Layoffs hit Quora

Any company that relies on SEO content is basically going to disapear. Google search and their new NLP technology is just extracting the question and answers from content like that on Quora, significantly reducing their page hit volumes. Not only that, other lower ranked content can be verified to be &quot;true&quot; using neural network based NLP, meaning that the value of content has gone down.<p>Google stole the business of quora and trip advisor. They did the hard work of getting the content.<p>Google NLP algorithms use quora and trip advisor like training data sets. This is theft!<p>My guess is that Yelp is next.<p>EDIT:<p>I have no affiliation to those businesses, just that as someone interested in websites and internet businesses, its clear that its much harder to build a consumer facing content based website now. The content is simply extracted and stolen. How can we have a thriving internet when such monopolistic and profit driven practices stifle innovation and creation on the web?

I used to enjoy Quora, but it lost its charm and I quit once my feed became mostly filled with questions such as:<p>- As a software engineer, what makes you roll your eyes every time you hear it?<p>- What did your mother say that made your jaw drop?<p>- What can I learn in one minute that will be useful for the rest of my life?<p>Those open questions just feel clickbait-y, with no real value added.<p>I occasionally see questions similar to the last one on HN (for example: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=21913129" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=21913129</a>), it’s OK once in a while, but I hope it doesn’t become the norm. I think the HN userbase’s mindset and strong moderation guarantees that for now.

I&#x27;ve said it in a few other posts but post WeWork, a lot of the big D, E, F companies are expected to hit profitability&#x2F;break-even soon.<p>Some other threads are talking about Google stealing a lot of the content. That&#x27;s definitely true for weather, flights, but things like long form content is still long form. I would argue these layoffs aren&#x27;t a function of the GMachine at work, but more generally all the big tech firms with lofted valuations are being &#x27;called in&#x27;. Every week, I see at least 1 large name running lay offs here on HNews.<p>The bubble at the 1B+ vals has started to correct. Firms are expecting people to prove their worth. Lots of times this means IPO and then trading on a multiple of earnings. Many of these guys aren&#x27;t even near net positive so it&#x27;s very scary.<p>I expect 2020 to be the year startups have a lot of trouble at the Series C.

&gt; a 10-year-old question-and-answer startup<p>Has the word &quot;startup&quot; simply replaced &quot;company&quot;? I&#x27;m thinking we should at least draw the line at a full decade.

Quora is a site that is somehow successful despite its product development decisions. They seem to constantly make the site and community worse with every update.<p>There&#x27;s still a decent amount of amazing valuable answers from real verified experts but the experience of using it is horrendous and I&#x27;ve completely stopped trying to write anything anymore.

Like others I&#x27;m amazed that Quora still exists. In my experience it&#x27;s accessible to people outside the programming bubble, but eschewed a lot of deliberate choices that StackOverflow made back in the early days. The result is that it&#x27;s more of a question and opinion site, than a question and answer site.<p>There isn&#x27;t anything wrong with this differentiation in some ways, but it has driven the company further down the SEO path and they don&#x27;t seem to have tried other things. It feels like SO has built up a recruiting business, tried many times to get their Q&amp;A software into companies with varying success, really managed the costs of their business, and invited public scrutiny of their tech. I can only imagine how much Quora are hemorrhaging from running costs and bad tech choices.

Not sure if a bit of confirmation bias on my side but seems like there is a recent big uptick of layoffs at Silicon Valley companies? Popular ones like Quora, TripAvisor, Ebay, Mozilla, Uber, 23andMe, etc we hear about but among my own network, i am even hearing it from smaller startups &amp; businesses.<p>Just wondering if it is just me but I am surmising that it seems to indicate a wider systematic.. issue? Maybe issue is not the word for it. Symptom is probably a better description and it feels we are at the precipitous of an incoming storm&#x2F;crunch&#x2F;etc.<p>Please tell me I am imagining things.<p>Edit: I guess my question is more are all these layoffs an indicator of an incoming recession or is it something more nefarious like the big tech (FAANG) are taking steps to widen their positions while they are still in a &quot;strong&quot; position to do so (e.g. google).

Years ago, I would occasionally answer a question on Quora, which usually seemed like a real question from a person trying to figure something out (for example, software career questions).<p>In recent years, oddly, even the questions seem fake, as if somebody somewhere is being paid to come up with questions. Why would I spend time to answer if not even the person asking seems to really care? Perhaps, I am not the only one to stop seeing the point in Quora a while ago.

I used to be quite active on Quora, but have noticed a decline in content and ux quality - seems like they are trying to &#x27;growth hack&#x27; in a way that is not benefiting users, e.g.:<p>- Links to other questions open in new tabs<p>- Most content is not shown unless you login, they are really trying to push being logged in and their mobile app<p>- Answers with images seem to be ranked higher (even if poor quality)<p>- Clickbait-y questions and answers<p>I hope they can return to quality since in the beginning it was such a great resource - it was awesome to be able to get answers from domain experts, celebrities, etc... and the site was very usable.

It&#x27;s genuinely hard to believe that Quora is still running.

