Twitch lays off 500 staff | Hacker News Reader

Twitch lays off 500 staff

venturebeat.com

Recent discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38933315 (yesterday, 405 points)

That previous discussion is actually pretty good

As I've said in several of these threads... over the coming years we're going to find out how much of the platform-boom Internet was built on the back of lighting fields of dump-trucks full of money on fire while vaguely waving your hands towards the future and something about monetizing user data because unheard-of low interest rates made money basically free, and that party has ended.

Honestly, I'm excited. I want to see what else we can build besides yet another bloody free service anyone can sign up for that needs to devour the world and enshittify itself with invasive advertising before it too goes bust.

I think in the long run it will be really good. These companies have been killing competition with those truck fulls of cash. All of these engineers being hungry will lead to a ton of innovation over time

So many companies from the whole 2010's tech boom just produce so little actual value per user that their entire business model just collapses once raising additional capital becomes even slightly difficult. These massive services are just fundamentally broken from a business perspective and have no path to profitability regardless of how annoying and obtrusive they're willing to become.

I understand, directionally I'd agree, but practically speaking, would you rather be a computer programmer in an era when VCs are dumping money in software, or in one when this is not case?

I've never worked for a VC firm and wouldn't unless I had no other options. I don't like the business model, I don't like the pressure to grow ad-infinitum, I don't like the prospect of investors who don't understand the business they are in dictating the product.

I strictly work for privately owned companies. They're not always perfect but the sensible-to-utter-nonsense ratio from leadership is FAR, FAR better.

> I've never worked for a VC firm

I don't think it actually matters (?) All practitioners, in VC funded company or not, benefit from frothy demand for programmers, even if a lot of that demand is driven by "dumb" money. I mean, compare to the years after .com crash, or the current lean years. I don't know, I think we should prefer the fat years?

No. That is pretty typical HN bias. I’ve too never worked anywhere VC-funded. Any increase in remuneration I’ve received as a result of a tech bubble at the very least has to be weighed up against the indirect downsides. The dominant technologies of the last 10+ years have been influenced by a) nothing needing to be built to last, and b) lots of companies having insanely high head counts resulting in over-engineered solutions. Both of these things have made my job leas enjoyable and I’d at the very least consider taking a pay cut to be in a world where things went differently. I can think of plenty of other downsides.

> has to be weighed up against the indirect downsides

Renumeration is directly measurable (and I think directly attribute to sustained investment in the industry, notably VCs), while the indirect downsides are just harder to pinpoint how and why they arise. e.g. low quality code bases ... I've seen that in all types of organizations, I've also seen very high quality code in VC-funded startups.

Both! I started my professional career in the year 2000 where I learned how to be resourceful. In the 2010s this positioned me to “do more with less” while still cashing in on the overall prosperity and bigger budgets. Now that belts are tightening again, my experience sets me apart from anyone under 35 in tech who spent their entire career in an unprecedented bull market.

Change is good, otherwise power structures ossify and things get stagnant.

> my experience sets me apart from anyone under 35 in tech

great to hear. It's nice to hear experienced practitioners speak with confidence about their future prospects. The doom&gloom you read a lot about agism etc.. are scary.

The purple snake should have never cancelled the two-time, back-to-back, 1993, 1994, Blockbuster Videogame Champion.

yayayayayaya

LOL. I'm sad to say I get this reference.

We still don't know why.

To juice their ESG rating to maintain their bond rating, I imagine. Same reason Gilette and Nike and every other megabrand suicided over the past 5 years. All to keep getting the speculation fiat buckerinos.

35% holy shit. Regardless of whether twitch really needed all those people, it can't feel great to see 1/3 of your coworkers gone, or 1/2 compared to a year ago

And PrimeVideo several hundreds too.

I’m surprised people actually believed Twitch was profitable.

I mean... did you not see how much some of the streamers make in pay outs from the leak a few years back? Some political comentators were pulling at least a million if I remember correctly. There's definitely some money being thrown around. Not sure if its all being thrown around incorrectly, but people definitely pay to watch streamers.

Just look up how much the highest paid streamers on Twitch make per month, and you'll see there's some value to it.

How much of that money is "prime" subs though? If streamers are making a million a month off of the attitude of "my other subscription lets me hand them 5 bucks for free, why not?" Then it's not really making money at the rate streamer income would suggest.

Should streamers be concerned? Or is this savings going to go to them?

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