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Discord is laying off 17 percent of employees
- paxys 3y agoLayoff season is becoming an annual thing in tech, isn't it?
- saos 3y agoThere’s always an annual layoff. Media just perpetuating it…
- dragontamer 3y ago30%+ at Twitch, 17% at Discord, huge numbers at Google (anyone have a % from Google yet?) There's definitely more layoffs this year than usual. There's always layoffs, but the size / scope of them are not traditionally this big.
- xen0 3y agoGoogle are being shy with the numbers. Confirmed 'hundreds'; probably very low thousands? Maybe 1%?
- slekker 3y agolayoffs.fyi says 1000
- tunesmith 3y agoI get a "ripping the bandaid off" sense of it. Like for a lot of them the assumption is "okay, this is the rest of it, and then we are reset to the new normal". No idea whether that assumption is correct, but it seems the mentality is more that than "oh crap, batten down the hatches, another storm is coming".
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- squigz 3y ago> Like for a lot of them the assumption is "okay, this is the rest of it, and then we are reset to the new normal". Not to say this is universal, but I read a comment here on HN just earlier that said their company said this last year... then did the exact same thing this year.
- Groxx 3y agoLots of social and casual-entertainment companies hired a ton for the pandemic "nobody goes outside" surge too. Some of this (and the last year or two) is simply shedding unsustainable increases as everyone gets a better idea of what changes have actually occurred and will stick around. Whether that's a 5% increase or a 500% increase in amount-laid-off though, no idea. And I do worry that the increased media attention will simply make these easier to pull off unjustly, as people get more and more used to seeing it happen.
- tsunamifury 3y agoThe google layoff was in the Hundreds... i.e. what they do normally every year anyway silently. It's just being played up for investors.
- saos 3y agoAren’t these companies who historically try and avoid layoffs? To me is them changing their stance.
- aaomidi 3y agoGoogle did not do layoffs like the one last year really ever before last year.
- paxys 3y agoHow many people did Google lay off annually in January before 2023?
- swingingFlyFish 3y agoNo these sets off layoffs are way different than before.
- jimbob45 3y agoReally need the government to start heavily penalizing companies who lay people off. Layoffs can't be a tool for a company to get ahead financially. We're ruining lives and triggering suicides with these layoffs.
- peter_l_downs 3y agoHow would this work? Would companies be unable to fire people except for rule violations?
- anotherhue 3y agoNo fault layoff == 50% salary severance would help align incentives.
- yladiz 3y agoIt’s not exactly related to the parent, but in many parts of Europe, yeah, you can’t just fire someone after the probation period, and the firing needs to be for cause (which is genuinely a high bar to cross). To the point of the parent, in a lot of Europe it’s not so simple to just lay off some small portion of the company. It needs to be justified and a decent percentage, and employees are often entitled to some compensation (some severance) to offset the layoff.
- yreg 3y agoYeah, obviously depends from country to country, but for a layoff the company often has to be in some problems. It's difficult to do a layoff when you have record profits. Of course there are other ways to fire employees but those have their own rules.
- yladiz 3y agoRight. My point is that the company can’t just say “we’re not doing well, we need to get rid of a few people” and do a layoff with impunity. They have to lay off a pretty decent amount of people (in some cases like 30%) and they need to pay severance to the laid off employees. In most of Europe it’s basically a tool of last resort besides going bankrupt, unlike in the states where it’s easier and done somewhat regularly.
- 29athrowaway 3y agoRank and yank https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve 1. Rank everyone 2. Layoff bottom 10% or so 3. Reward the top 4. Keep it secret or the workforce will adapt by hiring bad people and sabotaging good people Used at most companies with performance evaluations. Taught at MBA schools. Trivia: MBAs have accomplished nothing throughout human history. Only creating overpaid executives that avoid taxes, corrupt the government, ruin the environment, make people poor, sick and make other countries richer. If all MBAs retired tomorrow 90% of obesity, pollution and corruption would stop.
- eli 3y agoJust about all companies have performance evaluations. This is not an explicit tactic in most companies.
- 29athrowaway 3y agoIt is. Because of bad math and pseudoscience.
- dartos 3y agoIf it’s a tactic in a company, at some level it is explicit. Someone makes the choice.
- ok_dad 3y agoPerformance evaluations are not evaluating your performance, the evaluations are the performance. “Performance” evaluations. They’re intended to be a method to easily fire people in a litigious world.
- Scoundreller 3y agoYeah, manager’s duty is to always find something that could be improved. Same with interviews: gotta keep things qualitative lest someone sues you for not being the successful candidate.
