7 ms·

MakerBot lays off 20% of its staff for the second time this year

86 points by SSilver2k2 11y ago

fossuser 11y ago
Print The Legend was a pretty interesting documentary that showed the development of Makerbot and form labs - but it made Makerbot look like a complete disaster and the original CEO seem terrible (along with what I think was Amazons invester arm) Not surprised things aren't going well. Seems like the vision died long before the sale.
ChuckMcM 11y ago
This is sad on many levels, but for me it is most sad that Makerbot got caught up in the whole "if we own the IP we'll be the biggest fish in the pond" mentality. They fundamentally did not understand that as big as the 3D printer market was when they switched over from open source to closed source, it was not self sustaining, and it still isn't self sustaining. People like Printrbot came in with better solutions, people like Lulzbot out makered Makerbot, and in general the community revolted at them trying to be the only game in town after all the contributions from everyone in the community. Totally not the way to start a revolution but a good way to put the brakes on one.
- blhack 11y ago
  Why is that sad? What makerbot, and Bre Pettis, did was truly awful. That was an absolute betrayal of trust to everybody who had been working on that project. Good that makerbot is doing poorly.
  - 542458 11y ago
    It's sad because human beings are losing their jobs, which always sucks. It also sucks because this is a big market player, and them going under may hamper investor confidence in future 3D-printing ventures or give consumers the impression that consumer 3D printing is dead. Additionally, if they go under it would mean that there are suddenly lots of schools and libraries equipped with makerbot machines who are no longer capable of getting support or replacement parts, which would also serve to dampen public adoption. Finally, it's sad because makerbot had so much potential, and although it's been a long time coming and they completely brought it upon themselves it still sucks to watch it end up like this.
    - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
      >and them going under may hamper investor confidence in future 3D-printing ventures Could this be a blessing in disguise?
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - adamc 11y ago
    Unfortunately, it isn't Bre Pettis who will suffer from this, but the innocents who work there.
  - ChuckMcM 11y ago
    It is sad to me, because a different path would possibly have been better for everyone. When you see a young person die from an overdose of drugs, it is sad because they chose a path which lead them to an early death, and everything they could have contributed to the world is lost. Companies are like that too, although it's easy to feel like they "got what they deserved" I tend to grieve more for what they weren't able to achieve. It is only made more frustrating to people who advised them that this was the outcome at the end of their path if they chose to go this way, and they could not listen. I find that sad.
mrebus 11y ago
How big is their actual market. In Print The Legend they realize a major sector is the small engineering/tech shops that can't afford/don't need an industrial prototyper but could use a $3000 one. After that they have the "Hobbyist". These sectors seem small and possibly shrinking.
- togusa 11y ago
  An anecdote: I know someone who works for a small engineering company. They bought a ~$3000 one and used it perhaps a couple of times. 3d printing is still at the "early inkjet" phase of hassle. It's sometimes easier for a guy with a lathe and a mill to knock something up by hand from a pencil drawing for a one off if he's got 20 years of experience than have to knock the thing up in some CAD software and frig around with a 3d printer for an hour then wait for it to print and then have to clean it up. I suspect the market is saturated with such purchases.
  - msandford 11y ago
    Yeah, 3d printing is still a solution in search of a mass market problem. Quality isn't good enough to make "consumer" parts yet and still too fiddly, and not 10% of the country needs to prototype, much less the whole country. Eventually someone's going to figure out exactly what they're perfect for and things will really go bananas. Until then they're fun but only useful to a pretty limited set of people.
Animats 11y ago
MakerBot's problem is that their hardware technology is obsolete. They made a mediocre extruder-type printer years ago, and they still make a mediocre extruder-type printer. Meanwhile, the other players are going to better technologies.
empressplay 11y ago
Niche market is niche?
blhack 11y ago
