Discord is Laying Off 17 Percent of Employees (theverge.com) 68
Discord is laying off 17 percent of its staff, a move that CEO Jason Citron said is meant to "sharpen our focus and improve the way we work together to bring more agility to our organization." From a report: The cuts were announced today to employees in an all-hands meeting and internal memo The Verge has obtained. They'll impact 170 people across various departments.
Based on Citron's message to employees and my understanding of the business, Discord isn't in dire financial straits, though it has yet to become profitable and is still trying to revive user growth after a surge during the pandemic. In his memo to employees, which you can read in full below, Citron said Discord grew its headcount too fast over the last few years -- an admission that has become quite common among tech CEOs as of late. "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."
Based on Citron's message to employees and my understanding of the business, Discord isn't in dire financial straits, though it has yet to become profitable and is still trying to revive user growth after a surge during the pandemic. In his memo to employees, which you can read in full below, Citron said Discord grew its headcount too fast over the last few years -- an admission that has become quite common among tech CEOs as of late. "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."
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Why the hell would I want ANYONE to build up savings? The Fed will sooner or later have to drop the interest rates again or the next bank crash is a given.
Now, I don't know if the US banks are bound by Basel IV, but I would assume a similar concept regulates their risk management and credit handling. If not, that next bank crash is gonna come like clockwork anyway. The immense drawback of Basel IV was, though, that banks tightened the loan conditions considerably. Or, in the words of a loan officer I know,
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if you had a grown up mind and not that of a 3 year old
C'mon, I've come to expect better from you than personal attacks.
only people with savings can actually grow the economy
Only people with savings can start a business. Yes. But that's only one side of the economy. As stated before, nobody got rich producing, people get rich selling. You can have the best product in the world if there isn't anyone around who wants your product and can afford it. Now, the wanting part isn't the one we have a problem with, the affording one is.
I just built savings by doing what I always do to avoid inflation.
That's something you might want to explain, because it's kinda counter-intuitive. Savings
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I prefer everyone to have savings so they are not looking for a handout and wouldn't need one, wouldn't demand one from the government
I guess we have different philosophies. I prefer for such a case a strong social net that not only allows people who cannot build up savings because they don't get paid more than the bare minimum to still live a life without the constant fear of death in case you dare to become sick. Also, it allows people to actually take the risk of becoming self employed without risking exactly the same.
They key problem to savings is mostly that to build up savings, you first of all need to have a job that pays you more
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your philosophy is that you want to take my savings and use it without building up your own and you want to do this through the force of the government.
C'mon, don't twist my words around because I can do the same. Wanna see?
"Well, my philosophy is to create a meritocracy, i.e. what the USA originally was supposed to be. A place where your skill, not your financial background, determines how far ahead you go. You want to cement the aristocracy that we have, a society where a group of people rules by the divine right of the god of mammon, by the golden rule of who has the gold makes the rule. Where only those that have money can actually ever hope to found a
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What it means is that it gives people who would otherwise not have the chance to open a business despite having a great idea for one the chance to do it. Do you really want to say that only people who first managed to somehow get into money should be allowed to become self employed? Should owning a business be limited to the kids of rich daddys?
I am a firm believer in a meritocracy, that your ability and skill should matter. Not whether or not you are born rich or somehow managed to be lucky enough to someh
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I want to promote someone who wants to achieve something and doesn't have the means to. Equal opportunity doesn't equate equal outcome. Please understand that there is a considerable difference between them.
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You are interested in using force of government to take money away from those who have it, manage it, achieved it one way or another and transfer it to people who do not have it, are not managing it, did not achieve it one way or another, that's not meritocracy, that's the opposite of it..
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I want to give everyone the opportunity to open a business that has a business idea.
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Yeah, that's not meritocracy. Business ideas are a dime a dozen, everyone has a bunch, giving everyone government money to start their business is not any type of risk on the part of these people, while it is basically going to be a 100% risk (a total write off) for the government. So not only will you take money away from people who actually know what to do with it, you will also give it to people just to waste, which is what will happen to 99.9% of it.