- candiddevmike 3y ago
- ProllyInfamous 3y agoMany sub-contractors right now are "naming their own prices" — but from my POV (as a construction consultant, retired electrician) being a residential GC right now would have been "a tough christmas bonus." Hoping things swing better, but everything is in cycles. I definitely do NOT believe that AI has NOTHING to do with this (double-negative)...
- ttymck 3y agoWhat?
- ProllyInfamous 3y agoI'm providing perspective from non-IT/CS career (residential construction), which is booming for smaller trades (but not as a whole). Being a homebuilder right now would not be enviable (because it is too expensive to build/buy right now).
- ttymck 3y agoI see, thanks for clarifying! Your mention of AI, is that with respect to residential construction or tech layoffs?
- ProllyInfamous 3y agoI know few people that haven't used ChatGPT (or similar LLM), both technical and construction -types. Even fewer follow-up with "it is useless" (except initial users), unless their ego is clearly the motivation (e.g. lawyers, accountants, top-brass). i aM SO teH sMArTeST #A.I'mReplaceable As for AI in construction: I trained IBEW in commercial spaces, and have seen video footage of basic device layout being directed by a mobile bot (which follows blueprints and marks walls accordingly). I think oldwork construction is much safer than newwork, as far as AI-directed replacements are concerned.
- rvz 3y agoLike I said before and as predicted [0], its not over yet for the layoffs. More layoffs to come as the tech industry begins to correct further. Especially VC funded startups. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37924095 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37924095
- ren_engineer 3y agothe Silicon valley of the last 15 years was a 0% interest rate phenomenon, going to take a long time for normalcy to return after a decade of distortion to organic market forces
- sf_rob 3y agoAlso these companies are reaching financial maturity. It's going to be the next generation of companies to be trendy/fun/excessive IMO.
- groceryheist 3y agoYes. It is time for laid off seniors to take these exit packages and incubate the next generation. Be ready to draw financing when rates fall in Q3 of 2024.
- baq 3y agoDon’t be so sure about that… rates will fall sharply in a recession, otherwise inflation will run hot (see today’s print!) Rates market prices in the average outcome, but the distribution isn’t uniform nor Gaussian.
- chickenpotpie 3y ago> Don’t be so sure about that… rates will fall sharply in a recession, otherwise inflation will run hot What? Lowering interest rates raises inflation. > See today's print Can you link? Not sure what your talking about
- groceryheist 3y agoOfficial USA inflation numbers ticked up slightly in December.
- alfalfasprout 3y ago
- neom 3y agoFor any HR folks kicking around HN: When thinking about lay-off at this scale of business, how do y'all go about navigating the WARN act? Do you just mitigate it with longer than 60-day layoff compensation?
- bluetidepro 3y agoHave been wondering this, too.
- grumple 3y agoNot an HR folk, but from what I've seen they often just offer at least 60 days of severance and benefits.
- codingdave 3y agoThere are quite a few exceptions that can be used. They are listed on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_Adjustment_and_Retraining_Notification_Act_of_1988 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_Adjustment_and_Retraini... IANAL, nor am I HR, but I have to imagine that if a company wanted to avoid the WARN act, those exceptions would give them creative ways to structure the layoffs to avoid it.
- mikeryan 3y agoUnless you legitimately fall under those exceptions it’s generally viewed as best not try to skirt the WARN act you’ll end up with a bunch of lawsuits to defend and pretty harsh penalties if you lose (back pay up to the time of the award plus the severance and legal fees)
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoIf necessary, nearly all companies will give at least 60 days severance in lieu of notice. More to the point, though, in this particular example I'm not even sure federal WARN notice requirements apply here - there are lots of loopholes people don't often understand. See https://www.schneiderwallace.com/practice-areas/employment/warn-act-mass-layoff-closure/ https://www.schneiderwallace.com/practice-areas/employment/w... - looking at those bullets: * "Layoffs of 500 or more workers at a single site or location." - doesn't apply, was only 170 employees * "Layoffs of 50 or more workers when those layoffs comprise 33% of the total full-time workers at the location" - my guess is that doesn't apply either, as the 170 workers were spread throughout the company * "Layoffs of 50 or more workers when closing a building or facility, or the layoffs include the discontinuation of an entire operating unit" - Again, I believe these discord layoffs were broad-based and not the result of entirely closing a single business unit.