I have to be honest, I do feel for anybody losing their job, but it makes me happy to see makerbot doing poorly. These guys really did a mean thing to the maker community. Not only did they betray the trust of everybody that helped on that project, but it seemed like they wanted to take credit for 3D printing, as if capital M makerbot was THE THING that had suddenly made 3D printing explode. No. It was the efforts of thousands of hackers all over the world collaborating that made 3D printing explode, and it wasn't fair to those people to see Bre's face all over the news, as if he had personally designed and built all of this stuff. Time heals all wounds, obviously, and I hope there are good things for everybody involved with (or previously involved with) makerbot. But I hope that this is a lesson: being mean to people isn't cool, and they will turn on you and market against you when you do.
- kayoone 11y ago
  Agree, however Pettis probably does not care too much anymore after the sale to Stratasys some time ago. For the long term employees, i feel bad.
- snarfy 11y ago
  3d printing exploded because the patent expired.
chunkstuntman 11y ago
When they opened a brick and morter store in Boston, I remember walking in with a real sense of excitement but walking out without any interest in becoming more involved in the 3D printing scene. If anything, seeing the printers in action made me realize just how inessential their product seemed from a layperson's point of view. For all of the potential 3D printing has, at the moment it is a solution looking for a consumer problem, and most consumers aren't looking to make custom figurines or embossed text. A few months ago, I walked by the storefront and it was totally empty. Apparently I wasn't the only one disillusioned by seeing their product up close.
- blt 11y ago
  3d printing got oversold. "Print replacement parts for your washing machine" was total bullshit. 3D printer CEOs wanted to be like Steve Jobs and sell millions of devices to consumers. They could have earned a respected spot in the toolboxes of engineers, artists, scientists, even manufacturers. Instead they pushed trinket machines that didn't even work as designed. They could have been like Tektronix or Mori Seiki but they got greedy.
  - sleepybrett 11y ago
    I agree, My washing machine knobs are fine. I did however print a replacement for a knob on my clothes dryer. ;) However 95% of the time I'm printing something for a prototype or some little thing I'm tinkering with.
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    I read them as, enthusiastic promoters on the bleeding edge. They jumped into 3D printing despite the risks. Harsh to call that 'greedy'. That said, 3D printing is still pretty lame. Cheap plastic parts are rarely the critical element in a device. And even knobs etc often have retaining clips or friction-fit holes with sub-millimeter tolerances, that 3D printers cannot achieve.
    - blt 11y ago
      I speak from personal experience. It was all greed with certain major players.
ewindisch 11y ago
It's worrisome to me that I'm now getting in my emails offers for extreme discounts on their printers as part of customer loyalty (I've bought PLA filament from them, but not a printer). I mean, that's not generally unexpected, but 40% discounts? That does not instill confidence as a buyer, unless they're now going for the "always on sale" model.
hanklazard 11y ago
Sorry to hear about the problems at makerbot ... This company really got out in front of 3D printing and made people excited about it. That being said, maybe the growth was a little to aggressive. I remember seeing a makerbot store here in Boston in the last few years-- a lot of people watching the machines in awe, but no one was actually making any purchases (as in the printed items they were trying to sell). It just seemed more like an expensive showroom rather than a store. So cool, though! I'm still bullish on the maker space. I saw a functioning prototype of this 3in1 machine in Pittsburgh last year. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/boxzy/boxzy-rapid-change-fablab-mill-laser-engraver-3d-p https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/boxzy/boxzy-rapid-chang... CNC routing and laser cutting/etching included and priced much better. The maker machines will just get better and less expensive and I can't wait.
datashovel 11y ago
I'm looking forward to the day when the norm becomes "things have slowed down so we're all taking a temporary 20% pay cut". If you're hiring full-time employees for short-term goals you're part of the problem, not part of the solution.
- RyanZAG 11y ago
  You mean a 20% paycut and double the equity, right? If it's just the 20% paycut, all your best talent is going to jump ship and you end up losing people anyway.
  - datashovel 11y ago
