Patreon: Some Tough News to Share

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MV-3GgU6rlo

by tosh • 5 years ago

27 55 5 years ago

I’d be interested in why the staff that were laid off couldn’t cross train to the new skills required. It seems odd to me to lay off 36 people to get new skills in. I’m not saying it’s wrong but the video left me with more questions!

jiofih4• 5 years ago

Do you have any idea the amount of effort it takes to train 36 people? Not only that, but it would cost payroll for X months PLUS the cost of training, with uncertain results, and they would still start with zero working experience. Hiring is a much better, less risky filter.

Companies are not families with irreversible bonds, and everyone, especially employees, are better off acknowledging that.

mgkimsal3• 5 years ago

"Do you have any idea the amount of effort it takes to train 36 people?"

It takes a long time for new people to have a real understanding of the current system, the tradeoff decisions and culture that led to the current system. And it takes a long time for new people to learn how to work effectively together. I'd think bringing in new leadership and product vision first, and having the existing team be given the go ahead to work towards those new goals should be the first step, only doing large scale replacements if they don't deliver.

Loads of people will point to the Spolsky "iterate, don't start from scratch" story about netscape. Replacing large parts of your engineering team vs just improving the team you have seems like the same "mistake". Also not sure how they have such a large team in the first place, but that may be part of the root reason. I don't just mean large engineering team - google is showing ~200 employees altogether, which just seems like a lot, but many of those might be CSR positions?

But I suspect this is all to do with bringing in much cheaper people.

mutant2• 5 years ago

So upending the lives of 36 dedicated employees is the best alternative? People can't raise money like a corporation can. Those people got the company to where they are today, so suddenly it's fine to just cut them loose because you made a video about how you feel about the situation?

specialist2• 5 years ago

Do you have any idea the amount of effort it takes to train 36 people?

Two weeks?

Certainly less time than it'll take to restaff and onboard their replacements.

It's a website. Web stacks are mayflys. Pivoting to today's new hotness is part of the gig.

unity10014• 5 years ago

A senior dev could get into a new stack reliably within ~3 months. And it doesnt 'take' effort to train them - they just do it themselves. And the cost of loss of people who know the existing product, business model, existing codebase is WAY too great than a few months' pay. That's something that comes only by having people on board for long duration and having them accumulate experience of the existing product and business model.

Most people from MBA background has little understanding of this. They tend to see engineers as replaceable - you just bring in someone who knows a new stack while passing to that new stack and youre done (the best case scenario).

It doesnt work like that.

When you lose experienced engineers who know the product and the codebase in a fast moving startup, you lose people who you need to ask stuff when you need to do something new. Especially when the codebase lacks sufficient documentation (common in startups). Then the newcomers have to learn the codebase all over again - a gigantic hit to productivity.

This is why people from non-engineering background should not make engineering hiring/firing decisions.

scelerat2• 5 years ago

Entire teams were laid off, many excellent engineers who were making demonstrable impact to the core product performance. Other engineers were still in the midst of onboarding, having been hired only a few weeks before.

"Why" is an interesting question. "What" happened is a head scratcher in many ways.

nicolas_t• 5 years ago

I've always been surprised by how bad patreon's website is after so many years. The UX sucks and has barely evolved. I use them a lot to sponsor artists I like but that's because I have no real other choice, I'm amazed at how terrible the platform is.

Just as my own list of pet peeves:

- Comment UI is really terrible

- There's no great display of the different kind of medias. For example, I like to give money to some web novel writers, the way chapters are displayed in the Patreon mobile app makes it hard to read. I like to give money to webcomics, images are displayed too small for it to be comfortable when reading.

- It would seem obvious for them to have a video hosting option instead of forcing their users to host outside of Patreon.

- For a long time the mobile app didn't have a full feed of all creators in a single timeline which is utterly stupid.