Say what you want about how bad Quora content is, Quora has the most engaging email digest I ever knew.<p>Every day they send me an email with some answers on topics I&#x27;m interested in, and I can&#x27;t help but click on 6-8 of them from EACH email. The median CTR in any other of email digests recieved by me is zero.

I used to be on the side of “why do we need Quora” camp but over the last few years I see that they have some really good content that no one else has, particularly content about obscure questions that wiki is not meant for. So I end up visiting often. The problem is they don’t have a way to monetize the content. They can only survive on cash so long.

The team at Quora is really strong. Many ex-Quorans have gone on to start their own really successful companies.<p>If you or someone you know is affected, feel free to use this spreadsheet: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.google.com&#x2F;spreadsheets&#x2F;d&#x2F;1Hk4REpHkCCTS74MGGRNRHX1kQPEls4_vseUbul9dYW4&#x2F;edit#gid=0" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.google.com&#x2F;spreadsheets&#x2F;d&#x2F;1Hk4REpHkCCTS74MGGRNR...</a>

Companies like Quora should provide at least three or six months of severance in cases of layoffs. There&#x27;s no reason they can&#x27;t. They surely knew three or six months in advance that they would likely be making this move.<p>As startup workers, we should shame loudly and publicly companies that don&#x27;t provide sufficient severance packages. It&#x27;s the difference between causing a slight disturbance in worker&#x27;s lives and potentially huge financial hardship.<p>(Of course all employees should have a financial reserve. The fact is many people don&#x27;t though. And even if they do, it hurts a lot to make them burn it down.)<p>Someone should make a blacklist of startups that did layoffs without sufficient severance. Maybe I&#x27;ll get around to it.

Better title: Quora still inexplicably exists 8 years after its irrelevance became apparent.<p>You know, good news story.

Is it time to revive fuckedcompany.com yet?

Can they accidentally delete the breadcrumbs of questions I read, which they appear to keep about me, on the way out? Initially I loved Quora and participated, but some magic default setting toggle changed and suddenly I&#x27;d get emailed about something I clicked on due to a Google search result which took me to a Quora question or answer - pre-authenticated of course.<p>Most of that is my fault, but now that info is available someplace forever.

Quora used to be OK, many years ago. I wrote a few detailed technical answers about C, C++ and embedded programming.<p>Then it basically became GeoCities or MySpace or whatever. Garbage, filled with ads and posters shilling their services and goods, just yucky. Plus, as others have mentioned, doing a simple search, going over to quora, and then being forced to login.

In the past few days, Quora, EBay, 23 and Me and TripAdvisor all announced layoffs. Coincidence or early sign of something bigger?

Working at a company where the founder is so wealthy from a past exit can be really frustrating because they have little financial incentive to be running the company in a way that is in the best interest of the common shareholder (e.g. employees).

Quora’s web page restrictions were always annoying.<p>You can search for something from Google, and the site allows you to view the page. Then the page suggests other links, and when you click on it, it forces you to sign in.<p>The trick is to copy that link, and open the page in a new incognito window.<p>I don’t know why they did it this way, but it’s thoroughly annoying, and I try to avoid visiting the site if I can. And I roll my eyes whenever that site comes up in a search result.

There is some really good content on Quora (by which I mean good writers, and even some war criminals...) but they need beating into shape.

I don&#x27;t understand what&#x27;s going on with Quora. It used to be full of insightful answers that improved the quality of my life. But now my feed is cluttered with clickbait&#x27;s being recommended by random people saying &quot;Good article.&quot; and -- just in general -- very low quality answers written by people without experience and who fail to back up their claims with evidence. It&#x27;s become a big source of frustration reading these &quot;verbal vomit&quot; answers and trying to sort through the misinformation.<p>Whoever the ML engineers on the recommendation stack were.. really fucked up imo.

&quot;Layoffs hit techcrunch&quot; will be next: uMatrix has prevented the following page from loading: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;guce.advertising.com&#x2F;collectIdentifiers?sessionId=3_cc-session_a7ec9796-3f8a-4bd0-806a-953f55eac9f5" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;guce.advertising.com&#x2F;collectIdentifiers?sessionId=3_...</a>

A few days ago a search about CNAMES landed me on a Quora page which I quickly left. Like a fool I wasn&#x27;t incognito. And less than 24h later I got an email from Q to highlight other stale and incorrect information on their site.<p>Creepy and bad.<p>Unfortunate that layoffs don&#x27;t start with upper management.

Personally I love reading some answers on Quora. But it&#x27;s not because of Quora; the answer could be on any other site. I tried Quora Ads and lost some money only to discover that the returns are comparatively the worst among all the channels we tried, and off by several folds. That takes me and my money off of Quora Ads. If the company wants to monetize by selling ads, they should probably spend time making the advertisers&#x27; experience better. Because at the end of the day the advertisers are the people who are paying them.<p>Disclaimer: I didn&#x27;t write this to badmouth or (un)recommend them. I am only curious if other people&#x27;s experience is the same.