    20% was just an arbitrary example. The underlying point I think is the first focus should be on trying to retain all full-time employees. And I probably should've mentioned that the likely outcome would be that the higher ranks would make the sacrifice, not the lower levels (unless absolutely necessary), since they probably depend more on their salaries for the basics. Those who are not willing to make the sacrifice probably don't really believe in the vision and thus probably aren't the right people to help you get out of the rut. And one other caveat would be transparency. That way a company can't just arbitrarily request that their employees make sacrifices when it's not demonstrably essential.
    - erichmond 11y ago
      >Those who are not willing to make the sacrifice probably don't really believe in the vision and thus probably aren't the right people to help you get out of the rut. Sorry, but this is a bit ridiculous. You could make the same counter-argument from the employees perspective as well. "If my company isn't willing to sacrifice to pay my current market worth, then they don't really believe in me as an employee" Is this company going to pay an extra 20% when things start going well again to make up the difference lost? When you sign on for a job/salary you shouldn't feel bad for leaving if the company can't hold up their end of the bargain. If you only worked at 75% of the capacity they thought you were going to, you'll most likely be fired.
yAnonymous 11y ago
You know we're in a bad situation when machines are firing humans.
ekidd 11y ago
MakerBot appears to have gotten themselves trapped between Printrbot (proprietary, entry level) and Lulzbot (open source, more expensive). Well, and about 40 other competitors. I own a Printrbot Simple Metal, which is a nice machine. But the simple reality is that this is not a consumer machine: - Given a choice between driving to town to buy a part, and firing up the printer, I'll drive. - Given a choice between buying on Amazon, and firing up the printer, I'll buy on Amazon. Where 3D printers are awesome is when I'm in "tinkering" mode—when I've taken out my toolbox and my calipers and my Arduino and I want to make something that doesn't exist yet. I can design a part using OpenSCAD, mess with the tolerances a bit, and run off two or three generations of prototypes in an afternoon. When I'm done, I can upload the schematic and some images, and other people can download it. It makes hardware almost as much fun as software. But the reality—at least for machines using hot plastic—is that you need to learn about how plastic heats and cools, about what kinds of shapes are easy to print, and about how to model things using CAD software. Until the open source laser sintering printers come down in price, the only "mass market" for 3D printing will be the kinds of people who have always hung out around RadioShack and Home Depot, or who browse SparkFun and Octopart regularly. 3D printers are awesome because they encourage hacking and entrepreneurialism, not because they give you a push-button desktop fab.
kirk21 11y ago
Read an article a while ago where they did an analysis of the amount of printers a company needed to sell to break even (based on the parts cost). The conclusion was that there were just too many players in the field to ever make money (given the limited market atm).
benbojangles 11y ago
I quite like thingiverse.
gorena 11y ago
It seems weird that they'd put their software engineers and even customer support all the way down in Industry City. Unless you live off the D/N/R in Brooklyn already, or maybe in lower Manhattan, that's a horrid commute. Unless you actually need the industrial space for your job... why?
- dzlobin 11y ago
  Space in Industry City is _cheap_
Htsthbjig 11y ago
So many people talking about how 3d printers is something impractical for everybody. The other day I attended a talk about the history of personal computers, and certainly it rhymes. At the time everybody was saying, a personal computer? who wants this? People do not need a database for cooking, or a spreadsheet, it is a very expensive typing machine and it is very hard to use(command line). It was true. What happened is that personal (and then mobile) computers evolved from a entrepise-centric to user-centric to grandma-could-use-facebook centric computers. Most people in the old days could not imagine what the future would look like, because computer did exist, but their applications were different to what they predicted. In the same way I believe 3d printing is amazing, not for what it is now, but what it will became. I volunteered giving 3d classes for children and it is incredible what they could do after you teach them the basic concepts. What is shocking for me is that it is "normal" for those 10 years old to design things that I could only do after studying engineering and gaining experience. Some of them absorb knowledge like an sponge. I see in them the next Linux Towards, but instead of OSes, it becomes possible to design a car, or a plane over the Internet.Before 3d printers it is so hard that is practically impossible for normal people to do it.

