
| the coverage for COBRA but are usually not obligated to pay
| for it. Also, cost of COBRA out of pocket can go upto 102% of
| the total premiums (yes the 2% can be admin fee added by the
| employer if they choose to do so)
| staticautomatic wrote:
| Ideally, that's how it would be described in the internal
| meeting version.
| uneekname wrote:
| Let's change the HN post to link to this, it is much more
| informative.
| unity1001 wrote:
| > So basically, they overhired to meet demands during Pandemic
|
| Everybody did, even anticipating that the move to online
| economy would slow down after the pandemic.
|
| But nobody predicted the Ukraine war, sanctions, and the
| economic effect those sanctions made back in the West.
| dang wrote:
| Ok, we've changed the URL to that from
| https://www.instagram.com/p/CidAMM7pQ7u/. Thanks!
| BryanBeshore wrote:
| Full post from Jack Conte's Instagram post:
|
| "Hi everyone - I have some sad news to share: today, Patreon is
| doing a layoff of about 80 employees, about 17% of our team. This
| was ultimately my decision, so I wanted you all to hear directly
| from me about the reasoning.
|
| Before I do, I want to say two things: first, today will be
| painful for many people, and I am deeply sorry to the incredible
| teammates who will be leaving Patreon - they are good, kind,
| creator-first, exceptionally talented, and smart people.
|
| And second, I remember how nerve-racking it was when I was a full
| time creator - before starting Patreon - to watch companies that
| I depended on go through moments like this. So for those of you
| who rely on Patreon for your business and communities: I want to
| assure you that the company is making this move precisely for
| that reason - so we can continue to be a rock for your business.
|
| As the world has recovered from COVID lockdowns and entered a
| broader economic slowdown, it has become clear that the original
| plan we built doe he year, to support outsized growth through the
| pandemic, is no longer the right plan for the company.
|
| I take full responsibility for choosing that original path
| forward, and for the resulting changes today, which will be so
| difficult for our team.
|
| It's important to me that we continue to deliver for our creators
| and patrons with new features and products like native video, new
| content creation and organization tools, a wold-class mobile
| experience, and new ways for creators to grow their membership
| and strengthen their communities. To ensure that we make progress
| on that roadmap, we are increasing our investment in product,
| engineering, and design, which means decreasing our spend on
| other ares of the company.
|
| Ad difficult as this is fo our team, I know this is the right
| thing to do for Patreon, because it ensures that the company
| maintains a position of strength, even through an economic
| downturn, while continuing to deliver for our creators.
|
| If you want to read more about this decision, I just published
| the internal note I sent to our team this morning, and it's
| linked in my bio. I'm going to stop posting here for a while to
| be 100% present internally for our teammates at the company. But
| I promise to come back in a bit - I will see you all soon.
|
| - Jack"
| Rekksu wrote:
| > To ensure that we make progress on that roadmap, we are
| increasing our investment in product, engineering, and design,
| which means decreasing our spend on other ares of the company.
|
| Underrated dynamic in the startup layoffs this year. Many
| software companies grew headcount rapidly in areas outside of
| prod / eng in 2021 and are now scaling back those roles while
| preserving the talent that was extremely difficult to hire.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Their career page really bears this out. Lots of open
| engineering positions.
| COGlory wrote:
| >I take full responsibility for choosing that original path
| forward, and for the resulting changes today, which will be so
| difficult for our team.
|
| What does "take full responsibility" mean? Is he laying himself
| off instead of the employees? Is he paying the employees he's
| laying off out of his pocket? Is he resigning so this doesn't
| happen again?
|
| I'm confused how you can just say "I take full responsibility"
| without actually taking any responsibility. It seems like the
| laid off employees are taking responsibility.
| donedealomg wrote:
| honkdaddy wrote:
| Perhaps you're unfamiliar with the expression, but usually
| when English speakers say they "take full responsibility" for
| a tragedy or unfortunate occurrence, they mean from a moral
| and blame-based standpoint, it's rarely related to the
| finances of those affected.
|
| The laid off employees are the ones ultimately worse off by
| the outcome, that goes without saying, what you're missing is
| that this is different from being morally or strategically
| responsible for why the situation played out this way. That's
| the ownership the CEO is trying to take.
| LightG wrote:
| Back in the day it meant falling on your sword and letting
| someone better/new take over.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| It means 'there are layoffs because of poor management
| decisions and it isn't your fault if you're being laid off
| and it isn't your fault if you feel you pushed the company
| towards these management decisions that ultimately led to
| your colleagues being laid off'.
| magwa101 wrote:
| Aachen wrote:
| Recently signed up for patreon but couldn't figure out a payment
| method. The only option available, paypal, would succeed and I'd
| be redirected back to the merchant (patreon) but then neither
| show up in my patreon account nor on the paypal side - and I'd
| rather avoid giving paypal a cut so this was already a last
| resort. Open source liberapay was a no brainer (for K9 and
| F-Droid iirc) but very few creators have a liberapay. Surely
| there's more going on than this, but the news doesn't surprise me
| with this amount of friction and very handful of payment methods
| available. It'll work for the 90% or they'd not be in business at
| all, but still.
| capableweb wrote:
| Maybe that depends on your location? I can use card
| (debit/credit) and also PayPal. You don't see "add card" in the
| payment methods page?
| rexreed wrote:
| I can tell you that many people I know are abandoning Patreon for
| their support of Russian patreons. This statement didn't help:
| https://www.businessinsider.com/why-patreon-continued-to-sup...
|
| And their response is not so great:
| https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-us/articles/4553920132877-....
|
| I'm sure the layoffs are not entirely related, but having this
| stance didn't help.
| kzrdude wrote:
| Their statement makes sense to me
| bilsbie wrote:
| It's weird these companies grow this big. How many software
| engineers do you need to monthly bill a list of people and
| transfer it to a different list?
|
| That's like a single person saas.
| noirbot wrote:
| If I had a nickle for every time someone on HN claims that a
| sizable company could be replaced by 1-5 devs, I'd have enough
| money to start a competitor to most of them that did it better
| with more devs/staff, as evidenced by the general lack of 1
| person saas companies out there that solve more than a very
| niche problem.
| jrockway wrote:
| What large company is beating the 5 person competitor in
| their industry?
| noirbot wrote:
| Most of them? Can you give an example of a 5 person
| competitor competing with a large company?
|
| And of those, how many of them can only do that because
| they're outsourcing most of their needs to some other
| company people regularly complain is bloated?
| hedora wrote:
| Craigslist has 50 employees, which is closer to 5 than
| 500.
| compiler-guy wrote:
| Craigslist is wildly profitable, but can't touch ebay or
| amazon.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| And its lunch is slowly being eaten by facebook
| marketplace.
| lmm wrote:
| AIUI OnlyFans actually did successfully compete pretty
| directly with Patreon for a while as a 3 dev company. (I
| assume they may have grown a little since then)
| seydor wrote:
| The layoffs prove them right though no? Plenty of companies
| seem to have had layoffs without loss of profits
| noirbot wrote:
| Only once they lay off another 400+ people. If anything,
| the fact that Jack had anyone but himself to lay off isn't
| proving OP right.
|
| Being over-staffed is different from "one person can run
| this as a saas business"
| gamblor956 wrote:
| He's not wrong. Patreon's technical platform isn't cutting
| edge or unique and could be replicated fairly quickly by a
| small team in a month or two. Most of what makes Patreon what
| it is comes from the _other_ parts of the company, i.e., the
| marketers, account managers, etc., that bring in the actual
| revenue.
|
| Of course, that's also the reason why a tiny company can't
| just replace Patreon: it's not the tech that matters. It's
| the marketing and other people stuff that you just can't
| handle with a small team.
|
| It's not a good sign that Patreon is doubling down on
| engineering and eliminating the positions that actually bring
| in revenue. That's a sign of a poorly managed company not
| understanding its value proposition. Keeping extra engineers
| on staff to create yet another cryptocurrency isn't going to
| save Patreon, but the absence of the two dozen plus marketers
| and account managers they just fired will be acutely felt as
| they go into the holiday season.
| noirbot wrote:
| Is that true? I feel like every past discussion about
| Patreon, as well as from the folks I know who use it as
| artists, they're not really getting much in terms of
| marketing or assistance/management. I certainly have a hard
| time believing that they're making most of their money from
| their "services" outside of just relaying money.
|
| Their discovery is pretty awful too. My understanding is
| that they're mostly viable because there's no easier way to
| solicit money as a podcast/youtube channel right now.
| tester756 wrote:
| Discord had small engineering team and they outperformed
|
| Teams, Google's VoIPs, Skype, Ventrilo, TeamSpeak, Zoom
| noirbot wrote:
| Have they outperformed Zoom and Teams? That feels like a
| stretch, even if I prefer Discord to either of them
|
| Plus, they had a _small_ team, but I met most of them back
| in the Hammer and Chisel days and they were already a 20
| person team at that point at least.
|
| I'm not at all trying to say you can't have a good product
| with a small company. It's the incessant "I could do this
| myself in a month. I won't actually do it, but I totally
| could" responses. Almost every company you've heard of
| isn't getting by on single-digit employees, let alone one
| very smart person.
| tester756 wrote:
| >Have they outperformed Zoom and Teams? That feels like a
| stretch, even if I prefer Discord to either of them
|
| Better product
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| They've been pretty adamant about not chasing after
| business/enterprise sales and I bet this is a big reason
| why.