And this is as someone who is not a creator on that platform. Creators I've talked to have been much more scathing.

lathiat• 5 years ago

This has amazed me too. Even the iOS app, until very recently, for years, had no "news feed" for all creators in one timeline like the website had. You had to click each creator individually. They finally fixed it but like..? it's the #1 obvious feature.

mgkimsal3• 5 years ago

I support a couple people on it, because... I want to support those people and their content. If they chose another platform, I'd follow them there. The idea of patreon was interesting at first, but... listening to about 20 seconds of Jack talk about why they hired this new product person, to put together all the new stuff they've dreamed about, etc... I just have to wonder - WTF did this take years to get to this point? This just feels like some weird desperation.

Yes, the UI experience has been terrible for years. I've heard a number of creators talk about how the platform doesn't give them the tools they need. A seemingly 'easy' one on a podcast I follow is the ability for the host to give a free month of access to a guest so the guest can engage with the existing members in the comment section. The comment UI is, itself, pretty bad, imo, but that's a another story. I initially assumed the host maybe just missed out how to do it, but after poking around... it just seems like it's not possible to do what he needs.

I'd considered using patreon for myself, and still might but they've not seemed to take any interest in moving the platform forward for years. This messaging just seems desperate, and I don't have much faith they'll actually be able to make things markedly improved. Happy to be wrong though.

lewisflude• 5 years ago

If anyone wants to skip right to "why are we laying off people" go to 2:36 in the video

greazy• 5 years ago

Thank you.

Kye2• 5 years ago

He has a bad habit of rambling and never getting to a point. He had a ~20 minute video on their recent $155m round and never actually said what they were going to do with it. Just a lot of fluff about "wow! creative economy! integrations!" and how you can assemble a whole business as an individual from API as a Service type companies (Stripe, etc) while their API is being sunset.

oceanplexian• 5 years ago

This is not the only San Francisco CEO that I've seen follow this playbook almost word for word. Even using the same phraseology.. e.g. "I blame myself. It's my fault we had to do this", a bit about how "We're shifting the way we build products" so we can "Help creators grow their business", and "The $company will be stronger for this decision".

I am a bit burnt out when it comes to the industry at the moment and perhaps jaded, but my guess is these CEOs have outsourced their apology to the same local reputation-management consultants, and that's why they all sound identical. If the leadership really cared about employees they would write the apology themselves, have some backbone and admit they terminated people due to cost cutting or performance reasons. Offer severance privately and move on. The rest of this is theater.

unity10014• 5 years ago

Their api is not being sunset. A lot of large sites/creators and major web entities as partners are using it.

stratosgear• 5 years ago

What a bummer and a complete disregard of the current engineering team. You do not fire them to rehire other people in their place. If you respect them as much as you claim, you allow them to grow into the requirements that you need. It feels like there is zero trust that people can perform outside the well defined boxes that you think they operate. They are not engine oil to be replaced, so you machine will run better. Bummer!!!

viraptor5• 5 years ago

Something that wasn't mentioned in the video (or did I miss it?) is whether people were offered a choice. As far as I can tell we don't know if it was an immediate firing of 36 people, or for example 36 out of 50 people preferred the exit package rather than a move to a new team doing X.

scelerat2• 5 years ago

It was an immediate firing. Early Monday morning, a previously-unscheduled fifteen minute "all-hands" zoom meeting appeared on everyone's calendars for 10 AM. Jack started with an abbreviated version of the "Some Tough News to Share" speech you saw at the link above, before he handed off to the new CPO who started in January, who explained that in order for the company to move forward following massive growth, profitable quarter, a juicy funding round, and despite Jack's insistence to his employees in prior all-hands meetings, "you did this; you are responsible for Patreon's success," that the 36 people being laid off were "not the right fit."

Employees were told that those who were being laid off would have their access suspended by the end of the meeting, while the remainder would regroup with a second meeting later in the morning. As soon as that was announced, people started posting goodbyes and non-work contact in slack channels, though not everyone could get off their missives before access was suspended.

Entire groups were eliminated in the "reorganization." This was not an individual-by-individual layoff. Many fine people were let go, including those who had made major positive impacts in the short time (some less than six months) they were there. There were some among the layoff who had been hired literally less than a month before.