86 points by SSilver2k2 11y ago

Print The Legend was a pretty interesting documentary that showed the development of Makerbot and form labs - but it made Makerbot look like a complete disaster and the original CEO seem terrible (along with what I think was Amazons invester arm) Not surprised things aren't going well. Seems like the vision died long before the sale.

ChuckMcM 11y ago

This is sad on many levels, but for me it is most sad that Makerbot got caught up in the whole "if we own the IP we'll be the biggest fish in the pond" mentality. They fundamentally did not understand that as big as the 3D printer market was when they switched over from open source to closed source, it was not self sustaining, and it still isn't self sustaining. People like Printrbot came in with better solutions, people like Lulzbot out makered Makerbot, and in general the community revolted at them trying to be the only game in town after all the contributions from everyone in the community. Totally not the way to start a revolution but a good way to put the brakes on one.

blhack 11y ago
Why is that sad? What makerbot, and Bre Pettis, did was truly awful. That was an absolute betrayal of trust to everybody who had been working on that project. Good that makerbot is doing poorly.
- 542458 11y ago
  It's sad because human beings are losing their jobs, which always sucks. It also sucks because this is a big market player, and them going under may hamper investor confidence in future 3D-printing ventures or give consumers the impression that consumer 3D printing is dead. Additionally, if they go under it would mean that there are suddenly lots of schools and libraries equipped with makerbot machines who are no longer capable of getting support or replacement parts, which would also serve to dampen public adoption. Finally, it's sad because makerbot had so much potential, and although it's been a long time coming and they completely brought it upon themselves it still sucks to watch it end up like this.
  - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
    >and them going under may hamper investor confidence in future 3D-printing ventures Could this be a blessing in disguise?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- adamc 11y ago
  Unfortunately, it isn't Bre Pettis who will suffer from this, but the innocents who work there.
- ChuckMcM 11y ago
  It is sad to me, because a different path would possibly have been better for everyone. When you see a young person die from an overdose of drugs, it is sad because they chose a path which lead them to an early death, and everything they could have contributed to the world is lost. Companies are like that too, although it's easy to feel like they "got what they deserved" I tend to grieve more for what they weren't able to achieve. It is only made more frustrating to people who advised them that this was the outcome at the end of their path if they chose to go this way, and they could not listen. I find that sad.

mrebus 11y ago

How big is their actual market. In Print The Legend they realize a major sector is the small engineering/tech shops that can't afford/don't need an industrial prototyper but could use a $3000 one. After that they have the "Hobbyist". These sectors seem small and possibly shrinking.

togusa 11y ago
An anecdote: I know someone who works for a small engineering company. They bought a ~$3000 one and used it perhaps a couple of times. 3d printing is still at the "early inkjet" phase of hassle. It's sometimes easier for a guy with a lathe and a mill to knock something up by hand from a pencil drawing for a one off if he's got 20 years of experience than have to knock the thing up in some CAD software and frig around with a 3d printer for an hour then wait for it to print and then have to clean it up. I suspect the market is saturated with such purchases.
- msandford 11y ago
  Yeah, 3d printing is still a solution in search of a mass market problem. Quality isn't good enough to make "consumer" parts yet and still too fiddly, and not 10% of the country needs to prototype, much less the whole country. Eventually someone's going to figure out exactly what they're perfect for and things will really go bananas. Until then they're fun but only useful to a pretty limited set of people.