- newobj 3y agoI absolutely picked the right year to become a solo indie game dev (after I was laid off :P)
- par 3y agohow's that going? Not being sarcastic... i'm envious :)
- extrabladeworks 3y agoCan't get laid off if you're the only employee
- paxys 3y agoTry having an unhappy spouse..
- lightbendover 3y agoI am teetering on the decision myself. Have you enjoyed it?
- cableshaft 3y agoDoing that a bit in my spare time (hoping to get a game into Steam early access later this year, and I should be able to get a small mobile game released, it's already about 2/3rds of the way done). I'd consider going full-time indie, but then there'd be zero incomes in the family, instead of just one (partner is quitting her job and taking a break soon). Best of luck to you!
- gaws 3y agoHow are you supporting yourself?
- aaomidi 3y agoCanceling my nitro
- Scoundreller 3y agoHeh, I cancelled my newspaper sub once they went hard-paywall. I was happy to support the freeloaders but not once they axed them. Made for a confusing desub call. I’m sure they’ll come out ahead but at least I know I hurt their user-hostile project’s ROI a bit.
- aaomidi 3y agoI basically don't think Discord is ever going to be able to support my platform of choice properly at this point (Linux). I hope this company crashes and burns, especially for what they've done to documentation availability across projects.
- choilive 3y agoNot familiar with that issue, what did they do?
- letwhile 3y agoBut... they support "your" platform? It is running stunningly well on Linux. What are you talking about?
- aaomidi 3y agoScreen share with audio. Basic functionality missing from it. There are third party clients that add this functionality.
- ok123456 3y agoThank you for your service.
- kevincox 3y agoReminds me of YouTube Red (as it was called at the time) where they were really pushing these original premium films. But my favourite part about YouTube is that I can share the videos I watch. As a subscriber it was actually doing me a disservice to lock them up because I wanted my friends to watch them and discuss.
- bovermyer 3y agoOK, the layoffs suck, and the whole "failed to realize the pandemic growth wasn't permanent" thing is getting way overplayed. However, these are some crazy exit packages. Five months of salary? Health insurance through the end of 2024? That's a heck of a buffer.
- para_parolu 3y agoWith such package I would voluntarily quit.
- theonething 3y agoIn this (tech) job market, I would not.
- scrapcode 3y agoI think it seems fair. Maybe forums are biased toward the negative, but it seems like the market is tough and it is taking even highly qualified individuals at least that amount of time to find something new.
- cagenut 3y agowhat does 'fair' have to do with anything
- ryangs 3y agoBeing 'fair' helps company relationships with current and future employees.
- bruce511 3y agoDoes it though? In my experience any "credit" for fair behaviour disappears very fast. Employees don't really care about fairness, they care about themselves here and now. Equally businesses see employees as disposable, and work to maximise short term profit, not fairness. There's generally a lack of trust in one, or both sides, and that results in poor behaviour from both sides that spirals. Sure there are great companies to work for, but all their greatness is tossed aside as soon as a better offer comes along. Employees look out for #1. Employers do the same.
- _justinfunk 3y agoI wonder if the new IRS section 174 rules are intensifying these tech lay offs. As far as I understand it, software engineering salaries are no longer fully tax deductible in the year they are paid, instead they can only be depreciated at 20%.
- wutangisforever 3y agoi don't really get why this law was invented, what was it supposed to prevent?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- badpun 3y agoI'm not an accountant, but to me it looks like the IRS was operating at an assumption that the software engineers write is not immediately consumed, but rather has on average 5 years amortization period (meaning, it's producing value for 5 years, on average).
- dathinab 3y agoseems reasonable iff you have a tax system where this deductability is based on the product employees produce which seems strange to be but might be normal if I understand it correctly it means the cost of this year would be written of over 5 year each year 20%, but if you keep your employees it means in the second year you have 20% write off from that year and 20% of the previous years and so one, so 5 years in still 100% write off every year I wonder if that would motivate companies to have a more constant number of employees or more precise a similar income bill every year. Through it would definitely mean if you had considered layoffs this year is the year to go.
- ethbr1 3y ago
- whalesalad 3y agogotta cover the midjourney cdn bill somehow
- HumblyTossed 3y agoGoing to be a lot of lay-offs this year as employers reset employee expectations.
- dotnet00 3y agoHopefully those were the guys that have been mostly ruining the mobile app UI over the past couple of years. Discord is the only app I've felt the need to turn off updates for.
- cobalt60 3y agodiscord was done for me when it became whatever it is now than it was envisioned earlier.
- lulznews 3y agoHmm. Coordinated effort to depress salaries? How did that work for Steve?
