Patreon laying off 20% of staff

This case is clearly AI enabled “right sizing”, and it is inevitable for companies that aren’t seeing explosive growth. It seems like they are handing it well, better than most. Good for them.

Explaining why layoffs needed to happen, expressing remorse about it, and giving a good severance package is what serious adults with empathy for their employees do.

It's also a good way to maintain at least a neutral relationship with everyone you're laying off. Compare that to a company that coldly fires you with minimal severance, and delivers that message via some low-level lackey (not the CEO) – you, as the former employee, want nothing to do with that company ever again.

There was an interview with Jay Leno I saw recently and he was talking about his NBC deal where he was going to be getting $30mil/year but they had to cut staff to do that so he decided to cut his own pay/raise to keep staff. That type of move by someone at the top is rare or never happens with CEOs. I think Nintendo might be the only case I can think of where I heard something like that happening. That type of move evokes an "all in it together" type of team vs. a clear delineation of CEO/executives and employees.

The melodrama is performative because they have to maintain the mask/facade that they are "teammates".

Reminds me of Ozymandias speech when he says to Dr. Manhattan, that he has personally exprienced the pain of millions of New Yorkers he is about to decimate in the Nuclear attack.

In both the Watchmen graphic novel and the 2009 film adaptation, Ozymandias (Adrian Veidt) claims that he deeply feels and absorbs the psychic pain and deaths of the millions of people he kills. He views this immense personal suffering as his own tragic sacrifice for the greater good of humanity.

(I am making a normative claim, not a descriptive one; I am aware that that both CEOs and laid-off employees do in fact take it personally at times.)

People expect it and get very angry if such posts do not appear contrite. I share your cynicism and would prefer they just say it like it is, but that doesn't work for most people.

I know it's not usually true, but this is Jack Conte, not Mark Zuckerberg. Maybe he's one of the few CEOs who still has a human brain. I know I would feel legitimately horrible and sympathetic if I had to lay off a bunch of people.

Coarsely, people prefer things that don't hurt their feelings or that don't scare them. Sometimes that's candor; sometimes it is indirectness. Complicating matters further, different people will have different preferences in the same situations.

Morale. It’s important that the remaining employees are psychologically secure. They’re trying to make sure they know the company isn’t in jeopardy and that management has them in mind.

Some research supports this https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228120426_Survivors...

In my /opinion/ a personal address, one on one assurances from a trusted manager, this might be more effective, but HR also needs to be careful that the messaging is consistent so this kind of post is probably seen as the best alternative

I do not understand why I’m supposed to care.

Most of the time it's an attempt to stifle negative opinions of those reading the layoff announcements. But in the modern day it's getting old because we see a new layoff every day now.

Everybody knows we aren't a family, and we're doing this to get paid not for some contrived company mission.

I'm convinced with most of these layoff announcements people would take it better if they literally just said we're getting rid of N people for X,Y,Z reasons and called it at that without the presumptuous bullshit.

Some may wax la philosophie politique at times, but we tend to do that in the abstract when things are at an arms length.

At the end of the day, people made a choice between a corporation and a narrow group of stakeholders over employees and the downstream community influence of their buying power, likely a large group and certainly a different group.

You could argue in the long run it is better for society for companies to make these decisions, and many times that may actually be the case. But, in this one instance, when you place it all on the scales, they were not doing it to save a company or make its products and services more competitive in the market. There was nothing "existential" about it. They wanted to go from one profit level to a higher profit level for a certain group, and that is just what they did.

Real "Oh no! So sorry to see you go totally by your own choice" vibes.

The business is "solid", but is it not profitable? Who is cashing in on cutting these jobs? Which exec is losing their job for overhiring?

Who the hell is buying anything if more than 50% of the workforce is unemployed? And among the post-AI employable, every job that isn't highly skilled is going to have the wages pushed to the floor due to rampant unemployment.

None of this shit works unless we figure out "Star Trek welfare"...

First layoff was in 2022, 17%, claimed reason: economic downturn.

That was the last layoff.

So by "every few years" you mean, a single time a few years ago, yea.

Buckle in, our economy is flushing!

https://youtu.be/17_HcR95YBc

timestamp(s): ~33min and ~41mins

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.

Last I heard they also do their own payment processing, which is a substantial technical problem.

465 employees is not that large. Patreon handles millions of transactions. They need support, sales, engineers, etc. If anything I'm surprised they're not well over 1000.

Patreon is in the media/content business. It is perfectly reasonable to think that they have to rethink their company structure with AI completely destroying/changing the way their industry works.

I guess this is the "reason" but obviously they aren't elaborating. It's odd they picked "6 months" - what changed in "the market"?

I’ve worked for startups that will show massive customer churn, tell us that this is “actually a good thing”, do massive layoffs the next week because of the churn, and even while talking about the layoffs say that they’re stronger than ever.

I’ve been doing this long enough that I am mostly used to the gaslighting, and have just accepted that business people have neither the ability nor desire to ever be honest about anything.

It does under reason for reduction, quoting: At the same time, the market in which we operate has undergone profound change over the last 6 months.

> giving reasons why there's no need... Patreon’s core business is healthy and strong

Actually that's the reason. It says Patreon's core business is strong i.e. everything else isn't? You don't state the obvious unless there's a gotcha.

Thst is valid reason to layoff people. If there is no mess to clean, you do not need that many cleaners.

4 months is not bad.

You're not a slave to your employer. You have all the same autonomy that they have. No one is forcing you to be there.

People are so hopelessly confused about what a business relationship is. They actually drink the kool-aid of "We're a family here". No, you're work is not your family, it's a business, treat it like one, because I can assure you that leadership does.

I’d like to be convinced of this point.

Is that really true?

https://standout-cv.com/stats/how-long-does-it-take-to-get-a...

They found 3.8 months which sounds realistic. I can't imagine the average being significantly longer (like 6+ months?).

It doesn't take 4 months to find a job. Life goes on.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they were over a billion in revenue at this point.

I would imagine big chunks of the company also aren’t technology. They seem like they have a sizable PR and marketing presence, community liaisons (read: support), HR to support it all, legal for dealing with illicit content that ends up there instead of OnlyFans, etc.

They really should be running sustainable service for like tenth of that many employees... If even that. Most of the people don't care about them just the creators on their platform and less cut they take better for patrons or patronees.

Twitter used to have 7500 employees and now it is working perfectly ok with 1500~

What am I missing from business perspective?

  “It's not personal Sonny. It's strictly business!”

> or do you think that you'll need fewer humans because AI will be doing more of the work?

My bet is this one. To be fair, it isn't exactly an unpopular opinion. If I were starting a business today I'd plan to hire far fewer programmers than I would have just 2-3 years ago.

[1] https://graphtreon.com/top-patreon-earners