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Ancestry lays off 6% of staff
- CerealFounder 7y agoIncomplete. Its all the DNA business.
- labster 7y agoWere the employees terminated with a stop codon?
- sabujp 7y agothey were excised
- eshyong 7y agoCome on man, be sensitive. This is people's jobs we're talking about.
- Apocryphon 7y agoAlso, indulging in cheap puns is reddit's central dogma.
- sabujp 7y agodon't worry, they'll repair and transfer elsewhere
- staticautomatic 7y agoThe layoff was pre-programmed via apoptosis.
- suresk 7y agoLots of layoffs in Utah tech companies lately. Instructure just let go of 10%, other layoffs related to WeWork, and a bunch of other small companies. Still seems like there is a shortage of developers here and most people should find new work pretty easily, but it is always a little unsettling to have a bunch of layoffs in quick sequence.
- milosdog 7y ago> Instructure just let go of 10% Off topic, but indeed they did. Lots of people leaving, too. Things are not going to end well there.
- suresk 7y agoYeah, that one has been sad to watch. I worked there several years ago and thought it was a great place, but it seems like things have gone downhill a bit lately.
- julius_set 7y agoIt’s not just Utah they have headquarters in San Francisco as well lots of people let go here too.
- sky_rw 7y agoEvery-time a PR comes out like this I see this sort of comment. Is there any evidence that layoffs are engineering based? I always assume the first to go are marketing/admin/etc rather than developers.
- julius_set 7y agoYes it was I’m one of the ones affected. I’ve done mobile engineering both iOS and Android for around ~5 years. If anyone’s looking :)
- suresk 7y agoSorry to hear that, hope you find something soon!
- arconis987 7y agoIf you’re interested in crypto currencies, I know that Coinzoom, based in Holladay, is looking for mobile developers.
- awb 7y ago
- craftyguy 7y agoWhat did they expect? They don't really offer a valuable service besides a one-off test + results. At some point you're going to hit everyone who wants to use the service, they'll use it exactly once, and you'll have no more market.
- vikinghckr 7y agoEveryone should read "The End of the Beginning" by Ben Thompson [1]. [1] https://stratechery.com/2020/the-end-of-the-beginning/ https://stratechery.com/2020/the-end-of-the-beginning/
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- AlexCoventry 7y agoThat was great, but I don't see the connection to Ancestry's recent layoffs.
- dehrmann 7y ago> The web didn’t bridge Microsoft’s moat — it went around, and made it irrelevant. Reminds me a bit of how generals are always fighting the previous war.
- bcrosby95 7y agoI'm hoping the next phase would be having the cloud literally in your pocket, able to seamlessly integrate with any interface you want. Your phone. Your keyboard/mouse/monitor. Your TV. All talk to one computing device.
- ErikAugust 7y agoI hear they are trying to make it more of a family business.
- kalium_xyz 7y agoIs it a shock to anyone when a company whos business model does not allow for return customers suddenly find themselves less in demand?
- j88439h84 7y ago> business model does not allow for return customers How's that?
- mythrwy 7y agoWould you buy the same DNA test a second time from the same company?
- armadsen 7y agoDNA tests are a relatively new part of Ancestry’s business. I don’t have info about what percentage of their revenue they make up, but it’s certainly not a foregone conclusion that their the most important part of their revenue model. The other (and older) part of their business is subscriptions to their genealogy database and related software.
- llarsson 7y agoAnd once you have looked into you family's past and saved what info the was to find, what benefits does Ancestry offer to keep customers around? Genuine question, because I know very little about this stuff.
- stan_rogers 7y agoYou keep going. It's no coincidence that Ancestry's in SLC; saving your ancestors through baptism by proxy is a bit of a big deal for the Mormons/LDS. It's nice that they can make a buck off of the basic curiosity of outsiders, but the real money happens when you can make it off of people's deeply held religious beliefs. (And it is possible to believe that you're genuinely helping people with one side of your brain while taking advantage of them with the other.)
- ilaksh 7y agoI suspect some of the recent layoffs may be related to the overall economy. For example the global debt crisis Dalio talks about.
- anon176 7y agoMy wife subscribes to their service. I can say, you pay a lot for what you get.
- thrower123 7y agoIt's always seemed really expensive for what it is. I've looked up some family members, and all they really have is badly digitized scans of public documents that some library made available. How little of this type of thing exists in any searchable format other than driving to a library and finding somebody who knows how microfiche works is very frustrating.
- grumple 7y agoCompanies seem to have a really difficult time taking a moment to acknowledge or thank the workers being laid off. Would be nice to see that change in these corporate layoff announcements. This came close, but it's almost like pr and executives are allergic to expressing actual gratitude.
- nkrisc 7y agoMy last company had a couple rounds of layoffs last year (including me eventually), everyone in the executive leadership kept referring to it in such a roundabout way. They'd always call it, "the reorg" and the people laid off were people, "impacted" by it. So you had to fire a bunch of people for no fault of their own. I get it, that's business sometimes when the times aren't good. But just say it. I do believe our CEO is genuinely a good person and did not feel good about doing it, so maybe there's a component of protecting one's own emotions in there as well by speaking around it.