- seydor 3y agohow does discord survive? they also seem to have a large spam issue and they are stubborn on not implementing obvious features
- busymom0 3y agoWhat features? Asking as someone who doesn't use discord much.
- seydor 3y agobulk removing spam posts
- internet101010 3y agoOnly being able to receive a DM from someone after approving a friend request. Last I checked you have to enable this after installing. It should be the default setting.
- didntcheck 3y agoI'd also love to see their storage and bandwidth bill. They allow users to upload unlimited files with no retention limit, and have now upped the single file limit for Nitro users to 500mb. As a user I'm certainly not complaining, but surely it can't be sustainable
- FireBeyond 3y agoI suspect there's a huge benefit to deduplication for things like gifs and memes and emoji for them. But yes, still.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoFrustrating, layoffs seem to be back in full swing. I posted this comment just yesterday, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38945990 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38945990, and since then HN had articles about Google layoffs, now Discord, and I also saw that FullStory had a pretty big layoff. It really had felt like things had stabilized a bit (at least for software engineers) in the fall. Was that just the lull before the storm?
- beretguy 3y agoI started to bookmark all the layoff stories to see how many of them.
- pb7 3y agoCruise, Spotify, VMWare, and Unity were among the companies that had sizable (15%+ of a large group) layoffs before the end of last year. I don’t think it ever really stabilized.
- alephnerd 3y agoVMWare's is because of M&A. I wouldn't classify it's layoffs for the same reason as Cruise, Spotify, and Unity.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoBut Cruise, VMWare and Unity's layoffs were all very much company-specific execution issues - I'd expect to see some layoffs like that even during boom times. Of that list only Spotify is really in the "we hired too much and now we're downsizing due to economic conditions" boat. In fact, I remember thinking "That sucks, this is the first one of those I've heard in a while" when the Spotify layoff was announced.
- shmatt 3y ago>We grew quickly and expanded our workforce even faster, increasing by 5x since 2020 Am i reading this right? Once the pandemic hit headcount went 200 -> 1000 -> 830 What is different in the user experience since 2020? I can understand needing an army of SRE's but this feels extremely bloated for a company who was able to run their product on a 200 person crew
- dotnet00 3y agoSince 2020 they've screwed around with the UI several times and have added stuff like forums and threads.
- wrenky 3y agoI think the growth of Discord partially explains it- They needed a _lot_ more SRE/Scale engineers, which causes growth in HR/Management layers. They also added a bunch of monetization stuff (discord nitro) and attempted to get more "community" based features like custom emotes/badges/profiles per server/watch party stuff. The core experience is the same, I think they've done a great job ensuring that doesnt change! They have also done the usual software stuff, improving core outskirts like stability/performance/login methods/slash options. Its the same core product but better.
- ketzo 3y agoI'm sure their userbase grew in a big big way during the pandemic, but honestly, by the beginning of 2020 Discord was already a massive operation. How much more headcount could pure scaling explain? I think you're more on the money with the miscellaneous other projects. They were even trying to sell games through Discord at one point.
- whatyesaid 3y agoI guess they are building other products and trying to diversify, like a game store that flopped within Discord. To make the progress/maintain what they currently have, yeah, you wouldn't even need 200 people if they were halfway decent. Unlike Twitter or Twitch, they have to diversify, as I believe they are burning money on their core product. The benefits of Nitro is not much. But they aren't going to become profitable by paying engineers $400K on bad ideas and keeping the engineers on reserve duty, which they have probably been doing.
- boringuser2 3y ago[flagged]
- ok123456 3y agoBack to IRC
- subpixel 3y agoI was unaware they turned down a $12 billion acquisition. I think that is pretty insane even in the 0% interest era.
- ketzo 3y agoEyeball test with zero context, but honestly? I doubt a 17% layoff will cut deep enough. That still leaves them with more than 4x the employees they had in 2020 (when the product had already reached massive scale and, IMO, very high quality): > “We grew quickly and expanded our workforce even faster, increasing by 5x since 2020,” Citron wrote. “As a result, we took on more projects and became less efficient in how we operated.” I know someone always makes a comment about "wow, X company had Y000 employees? what do they even do all day?", and I don't wanna be glib, but it really does seem like they expanded beyond any kind of reasonable measure. If I were at Discord, and I wasn't part of an extremely core team with a direct line to revenue generation, I would be sharpening up my resume. --- Edit: Okay, I missed this: > Discord has raised a total of about $1 billion in funding. It has more than $700 million in cash on its balance sheet and the goal to become profitable this year That's actually a lot better than I expected. Clearly they are making non-trivial revenue, and still have quite a bit of cash; maybe keeping a still-pretty-high headcount to pursue new monetization projects is the right call.