There used to be quite a few very interesting and insightful people who answered questions over there. These days it&#x27;s all people trying to shamelessly self-promote with very low quality answers, something Quora should have banned a long time ago.

I don&#x27;t understand why Quora had so many employees. I don&#x27;t intend to harsh on them: I literally don&#x27;t understand their business.<p>To my naïve understanding: they have an authentication system, a moderately high throughput CMS with a search engine, and...? + User-generated content. OK, some DevOps people, some people who negotiate with the CDNs. They seem pretty snappy so some serious work presumably went into the back end, but still. WhatsApp had only 50 people!<p>What am I completely missing here? why did they have 200 people?

IMO these types of companies never had a future. They only succeeded because of monetary inflation in the corporate sphere due to ultra-low interest rates.<p>If the interest repayment on a bank loan is less than 2%, then it means that any business which can make more than 2% profit on their activities is profitable. But do such businesses deserve to exist? The Fed sets the interest rate so they decide what kind of business is profitable and is allowed to exist.<p>It&#x27;s obvious why the current economy has benefited tech companies that operate at high scale with ultra-low or close to 0 profit margins.

California Employment Development Department said the company had not filed the type of notice that is required for mass layoffs, suggesting the cuts in the state involve fewer than 50 employees.

“We need to reduce our burn rate to a sustainable level from which we can focus on pursuing the mission and growing the business over the long term.”. The question is: what mission?

We talked to Quora&#x27;s CEO about 2 years ago about premium content and alternative business models, including subscription.<p>There was no interest at the time and advertising was a sole focus for business model.<p>CEO never followed up.<p>Sad.

It&#x27;s surprising to me that they just started layoff this year. This &quot;startup&quot; will come to an end because of its arrogance.

Seems like a pretty solid wave of layoffs as of late. Harbinger of startup doom? Temporary correction?

So they overestimated what Quora really could be and burned way more money? Or is Google suffocating smaller tech companies?<p>Content curation doesn’t scale as well as search algorithms. It reminds me of Yahoo and other portals who relies on editorial staffs (not meant it in a bad way).

This is an honest question, what is Quoras business model? It feels like a traditional forum.

Quora used to be my favorite place to find interesting answers. Now the site is filled with marketers. It&#x27;s mystery for me how the site still show up on Google every time I need to search something.

Gheesh... First Uber, DigitalOcean, 23AndMe... and now Quora

is layoff announcement becoming more frequent recently?

burn rate? so they are still running on vc? i guess it doesnt surprise me. they arent the worst thing to get massive vc. i will be very entertaining to see when the next recession hits and all these shitty companies dry up overnight. and it will be nice to have fewer arrogant tech peoples around who only have money because of misguided investors who have more money than sense.

I knew Quora’s time was up when they sent me a partner program email. It devolved into “yahoo answers” very quickly after that.

“Quora, a 10-year-old question-and-answer startup”<p>Companies that are ten years old are no longer startups.<p>“IBM, a 109-year-old software &amp; services startup, will enhance the red carpet livestream with Grammy Insights with Watson this Sunday at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.&quot;<p>;)

Do we know how many ? News is useless unless its more than 10%

Quora layoffs just before peak election season?<p>I did not see that one coming.

Why are Tech Crunch highjacking my back button?

Quora was a good product. I remember the first time I used it, I was amazed by the quality of their answers. Even Jordan Peterson betseller book was based on a Quora answer. Sadly, they decided to focus on questions instead. Now, it&#x27;s filled with garbage questions and it is just slightly better than Yahoo answers.

is it really a startup if it&#x27;s been around 10 years?

According to the article, the number of layoffs is unknown (though I assume we&#x27;ll know shortly since they&#x27;re required by law to report it in California). They have approximately 200 employees, it also mentioned.<p>According to a quick search, they were certified for 57 H1B visas. You read that right: 57 employees, in just 2019, of an approximate 200 person workforce, are foreigners that CEO D&#x27;Angelo claimed he was required to hire because he could not find US workers.<p>It looks like another 50 or so in the previous two years.<p>So half their employees are foreigners? How many US citizens are being laid off?<p>Some of these jobs, according the Department of Labor&#x27;s data, are paying as low as $60K... in Mountain View.<p>Truly disgusting that this company is abusing the system like this. A fair punishment for these companies, along with all their visas being immediately revoked and a massive fine to discourage others, would be for the executive board to be forced to move their company to S. Asia, since apparently that&#x27;s where their talent pool originates. If they aren&#x27;t willing to hire US workers, they shouldn&#x27;t be allowed to enjoy the infrastructure, laws, capital markets, etc. that are provided by US taxpayers.<p>* ReportH1BAbuse@uscis.dhs.gov<p>* <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.myvisajobs.com&#x2F;Visa-Sponsor&#x2F;Quora&#x2F;1096469.htm" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.myvisajobs.com&#x2F;Visa-Sponsor&#x2F;Quora&#x2F;1096469.htm</a><p>* <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;h1bsalary.online&#x2F;extended_lca_data.php?LCADataID=7815163" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;h1bsalary.online&#x2F;extended_lca_data.php?LCADataID=781...</a>