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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Dogpiling is dogpiling. Luddites are luddites. Who am I, a person with real tech agency recruiting experience who could view the actual live job boards year after year during this period, to possibly to speak out about what actually happens when we've got people who have anecdotal experience? Every year we would reach that point and suddenly pull many jobs from the board until after the new year, but I guess it was just my imagination because someone over there got a new job in November once.
I didn't even say it was impossible. I just think it's unrealistic to expect to find something after Nov 15th and until the New Year. Sorry for knowing what I'm talking about, I guess.
Also, I think it's quaint that people assume that when labor reductions happen at tech companies, that only tech employees are affected. Somewhere there's an admin assistant who has been working at that glorified CMS, and I doubt they have the same job prospects as a software architect.
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.
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.
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'.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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".
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.
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!
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.
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.
> The post includes tons of details about complicated things Patreon is doing to help out the people affected
I was under the impression we were addressing "Jack"'s claim to responsibility. I wasn't trying to comment on the actions of the company (which I fully admit is more compassionate in its layoffs than other companies would be).
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.)
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.
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.
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".
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."
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.
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."
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.
Have you considered that part of the fabric of civilized society is...being civil with the people that you interact with, and require cooperation from?
You can hold any opinion of them that you like, but the difference between a competent manager and an incompetent one is how they can translate their personal disdain for their direct reports, in a way that doesn't treat them like cogs, and improves their performance on the things they're responsible for.
This is just patently untrue and plays out in every office across the entire world every day.
What makes someone a competent manager is whether or not they complete their assigned tasks and projects that come down from above.
You don't like people who are direct and brutal in their feedback. Got it.
Hell, you can turn back the clock to 2004-2008 World of Warcraft and see this for yourself. The best guilds in the world had leadership that was brutally forthright - bordering on downright cruel - to their membership, but they still managed to execute, because when everyone's goals are aligned, you'll be surprised the shit people are willing to entertain. And not only were these people not being paid, they had to pay to play the damn game!
And yes, I know the analogy doesn't map perfectly onto work for several reasons, but the crux of the idea is there: a harsh taskmaster can move mountains with a little bit of fear (I'll replace you with a shell script if your performance doesn't improve) and a lot of honesty.
In the future, you could save us both a lot of time and effort by just saying, "I don't like this management style."
But I've seen it in video games, I've seen it in startups, I've seen it in Fortune 500 companies, and I've seen it in the military. Properly implemented, it works wonders.
That is the one and only purpose of high tech. To automate work and improve efficiency (I.E. make people redundant). Be that automating the work of acquiring and connecting eyeballs to adds or getting rid of Janice the nice secretary from the 80s to going from 50 to 5 production planners at a factory.
It was fine when I was an external developer, but when I switched over to an in-house role it sucked seeing the fear in departments that I turned my gaze to :(
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.
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>.
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!”
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..."
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.
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.
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.
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.
Even if they didn't bend over backwards to make sure everyone lands okay, saying "lose their livelihood" is a bit much, no? These are not peasants losing their land, rather they're highly paid professionals that should have no issue finding work. Shameful plug - we're hiring at Vitally :) Feel free to reach out in the DMs.
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.
Taking full responsibility mean taking a pay cut or stepping down or basically taking consequences for yourself first before others have to.