|
| Enterprise pays the big bucks but also has way higher
| demands from support, higher expectations about downtime,
| and all the third party integration requests. It has to
| integrate with Jira, it has to integrate with Google
| Calendar, it has to integrate with this niche service that
| changes their API every month and doesn't care your
| contract with Dairy Queen relies on this integration
| working.
| gruez wrote:
| Okay but it doesn't seem like patreon needs to, or is
| even chasing after enterprise sales? At least in the b2c
| space it doesn't seem like you need a huge engineering
| team.
| [deleted]
| Ekaros wrote:
| 1 is bit low with number of customers that is both creators and
| users. But I would see the right number reasonably be under
| 100. With some geographical distribution.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| > to monthly bill a list of people and transfer it to a
| different list
|
| Sounds like a fantastic service to use for fraud or money
| laundering. It would be a shame if you had to dedicate a ton of
| employees towards preventing that. ;)
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| It's amazing how consistently HN people underestimate the
| workload involved in basically any software product, and how
| often this blog post is relevant: https://danluu.com/sounds-
| easy/
|
| > I can't think of a single large software company that doesn't
| regularly draw internet comments of the form "What do all the
| employees do? I could build their product myself."
|
| Products are nearly always more complicated internally than it
| appears to the user. Indeed, often the very ease of use that
| you see as an end user is _because_ of higher complexity on the
| inside.
| flavmartins wrote:
| People who say this have never worked in an enterprise,
| global software company. Or if they did, they may not be
| working on key projects.
|
| Just SCALE ALONE is enough to expand a group of engineers a
| significant amount. A personal project is fine to run 1 AWS
| or Digital Ocean instance to run the application, database.
| But global distribution that has to support tens of
| thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even million+ users
| concurrently globally? It's a big orchestration of
| applications and services that requires much larger teams.
|
| Add in payment services and managing those integrations.
| Then, given that you're a global company and have to operate
| in multiple countries you have all sorts of regulatory
| compliance requirements. Who oversees that? Who manages all
| of these requirements? Not a single dev or a small team.
| tester756 wrote:
| >People who say this have never worked in an enterprise,
| global software company.
|
| On the other hand
|
| How much friction there's between decision makers and
| people writing code in those companies?
|
| How much time is wasted on meetings, teaching new people
| every month, etc, etc?
|
| Sorry, but I really can see scenerios where 5 skilled
| engineers with domain knowledge can outperform 25-50 that
| need meetings to agree on everything
| abigail95 wrote:
| How many people worked at WhatsApp/Instagram before acq?
| lgleason wrote:
| I have no love lost for that company, so while I feel bad for the
| workers, I would love to see the company as a whole go under and
| a better alternative emerge.
| clcaev wrote:
| I hope their Precor acquisition remains unscathed, perhaps they
| spin it off so it can continue to build excellent elipticals.
| PeterisP wrote:
| I wonder if it's somehow related to some allegations floating
| around today (e.g.
| https://twitter.com/TizzyEnt/status/1569439160561442817 ) of
| Patreon dealing with part of the revenue coming from effectively
| selling risque pictures of minors.
| sprkwd wrote:
| Doing this on Instagram seems... off. Can't put my finger in it.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| This is legitimate feeling, maybe because not all your
| employees might have Instagram. We can't assume it wasn't also
| done on internal channels, though?
| gobirds321 wrote:
| I think it was first posted on their blog here:
| https://blog.patreon.com/a-note-from-jack
| mike_d wrote:
| Are we supposed to know who Jack is?
|
| Sounds like someone is in serious need of an ego check.
| egypturnash wrote:
| Patreon's creator and CEO.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > Are we supposed to know who Jack is?
|
| I should imagine the people that blog post is relevant to
| know who he is, yes.
| Shebanator wrote:
| AFAICT, he told the team separately, and is just using IG to
| announce publicly. I don't see how that is any worse than the
| usual dry press release.
| [deleted]
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| Agreed. This and the recent controversy around the HyperSocial
| CEO posting an emotional layoff post on LinkedIn makes me
| wonder if the new trend in layoffs is to try to make us relate
| more with the CEO than the laid off employees and take some
| heat off them.
| indy wrote:
| Wait a little longer and they'll be announced on TikTok
| unity1001 wrote:
| Ask the person who posted the Instagram post at HN instead of
| the Patreon's official blog's post.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Because companies like Patreon come and go. They know it, we
| know it. So they grasp at straws for a fleeting moment of
| popularity.
| [deleted]
| TaylorGood wrote:
| On twitter a couple days ago it was said they're laying off their
| whole data security team.
|
| https://twitter.com/wbm312/status/1567974063578185728?s=21&t...
| darth_avocado wrote:
| What does "taking full responsibility" even mean? Like people
| lose their livelihood and you can get away with "I take full
| responsibility".
|
| Taking full responsibility mean taking a pay cut or stepping down
| or basically taking consequences for yourself first before others
| have to.
| julienb_sea wrote:
| He's taking responsibility for over-hiring relative to the
| needs of his business, and taking corrective action for the
| long term health and viability of the business. This is the
| right thing to do. Yes, it sucks for the people who lose their
| jobs, but unfortunately some risk is always involved in an
| employment arrangement. It would be far more unfortunate if
| Patreon overspent to the point that their business had to
| close, as that would affect their entire userbase and entire
| employee base.
| NoFactualActual wrote:
| > He's taking responsibility...and taking corrective action
| for the long term health and viability of the business.
|
| Maybe this is just a language thing, but in my world "taking
| responsibility" involves some action to personally shoulder
| the pain of the layoffs beyond saying "my bad". I'd expect
| it'd at least begin with resignation in this case. Just like
| you can't just announce "I declare bankruptcy" to shrug off
| debts.
| ajkjk wrote:
| The post includes tons of details about complicated things
| Patreon is doing to help out the people affected. Do those
| count for nothing to you? It feels like you are insisting
| not on "support" or "generosity" but on "sacrifice".
| db579 wrote:
| Those are things the company is doing to take
| responsibility, not him personally which is what his
| statement should imply.
| weego wrote:
| When you're +$400mil into venture capital raises 'the
| company' doing something like that can be an awful lot of
| time, effort and potentially political capital for a CEO
| to get through.
|
| I'm astounded that so many supposed seasoned leaders were
| out there making crazy projections around maintaining
| covid levels of growth and I also don't think 'my bad' is
| enough in that context, but benefits above what's
| required are rarely handed over without someone
| committing to fighting for it.
| bcrescimanno wrote:
| I'd share your surprise; but, I sometimes question if
| they believed it themselves. I've spent the last 15 years
| in public companies and if there's one thing "The Street"
| demands, it's growth upon growth. The context of a
| pandemic being a once-in-a-lifetime event is meaningless.
| Your business experienced record growth and we expect you
| to continue that trajectory of increased growth no matter
| what--so get to investing for it!
| ajkjk wrote:
| I tend to think that non-profit-maximizing actions of a
| company are almost entirely due to top-down leadership,
| so I would give him credit for those actions.
| cbozeman wrote:
| Here's how the Federal Government defines:
|
| _Responsibility
|
| Being responsible means being dependable, keeping
| promises and honoring our commitments. It is accepting
| the consequences for what we say and do. It also means
| developing our potential.
|
| People who are responsible don't make excuses for their
| actions or blame others when things go wrong. They think
| things through and use good judgment before they take
| action. They behave in ways that encourage others to
| trust them.
|
| People who are responsible take charge of their lives.
| They make plans and set goals for nurturing their talents
| and skills. They are resilient in finding ways to
| overcome adversity. They make decisions, taking into
| account obligations to family and community._
|
| This guy literally made excuses for his actions: "broader
| economic slowdown"
|
| "To ensure that we make progress on that roadmap, we are
| increasing our investment in product, engineering, and
| design, which means decreasing our spend on other
| ares[sic] of the company."
|
| So it's not even a money issue. They have the money, they
| just want to spend it on servers and _other_ people.
|
| And finally, just so we're clear, I don't take umbrage
| with his decision and his plan for his employees. Hell,
| it's admirable, frankly. I take umbrage with his words.
| He's not taking responsibility. Responsibility means he'd
| cut his pay as much as necessary to keep these people
| because _he_ misjudged the market and where it 's headed
| post-COVID-19 lockdowns (since there is no such thing as
| 'post-COVID-19' - it's here forever now).
|
| This is pretty classic example of wanting to have the
| best of all possible worlds.
|
| "I want to be lauded for my graciousness. I want to be
| lauded for taking responsibility. I want to be lauded by
| my investors for a plan that grows the company."
|
| That's why this is a load of horseshit. He's trying to
| please everyone. I have no doubt he probably agonized
| over this decision - I really do not; but he made it, and
| that means there are certain consequences with which he
| must live, one of those is that it should be clear to his
| employees that they will always take a backseat when the
| economic times get tough.
| bgro wrote:
| You're textbook correct, I think, but in general I never
| really understand the CEO who makes a statement about trying
| to do everything they could to prevent this from happening
| but there was no possible other situation than laying off X
| amount of people who were significantly contributing to the
| company.
|
| Not that this was said in this particular case so directly.
| This is just a general thought.
|
| How is funding so tight that cutting the 1% of money going to
| these people is going to make all the difference? It's not
| even a total 1% gain, there will be some lost productivity
| making it somewhat difficult to measure.
|
| If you truly tried everything, couldn't the CEO or other
| executives take a tiny cut? Not that I expect them to, I'm
| just saying if they truly did everything within their power
| to prevent it, like is often said.
|
| I mean, sometimes I give a significant amount of my salary,
| like 10% as donations / tips / handouts and expect nothing
| back. These aren't even people I did something bad to, like
| forgot to pick up when I said I would, or felt guilty for
| spilling food on their carpet.
|
| Surely in situation where I messed up and caused a problem
| for someone, I would do whatever it takes to make it right. I
| wouldn't just say "Well, that's what you get in this system
| of inviting friends over. I'm not technically required to do
| anything. I guess there's nothing I can do (including picking
| up the mess I caused or paying to have it cleaned)"
|
| I've seen similar large donations from people who truly
| struggle to pay for rent and food even be similarly generous.
| Sometimes people will live on limited food or delay getting
| an apartment if it means helping out an acquaintance.
|
| If you make millions of dollars, you don't need to worry
| about these basics. You'd think it'd be easier to take a
| personal hit which probably will have actually 0 impact on
| your life (literally no change-- keep on golfing, vacations,
| etc), rather than supposedly living with the guilt, as is
| frequently said, of people struggling to survive because you
| wanted to save 1% of your company's money for a few months
| (before realizing you need to hire and retrain people from
| scratch.)
| ricardobeat wrote:
| They're listed as having 885 employees. If the average cost
| is $100k per head, 88M/year looks like a pretty high burn
| rate (they've had ~400M in funding). Saving 10% in one
| swoop is huge.
|
| > it'd be easier to take a personal hit
|
| Jack Conte, the CEO, was not previously wealthy (that we
| know of). At this stage he might be getting paid very well,
| maybe even in the mid six figures, but definitely not
| spending $8M/year on golfing to make that a viable
| alternative to layoffs.
| bombcar wrote:
| It's a far sight better than some of the "the employees we let
| go were worse than worthless, likely the spawn of Satan
| himself" memos you see.
| rdl wrote:
| The main significance here is "please hire the people we're
| letting go as if they were normal Patreon employees you'd want
| to poach; they weren't let go for performance or other
| individual reasons".
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| This is what a layoff means no? My understanding was "Fired =
| Your Fault" and "Laid Off = Your Employer's Fault".
|
| Is it possible to be "laid off" for performance reasons?
| phpisthebest wrote:
| some companies have a policy to layoff the bottom x% of
| "lowest performers" so yes it is possible to be laid off
| for performance reasons.
|
| For example "The bottom 10% of salesmen by sales volume"
| TheCondor wrote:
| Yeah, absolutely.
|
| A company finds itself in a situation where it needs to
| reduce headcount for reasons. Do you a) just role the dice
| and randomly pick who goes? or b) Have managers rank their
| performers and use it to get rid of the lower performers or
| protect their most valuable people? In a case like this is
| means some variation of "you're too expensive for what you
| do for us."
| unity1001 wrote:
| They seem to have contracted a placement company to do that.
| nosianu wrote:
| Yes, and the parent's point is that companies that end up
| looking at those people's resumes are going to know that
| they were not let go because of poor performance. What the
| parent said.
| unity1001 wrote:
| Nobody looks like they are going to lose their livelihood over
| this:
|
| https://blog.patreon.com/a-note-from-jack
|
| 3 months' of pay + longer depending on tenure at the company.
| Healthcare until the end of the year. Mental care up to 6
| months. They contracted a placement company to place the laid
| off staff to other companies in the sector. A lot of those
| people will already get hooked up by a company within a week or
| so, even without the placement company being able to take
| action.
|
| This looks as decent as layoffs go.
| backspace_ wrote:
| Why was an Instagram post shared instead of the blog post on
| patreon?
| unity1001 wrote:
| That's the choice of the person who posted the Instagram
| post at HN instead of the actual blog post that was posted
| before the Instagram post, obviously.
| awb wrote:
| > Nobody looks like they are going to lose their livelihood
| over this
|
| We don't know everyone's unique situation, even if they did
| go beyond what most companies do.
| nomel wrote:
| No. That's not the social contract for employment. It's
| dangerous to think it is. There's a mutual need from both
| parties. When that need changes, both parties are free to
| respond. Forcing a company to keep someone would be just as
| bad as forcing someone to stay.
|
| What we also don't know is the companies financial
| situation. Keeping people on when they can't be afforded
| can be a way to make a company _completely_ collapse. I was
| in two startups that would have collapsed completely,
| without layoffs, around the time of the last recession.
| This is why the "keep x months of salary" are rules you
| strictly follow.
| etchalon wrote:
| There's a difference between "someone will lose their
| livelihood because of this" and "that's entirely the
| employers fault."
|
| Recognizing the impact of an action does not mean you're
| entirely responsible for it.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| What are you responding to, exactly? That comment was
| claiming that we can't know for sure that "nobody" would
| lose their livelihood over this. And it's true, we can't
| know.
| jwagenet wrote:
| I think they are responding to the assertion that the
| employer is obligated to keep the employee just because
| the employee _might_ have absolutely nowhere else to go.
| Especially in the competitive tech space neither you nor
| your employer are obligated to maintain your employment
| relationship.
|
| This is besides Patreon giving their former employees a
| license to goof off on their dime for 3 months. I can't
| imagine anyone at Patreon being so hard up that 3 months
| pay and insurance to look for new work is enough to break
| the camels back.
| unity1001 wrote:
| > We don't know everyone's unique situation
|
| Those who are hired to Patreon and similar companies arent
| people who would end up unemployed if they are laid off.
| Those people already have to turn down recruiters who try
| to poach them every week.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Mid-November through December is a hiring no-man's land due
| to the accumulation of end-of-year vacations and family
| trips. Most of these employees have about a month and a half
| before the shutdown begins and they are stuck scrambling to
| try to find work in the new year.
| renewiltord wrote:
| It's not going to be this hard. They will land on their
| feet in weeks, maybe days. Anyone recruiting is hard
| plugged into layoffs.fyi and while big company recruiting
| takes months, we (and my other friends in startups) can
| turn around the whole thing in 3 days if we have to.
| r00fus wrote:
| This viewpoint seems very domain/market dependent. Retail
| usually explodes during winter months, for example.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Yes replace your likely 6-figure dev job with a $15/hr
| job stocking the shelves at walmart...
| kube-system wrote:
| Walmart has 943 software engineering positions open right
| now.
|
| They're making more than $15/hr:
| https://www.levels.fyi/companies/walmart-global-
| tech/salarie...
| phpisthebest wrote:
| While true the parent comment was talking about Seasonal
| jobs that retail adds at the end of the year, these are
| not programming jobs that are added but cashiers,
| stockers, etc.
| r00fus wrote:
| I wasn't. My point stands - people, including myself,
| have no trouble getting software related jobs in any
| season. Other markets/industries it may vary.
| unity1001 wrote:
| Recruiters would fill that gap readily enough.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| My comment comes directly from my experience in the past
| as a recruiter. We saw a 60%+ downturn in the hiring
| market From Nov 15 - Dec 31 regardless of how the hiring
| market was performing in general, and then they would
| spring back to life after Jan 1 when everyone was back in
| the office. It takes more than a hiring manager to hire
| employees.
|
| The slowdown comes from all the moving parts who need to
| be in place in order to facilitate the transition of an
| employee to an org.
|
| Think of your average tech hire who needs to (a) go
| through orientation just like everyone else, and (b) is
| going to take a week or two just to get his work
| environment and credentialing set up so he can work with
| the servers. I'll put my experience on that side of the
| desk working with dozens of clients against any anecdotal
| one-offs who got hired late in the year.
| lowercased wrote:
| A lot of business _in general_ tends to slow down during
| the last few weeks of the year. It 's sector-dependent,
| somewhat, but just things like getting approvals from or
| meetings with people who are 'out' for the holidays
| impacts even well-intentioned orgs from moving at
| 'regular' speed when it comes to making hires or signing
| business deals or what not. It's not a 'negative'
| viewpoint so much as 'realistic'.
| taylodl wrote:
| You speak the truth. Any recruiter with any experience at
| all will tell you hiring _plunges_ late in the 4th
| quarter. It 's been that way forever. There does tend to
| be an uptick in interviewing starting late in the 3rd
| quarter and early on in the 4th (i.e. _now_ ) so they can
| get the people they need in place for the start of the
| new year and next year's budget. Hopefully these folks
| will be able to take advantage of that and if they can't
| start immediately at least be ready to go at the end of
| the holidays, and if they've been paid through the end of
| the year then they can at least enjoy the holidays.
| Shindi wrote:
| This is pure negativity and not true. Hiring might slow
| down because of seasonality overall, but I was hired the
| last two times end of year. It's a great time to get new
| employees ramped up when things are slower.
|
| A polite reminder that some companies are growing really
| fast and are even struggling with hiring.
| mathgeek wrote:
| Just wanted to throw in my $0.02 here as well. I've been
| hired in November/December twice in my career without
| issue.
| jnwatson wrote:
| Likewise. I didn't even know it was a slow period.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I got hired in November, for a job I held for almost 27
| years.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| Same here. My current position was a November hire, as
| was my first position.
| time_to_smile wrote:
| I would think the impending collapse of the tech sector
| might be a bigger concern, but I think there's still
| plenty of time for people getting laid off right now.
| m00x wrote:
| January/February is the most active recruiting time though,
| 3 months pay is more than enough to make it there without
| any issues.