55606752602• 5 years ago

grow into the requirements that you need

My guess is that main requirements in this case are living in a cheap location and willingness to work for 1/4 of the pay.

mgkimsal3• 5 years ago

"you allow them to grow into the requirements that you need. "

If one of your requirements is "pay out 30% of what we were paying before"... not many existing employees will want to grow in to those requirements. It's just a hunch, but I suspect many of these people will be replaced with "better fits" that happen to cost a lot less.

55606752602• 5 years ago

Jack takes so much time to get to the point and tells so little in 6 minutes, that I've at first assumed that it's someone parodying Patreon's CEO.

Is this kind of delivery effective for an auditory that I'm not familiar with?

bluefirebrand3• 5 years ago

Very common for people trying to monetize YouTube videos to take a long time to get to the point in order to pad their video length

viraptor5• 5 years ago

This video doesn't seem to be monetized. Refreshing multiple times doesn't give me any ads.

mutant2• 5 years ago

Claiming so much respect for people you just made jobless feels a lot like negging. Retrain, retain where possible. Show loyalty, instead they just give up on lives like an unthinking huge corporate machine.

willio58• 5 years ago

Not a fan of this guy. He’s been trying to become YouTube famous for the past couple years now and it’s gross to see him use YouTube to communicate this news. I’m just happy I don’t work for him.

ziml77• 5 years ago

I don't know anything about him, but I felt the same way when seeing this. It's such a weird way to get this message out. And the way he's talking sounds very unnatural, like an ad.

failwhaleshark4• 5 years ago

It's stilted startup SF hipsterspeak: mission-statement newspeak synergy 2.0. Different BS, same results - fake af.

I think his nonverbals gave him away. If he were a more-convincing, greedy sociopath, I might believe more of it.

TechBro8615• 5 years ago

Never heard of him, but what a ridiculous video. Who fires 36 people and then uses it for self promotion on YouTube? Lots of words come to mind and none of them are nice.

failwhaleshark4• 5 years ago

I'll broach the annoying expectations of toxic positivity for ya:

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slimsag4• 5 years ago

Look, I'll be the first one to say there is a lot of corporate double-speak in this and the guy has a habit of rambling. I don't like the content of the video.

But I am surprised to see so many people saying a YouTube video is a bad way to communicate this.

Would people really prefer a small news article about how they are "Restructuring for the future" or a small Twitter thread started by an ex-employee?

The fact that this is a video makes it incredibly easy for us to judge his statements as humans, and easily decipher that _he is using corporate double-speak_ and judge him on that.

I don't like the video. I don't like the situation. I don't like the lack of concrete transparency about why.

But I do like the fact that it is communicated by a person in a video, easy for all to judge what is being said.

bluefirebrand3• 5 years ago

The problem is that he's essentially using this news as self promotion to build his channel. He's probably getting ad revenue for that, and if he's not, youtube is. That's pretty messed up.

failwhaleshark4• 5 years ago

Exactly. It's a "sorry not sorry" guilt-alleviation "confessional" for "victim-," social approval-, and popularity-points.

Issues:

1. They took a bunch of VC cash.

2. Scaled big-and-fast, rather than carefully.

3. Decided to throw people who built their business under the bus to squeeze more short-term profits. This is fucking with people's lives in the name of money, and not even close to resembling a social venture with the values of their supposed "creator" customers.

4. Intent on coasting on their laurels to grab and stack more cash.

That dude can GTFO with that BS.

jmiskovic• 5 years ago

Wait, what year is it again? Didn't they fire 30ish people around same time last year?

Patreon has horrible UX. It's a walled garden and all engineering seems to go towards building higher wall. Compare that to itch.io, which is not the same model but the site is superior in every way.

slimsag4• 5 years ago

You weren't kidding, 13% of their staff (30 people) and also literally at the end of April.[1]

Guess that makes the corporate double-speak in this video even more damning.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/21/21230290/patreon-laid-off...

reiichiroh• 5 years ago

This is the guy that’s one half of Pamplemoose

christkv• 5 years ago

Talk about literally spitting in peoples face on their way out the door. Not only do you have to loose your job but you have to watch the CEO grandstand on youtube talking about his feelings. What a horrible person.

valyagolev• 5 years ago

some companies end up being entertainment production companies around their star CEOs – this dude is clearly envious of that

Patreon: Some Tough News to Share

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