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The merit here isn't having the business idea, there merit is in succeeding with yours. And I don't want to give people money to start a business, all I want is for them to be secure in the knowledge that in case they fail they won't hit rock bottom but that there is a safety net to fall back on. You still need to somehow fund your business, but that's surprisingly easy (depending on the business of course), what keeps most people from actually trying is that they fear that they lose their existence if they
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I don't understand the logic here. It goes like this: take money away from people who earned it (let's consider merit, excluding those who obtained it by chance or inheritance), and give this money to people who haven't started a business, managed money, or grasped its value in the specific sense of savings and production.
Actually, starting many businesses doesn't require as much money as it does time. You should be willing to risk both your time and money to start a business. This makes you cautious, pract
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let's consider merit, excluding those who obtained it by chance or inheritance
That's the problem here, you cannot do that. "Earned" is a very flexible term in this context. Does any CEO really "earn" getting millions a year while an engineer working for him slaves away 60+ hours a week for 120k? Who would really "earn" what here?
In the end, you will, one way or another, pay for someone like this. Either you give him the security that he can open his business and fall back on a security net, or you pay for his foods stamps once he fails and realizes that he can't pay back the debt so
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Of course I can because it's the only thing that matters. For whatever reason you have an issue with people winning some form a lottery, I don't care about them because I don't lose anything from someone else having money. I am talking about people who *make* money, that's the only part of the equation that matters because they are the engine that pushes the economy forward and you want to throw a monkey wrench into that engine. Well, there are already plenty of those monkey wrenches in that engine, thro
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People "making money" is not what drives the economy forward, or at least, it's only one part of the equation. The second, equally important, part is people who can spend money. Because, as stated before, producing makes you poor, only selling makes you rich. And you can only sell if there is someone who can buy.
This may not matter to you. If I understood you right, you're a software developer. You only work for other companies, never for a consumer. But these companies do, and if they have no consumers, th
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People making money is the only thing that drives the economy forward, literally the only one single thing and there is nothing else that drives *the economy* forward. Money is a store of value, unit of account and medium of exchange, it doesn't have to be dollars, it could be bags of grain for all I care, if there is something to exchange, then there will be people who exchange among themselves, money is a proxy but what we exchange is the value of what we create. Using a proxy means we are *promising* e
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Who do you sell to if the consumer doesn't have money available to purchase? We're in the process of concentrating the assets in the hands of a few, which in turn means that your customer base is dwindling. And that in turn means your market is shrinking.
For a sale to happen, three things have to come together. First, the commodity has to be available (obviously). Second, a potential customer must have the want to have this commodity. And finally, the potential customer also needs to have the means to affor
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Who do you sell to if the consumer doesn't have money available to purchase
I am pretty sure I would have a different business model in mind if everyone was dirt poor, and by the way, aren't you a proponent of everybody being dirt poor, no savings, nothing but what the government can take from someone else (I wonder from who) to give to all the dirt poor people? Wasn't this the first idea in this thread, let me go back for a moment and check it. Oh yeah, here it is:
Why the hell would I want ANYONE to build up savings?
So if your very concept of a society is that everyone should be dirt poor, relying on government, you must be reall
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aren't you a proponent of everybody being dirt poor, no savings, nothing but what the government can take from someone else
I'm a proponent of everyone deserving equal chance to strike it big. Yes, that entails having to take some money to distribute to those that cannot get off the ground themselves. It may surprise you that I'm not a big fan of simple handouts (at least not past the point of keeping people fed and sheltered enough that they don't think mugging me for the 100 bucks in my wallet is a more sensible idea than sitting around and doing nothing, because that's one of the reasons the city I live in is one of the safes
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I'm a proponent of everyone deserving equal chance to strike it big.
that is what equality under the is for. There are other factors that will prevent people from having equal outcomes. Height is an important factor for basketball players, someone born with a down syndrome will not become a math genius, someone without eye sight will not become an airplane pilot, someone, who is too ugly will not become a famous actor, etc. We have unequal chances in every possible way because of where we are born, when we are born, how we are born, what genes we have, traumas, whatever.