|
| Most people in tech also don't live paycheck to paycheck.
| As an adult, your responsibility is to have an emergency
| fund. No career is safe.
| stu2b50 wrote:
| It means that the employees are being let go because he did a
| bad job, not that they were low performing or that other
| employee performances caused patreon to perform better.
|
| It doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things but it's
| just that he is claiming culpability for all of the ills
| patreon is experiencing.
| [deleted]
| saos wrote:
| He said the same thing last year lol
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MV-3GgU6rlo
|
| It seems to be what most CEO are saying lately.
| cbozeman wrote:
| It's like people didn't read the statement at all. He clearly
| says they're going to invest more into engineering and some
| other shit... so it's not about money. They're going to spend
| _more_ fucking money. This sounds like a bunch of people got
| their jobs automated away through algorithms or intelligent
| systems or just whatever innovation you wanna chalk it up to,
| and they redundant to the company, so they gotta go.
|
| This is why I will never be a CEO. I'd just come right out
| and say, "17% of you are expendable and I had your jobs
| replaced by scripts and a few machines. I'm going to use that
| money to buy more machines, hire more brilliant engineers,
| and see what percentage of the company I can replace by next
| year."
| rchaud wrote:
| Forget about CEO, could you even be a competent manager if
| that's how you think?
| cbozeman wrote:
| I hate to be the one to break this to you, but this is
| how an _extraordinarily_ large amount of high-level
| individuals think - they just won 't admit it.
|
| If you're able to automate a large portion of your
| workforce, why wouldn't you? You'll be rewarded for it in
| every aspect. You'll be praised by the Board of Directors
| for cutting costs and improving productivity (since
| algorithms and robots don't have to sleep, never get
| tired, never call in sick, never get drunk and shit in
| their husband's bed, etc.). You'll be praised by Wall
| Street as a "visionary, technologically-minded thinker /
| leader".
|
| There's zero downside _for you_.
|
| There's enormous downside _for parts of society_.
|
| The difference is, I'm willing to admit that when I do
| this, it's directly to my benefit.
| dlandis wrote:
| Agreed. That part was not well written. It seems like a
| vacuous, self-important phrase unless it is immediately tied to
| something else like, "I take full responsibility and as such I
| will be <taking the following meaningful actions or stepping
| down, etc>.
| Thaxll wrote:
| If every CEO would be sanctionned for every situations no one
| would want to be CEO.
| jstx1 wrote:
| > What does "taking full responsibility" even mean?
|
| It means "I'm not blaming anyone else for this". Which might
| not mean much but it's probably better than the alternatives.
| cush wrote:
| You might be overthinking... Jack over-hired. That's it.
| Doesn't really warrant a CEO stepping down. He's simply
| empathetic and wants to let people know that the employees are
| good to hire, and Patreon is still doing well as a business.
| dougmwne wrote:
| That would be meaningless virtue signaling. Standard corporate
| speak.
| gausswho wrote:
| The rest of the letter reads well to me. He should have
| avoided that phrase given how pilloried it's been recently,
| with reason. But that doesn't take away from the generous
| actions he's fought for for the departed.
| davezatch wrote:
| What would non-"meaningless virtue signaling" look like to
| you? This seems quite decent as far as these things go.
| cbozeman wrote:
| That's because you didn't come up in a time when people who
| fucked up like this would step down from their position for
| their clear and obviously failed leadership. You're not
| used to seeing what "full responsibility" actually is.
|
| Full responsibility is a samurai killing himself painfully
| while his best friend cuts off his head to end his
| suffering. That's full responsibility.
|
| This is, "I fucked up guys, here's 3-6 months pay and some
| benes... my bad. And yeah I know I fucked up last year too,
| but I took full responsibility then as well, so it's all
| good..."
| dougmwne wrote:
| Yes, that is a good image. I don't think litteral seppuku
| is called for (though it is a helpful reminder of what
| shame has looked like in the past), just that people are
| getting a bit tired of executives saying "I take full
| responsibility for this failure," while getting handed a
| giant bonus, a pat on the back from the board and
| shareholders and another biz mag feature.
| MerelyMortal wrote:
| "I am responsible for overhiring/mismanaging, I'm sorry."
| rchaud wrote:
| Putting your money where your mouth is. Resignation and
| public, in-person apology like they do in Japan.
|
| Better yet, refuse to take a bonus, not that the board
| should award one. If the board awards one anyway,
| contribute 100% of it to helping laid off employees.
| dougmwne wrote:
| Well, seeing as how saying that means nothing, adds
| nothing, and says nothing, then not saying it at all would
| be more meaningful.
|
| The non-corporate speak translation would be "I tried my
| best to make this company bigger and more valuable, but it
| didn't work. Some of you will now need to be sacrificed,
| but not me!"
| ipaddr wrote:
| He quits / pay cut. Something where his actions affect him
| lowercased wrote:
| We don't know that he hasn't taken a pay cut. Posting
| about it might just come across as self-serving, but then
| not posting about it makes it seem like he's not doing
| it. Lose-lose, it seems.
|
| And... I suspect whatever he's doing is also affecting
| him emotionally/mentally, and... to some extent career-
| wise. Taking these sorts of public steps may make it
| harder to be entrusted to CEO someplace else in future.
| Given patreon specifically, I doubt he's planning to
| leave and go CEO someplace else, but overall, there's no
| easy outs in scenarios like this. He'll be getting
| second-guessed and pilloried regardless of what steps he
| takes.
| remram wrote:
| Removing that meaningless sentence, or replacing it with an
| apology.
| bolyarche wrote:
| nscalf wrote:
| Taking full responsibility used to look like getting fired for
| poor planning. Now taking full responsibility means "I say in
| public that this is my fault" versus trying to push the blame
| off.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| Corpspeak for "your call is very important to us, all our
| operators are currently busy..."
| skilled wrote:
| Interesting... As comments have pointed out already, this might
| have to do with the fact that companies kept on hiring more
| people to deal with the influx of customers during the pandemic.
|
| I don't question it, but I most definitely question how many of
| these companies blindly hired these people without spending a
| second thinking about consequences of their actions. Shopify was
| recently in the news for the same reason[0].
|
| [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32237574
| csmpltn wrote:
| > "... I'm more confident than ever that the world needs a better
| economic system for creative people, and Patreon will keep
| building that system for creators over the decades ahead.
| However, the pandemic introduced volatility to the broader trend,
| starting with a rapid acceleration during COVID lockdowns. In
| response, we built an operating plan to support this outsized
| growth, but as the world began recovering from the pandemic and
| enduring a broader economic slowdown, that plan is no longer the
| right path forward for Patreon. I take full responsibility for
| choosing that original path forward, and for the changes today,
| which will be very difficult for our team."
|
| It's the same pattern at so many other companies now. Over-hiring
| during COVID (thinking what exactly? that people would forever
| stay locked up at home with nothing else to do with their
| money?), before waking up to the reality that things have gone
| back to normal and that there was never really a plan whatsoever
| for those hired. Asses were put in seats though, so there's that.
| Groxx wrote:
| I wonder how much of it may just be "keeping up with
| competitors". You can lose a lot of ground in a year or two,
| and recovering that ground may be more costly than the
| additional hiring-and-firing cost.
| short_sells_poo wrote:
| I agree with you in principle, but we now have the benefit of
| foresight.
|
| Imagine Patreon's position during early covid: they had a
| firehose of money pointed at them. I'm sure they knew it will
| end, but not "when". They had to react to it, if for no other
| reason than to prevent a competitor from getting ahead.
| ArchOversight wrote:
| This is somewhat meta, but linking to an instagram post is
| terrible, I get immediately redirected to a login page and can't
| even see the content on Instagram. I do not have an instagram
| account, nor do I want to create one just to see this.
|
| Was there no better place to link to?
| vitiral wrote:
| https://blog.patreon.com/a-note-from-jack
| princevegeta89 wrote:
| Love it when companies and executives come with subtle titles
| like "A Note from XXXX", "A sad announcement", "Looking ahead
| into the future" etc. when they're nothing but just plain
| layoff notices.
| RoadieRoller wrote:
| https://blog.patreon.com/a-note-from-jack
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Not only that, it's an image of text. It's incredible that this
| is _still_ how we 're sharing information online in 2022.
| ShamelessC wrote:
| This happens more and more when I visit Twitter now, too.
| _Really_ annoying and I have zero intention of creating an
| account on either of those sites.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| if you are using firefox on the desktop you can prevent all
| cookies for the site than that goes away. Free the browse
| with no popup for login
| deathanatos wrote:
| With Twitter, I find you can click the log in button, and
| then there is an X to dismiss the modal with, which then lets
| you read the page. (And this is absolutely annoying, terrible
| UX, and I wish to God people would stop putting things on
| Twitter.)
| d23 wrote:
| The existence of these backdoors is a bad excuse these
| teams use to justify user-hostile UX. I had no idea this
| was possible, so for me this might as well have not
| existed. I simply skipped reading twitter threads when I
| was on a device I wasn't logged in on.
| pentagrama wrote:
| If you use Ublock Origin, you can enable the "annoyances"
| filter and the Twitter login overlay is removed.
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| Sometimes I click a twitter link on a devices I don't want to
| login to (work machine). I ended up creating a second account
| for this exact reason, so annoying.
| Akronymus wrote:
| Reddit also, if it is deemed sensitive.
| [deleted]
| remram wrote:
| Patreon could have eaten OnlyFans' cake so easily, instead they
| seem to be struggling like everyone thought they would when they
| banned NSFW content in 2017.
|
| I don't understand why they thought that move would benefit them.
| I don't understand how Jack Conte is still CEO after such a
| stupid change or how he can say with a straight face that he's
| "taking responsibility".
| battery_glasses wrote:
| I think its reasonable that a lot of creators don't want to
| distribute their work along side porn.
|
| Does Only Fans have any non-porn content? I really don't know
| because in my head Only Fans is a place for porn.
| throwaway675309 wrote:
| Patreon has a shit ton of NSFW stuff so I'm not sure if this
| decision was overturned or if it's just limited to actual
| live actor pornography.
| egypturnash wrote:
| https://www.patreon.com/policy/guidelines is the official
| rules.
|
| A summary:
|
| * mark horny stuff as 18+
|
| * all horny posts must be patron-only
|
| * drawings are okay but no photos/video of actual people
| going at it
|
| * no bestiality, rape, kids, incest, necrophilia, or
| dubcon/noncon
|
| As a creator of horny art I do not look forwards to the day
| when Visa/Mastercard/Apple/Google/etc leans on Patreon and
| says "hey we banned _all_ horny content, you can either ban
| it too or you can quit working with us ".
| dc-programmer wrote:
| Maybe I'm biased due to the content I subscribe to, but
| Patreon seems to be going for a more sophisticated
| aesthetic. This comes through even in the name. The word
| Patreon conjures images of the Medici's and "elevated" art
| forms. I think if they started to cater to the NSFW side of
| things it would result in brand confusion for producers and
| consumers.
| brown9-2 wrote:
| Patreon probably feared pressure from the Apple App Store.
| egypturnash wrote:
| There is a time-honored path that this choice to ban NSFW stuff
| is part of.
|
| 1. Make a way for people to get paid over the Internet for
| making stuff.
|
| 2. Be okay with horny stuff, possibly as an explicit choice in
| the beginning, possibly as a pivot when people who make horny
| stuff start shifting a lot of money through the pipeline you're
| providing.
|
| 3. Get big enough for Visa/Mastercard/Apple/Google to notice
| that you sure are pushing a lot of horny money through their
| payment systems. Which have a lot of clauses that basically
| boil down to "no horny".
|
| 4. You have a choice here: figure out how to work completely
| outside of whichever payment system's owner is saying "no
| horny", or ban horny. I've never seen anyone take the former
| option.
|
| 5. Make a wishy-washy blog post about how you are banning horny
| stuff that completely fails to come out and say "this really
| sucks and we hate to do it but we can either drop our horny
| creators and keep existing as a company, or we can pretty much
| pack up the entire affair; here are some ways you can go put
| pressure on Visa/MC/Google/Apple/your lawmakers/etc to maybe
| change this state of affairs for the next people to follow this
| path, seriously this is 100% happening because V/MC/G/A finally
| noticed we have been blatantly skirting these rules".
|
| This has happened many times before, and it will continue to
| happen many times in the future until someone chooses "fuck all
| existing payment processors, we're finding a new way to get
| money from customers to creators" and makes it _work_.
| koyote wrote:
| I'm no entrepreneur but wouldn't a good way to solve this be to
| have two separate brands under the same platform?
|
| Patreon and Patreon Red or something, where one is adult
| content only and the other is not.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Structural inflation is primarily driven by blue collar wages.
| Going to be a lot of white collar casualties on the way back to
| 2%, given that rising discount rates hits them first
| Havoc wrote:
| Well, that seems pretty OK for a layoff mail.
|
| Bit confused by reducing staff spend while increasing spending on
| engineering & product. Surely for a software company those are
| roughly the same thing?
| q7xvh97o2pDhNrh wrote:
| This bit from the employee announcement about how they're
| handling equity vesting [1] is worth highlighting as a pretty
| classy move, all things considered:
|
| > We're waiving the one-year equity vesting cliff for all
| departing employees so that everyone has an opportunity to be a
| shareholder, regardless of your tenure. [...] All departing
| teammates will qualify for an extended option exercise period of
| 5 years, and we have extended it to 7 years in regions where we
| are legally able.
|
| It must be jarring to be on the receiving end of a layoff. In the
| grand scheme of things, a laid-off employee surely has bigger
| things to worry about... but I still think what they did here
| with the equity, _especially_ the option exercise period, is a
| nice touch. Not many companies do this sort of thing, but they
| should.
|
| [1]: https://blog.patreon.com/a-note-from-jack
| [deleted]
| mabbo wrote:
| Correct me if I'm wrong, please, but since the equity is all
| _options_ , doesn't that imply that they're making it easier
| for people to _give them money_?
|
| Yes, sure, they have to dilute the company a bit by creating
| more stocks for the people buying it, but if your company is in
| enough trouble that you're laying off 1 in 6 employees, it
| seems financially wise to effectively be doing many small
| rounds of fundraising this way. It extends your runway some
| small amount.
| ftufek wrote:
| Only if you exercise the options, you won't exercise the
| options if it's not profitable to you.
| mabbo wrote:
| Ah, that's a good point. It's sort of the opposite: now the
| option holder can wait longer to decide if this is a
| worthwhile investment, vs "You have 30 days to exercise
| this or you get nothing".
| ginger2016 wrote:
| I am not a user or an employee of Patreon, still I appreciate
| Patreon being generous about equity vesting.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| The progressive thing is 10-year option exercise, and the
| more progressive thing has been 1-month cliff which some of
| big tech does now
|
| This is "mid", as my friends have started to say
| ugh123 wrote:
| Indeed classy. The 1-year cliff waiver should standard
| operating procedure during layoffs.
| rconti wrote:
| I think how much compensation they end up with from their ex-
| employer is likely top-of-mind, actually!
| unity1001 wrote:
| They say there's 3 months of pay, healthcare, mental care until
| the end of the year too. And they contracted a placement
| company to hook people up with new jobs.
| fckgw wrote:
| Some of this is because of the WARN Act in California [0],
| which requires 60-day notice before any mass layoff.
| Employers can also fulfill the requirements of this mandate
| by letting employees go now but having their actual
| termination date 60+ days in advance. I've been survived a
| few layoffs that work this way.
|
| Good for Patreon to go beyond the 60-day mandated period
| though
|
| [0]
| https://edd.ca.gov/en/Jobs_and_Training/Layoff_Services_WARN
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| > I've been survived a few layoffs that work this way.
|
| How many times have you been laid off?!
| mleo wrote:
| During the dot com downturn the consulting company I was
| at went through 2 or 3 rounds of layoffs. Then in the
| 2008 fallout, there was another round. If one is lucky
| enough to survive them, they could be witness to many but
| not be a recipient of any.
| snapetom wrote:
| Unless you're in government/health. You're going to lucky
| not to be laid off multiple times in your career and if
| you're not laid off at all in your career, consider
| yourself extremely lucky.
| jrockway wrote:
| There are probably a large number of HN readers that have
| weathered the dotcom bust, the 2008 financial crisis, and
| the 2022 financial crisis. If you were born 1980-ish and
| you haven't been laid off 3 times, congrats!
| thelittleone wrote:
| Being laid off twice was a rewarding experience both
| financially and for my career. It forced me to step out
| of my comfort zone. Now, being outside my comfort zone is
| my comfort zone.
|
| In the first layoff I knew the company was planning a
| round in the next 18 months and I'd been there 6 years. I
| waited around for the payout. Layoff law in Australia is
| more favorable to the employee, the payout was 10 months.
| I took a week off before starting the next job on a
| substantial salary increase.
|
| The most important is not to take it personally as a
| failure. That can mess with self confidence and interview
| performance and general well being. At my HR interview
| they had the team there and some "transition coach" they
| seemed worried about us. I was actually thrilled as I
| planned to leave anyway.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > If you were born 1980-ish and you haven't been laid off
| 3 times, congrats!
|
| This depends on where you worked. Most of the developers
| I know were around for the dotcom bust, but only 2 have
| experienced a layoff. But none were working for dotcom
| companies.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| Ah, the safety of grad school...
| smm11 wrote:
| Yeah, 5 or 6 times. Happy to be, right now, a one-person
| IT department at a "small" company. My way is the way.
| madamelic wrote:
| Or just work in startups.
|
| It's pretty easy to get laid off a lot if you work in
| startups. You join and know there is a ticking clock in
| the background. If you don't, you probably should.
|
| Every startup thinks they are the 1 out of 10 (because
| why wouldn't they, you have to.)
| nraynaud wrote:
| I agree, I have never actually been fired from a
| collapsing company, but as an intern I have been in the
| meeting room when a company was folded, and I have also
| seen a few companies collapse after I left. I'm a realy
| early guy, I tend to leave when the timesheet comes, so
| there is probably some runway left when I leave.
| [deleted]
| gabereiser wrote:
| This, I've been laid off about 6 times, only once because
| of my own accord (and I freely admit my fault there).
| I've left a company 2x that count. I started my career in
| 1999. What a year to start...
| dahfizz wrote:
| In 23 years you have worked at 18 companies? Has this
| hurt you during interviews?
| gabereiser wrote:
| Very much so. I've had to explain that some of them were
| just contracts, some of them cease to exist anymore, and
| some went through layoffs. The reality is it's more like
| 13 companies but yeah.
| Maursault wrote:
| Don't sweat it. Most human resource departments take
| their methods from Kafka's The Trial. The more you look
| the better you get at it, the easier the brutal process
| of some employers' hiring processes become. Fire and
| forget. The more applications you complete, the better
| your chances of getting hired, and once hired, the longer
| you work, the further disappointment retreats in your
| rearview.
| gabereiser wrote:
| Yup! Exactly. It's a numbers game. I'll never work at a
| FAANG probably because of it but that's ok. I've carved
| out a pretty cool career AND I do side projects and games
| so it's fine.
| Tsukiortu wrote:
| I started in 2020 :) officially. I technically did side
| things throughout HS, but officially looked for jobs in
| 2020. Was pretty miserable.
| purpleblue wrote:
| I was born in the 60s and haven't been laid off yet,
| including during the dotcom bust, all while working for
| 12+ companies in my career. The bust was the worst,
| though, our company went through 7+ layoffs and we were
| decimated, and no one did any real work after a while.
| Fingers crossed that I can keep this trend until
| retirement!
| fckgw wrote:
| None, that's how I survived them ;)
|
| I worked in an industry that's highly cyclical and had
| major consolidation over the last decade (HDD/SSD
| storage). We bought several companies and they would do
| layoffs roughly every 18 months or so.
| Test0129 wrote:
| I joke with my friends in other industries about how
| often I have been laid off. For me, it's been uh...5
| times? Maybe 6. I am probably forgetting them. None of
| them were very small but like usual characteristically
| overextended. One company I survived 4 full rounds of
| layoffs before getting axed. Another one I survived 3.
|
| It's the nature of playing around in the high stakes
| startup world. As I've gotten older I've found more
| stable companies. But it was quite funny coming home once
| every few years to tell my girlfriend I was laid off
| again and then picking up another job a week later.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| WARN Act is federal law not CA Law. I highlight this
| because there is a belief that only CA has employment
| protections laws, and while CA does have more of these;
| other parts of the US also have employment protection laws
| often times not really that much different than CA
| quux wrote:
| I think WARN is 60 days at the federal level and some
| states like CA and NY extend it to 90 days.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Both CA and Federal is 60 days, the main difference is CA
| requires employers with over 75 employee's federal is
| 100, and CA includes Part Time employees in the count
| Federal is Full Time workers only
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Decency demonstrated, and hopefully recognized at large
| regardless of the criticisms of the business strategy and
| execution.
| unity1001 wrote:
| I agree. Tech companies should never really break off with
| former employees. Any former employee is a future potential
| employee that you can re-recruit when the time comes. Also,
| talent is difficult to find. Which makes people the center.
| Whatever you build, you will build it with people. So you
| need people. Be them new employees, be them former
| employees.
| cafed00d wrote:
| > Any former employee is a future potential employee that
| you can re-recruit when the time comes
|
| Not only that, all former employees are de-facto
| "background check references" / "evagenlists" /
| "detractors" of your company. Forever! (well, not exactly
| forever... but close enough)
|
| I can't recall a single year over the last 10 years where
| younger engineers, cousins, nephews or friends have asked
| me about the 2 companies I worked at before.
|
| And boy, have I been candid.
|
| Talked a very good friend of mine from joining Amazon for
| an offer he got making nearly 3 times much I did. All
| because of "decency" (or lack thereof) of a company.
| treis wrote:
| >friends have asked me
|
| Is this supposed to be haven't?
| cafed00d wrote:
| Whoops! Yes, you're right. Thanks! Wish I could edit it
| now.
| smm11 wrote:
| Seems Amazon needs to be careful about this, too.
|
| https://retailwire.com/discussion/there-might-soon-be-no-
| one...
| water-your-self wrote:
| Would love to hear your take on Amazon.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Even more importantly, they are evangelists for other
| future employees.
|
| I actually went out of my way to make it easy for my
| employees to quit. If they didn't want to stay, then I
| sincerely wished them well.
|
| The company limited what I could do, but I did my best,
| and it seemed to work out.
| jzb wrote:
| I had some unkind feelings about Patreon when it was
| announced / made public that they laid off _their entire
| security team._ I still think that was a poor move and any
| company responsible for handling payments ought to have an
| in-house security team.
|
| That said - I've held off on any criticisms around their
| strategy/execution for the moment (aside from that) since
| it's unclear what happened. I'm wondering if Patreon is
| getting hit with lots of people backing off support of
| artists after a big jump due to the pandemic.
|
| Given inflation and a lot of feelings of uncertainty around
| the economy, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that their
| revenue went _way_ down in a hurry this year.
|
| I back four artists on Patreon, down from five a year ago.
| In all 4 cases I'm either too busy to get full "value" out
| of sponsoring (e.g., I don't have time to read the updates
| or listen to all the demos), or there's not really any
| benefit other than funneling money to support the artist in
| hopes they'll continue working as an artist.
|
| Each month I look at the bill from Patreon and wonder "do I
| really need to keep spending this money?" So far I've
| elected to - but I haven't been hit super hard by inflation
| or a layoff like many folks...
| unity1001 wrote:
| They didn't lay off their entire security team. What one
| person among the laid off ones thought to be 'security
| team' may not overlap with what their company had been
| doing since a long time. In startups, its not uncommon to
| have engineers who have been handling various
| responsibilities, including security (especially early
| employees).
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Agreed, its not ideal but there are things a company can do
| to put their money where there mouth is in this situation.
| This seems to be the new playback for doing it right. I
| appreciate that.
| staunch wrote:
| This is exactly how to handle a layoff: do it 3-6 months
| earlier than required and give the laid off employees that
| money as severance. Waving the equity cliff too is very
| generous and good of them.
|
| Everyone should note the companies that do brutal layoffs
| with little/no severance. It's a major red flag because it
| shows incompetence and/or a lack of ethics.
| preston4tw wrote:
| I always thought it was awesome that a company to support
| creators was creator lead. I came across Jack Conte in 2010
| before Patreon existed. He was a music creator on YouTube that
| made what he was calling Video Songs, songs with each
| instrument part video'd and mixed together, and selling his
| music collection through e-junkie at the time. He was one of
| the first creators I ever financially supported. Some of the
| videos are still up on YT: https://youtu.be/D2PwVkQBp5o
|
| Despite not knowing Jack personally pretty much everything I've
| seen from him over the years has reinforced my generally high
| opinion of him. In this case as well. As lay-offs go Patreon
| seems to be trying very hard to do right by their employees.
| avg_dev wrote:
| I am sure this says more about me than anything but if a
| company lays me off there is zero chance of me exercising
| options in that company.
|
| Edit: I read the link and it appears to apply to RSUs as well.
| What I said about options is true but RSUs, different story.
| I'd sell those for sure.
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| Patreon is not publicy traded, so your ability to sell any
| RSUs is very limited.
| aeyes wrote:
| Why not? Options are usually "in the money" so if you don't
| exercise them you are throwing away money which you already
| earned.
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| > what they did here with the equity, especially the option
| exercise period, is a nice touch.
|
| But it's not all that great. Patreon is not publicly traded, so
| it seems likely that exercising any options will require cash
| up front, plus it will immediately trigger taxable compensation
| (income tax plus FICA). And how will the FMV be determined, if
| there is no public market trading? (ans.: usually just some
| number voted on by the board). It may well be that the options
| are never worth anything even after the extended period.
|
| It is clear that these are not ISOs (statutory options),
| because statutory options by law only allow up to 3 months to
| exercise after employment ends.
| entangledqubit wrote:
| To me, this seems a little odd to complain about given that
| all those factors were true about the equity compensation
| when people signed on. The company didn't fundamentally do a
| bait and switch or change the rules.
|
| Layoffs suck but I found the extended exercise windows and
| other benefits to be rather pleasantly responsible given the
| situation.
| xhrpost wrote:
| I believe the 90day limit for ISOs is just the time to get
| the tax benefits. You can still exercise after 90days, you
| just pay more.
| pastor_bob wrote:
| I guess undercutting Vimeo wasn't cheap
| MintDice wrote:
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| Feel like the real story is a bunch of competitors are eating
| their lunch.
| gtfoutttt wrote:
| Who are those competitors? The subject company is tho only one
| I know of like this. But I am not really active in the creative
| space so I'm ignorant.
| blisterpeanuts wrote:
| Youtube and Facebook both offer monthly subscription plans
| for creators.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| Which hardly anyone seems to use, at least for YouTube. I
| watch too much YouTube for my own good, and I can't
| remember the last time someone encouraged viewers to donate
| money on a recurring basis via any company except Patreon.
| mwidell wrote:
| And the reason for this is likely that youtube takes at
| least 30% of the money, while patreon is around 5-8%
| Minor49er wrote:
| Gumroad is becoming a big one
| kradeelav wrote:
| Subscribestar, which I'm much more of a fan of since they
| have more common sense rules around NSFW art.
| throwaway675309 wrote:
| I don't think it has anything to do with common sense, from
| reading their guidelines it sounds like they just ban NSFW
| stuff all together.
| voxl wrote:
| Common sense rules == completely banning all NSFW work?
|
| https://www.subscribestar.com/prohibited_content
|
| I'm all for having some SFW platforms, but let's not
| pretend that there isn't a dramatic, dramatic demand for
| NSFW content, and that banning it is nothing short of
| prudish.
| lmm wrote:
| I'm no fan of banning such things, but an outright ban is
| much clearer and more comprehensible than Patreon's very
| murky and subjective (to the point where it's almost
| impossible that they're not selectively applied, if only
| by accident) rules.
| dividuum wrote:
| ko-fi.com seems to morph more and more into a competitor.
| scelerat wrote:
| This seems to simply be how Patreon operates: yearly layoffs
| donatj wrote:
| 80 / .17 = 470 employees.
|
| How does Patreon need this many employees? It really doesn't seem
| like that much of an operation.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| I would guess >300 of those employees aren't working on the
| core product.
| abimaelmartell wrote:
| Didn't they just fired their whole security team a few weeks ago?
| HankB99 wrote:
| Apparently all 5 of them.
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/09/patreon-security-layoffs/
| o_1 wrote:
| What's the growth from graphtreon vs these layoffs. Most top
| patreons have quadrupled or more monthly earnings from 2020. This
| could just be a netflix style "thanks for the hardwork, goodbye".
| bArray wrote:
| > Last week, we let go of 5 teammates from our security
| organization, which stemmed from a different set of reasons from
| the ones guiding today's decisions. The change last week was part
| of a longer-term strategy to continue distributing security
| responsibilities across our entire engineering team, bring new
| areas of expertise into Patreon internally, and continue
| partnering with external experts. Unfortunately, the change
| generated concern that we were reducing our security investment,
| but I wanted to make it clear, especially in light of today's
| changes, that we are in fact increasing our investment in
| security.
|
| This is interesting, and I'm not entirely convinced. It seems as
| though their security team was not warned and you would expect a
| handover process.
|
| > The change last week was part of a longer-term strategy to
| continue distributing security responsibilities across our entire
| engineering team
|
| > Unfortunately, the change generated concern that we were
| reducing our security investment, but I wanted to make it clear,
| especially in light of today's changes, that we are in fact
| increasing our investment in security.
|
| This doesn't sound like an increased investment, it sounds like a
| decreased investment. "Why are we paying these people when we can
| just get the normal engineers to do this?". Maybe this is
| possible, but who's going to allocate sprint time to work on
| background pentesting and documenting?
|
| You may say "we will get an external team to do this", but will
| they get access to source code? Will they get access to upcoming
| features?
| mherdeg wrote:
| Hmm -- how is Gumroad doing? Is their business affected by the
| same economic slowdown issues, or did they find another way
| forward?
| lxe wrote:
| Every SV company:
|
| 1. Start a company that does a thing well
|
| 2. Hire enough people to do the thing well
|
| 3. For some reason, hire more and more people to do more and more
| random things
|
| 4. Hire more managers who hire even more people
|
| 5. You are now a complicated mess and can't get anything done
|
| 6. Run out of money
|
| 7. Fire people and write a sad post. Continue to collect hefty
| CEO salary.
|
| Why not just stop at 2?
| jesuspiece wrote:
| I've wondered this as well. Look at Uber, how are they not
| profitable? How many more engineers/general personnel do they
| possibly need to hire?
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| Looking at their app they do a lot more than just give rides
| nowadays. UberEats delivers from restaurants, but also
| apparently groceries now? They have a short-distance package
| delivery option. Rental cars. And some kind of tool to book a
| plane and hotel for travel?
|
| I don't know if it's the right business call, but Uber is
| like 10 different companies now.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Because taxi business isn't actually that great business. You
| have to employ lot of relatively expensive drivers and they
| have to pay for costs of complex machine... And the users
| want to get it as cheap as possible and complain somewhat if
| prices ever go up.
| D-Coder wrote:
| Many people do. They have a five-person company that does one
| thing and that you never hear of, either while it's running
| happily or when it goes out of business.
| ransom1538 wrote:
| If you take VC money you are on a different track. VC's place
| thousands of bets with a %99.9 failure rate. But the hits, are
| so huge, they cover all their bad bets. So they want you to
| take the money and swing for fences.
| rmah wrote:
| Because if you stop at #2...
|
| 1) you won't attract any follow-on investment capital;
|
| 2) your original investor will be angry that you're sitting on
| a pile of money that is doing nothing;
|
| 3) you will likely grow slower than your other competitors. in
| some markets, this is death, in other markets, this is fine.
|
| Patreon had nearly 500 staff before layoffs. Now has about 400
| staff. You may have a hard time understanding what all those
| people do, but I suspect they're all quite busy.
| lxe wrote:
| > You may have a hard time understanding what all those
| people do, but I suspect they're all quite busy.
|
| I'm guessing 100 managers at least. Busy hiring more people
| to staff their perpetually understaffed teams, each doing
| some disjoint initiative.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Shouldn't point 2) be start paying the pile of money back? Or
| allow investor to sell the whole thing to someone else who
| just want to live on dividends.
| LegitShady wrote:
| The investors don't want their pile of money back - that
| would just be a loan, they want your business to go to the
| moon so their equity becomes much more valuable than their
| investment. The investors will call for more investment and
| faster growth, so they can find a window to sell for big
| money.
| flavmartins wrote:
| +1
|
| That's just not how VCs work. Basically it's you HAVE to
| always show hockey stick growth.
|
| Steady 5-10% per year isn't good enough. It has to grow
| exponentially. So that's why you keep hiring and keep
| spreading out the service into a whole bunch of other areas.
| harerazer wrote:
| I'm just going to point out that growing 10% per year is
| actually exponential growth
| [deleted]
| didgetmaster wrote:
| There are plenty of companies that have been highly successful
| at growing way beyond their first product or service. If Apple
| had stopped with PCs, we wouldn't have iPods, iPhones, iPads,
| etc.
|
| The danger is when a startup seeks to grow just for growth
| sake. Hire way more people than we really need so we attract
| investors by showing rapid growth is their modus operandi. That
| approach has actually worked enough that many companies are
| willing to travel that risky road. But that road is also
| littered with casualties.
| lmarcos wrote:
| Please don't give away the secret sauce. Let those silly
| entrepreneurs and investors keep playing with fire.
| pastor_bob wrote:
| Patreon is/was clearly trying to become an all-in-one platform
| to justify their increasingly large cut (like 15% now).
| Stopping at 2 doesn't achieve that.
| adrr wrote:
| Because a startup isn't about growing sustainable. It's about
| build an expensive rocket ship and trying to grow at record
| speeds. Most companies will fail but a select few will have
| 10x+ gains.
|
| You don't need VC cash to start a successful company but the
| time horizon is much longer.
| unity1001 wrote:
| > Why not just stop at 2?
|
| Because your investors will never allow that. And without their
| money, you cant even reach #2.
| _Adam wrote:
| >So within the next 10 minutes, teammates who will be leaving the
| company will receive a calendar invitation to a video call with a
| leader in your function and a teammate from the People team. In
| that meeting, you'll review the details of your separation and
| have an opportunity to ask any questions you may have.
|
| I would have sent the invite out beforehand to avoid the entire
| companying spending the next ten minutes in complete uncertainty
| about their futures.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| > We are offering our nine Dublin engineering teammates
| relocation packages to join these US-based teams.
|
| Do they get a payrise to match US salaries?
| drusepth wrote:
| Probably a better link than whatever the Instagram post is
| (behind a login): https://blog.patreon.com/a-note-from-jack
| tomovo wrote:
| TIL: Jack Conte is the keyboard player in Pomplamoose. Weird.
| an1sotropy wrote:
| he was that before Patreon was a thing, and they're connected:
| https://www.inc.com/alexa-von-tobel/jack-conte-youtube-patre...
| shtopointo wrote:
| "I take full responsibility" - ok, what's the responsibility you
| take?
| remram wrote:
| *I* take responsibility by having *you* be unemployed. It makes
| sense if you don't think about it.
| jfasi wrote:
| Looks like most of the layoffs are in marketing and sales, and
| that they're still hiring on engineering and product. Honestly,
| I'm surprised they had marketing and sales people to begin with.
| Those sorts of efforts pay off most with big-name, high-end
| artists who probably don't need monthly patrons to be successful.
| Focusing in improving the product seems like a smarter move,
| especially given how janky their product was until quite
| recently.
| bombcar wrote:
| These "user generated content companies" spend a lot of time
| and money marketing to the content creators (Patreon is
| defending against the built-in platform monetization of things
| like Youtube and Twitch, et al) and getting big name content
| creators on their platform (see some of the leaks related to
| Onlyfans, etc al).
| Lanz wrote:
| It'd be good to see Patreon face some more serious competition.
| They are by far the dominant force in their segment.
| phamilton4 wrote:
| Not being in the know, what are the serious competitors to
| Patreon? Utreon? Buy Me a Coffee? Youtube itself?
| api wrote:
| Apple and Spotify doing podcast subscriptions maybe?