Animats 11y ago

MakerBot's problem is that their hardware technology is obsolete. They made a mediocre extruder-type printer years ago, and they still make a mediocre extruder-type printer. Meanwhile, the other players are going to better technologies.

empressplay 11y ago

Niche market is niche?

blhack 11y ago

I have to be honest, I do feel for anybody losing their job, but it makes me happy to see makerbot doing poorly. These guys really did a mean thing to the maker community. Not only did they betray the trust of everybody that helped on that project, but it seemed like they wanted to take credit for 3D printing, as if capital M makerbot was THE THING that had suddenly made 3D printing explode. No. It was the efforts of thousands of hackers all over the world collaborating that made 3D printing explode, and it wasn't fair to those people to see Bre's face all over the news, as if he had personally designed and built all of this stuff. Time heals all wounds, obviously, and I hope there are good things for everybody involved with (or previously involved with) makerbot. But I hope that this is a lesson: being mean to people isn't cool, and they will turn on you and market against you when you do.

kayoone 11y ago
Agree, however Pettis probably does not care too much anymore after the sale to Stratasys some time ago. For the long term employees, i feel bad.
snarfy 11y ago
3d printing exploded because the patent expired.

chunkstuntman 11y ago

When they opened a brick and morter store in Boston, I remember walking in with a real sense of excitement but walking out without any interest in becoming more involved in the 3D printing scene. If anything, seeing the printers in action made me realize just how inessential their product seemed from a layperson's point of view. For all of the potential 3D printing has, at the moment it is a solution looking for a consumer problem, and most consumers aren't looking to make custom figurines or embossed text. A few months ago, I walked by the storefront and it was totally empty. Apparently I wasn't the only one disillusioned by seeing their product up close.

blt 11y ago
3d printing got oversold. "Print replacement parts for your washing machine" was total bullshit. 3D printer CEOs wanted to be like Steve Jobs and sell millions of devices to consumers. They could have earned a respected spot in the toolboxes of engineers, artists, scientists, even manufacturers. Instead they pushed trinket machines that didn't even work as designed. They could have been like Tektronix or Mori Seiki but they got greedy.
- sleepybrett 11y ago
  I agree, My washing machine knobs are fine. I did however print a replacement for a knob on my clothes dryer. ;) However 95% of the time I'm printing something for a prototype or some little thing I'm tinkering with.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  I read them as, enthusiastic promoters on the bleeding edge. They jumped into 3D printing despite the risks. Harsh to call that 'greedy'. That said, 3D printing is still pretty lame. Cheap plastic parts are rarely the critical element in a device. And even knobs etc often have retaining clips or friction-fit holes with sub-millimeter tolerances, that 3D printers cannot achieve.
  - blt 11y ago
    I speak from personal experience. It was all greed with certain major players.

ewindisch 11y ago

It's worrisome to me that I'm now getting in my emails offers for extreme discounts on their printers as part of customer loyalty (I've bought PLA filament from them, but not a printer). I mean, that's not generally unexpected, but 40% discounts? That does not instill confidence as a buyer, unless they're now going for the "always on sale" model.

hanklazard 11y ago

Sorry to hear about the problems at makerbot ... This company really got out in front of 3D printing and made people excited about it. That being said, maybe the growth was a little to aggressive. I remember seeing a makerbot store here in Boston in the last few years-- a lot of people watching the machines in awe, but no one was actually making any purchases (as in the printed items they were trying to sell). It just seemed more like an expensive showroom rather than a store. So cool, though! I'm still bullish on the maker space. I saw a functioning prototype of this 3in1 machine in Pittsburgh last year. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/boxzy/boxzy-rapid-change-fablab-mill-laser-engraver-3d-p https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/boxzy/boxzy-rapid-chang... CNC routing and laser cutting/etching included and priced much better. The maker machines will just get better and less expensive and I can't wait.

datashovel 11y ago

I'm looking forward to the day when the norm becomes "things have slowed down so we're all taking a temporary 20% pay cut". If you're hiring full-time employees for short-term goals you're part of the problem, not part of the solution.

