this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2024
640 points (98.2% liked)

Technology

60082 readers
3170 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] paddirn@lemmy.world 240 points 11 months ago (5 children)

“sharpen our focus and improve the way we work together to bring more agility to our organization.”

Ahh yes, watching co-workers get laid off does wonders for improving the way you work together with the people still there.

[–] OpenStars@startrek.website 74 points 11 months ago

It does make you work harder... at finding some other job:-P.

[–] AFC1886VCC@reddthat.com 19 points 11 months ago

What a load of PR wank

[–] GuyDudeman@lemmy.world 17 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Right? Sharpening focus and working together have zero to do with how many people you employ.

This was about profits. It's always about profits.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] GlitzyArmrest@lemmy.world 134 points 11 months ago (3 children)
[–] mp3@lemmy.ca 65 points 11 months ago (1 children)

At least not without a golden parachute.

[–] SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 17 points 11 months ago

Here is your reward for fucking up

[–] Gork@lemm.ee 25 points 11 months ago

The execs I know yell at people. They somehow get rewarded for having temper tantrums.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] dinckelman@lemmy.world 116 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It's not like the management has let people, who still work there, add or fix anything. It's been nothing but Nitro promos, and animated profiles. Huge shame that people got laid off like this

[–] