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Opera sends 90 out the door
- justinschuh 14y agoGood browser engine devs are very hard to come by. I expect they won't have too much trouble landing on their feet.
- btipling 14y agoDifficult to make it out in the translation but if they laid off engineers good enough to work on Presto they must not be a technology company any more. They must be transitioning to something else entirely, as your technical team is an asset and browser engine engineering requires some skill so you if you had to downsize you probably wouldn't want to get rid of those guys. Although I guess they can't be cheap. But I figure you could sell that team as a division and instead of paying severance you would be making money. I just don't understand what kind of crazy thinking would go into this. Maybe they just had a bad team that was unhappy?
- runarb 14y agoMany from the core team have worked there since 1995. They may also have thought that this was a good time to move on to other ventures. The unemployment rate her in Norway are around 3%[0], and probably 0% among it-engineers, so thus guys will be picked up right away. 0: https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=z8o7pt6rd5uqa6_&met_y=unemployment_rate&idim=country:no&fdim_y=seasonality:sa&dl=no&hl=no&q=arbeidsledighet https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=z8o7pt6rd5uqa6_...
- btipling 14y agoMy comment was more about the company, and less so about the people. Mass layoffs with severance does not portray the situation as employees choosing to leave.
- dagw 14y agoFrom what I could gather from the article (i read Norwegian) they closed down the Presto department by offering everybody either a move to a different department (mainly mobile and desktop clients) or a severance package. At this point 50-70 people chose to leave. Since then they've also interdependently gotten rid of various other, both technical and non-technical people, for a grand total of 90. I just don't understand what kind of crazy thinking would go into this. It sounds like most of the engineers simply didn't want to move from core render engine and javascript interpreter development to more front-end client development.
- toyg 14y agoDepending on how they played it, it might have been a "good" way to get rid of employees with a lot of seniority and big pay packages.
- nafmo 14y agoThey did not offer everybody to move to a different department. They did offer a that to a lot of us, but not to everyone. Most of those of us left were offered severance packages (which were said to be voluntary, but AFAICT most of the people who got offered one in the first round took it).
- thomasnno 14y agoRemember that the low unemployment in Norway means that it can make sense to take a severance package, and get another job immediately, and thus get 2x pay for months.
- prumek 14y agoExecpt all 90 were not developers. They were marketing, sales, etc. Some were engineers, but it seems they were a minority.
- sgt 14y agoDirect link for those of us who can read Norwegian: http://www.digi.no/911787/opera-sendte-90-paa-doren http://www.digi.no/911787/opera-sendte-90-paa-doren
- blaabjerg 14y agoFWIW, there's also a "Show: original" button on the top right of the Translate page.
- sgt 14y agoGreit nok, men da har man likevel en stor del av vinduet dekket av "Google Translate", i tillegg til de gigantiske bildene som norske nettaviser typisk bruker, før man kommer til artikkelen.
- gcp 14y agoI thought their press release of less than a week ago said those people were supposed to improve WebKit :-) Can imagine that quite a few of those fired would have been tough to motivate, though. Nobody likes seeing their lifework put out and shot.
- muyuu 14y agoYep, usually all these announcements come with a massive dosage of bullshit. I hope they can keep their engine alive elsewhere... not likely though.
- runarb 14y agoA culture crash may have contributed to that so many are leaving. According to the Opera CEO, iOS and Android are the future for Opera now[0]. One could argue that Opera now are in more need of 25 years old iOS developers, that 40+ C++ specialists. 0: http://translate.google.no/translate?sl=no&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=no&ie=UTF-8&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.digi.no%2F911808%2Fbittersott-og-nytt-i-opera http://translate.google.no/translate?sl=no&tl=en&js=...
- avar 14y ago> One could argue that Opera now are in > more need of 25 years old iOS developers, > that 40+ C++ specialists. One could, but would one not be assuming that their 20+ years of experience wouldn't more than make up for whatever platform-specific skills they'd need to train on which could surely be picked up in less than a year?
- atdrummond 14y agoHow many engineers will they receive from the Skyfire purchase?
- _delirium 14y agoAs of March 2012 it looks like they had 44 employees and were looking to hire another 20: http://it-jobs.fins.com/Articles/SBB0001424052970203370604577265340134393880/Skyfire-to-Hire-20-After-Raising-8-Million http://it-jobs.fins.com/Articles/SBB000142405297020337060457... Not sure how many of those ~65 would be engineers. Somewhere in the range of 30-50?
- Supermighty 14y agoI wonder how many of these Mozilla will pickup on the cheap. Browser rendering engine seems such a specialized skill, where else could these people go?
- 0x0 14y agoOh come on. It's not like these guys went to Browser Rendering U, and that's all they know!
- jrockway 14y agoWhy do you think they'll want to work for Mozilla "on the cheap"?
