What is it with companies doing mass-layoffs and stating no reasons whatsoever, in fact giving reasons why there's no need:
> Second, Patreon’s core business is healthy and strong, and we’re going to be a rock for creators for decades to come. Hundreds of thousands of creators rely on Patreon for their livelihoods, businesses, ...
> We’re reducing the size of our team by 20%, or ...
There are so many contradictions in this statement that either the person who wrote it is completely muddle-headed, or just a bad liar.
> Nothing about our core business has changed – it remains strong and consistent
a few paragraphs later
> But our transformation is going to take time
and the next paragraph
> At the same time, the market in which we operate has undergone profound change over the last 6 months. We need to adjust our cost structure
So is the business strong and consistent, or is it facing a rapidly-changing market, requiring that the business transform and adjust it's cost structure?
> To be clear about the impact of AI on today’s decision: we are not making the above changes because we believe AI replaces humans.
A few paragraphs later
> AI has fundamentally transformed the tech industry, though, including how we work, how we build products, how we communicate, and more. That does have an impact on how we operate and organize.
So do you think AI doesn't replace humans, or do you think that you'll need fewer humans because AI will be doing more of the work?
I'm the opposite - I wish people wrote like this more often. Basic humanity needs to make a comeback before we all kill each other.
With the enormous caveat that this writing is honest, and I imagine you are implicitly including "it's not honest" in your grievance, which is a totally reasonable guess. We rightly assume CEOs are usually not honest when it comes to sympathizing with employees.
> A $1,500 stipend to replace your company laptop.
It seems like a wild choice to give a specific figure as additional cash rather than just letting them keep their (wiped) laptop. That additional cash will be taxed (as should a laptop that is left with the ex-employee, but the used laptop can be valued and taxed as a used laptop rather than a $1500 cash payment [and frankly would often be, um, overlooked...).
It seems like it's better for Patreon (cheaper, less IT labor) and approximately as good for the ex-employee to make this be in the shape of the used laptop than a $1500 payment.
I don't understand why this is problematic for some:
They lay off 93 people so the total # employees before layoffs is 465 and it will be 372 employees remaining after layoffs.
In same post they state there are 300k creators making money on their platform, so the ratio of employees to creators is 1:645 before layoffs and 1:800 after layoffs.
It's a mature business and VC funding has significantly dried up for these kind of middlemen business models.
Why wouldn't 372 people having thousands of meetings between them per week be enough to run such a company?
Edit: If you downvote this without explanation I'd wager you never ran a company.
I watched this dudes youtube channel where he makes music for years before I ever knew he was the CEO of pateron. It was a bit of a wtf moment when I found out.
Found him with his animatronic video on Instagram later he announced Patreon, I thought that's neat I'm sure it'll help a few people, a few years later it's worth Billions
The only possible positive thing out of this cringy article is that the severance is decent (for a US company). 4 months of pay and healthcare coverage through Year end. Everything else could have just been a couple of sentences.
Companies need to stop doing this melodrama every time they decide to fire people. Everyone knows the goal is to make money and keep a company profitable for their shareholders. Why these melodramatic posts ? People would prefer honesty. Just say "We need to increase our profits or reduce costs or both and hence we have to lay people off. Here is what we are providing as a severance". That's it.
Patreon lost >90% of customers from India and a few other Asian nations since they did not implement credit card 2FA nor implement support for native payment gateways. Had to drop a dozen patreon subscriptions and found several hundreds online were complaining about the same thing. Several creators were puzzled why they had a sudden drop without any feedback. Many folks just shrugged and silently moved onto other mechanisms.
No matter what, people who write articles about layoffs like this go straight onto my 'people to stay far away from' list. He is on it since the crying video of the last round of layoffs.
I see others mentioning the severance package being decent for a US company. I'm glad they received something, but I'm sorry, can we stop calling this decent? It's markedly lopsided when a company can one day decide to lay off a large portion of their workforce and think 4 months is anywhere near acceptable. The average time to find a new job is significantly longer, especially depending on role and seniority.
I'm tired of seeing American workers bear the brunt of the stupidity of the executive teams that have done their job so poorly as to suddenly need to lay off workers. If you are a leader and you are put in this situation, it is because you are a terrible at your job. It's not the market, it's not AI or some unforeseen disaster...it's because you had your head up your ass instead of actively running the business.
> First, the people who work at Patreon are special, beautiful humans, through and through.
If you're calling me "special" and "beautiful" and removing my ability to pay my mortgage in the same sentence through no fault of my own, you can absolutely get in the bin.
IBM went seven decades without layoffs. Yes, part of that was the unique situation of post WWII America. But read TJ Watson Jr.'s words - they really took seriously the fact that they weren't just a business - they had a responsibility to people who worked for them. IBM went through a LOT of transformation in those seven decades BTW - they somehow found ways to re-deploy people in their growing business each time.
The words of this CEO are about as good as they can be under the circumstances, but all the happy talk about "special, beautiful humans" and "Patreon’s core business is healthy and strong" and "we’re not changing our roadmap or priorities" are obviously self-contradictory. Of course, if your business can't survive with its current headcount, it would be foolish to run it into the ground - then everyone loses. But this doesn't appear to be the case here.
