> Like many companies, our business has been impacted by the current macroeconomic environment, and user and revenue growth has not kept pace with our expectations. In order to run our business sustainably, we’ve made the very difficult decision to shrink the size of our workforce.<p>Let's just take a moment to admire this paragraph.<p>> "our business has been impacted by the current macroeconomic environment"<p>There's that passive, vague non-word again: "impacted". Such a milquetoast way to say "something happened" but without that pesky specificity.<p>> "user and revenue growth has not kept pace with our expectations"<p>So, they are growing, but not growing faster than some [arbitrary] goal?<p>> "In order to run our business sustainably"<p>Wait, I thought revenue was growing! How is that not sustainable? If you just leave costs where they are and let revenue grow, you are by definition sustaining/growing the bottom line.<p>> "we’ve made the very difficult decision to shrink the size of our workforce"<p>This is what I don't get about all of these layoff letters. It's always the same thing: We're growing, our revenue is growing, and [usually unsaid] our costs are growing. So why not just arrest the cost growth? Stop the bleeding, don't start amputating limbs. I can understand layoffs when your business is running at a loss, not when it's growing.
<i>> Like many companies, our business has been impacted by the current macroeconomic environment</i><p>I must be living under a rock because, outside big tech self-inflicted wounds, I don't know what they are talking about. Is it Ukraine? SVB? Chinese housing market?
The CEO and founder of Twitch announced a week ago that he was leaving the company. It's admirable to see a captain going down with his ship.<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35184011" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35184011</a>
For context, this is part of a wider layoff at Amazon, with over 9000 job losses:<p><a href="https://twitter.com/zachbussey/status/1637826120216195075" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/zachbussey/status/1637826120216195075</a>
A bit unfortunate that their blog format has "In other news" in giant letters right under their announcement about laying off 400 people. Maybe a blog isn't the right place to make news like this public.
Every one of these companies doing layoffs says something like what's in this update: "user and revenue growth has not kept pace with our expectations." I find it really hard to believe that all of these companies assumed that growth during Covid was sustainable and would just continue into eternity. I have a small restaurant supply business. Our revenue was up almost 50% above our best year ever. We knew there was no way it was going to last forever. All of these companies just sound so disingenuous when they say their growth didn't keep up with their expectations. They knew this day would eventually have to come, they just don't want to come out and say that.
For some perspective, twitch generated $2.6 billion in revenue in 2021 and $2.8 billion in 2022. They've seen nothing but increased revenue over time.
If I was more suspicious I’d be wondering if the sudden huge rise in ai was at all linked to the sudden huge waves of layoffs. Maybe all these big tech companies have seen something before the rest of us?
I don't see how "macroeconomic conditions" impacts Twitch viewership.<p>It's not selling anything to any consumer or business. If anything, people are watching more Twitch.
I'd be curious to see how the sudden surge of available workforce is affecting the average salaries in the IT, compared to other fields that weren't touched so badly by the layoff wave.