- Argorak 14y agoIf a competitor fires people with the skills you need, the hiring process gets a lot easier and as such cheaper. It not necessarily means low wages, but more "easy grab".
- Supermighty 14y ago"easy grab", exactly. Hiring ex Opera employees who worked on a rendering engine will be cheaper than hiring c++ coders who then have to ramp up knowledge on how to code a rendering engine.
- gcp 14y agoI'm guessing they are skilled and versatile C++ programmers with years of experience even on difficult and restricted platforms. Where could they not go?
- wilhelm 14y agoIt's worse than the article describes. Those laid off are terrified to say anything publicly. From what I can gather, the total may be double the quoted number. In addition, morale is at rock bottom, with a number of people leaving on their own. Opera as we knew it is gone. I worked for Opera for seven years, three of them managing the core testing team. I left a year ago. It breaks my heart to see how the current management treats some of the best engineers I've ever met, loyal to the company for a decade, like disposable rubbish. Here's your ten-year watch, now fuck off. In the 2010 downsizing (described by the HR VP as "rightsizing"), they at least tried to make the decisions look good internally, blaming the economic downturn. The last two rounds they didn't even bother. No explainations, just individual talks - and a wave of fear. The only good news is that there's plenty of fantastically skilled engineers available. I've hired one myself. If you need anyone, drop me a line, and I'd be happy to recommend someone for your open position. My loyalty is to my old team and the technology - not the current mismanagement. /c:
- tatsuke95 14y ago>"Those laid off are terrified to say anything publicly." I'm curious as to why? Norway doesn't seem like a place where people would fear their ex-employers.
- kmfrk 14y agoIt might not be the worst idea to secure a job, before you go ahead and dish on your former employer.
- mariusmg 14y agoCome on.....saying publicly that you've been "laid off" doesn't mean you're dishing on the former employer.
- prumek 14y agoSo it is not actually out of fear for the current management, then? It's just a general fear of speaking of one's former employer if one was let go? If so, why even mention Opera specifically then?
- vdoma 14y agoJust curious, how do browser-only companies like Opera or Mozilla make money? I know Opera Mini used to be shipped with phones, but what other sources of revenue do they have?
- rrreese 14y agoMozilla makes money by setting Google as the default search provider: http://allthingsd.com/20111222/google-will-pay-mozilla-almost-300m-per-year-in-search-deal-besting-microsoft-and-yahoo/ http://allthingsd.com/20111222/google-will-pay-mozilla-almos... I assume Opera makes some money this way, along with the Opera Mini deals you mention.
- aw3c2 14y agoThey default the user to search engines. And add default bookmarks.
- blowski 14y agoAt a conservative average of $40K pa per employee, that's an annual staff bill of around $35M annually. The Firefox-Google deal is worth $300M annually, and their user base is 15x larger. Add in other costs, and it's not hard to see that either they've got a huge source of other income or they are hemorrhaging cash.
- gcp 14y agoOpera's accounting is public. Last I remember, they were profitable and were taking in significantly more per user than Mozilla. http://media.opera.com/media/finance/2012/4Q12_presentation.pdf http://media.opera.com/media/finance/2012/4Q12_presentation.... •Revenue growth of 39% (40% FX adjusted) •Record revenue and strong profits
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- chetanahuja 14y agoAt a conservative average of $40K pa per employee Well that's extremely conservative. I don't know whether you speak from personal knowledge of Norwegian market but I can tell you that it's about 1/4 of what a intermediate/senior level engineer in the bay area would make. In fact it's about at the level of what a senior engineer (from a top level school) in India would make.
- tobiasbischoff 14y agoBy the way: Their year-over-year revenue is up 39% from Q411 to Q412. Most of their revenue is from providing browsing service to mobile operators around the world. very well secured by long term contracts and adjusting the rendering engine should not affect any of that business.
- prumek 14y agoActually, look at the Q4 presentation. Operators are less than 20%. Desktop is the second biggest with nearly 30%, while publishing/advertising is the biggest revenue source with more than 40%.
- prumek 14y agoThe story is misleading. 90 people have either left of their own free will or were let go for various reasons. Those 90 were not all developers, but included marketing, sales, and other non-engineering staff. All the comments so far therefore seem to be based on the misconception that they fired their entire Presto development team. I thought HN was better than this.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- prumek 14y agoStrange how my karma takes a nosedive because I contradict the "evil Opera is doomed" thing...
- aj700 14y agoI'm just gonna throw this slight grenade in. Opera is closed source. Does that in practice mean that it is unforkable (as is - with Presto)? On the desktop or mobile versions?
- nafmo 14y agoYes. The source is not available publicly. There is a petition for opening the sources here - https://www.change.org/petitions/opera-software-open-sources-of-presto-engine https://www.change.org/petitions/opera-software-open-sources... - but I wouldn't hold my breath.