- shmatt 3y agoKnowing the average SV interview loop too well, I can't imagine how many bad (for corporate type work) hires growing that fast brings in. A bunch of leetcode-hard optimized engineers being thrown into an organization that just grew from 200 to 1000 people. If you are part of that 200 original group, you probably have a paycheck for another 5 years just answering tech debt questions
- autoexecbat 3y agoWhen hiring fast, there's also an element of "we'll find something for you to do", meaning that you're expected to find something yourself. This can lead to people becoming very narrow on something that the business doesn't really value
- nine_zeros 3y agoOr better yet, "We hired you to do some work" but at performance review time "tell us how you have made an impact" Dear company, I did what you asked me to do. If my work doesn't have adequate impact, that is on you for planning poorly.
- letwhile 3y agoGood management. But you can buy stickers and stuff
- gumballindie 3y ago> “We grew quickly and expanded our workforce even faster, increasing by 5x since 2020,” Turns out ordering people back to offices is bad for the economy. Less disposable income and free time means people spending less sharing anime pictures on discord.
- hellotomyrars 3y ago700 million in cash is a massive warchest to be sitting on. I’m still doubtful on their path to profitability but having looked at their financials that are readily available, I’m actually more optimistic about their long term prospects. Absolutely sucks for anyone losing their job but assuming they actually deliver on the claims made here, it is an entirely reasonable severance package to me.
- sumtechguy 3y agoPark it in 5% bonds. Can the employees beat that for making rev for the company?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- majani 3y agoMaybe you're joking but if you're not, investors could sue you for lack of fiduciary duty
- xnx 3y agoI have to imagine some of these single product companies (Zoom, Dropbox, Discourse) will eventually get rolled up to make some office suite alternative to Mircrosoft Office and Google Workspace.
- nickstinemates 3y agoI basically live on Discord these days. Love it. It's one of the best pieces of technology I have ever used. I hope they figure it out.
- bowsamic 3y agoI just deleted my discord account after realising I live on it way too much. I will miss the people I met there, but it was consuming my life
- nickstinemates 3y agoIt's definitely the people that keep me on it and engaged, and how easily the software makes it happen. I've made a lot of friends, and it is nice to spend time with them there.
- gaws 3y agoWhat servers?
- bowsamic 3y agoFor every friend I made, there was a horrible troll or toxic clique. Also, I’m just not a huge fan of compulsively talking to internet friends in general. I know that’s controversial for some, but it feels more like validation for myself and someone to talk at when it’s by text, rather than someone to talk with. I’m doing it right now even in this message. Basically it’s hard to not just constantly grandstand with little emotional attachment
- nickstinemates 3y agoThat is why getting into voice chat is so powerful. And doing shit over voice chat together on the internet, even if it's just hanging out like you're at a coffee shop talking about whatever. Part of what makes Discord awesome is swapping modes of communication is very simple. You're there. Hop into a voice channel and chat. Have a private conversation over DM. Watch a youtube video together, whatever.
- Solvency 3y agoSo this is just a new annual tech industry thing yeah? Because every year it happens, and always the same excuses. This screams of a boiling the frog strategy.
- dancemethis 3y agoTime for them to cash in some more on the user data and metadata they are selling, I guess. Why these folks don't blow the whistle is beyond me.
- honkycat 3y agoI wonder if this yet another layoff as a result of the R&D tax change for SWEs
- ptek 3y ago170 employees at average IT salary of $100,000 = $17,000,000.00USD. Saving 17 million a year is a lot. I feel sorry for the workers.
- Kye 3y agoDo you think all the institutional knowledge that 17% took with them was documented somewhere in an internal Discord server?
- seoulmetro 3y agoConsidering all the useless crap Discord is bundling into the app. They definitely had too many hands on deck. So much spam whenever you open the app.
- sagarkamat 3y agoCan someone answer this question for me? By now, a ton of companies have done layoffs explaining that they overhired during COVID. These hires had to have come from somewhere, presumably other industries. What happened to those industries? Do they not want workers back? Did those jobs go away? Or do people just not want to go back to them?
- reportgunner 3y agoHopefully it's the people who designed the new mobile app.
- lucysienna 3y ago[dead]
- wseqyrku 3y agoIf MS could acquire Discord back in 2021 people would assert that this is the direct result of the acquisition.