• paddirn@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    “sharpen our focus and improve the way we work together to bring more agility to our organization.”

    Ahh yes, watching co-workers get laid off does wonders for improving the way you work together with the people still there.

      • GissaMittJobb@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Not exactly a stellar market to be looking in. Chances are that you’ll be trading down, especially if you’re in some level of big tech, like Discord arguably is.

    • Guy Dudeman@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Right? Sharpening focus and working together have zero to do with how many people you employ.

      This was about profits. It’s always about profits.

      • Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        Or maybe if has something to do with the limited availability of VC money. If you can’t find people to throw free money at your company, you need to figure out a way to actually make it profitable. You know, like a normal business…

        After 15 rounds and 995.4 M$, maybe it’s about time.

  • dinckel@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    It’s not like the management has let people, who still work there, add or fix anything. It’s been nothing but Nitro promos, and animated profiles. Huge shame that people got laid off like this

    • Sabata11792@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      “Heres your hourly reminder to rent worthless garbage we want you to pay monthy for, per server”

        • surewhynotlem@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          The market decides. And the market seems to have decided that their goods and services are not worth exchanging for money.

          • vynlwombat@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Discord is one of the few companies that don’t shove 3rd party ads down your throat. But they do advertise the hell out of nitro. And yeah, I don’t find nitro interesting enough to pay that much.

            • SuperSpruce@lemmy.zip
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              1 year ago

              I used to occasionally pay for nitro due to the same reasons and the decent privacy policy–until they changed it early last year (or was it '22?) There I did a 180 and am anti-Discord now.

          • stom@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I pay for it.

            The cost is worth the extra quality when working with others over screenshare etc. The community management features are useful. A large portion of my workflow is aided by discord and GitHub, both of whi h I pay for premium features.

            I don’t expect them to provide these services for free considering the huge boost they give to productivity. Expecting them to be free is naive.

        • pycorax@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I would if their features worked consistently for me. If I’m paying a monthly subscription, the app better not have major bugs in the key features I use. With my hardware configuration, screensharing is a blurry stuttery mess, their mobile app is a complete shitshow that can’t even layout elements correctly or display the correct channel without having to restart the app every few seconds.

          It doesn’t help that their support seems to be ignoring reports of these issues from people.

  • inb4_FoundTheVegan@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    To be clear, I’m not defeneding this pratice but explaining it. This cycle is how large businesses operate to foster growth over time.

    • Lay off people to tell stock holders they are becoming more efficient.
    • wait
    • Hiring spree, announce new features, new directions, hype hype hype
    • wait
    • Lay offs! Trimming overhead! Streamlining! Much efficency! Good business!
    • wait
    • Hyyyyyyype! Discord announces a plan to replace iMessage, Email and the entire concept of texting! Triples their staff! Such hype!

    Rinse, repeat

    It’s horrific for the employees and a scathing indictment as capitalism as a whole. But, this is how large businesses work, not nessecarily a massive corporate slip up.

    Here is a lawyer explaining the “dance steps” that the game industries is doing as of late.

  • SuperSpruce@lemmy.zip
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    1 year ago

    Y’know, they were going crazy over the top implementing unnecessary features… Maybe they actually did have too many employees doing useless things, but they should’ve instead had those employees focus on performance instead

    • sunbeam60@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      You hit the nail on the head.

      I see this so many places - nobody asks “how big does this company need to be”? This is the problem with public companies - they are caught in an endless growth trap. Private businesses at least get to a point where a) growth has to happen sustainably because often there isn’t endless money available to invest and b) once you’ve got one private jet, as owners, do you really need another?

      Reddit was no different. Maybe it would have been better for us all if it was a much smaller team and just careful tendered like a garden that had filled its plot.

        • sunbeam60@lemmy.one
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          1 year ago

          Well yeah, but we both know they are behaving like a company heading for an attempted IPO.

          • Copernican@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            But that’s why I don’t think the private vs public company distinction is what matters. When it comes to private, there’s a whole class of private equity owned companies that some people won’t even consider working at because of the reputation their cost cutting and flip mentality is. It’s not a black and white private good public bad because only one has public share holders and exchanges.

    • NotJustForMe@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      The one writing the change-logs should stay though. Hilarious.

      But yeah, featureitis usually comes from employees sitting on their hands. I mean, I keep telling myself, just because I only use two features, doesn’t mean everybody else does… But I strongly feel that nobody really does. Chat, video, voice, done.

    • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      You think you could put “improved performance and fixed bugs” on the brochure but if it’s not something with ~A.I. then it’s not gonna help sales.

  • Zoidberg@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Unity, Google, Discord. All within a day or two of each other.

    For every number of employees laid off, a VP level employee must be fired. Those employees didn’t hire themselves. Someone came up with the idea.

    If companies don’t do this they’re not attacking the root of the problem.

    • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      They coordinate to create a glut and push all their wages down. Computer touching wagies and so socially stunted they’ll never form effective union. If they did, they would jusy defect out of greed.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Computer touching wagies and so socially stunted they’ll never form effective union.

        The industry is so niche, the technology is so heavily customized, and the people so idiosyncratic that I think forming a union shouldn’t be that hard. The real dampener is that the pay for these jobs is always far above the median. Five years of experience and you’re reaching towards six figures. Ten years and you’re well over the line. And in Silicon Valley, the sky is the limit. A master’s or phd in your field means you’re looking at $200k, $300k, $400k…

        If there’s a big drop in wages (and considering the real estate prices in the neighborhoods where these businesses exist) something’s got to give. Maybe you get unions. Maybe you just get a bunch of businesses collapsing on themselves Twitter-style and forcing people back into the “indie company-in-my-garage” model. Maybe everyone becomes contractors.