RyanZAG 11y ago
You mean a 20% paycut and double the equity, right? If it's just the 20% paycut, all your best talent is going to jump ship and you end up losing people anyway.
- datashovel 11y ago
  20% was just an arbitrary example. The underlying point I think is the first focus should be on trying to retain all full-time employees. And I probably should've mentioned that the likely outcome would be that the higher ranks would make the sacrifice, not the lower levels (unless absolutely necessary), since they probably depend more on their salaries for the basics. Those who are not willing to make the sacrifice probably don't really believe in the vision and thus probably aren't the right people to help you get out of the rut. And one other caveat would be transparency. That way a company can't just arbitrarily request that their employees make sacrifices when it's not demonstrably essential.
  - erichmond 11y ago
    >Those who are not willing to make the sacrifice probably don't really believe in the vision and thus probably aren't the right people to help you get out of the rut. Sorry, but this is a bit ridiculous. You could make the same counter-argument from the employees perspective as well. "If my company isn't willing to sacrifice to pay my current market worth, then they don't really believe in me as an employee" Is this company going to pay an extra 20% when things start going well again to make up the difference lost? When you sign on for a job/salary you shouldn't feel bad for leaving if the company can't hold up their end of the bargain. If you only worked at 75% of the capacity they thought you were going to, you'll most likely be fired.

yAnonymous 11y ago

You know we're in a bad situation when machines are firing humans.

ekidd 11y ago

MakerBot appears to have gotten themselves trapped between Printrbot (proprietary, entry level) and Lulzbot (open source, more expensive). Well, and about 40 other competitors. I own a Printrbot Simple Metal, which is a nice machine. But the simple reality is that this is not a consumer machine: - Given a choice between driving to town to buy a part, and firing up the printer, I'll drive. - Given a choice between buying on Amazon, and firing up the printer, I'll buy on Amazon. Where 3D printers are awesome is when I'm in "tinkering" mode—when I've taken out my toolbox and my calipers and my Arduino and I want to make something that doesn't exist yet. I can design a part using OpenSCAD, mess with the tolerances a bit, and run off two or three generations of prototypes in an afternoon. When I'm done, I can upload the schematic and some images, and other people can download it. It makes hardware almost as much fun as software. But the reality—at least for machines using hot plastic—is that you need to learn about how plastic heats and cools, about what kinds of shapes are easy to print, and about how to model things using CAD software. Until the open source laser sintering printers come down in price, the only "mass market" for 3D printing will be the kinds of people who have always hung out around RadioShack and Home Depot, or who browse SparkFun and Octopart regularly. 3D printers are awesome because they encourage hacking and entrepreneurialism, not because they give you a push-button desktop fab.

kirk21 11y ago

Read an article a while ago where they did an analysis of the amount of printers a company needed to sell to break even (based on the parts cost). The conclusion was that there were just too many players in the field to ever make money (given the limited market atm).

benbojangles 11y ago

I quite like thingiverse.

gorena 11y ago

It seems weird that they'd put their software engineers and even customer support all the way down in Industry City. Unless you live off the D/N/R in Brooklyn already, or maybe in lower Manhattan, that's a horrid commute. Unless you actually need the industrial space for your job... why?

dzlobin 11y ago
Space in Industry City is _cheap_

Htsthbjig 11y ago

So many people talking about how 3d printers is something impractical for everybody. The other day I attended a talk about the history of personal computers, and certainly it rhymes. At the time everybody was saying, a personal computer? who wants this? People do not need a database for cooking, or a spreadsheet, it is a very expensive typing machine and it is very hard to use(command line). It was true. What happened is that personal (and then mobile) computers evolved from a entrepise-centric to user-centric to grandma-could-use-facebook centric computers. Most people in the old days could not imagine what the future would look like, because computer did exist, but their applications were different to what they predicted. In the same way I believe 3d printing is amazing, not for what it is now, but what it will became. I volunteered giving 3d classes for children and it is incredible what they could do after you teach them the basic concepts. What is shocking for me is that it is "normal" for those 10 years old to design things that I could only do after studying engineering and gaining experience. Some of them absorb knowledge like an sponge. I see in them the next Linux Towards, but instead of OSes, it becomes possible to design a car, or a plane over the Internet.Before 3d printers it is so hard that is practically impossible for normal people to do it.