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| As a new user of Patreon (literally this week is the first
| time I've used it) I finally signed up because a content
| creator is posting their videos to Patreon a day early.
| Youtube could solve that problem.
|
| Does anyone have any other examples of what Patreon does
| for them?
| bombcar wrote:
| It's cross platform and PayPal hasn't decided to eat it
| as a feature yet. That's it.
| hobofan wrote:
| OnlyFans
| ivraatiems wrote:
| As layoff announcements go, this one is pretty solid. Cuts
| immediately to the chase. No sugarcoating. Takes full
| responsibility. Offers pretty solid severance packages.
|
| I can only hope that if my organization has to lay people off,
| they'd be half as kind as some of the recent ones have been (and
| not at all like others, such as Klarna).
| browningstreet wrote:
| Patreon's handling of expired cards is terrible.. people I know
| who used Patreon just lose subscribers because the flow for
| fixing an expired card basically doesn't exist (or didn't, maybe
| it's been fixed since). Those people left Patreon and won't be
| returning.
|
| Their new engineering staff could fix that, for one.
| cronix wrote:
| Interesting. I haven't had to enter new data for any
| subscription service when a cc expires for years now. Somehow
| the new info gets relayed to the service without my input.
| Sivart13 wrote:
| Certain credit card providers have a (paid?) service where
| companies like Patreon can poll for the updated details of
| any of the cards they have on file.
|
| My card didn't automatically update and I can confirm that
| the site gets weirdly broken.
| datalopers wrote:
| They laid off the entire security team last week
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Glad to see they're really thinking long term. After getting
| rid of their security team, they should maybe rethink those
| pesky fire extinguishers that have done nothing but expire.
| AngeloR wrote:
| I think this is just the start for some bad things are patreon...
|
| This video of execs at Patreon apparently turning a blind eye to
| employees calling out patreon users that were selling images of
| underage children:
| https://twitter.com/TizzyEnt/status/1315626557688483841?s=20...
|
| They also laid off their ENTIRE security team:
| https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/09/patreon-security-layoffs/
| tptacek wrote:
| It's not actually that unusual to absorb security into
| engineering; if engineering is already doing most of software
| security, and engineering/ops is already handling IT security,
| then the rest of security might in fact be duplicative of stuff
| third parties can do just as well.
|
| I have no inside knowledge as to whether this was the case at
| Patreon; no opinions about Patreon whatsoever. But re-orging
| security into and out of engineering is not unprecedented.
| [deleted]
| verall wrote:
| I don't think that's the right twitter link
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Patreon decline had 3 Phases
|
| 1. Censorship which caused a market reaction for more
| competition, and the first mass exit of the platform
|
| 2. Changes in the Fee Structure and billing policies, this
| caused the 2nd mass exit from the platform
|
| 3. Platforms getting better at internal monetization (i.e YT
| SuperChat and memberships)
|
| There has been little advancement of of the patreon platform,
| and with more and more competition from other direct compeitors
| (subscribestar, etc) and different monetization avenues
| (TeeSpring,etc) there is little reason for creators to use
| patreon outside of the network effect, and since they are not
| growing that effect is smaller every day
| adamhowell wrote:
| I'm guessing this is the Twitter link you meant:
| https://twitter.com/TizzyEnt/status/1569439160561442817
| rvz wrote:
| As an insult to injury this was announced on his Instagram.
|
| So professional! /s
| karaterobot wrote:
| It was announced on the Patreon blog, the poster chose to link
| to Instagram (annoyingly, for those of us not on Instagram).
|
| https://blog.patreon.com/a-note-from-jack
|
| I assume OP expected the blog post to be taken down or changed,
| so they captured it and linked to the capture instead of the
| original. I feel like the protocol for this should be to make a
| capture, post a link to it as a _comment_ in the thread, and
| link to the original in the post.
| behnamoh wrote:
| The pandemic is over and so are most remote "jobs" that people
| started doing on Onlyfans, Patreon, etc. a couple years ago.
| bo0tzz wrote:
| Your quoting suggests that you think what people on onlyfans
| and patreon do aren't "real jobs", but in fact to succeed in
| those spaces needs very hard work.
| acheron wrote:
| Digging a big hole then filling it back in is "very hard
| work" too but that doesn't make it a real job.
| garmanarnar wrote:
| Construction companies would like a word with you.
| woodruffw wrote:
| And yet, the Hoover Dam was a job very well done.
| lovich wrote:
| What, pray tell, qualifies a job as a "real" job?
| bombcar wrote:
| I'd say something like people are actually willing to pay
| the _average_ or even the _worst_ job-doer something
| resembling a living wage.
|
| If the stats from things like Patreon are to believed
| (and filtering out the "dead weight" of creators who
| don't post or have given up without closing their
| account) there's a serious "top 1% of creators make XX%
| of the revenue" problem.
|
| Which means that for a small fraction, it's a job, for
| the vast majority it's a money-losing hobby.
| lovich wrote:
| Do you not believe working in retail or restaurants are
| real jobs? Because the vast majority of them are not paid
| a living wage in the US and have to rely on having
| multiple jobs or welfare. Walmart even teaches you how to
| sign up for welfare as an employee
| bombcar wrote:
| Those are real jobs and should be paid a living wage or
| eliminated if that's entirely unfeasible. There can be
| arguments at the edges but I think people generally agree
| on that.
|
| And even if you don't, certainly an "industry" where 99%
| of the people "employed" don't even make the poverty line
| or make back their expenses (patreon and only fans would
| fall here) wouldn't. (The people trying to 'make it big'
| are probably moonlighting as retail/restuarant anyway,
| just as all those who tried to make it in Hollywood did
| in years past).
|
| There's certainly major abuses but the 1099 and "self
| employed" world is even more full of them than the W4
| world.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| By that definition, real jobs are doctor, dentist, and
| software developer. We don't pay the worst in most jobs
| anything more than the legal minimum.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Yeah, "adds value to the world," "works hard," and "pays
| well" are radically different metrics.
| panzagl wrote:
| Oh, you know, Javascript Ninja, Devops Rockstar, a real
| job.
|
| /s
| behnamoh wrote:
| > but in fact to succeed in those spaces needs very hard
| work.
|
| But that doesn't make it a job. You could do hard work in
| moving a mountain but that's not a job.
|
| Needless to say, earning money off of your looks (something
| you didn't work hard to gain in the first place) doesn't
| qualify as hard-working job.
| unity1001 wrote:
| > But that doesn't make it a job. You could do hard work in
| moving a mountain but that's not a job.
|
| If people are willingly paying you to do something, that's
| a good job as any other job.
| throwaway675309 wrote:
| "earning money off of your looks (something you didn't work
| hard to gain in the first place) ....."
|
| If you have a cognitive aptitude for mathematics, you
| didn't "earn" that either - everything in some way or
| another is part of your birthright and privilege, both
| nature and nurture.
|
| If you genuinely believe that the mind is somehow magically
| distinct from the same genetic system that gave you your
| physique, I'm afraid you're the delusional one.
| Scarjit wrote:
| If you get paid moving that mountain, it would be a job.
| DrBoring wrote:
| > earning money off of your looks I'm assuming your taking
| about the sex workers of OnlyFans. I find your attitudes a
| bit dismissive and offensive. These are real humans with
| real feelings that you're talking about with such little
| regard.
|
| Plus, I earn money off of my natural intelligence. I didn't
| do anything to gain it in the first place, I just happened
| to have intelligent parents.
|
| > doesn't qualify as hard-working job
|
| Two questions:
|
| 1. Why doesn't it qualify as a job if they are earning
| income?
|
| 2. Why should someone have to "work hard" to earn a living?
| If have a high-value easy-to-sell product, then why work
| harder than you need to?
| eganist wrote:
| > But that doesn't make it a job. You could do hard work in
| moving a mountain but that's not a job.
|
| Job (n):
|
| 1. a paid position of regular employment.
|
| 2. a task or piece of work, especially one that is paid.
|
| ---
|
| It seems to fit #2 perfectly (exhibiting to an audience),
| and #1 can be met based on e.g corporate structure
| (subscription pay into an LLC that normalizes the salary
| etc)
|
| I'd argue that it's in fact potentially "skilled labor" in
| that it's not obvious what it takes to produce content that
| brings regular subscribers. Tons of adult content creators
| burn out and pivot because they can't get traction.
| hellomyguys wrote:
| What a very bizarre definition of a job
| skyyler wrote:
| >Needless to say, earning money off of your looks
| (something you didn't work hard to gain in the first place)
| doesn't qualify as hard-working job.
|
| Even if you're very conventionally attractive, you need to
| put in a lot of networking and marketing before you can
| make money off of "your looks". Even then, you don't just
| sit back and let your looks do everything.
|
| Porn stars generally spend a couple hours DAILY in the gym.
| Then there's all of the events you have to do to remain
| relevant in social circles. Then there's actual shooting.
| But before that there's hair and makeup. Then there's
| outfits. Selecting garments that match your personal style
| and also are sexy enough to excite your fans isn't easy and
| it usually isn't cheap.
|
| Going through all of that to get paid by the fans is
| absolutely a job. If the fans didn't pay, it wouldn't be a
| job.
| ranma4703 wrote:
| It takes a LOT of work to "earn a living off your looks"
|
| Ignoring the time spent setting up shoots, editing,
| engagement, etc, and focusing just on "looks", you have to
| spend a lot of time on working out, make up, shaving,
| putting together outfits, etc.
|
| If you think that looking good is something that doesn't
| take any hard work, it's because you've never tried to put
| in that work yourself.
| behnamoh wrote:
| Anything you do to make yourself look good has only
| incremental effect; you must already have a "good"
| foundation (genetics, race, etc.)
|
| An African American woman, for example, has almost zero
| chance of making it to the top 10 p$rnstars list, no
| matter how much she put effort and time to prepare
| herself.
|
| Some things are just the realities of the world. Thinking
| otherwise makes you delusional.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| What are you responding to? (I feel like I'm asking this
| a lot here.) The comment to which you're apparently
| responding was only saying that it takes a lot of work to
| make a living off of your looks; they were silent on
| whether you need to have good genetics, the correct skin
| color, or anything else.
| unity1001 wrote:
| If you knew how much some of those people who are doing 'remote
| jobs' on Only Fans, Patreon now...
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-09-13 23:00 UTC)