He took a long time to get to the punch line: "AI has fundamentally transformed the tech industry, though, including how we work, how we build products, how we communicate, and more. That does have an impact on how we operate and organize."
So, there it is, finally. Management realized we can do the exact same thing with 20% fewer (more productive) employees. That means the shareholders (including the CEO and the remaining employees), will have a more valuable company. Sorry, we couldn't share this with the 20% we let go, who helped build the company to this point, and we can't even wait for our business to grow into our headcount, which if everything is so rosy, should be a matter of months. So good luck with the "my journey has come to an end, I am so grateful [to have been fired]..." LinkedIn posts!
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[ 0.28 ms ] story [ 61.3 ms ] thread> Second, Patreon’s core business is healthy and strong, and we’re going to be a rock for creators for decades to come. Hundreds of thousands of creators rely on Patreon for their livelihoods, businesses, ...
> We’re reducing the size of our team by 20%, or ...
Please support my efforts through my Patreon account!
/s
> Nothing about our core business has changed – it remains strong and consistent
a few paragraphs later
> But our transformation is going to take time
and the next paragraph
> At the same time, the market in which we operate has undergone profound change over the last 6 months. We need to adjust our cost structure
So is the business strong and consistent, or is it facing a rapidly-changing market, requiring that the business transform and adjust it's cost structure?
> To be clear about the impact of AI on today’s decision: we are not making the above changes because we believe AI replaces humans.
A few paragraphs later
> AI has fundamentally transformed the tech industry, though, including how we work, how we build products, how we communicate, and more. That does have an impact on how we operate and organize.
So do you think AI doesn't replace humans, or do you think that you'll need fewer humans because AI will be doing more of the work?
With the enormous caveat that this writing is honest, and I imagine you are implicitly including "it's not honest" in your grievance, which is a totally reasonable guess. We rightly assume CEOs are usually not honest when it comes to sympathizing with employees.
It wasn’t, I bet executives were laughing reading that
It seems like a wild choice to give a specific figure as additional cash rather than just letting them keep their (wiped) laptop. That additional cash will be taxed (as should a laptop that is left with the ex-employee, but the used laptop can be valued and taxed as a used laptop rather than a $1500 cash payment [and frankly would often be, um, overlooked...).
It seems like it's better for Patreon (cheaper, less IT labor) and approximately as good for the ex-employee to make this be in the shape of the used laptop than a $1500 payment.
They lay off 93 people so the total # employees before layoffs is 465 and it will be 372 employees remaining after layoffs.
In same post they state there are 300k creators making money on their platform, so the ratio of employees to creators is 1:645 before layoffs and 1:800 after layoffs.
It's a mature business and VC funding has significantly dried up for these kind of middlemen business models.
Why wouldn't 372 people having thousands of meetings between them per week be enough to run such a company?
Edit: If you downvote this without explanation I'd wager you never ran a company.
Companies need to stop doing this melodrama every time they decide to fire people. Everyone knows the goal is to make money and keep a company profitable for their shareholders. Why these melodramatic posts ? People would prefer honesty. Just say "We need to increase our profits or reduce costs or both and hence we have to lay people off. Here is what we are providing as a severance". That's it.
>Creators, members, revenue, and processing volume continue to show strong, consistent growth every month.
lol strong consistent growth -> 20% layoff
I'm tired of seeing American workers bear the brunt of the stupidity of the executive teams that have done their job so poorly as to suddenly need to lay off workers. If you are a leader and you are put in this situation, it is because you are a terrible at your job. It's not the market, it's not AI or some unforeseen disaster...it's because you had your head up your ass instead of actively running the business.
If you're calling me "special" and "beautiful" and removing my ability to pay my mortgage in the same sentence through no fault of my own, you can absolutely get in the bin.
Fundamentally weird behaviour.
IBM went seven decades without layoffs. Yes, part of that was the unique situation of post WWII America. But read TJ Watson Jr.'s words - they really took seriously the fact that they weren't just a business - they had a responsibility to people who worked for them. IBM went through a LOT of transformation in those seven decades BTW - they somehow found ways to re-deploy people in their growing business each time.
The words of this CEO are about as good as they can be under the circumstances, but all the happy talk about "special, beautiful humans" and "Patreon’s core business is healthy and strong" and "we’re not changing our roadmap or priorities" are obviously self-contradictory. Of course, if your business can't survive with its current headcount, it would be foolish to run it into the ground - then everyone loses. But this doesn't appear to be the case here.
He took a long time to get to the punch line: "AI has fundamentally transformed the tech industry, though, including how we work, how we build products, how we communicate, and more. That does have an impact on how we operate and organize."
So, there it is, finally. Management realized we can do the exact same thing with 20% fewer (more productive) employees. That means the shareholders (including the CEO and the remaining employees), will have a more valuable company. Sorry, we couldn't share this with the 20% we let go, who helped build the company to this point, and we can't even wait for our business to grow into our headcount, which if everything is so rosy, should be a matter of months. So good luck with the "my journey has come to an end, I am so grateful [to have been fired]..." LinkedIn posts!