I have, but it also publicized seven completely different business units. It is easier to reason about why what are effectively seven different businesses need so many employees. Each unit did not have all that many people, however. They would all be considered small businesses if the company broke up those business units into individual companies. Patreon, on the other hand, seems to have only one obvious business unit.

But also most haven't. Across most of the western world, 70% of workforce work for small businesses and in Asian markets that rises to 80%+. The USA is a curious outlier where only around 40% of the workforce works for small businesses. Some HN accounts forget its a big world out there.

You should talk to someone who works at Patreon. Or a larger creator on their platform.

Twitter used to have 7500 employees and now it is working perfectly ok with 1500~

What am I missing from business perspective?

I wouldn’t be surprised if they were over a billion in revenue at this point.

I would imagine big chunks of the company also aren’t technology. They seem like they have a sizable PR and marketing presence, community liaisons (read: support), HR to support it all, legal for dealing with illicit content that ends up there instead of OnlyFans, etc.

Also, many employees likely have their own personal laptops and may not have any use for them.

Morale. It’s important that the remaining employees are psychologically secure. They’re trying to make sure they know the company isn’t in jeopardy and that management has them in mind.

Some research supports this https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228120426_Survivors...

In my /opinion/ a personal address, one on one assurances from a trusted manager, this might be more effective, but HR also needs to be careful that the messaging is consistent so this kind of post is probably seen as the best alternative

I do not understand why I’m supposed to care.

This case is clearly AI enabled “right sizing”, and it is inevitable for companies that aren’t seeing explosive growth. It seems like they are handing it well, better than most. Good for them.

Coarsely, people prefer things that don't hurt their feelings or that don't scare them. Sometimes that's candor; sometimes it is indirectness. Complicating matters further, different people will have different preferences in the same situations.

I know it's not usually true, but this is Jack Conte, not Mark Zuckerberg. Maybe he's one of the few CEOs who still has a human brain. I know I would feel legitimately horrible and sympathetic if I had to lay off a bunch of people.

Some may wax la philosophie politique at times, but we tend to do that in the abstract when things are at an arms length.

At the end of the day, people made a choice between a corporation and a narrow group of stakeholders over employees and the downstream community influence of their buying power, likely a large group and certainly a different group.

You could argue in the long run it is better for society for companies to make these decisions, and many times that may actually be the case. But, in this one instance, when you place it all on the scales, they were not doing it to save a company or make its products and services more competitive in the market. There was nothing "existential" about it. They wanted to go from one profit level to a higher profit level for a certain group, and that is just what they did.

Explaining why layoffs needed to happen, expressing remorse about it, and giving a good severance package is what serious adults with empathy for their employees do.

It's also a good way to maintain at least a neutral relationship with everyone you're laying off. Compare that to a company that coldly fires you with minimal severance, and delivers that message via some low-level lackey (not the CEO) – you, as the former employee, want nothing to do with that company ever again.

(I am making a normative claim, not a descriptive one; I am aware that that both CEOs and laid-off employees do in fact take it personally at times.)

People expect it and get very angry if such posts do not appear contrite. I share your cynicism and would prefer they just say it like it is, but that doesn't work for most people.

Most of the time it's an attempt to stifle negative opinions of those reading the layoff announcements. But in the modern day it's getting old because we see a new layoff every day now.

Everybody knows we aren't a family, and we're doing this to get paid not for some contrived company mission.

I'm convinced with most of these layoff announcements people would take it better if they literally just said we're getting rid of N people for X,Y,Z reasons and called it at that without the presumptuous bullshit.

There was an interview with Jay Leno I saw recently and he was talking about his NBC deal where he was going to be getting $30mil/year but they had to cut staff to do that so he decided to cut his own pay/raise to keep staff. That type of move by someone at the top is rare or never happens with CEOs. I think Nintendo might be the only case I can think of where I heard something like that happening. That type of move evokes an "all in it together" type of team vs. a clear delineation of CEO/executives and employees.

The melodrama is performative because they have to maintain the mask/facade that they are "teammates".

Reminds me of Ozymandias speech when he says to Dr. Manhattan, that he has personally exprienced the pain of millions of New Yorkers he is about to decimate in the Nuclear attack.

In both the Watchmen graphic novel and the 2009 film adaptation, Ozymandias (Adrian Veidt) claims that he deeply feels and absorbs the psychic pain and deaths of the millions of people he kills. He views this immense personal suffering as his own tragic sacrifice for the greater good of humanity.