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It's rather sad that after Onion went full unfunny, Babylon Bee almost became the new Onion. It was so close.
And then they went hard unfunny, to the point where they're about as unfunny as Onion in late 2010s. Same reason too, forced political partisanship.
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The problem is they just take right wing fantasies about the left and then satirize those rather than satirizing what actually happens in reality. They other type of story they do is the "X didn't do stupid thing, but wouldn't it be funny if they did?" type which can work in some cases as long as it's absurd enough and not just what OANN reports.
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I suspect it has something to do with being the underdog making fun of the mainstream. When Onion was great, around 2010, it was the underdog pushing sanity into the mainstream political narrative. By early 2020, Onion was full mainstream narrative, and Babylon Bee was going against it as an underdog from the opposite political side. And today, Babylon Bee is mainstream right and Onion is mainstream left and it's just a partisan slogfest that might be funny for partisans... but not so much for anyone else.
revive user growth after the pandemic surge (Score:1)
trying to revive user growth after a surge during the pandemic
That's like trying to revive growth in life variation after the cambrian explosion. Accept the abnormal win and don't expect growth like that again. Be glad you have growth. Be glad you have users. Be glad you're not Myspace.
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Be glad you're not Myspace.
Or Twitter where Musky told the banks who bought into his nonsense they won't lose money, but have already lost over $2 billion [businessinsider.com]. This is probably part of the 71% decline in Twitter's value [marketwatch.com] since he took over.
Banks deserve what they got (Score:3)
Astonishingly they couldn't find anyone dumb enough to buy the debt from them. I think the numbers were just too big so they couldn't find anyone stupid enough or anyone who was that deep into
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trying to revive user growth after a surge during the pandemic
That's like trying to revive growth in life variation after the cambrian explosion. Accept the abnormal win and don't expect growth like that again. Be glad you have growth. Be glad you have users. Be glad you're not Myspace.
That's not how the modern business world works. The concept of "always more" has firmly taken root within the business sector and EVERY company expects record profits almost every quarter, perhaps with single quarter flatlines when investments are being made. Outside of expansion/investment? ALWAYS MORE ALWAYS! Trying to convince an MBA that something like the pandemic was a once in a lifetime event and you won't be able to replicate it would be like trying to tell a priest that Lucifer was the good guy and
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The concept of "always more" has firmly taken root within the business sector and EVERY company expects record profits almost every quarter, ...
It hasn't "taken root" - it's the foundational principle of capitalism itself - expand or die.
Trying to convince an MBA that something...
Trying to convince *any* MBA of anything other than their own personal awesomeness or the divinity of Adam Smith is like talking to a brick wall
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Government is the referee for capitalism. We took the referee out or if we do have a referee it's more like one from a professional wrestling match where they look the other way when it's convenient and periodically get hit over the head with a metal chair.
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I think you're confusing capitalism with colonialism.
No I'm not.
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The concept of "always more" has firmly taken root within the business sector and EVERY company expects record profits almost every quarter, ...
It hasn't "taken root" - it's the foundational principle of capitalism itself - expand or die.
It's certainly the concept as it exists today. But we're currently deep into crony capitalism, which is leaning heavily into oligarchy, rather than "free market" capitalism. The "expand or die" concept isn't necessary, it's just a nice convenient excuse to give up on taking anything into account other than purely driving profit ever higher, regardless of what it does to you or your customers long-term.
Trying to convince an MBA that something...
Trying to convince *any* MBA of anything other than their own personal awesomeness or the divinity of Adam Smith is like talking to a brick wall
Having had a few conversations with MBAs over the years? Yup. Fair enough.
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It's certainly the concept as it exists today.
Fine by me. I have no interest in inapplicable historical concepts, I'll stick with the "that's how it is now" ones, thx.
Musk started a trend (Score:1)
Remember when Musk fired like 90% of all twitter employees?
He was just ahead of the game. It should be noted, despite the teeth gnashing at the time, twitter has been plugging along just fine despite all the doom and gloom predictions.
Re:Musk started a trend (Score:4, Insightful)
Is this a publicly traded company? No?
Then the valuation is literally an opinion and nothing more. We don't know the actual value until it's sold or taken public again, because what matters is not opinion of one of many owners, but what a potential buyer would be willing to pay.
After all, who would've believed that twitter is worth what Musk paid for it a day before the offer was made?
This whole "valuation by private entity, it's totally the same thing as a price tag in a store" economic illiteracy is really endemic lately.
The value of a company isn't what a buyer pays (Score:3)
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This totally novel and capitalist idea can be found in folk tales from Europe, and probably other regions. Things that predate capitalism by centuries.
You remind me of the twitter user who recently bitched at Christians who were complaining about Muslims cleansing Christianity from most of Middle East over last three decades by stating that Christ was born in a Muslim region of the world.
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It should be noted, despite the teeth gnashing at the time, twitter has been plugging along just fine despite all the doom and gloom predictions.
Banks have lost over $2 billion [businessinsider.com] so far on the deal, and Twitter's value has plunged 71% [marketwatch.com]. Twitter has lost 50% of its ad revenue and is still cash flow negative [theguardian.com]. Anti-semitism is flourishing [fortune.com] and that pedo guy is agreeing with it [theguardian.com]. Advertisers are fleeing the dumpster fire [theguardian.com] after he told them to go fuck themselves, and what does Musk do? Blames someone else [reuters.com]. You'l
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But sure, everything's fine.
It is. Can't say I consider this a bad thing.
They might consider less user hostility (Score:3, Informative)
I don't want fake virtual "gifts" and bright pink begs for them that can't be silenced. I don't want animated emoji. I want reasonably priced chat, voice and video services. I'm willing to pay - i've been paying for it for years now. Why the value proposition keeps getting worse is the question I have. That and the excessive prices have caused me to reconsider upgrading/activating new Discord sites and seeking alternatives.
Way to take a dump on a gold mine. Greed. The very enshittification that Doctorow was talking about.
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Poorly implemented security. I mean yeah it's user hostile but it's not revenue focused per se. Discord has a lot of issues with burner accounts being used to harass. I am involved in a group (Al-Anon) that often has people stopping in to disrupt the meetings with porn streams and audio crap. It's whack-a-mole to stop it.
Asking for an authenticator pin as an alternative would be much less user hostile.
Circling the drain (Score:2)
Still waiting how they plan to make money anyway (Score:3)
Let's be serious here, I have taken a look at their app. As far as I can tell, there are no ads. As far as I can tell, there is no compelling reason to drop any money on any "server" you have with them unless you're in some way into vanity features. Their target audience is a fairly young market that has little to no money but a considerable amount of time and tech knowledge, along startup companies that need a cheap way to form a "community", who don't have the money and talent to set something like this up on a cloud service, in other words, again not exactly the AAA studios.
Who the hell is supposed to finance that whole deal?
Re: Still waiting how they plan to make money anyw (Score:2)
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Psst they sell user data on the downlow. Also Tencent is a partial owner so whom do you think is Discord's biggest customer?
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Investors so far. Their monetizing efforts are three-fold so far:
1. Attempt at selling games on discord. Mostly failed. Especially in wake of the whole "banned on discord, banned from your games, and we're listening to you and god forbid you say anything against the furries and get reported". No, I'm not joking about that one. I wish I was.
2. Donation model. They call it "Nitro". You same stuff you get on streaming sites for subscribing to streamers - stickers, emotes, some additional chat features for your
"More efficient" (Score:2)
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Hopeless (Score:2)
I had the misfortune of being laid off in September. I was hoping the new year would see a turn around and it hurts to see the job cuts still rolling in. I guess the Fed got what it wanted with the increase in unemployment levels.
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In IT, it's more of boomers going into retirement (no investment to fund unprofitable projects) combined with massive overhiring during covid which is being corrected.
no slashdot story about twitter layoffs (Score:2)