        But this isn’t sustainable in any serious sense.

        • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          and considering the real estate prices in the neighborhoods where these businesses exist) something’s got to give. M

          I work in aerospace, we got unions back in the 70s and never let them go. For what the job actually is, it pays pretty good.

          • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Aerospace pay is good, but it used to be a whole lot better. The salaries definitely haven’t kept up with executive pay, even if they’re multiples of the regional average. I’ve got a friend who went into aerospace and bemoans how he’s living solidly middle class in a field that used to put you squarely into the top 5% income bracket. Funny to see someone complain about earning a quarter million a year, but when buying a starter home costs twice that…

    • ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Bold of you to think that the VP level employees don’t get big raises in exchange for laying empoyees off.

      • Copernican@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I think it’s an unfair and naive assumption to think VPs all keep their jobs. I’ve seen some pretty nasty game of thrones plays by executive leadership during layoffs due to consolidation of teams and remits. Someone might get a bonus that doesn’t deserve it, but someone is going to get let go at a high level (albeit with a generous severance not offered to the rest of the employees).

        Also, when new senior leadership comes in, it’s not uncommon for them to let heads roll at the leadership level to fill out the team with folks they know or trust. I’m not shedding a tear about where those folks will go on to find similar employment, but I think there’s a misconception about how safe those positions actually are.

        • ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          I guess I’m jaded because I’ve seen far too many times where it’s the worker bees, the people who actually put the work in and get things done, getting the sharp end of the stick. I would be surprised if the 17% of employees Discord laid off actually included VPs.

          • Copernican@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I hear you. You are going to see a lot more worker bees than VPs laid off in part because there’s a lot more worker bees than VPs.

            per https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/discord-layoffs-citron-overhiring-gaming-18603308.php

            The notice, required when companies perform mass layoffs, said the employees would officially leave Discord on Feb. 2. Dozens of engineers are among the casualties, as are several trust and safety employees, product managers and data scientists, according to the notice.

            Depending on how the structure is laid out and what product areas were cut, I’m guessing up to the director level would be impacted.

  • Optional@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Tech CEOs: we need better numbers. Fire a bunch of people! Ahh there we go. Now we’re flush with cash. Well, my work here is done.

    • Sylvartas@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      You don’t. Gamers, are generally happy to bow to their corporate overlords for some reason.

      Source: am a gamer. And I admit I do put up with some of that bullshit too.

      • Tangent5280@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I think that behaviour pattern has it’s roots in the perceived dominance of Microsoft windows in the gaming sphere - we can fix that by encouraging people to game with linux.

        • Sylvartas@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Yeah I was thinking about exactly that when writing this comment. Windows is one of these things I’m currently putting up with.

          I’m planning on building a new PC though, and since I love my steam deck I’m wondering if I should try going full Linux with this one.

      • MonkderZweite@feddit.ch
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        1 year ago

        Because it locks you out from even seeing the mods and stuff if you don’t have an account. Old time forums were better.

    • Daniel F.@aussie.zone
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      1 year ago

      I haven’t used Discord in a while so YMMV but I used to use WebCord and screen sharing worked pretty well IIRC. It uses an up-to-date Electron version which has better support for modern desktop Linux protocols. There are probably plenty of other alternative clients that just repackage the web app with better Linux support. There’s also gtkcord4 which is a native Gtk client, though definitely not as polished as the official client.

  • Potfarmer@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Discord went the way of Skype, it’s just a bloated fustercluck now. I don’t use it often, just once a month or so to keep up with a group of old friends, and every time I fire it up it has a new update bringing features I don’t give a rats ass about.

      • AlecSadler@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Absolutely. For some crazy-ass reason my job transitioned away from Teams (I get it) and Slack and to Discord.

        Discord is garbage for this type of work environment. Maybe it works for some? But it just doesn’t make sense.

        • mint_tamas@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          My company has been using Discord for work and at first I was excited to try it (coming from Slack companies), but I had to realize that it’s very unfit for work. The only thing that’s better is the visibility of threads. We are moving to Slack now, thankfully.

        • ???@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I used Discord for work and it was great for voice channels. We used slack for channels where we needed to share text and images, worked quite well. Main problem was that many people at the company were not really from the internet in the sense that they had no Discord etiquette whatsoever.

      • platypus_plumba@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        My stress levels skyrocket whenever I’m using Discord. The quality of the voice is nice but having to constantly reconfigure the settings to make it work fine and the unintuitive UI stresses me out.

        • Urist@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          I have basically disabled all input settings in the app and configure the input before it reaches Discord for consistency. Still it sometimes messes up things amazingly.

          • webhead@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Yeah I use the Steelseries sonar stuff because that makes it so that inputs never change. When my headset turns off it redirects the output to my speakers and when I turn the headset back on, it goes back to it. Virtual audio devices are very nice in general lol.

  • DoomBot5@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Small company: yeah, we hired too many people, need to let go of 170.

    People: such huge cuts, not touching them anymore

    Large company: we’re laying off the entire staff of pre-Elon Twitter worth of employees in this one department because they didn’t make us enough money.

    People: good, your product sucked anyways

    • Chobbes@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I mean, I wouldn’t exactly call a company with 1000 employees “small”. It’s not the behemoth that something like Google is, but like… that’s a good chunk of people.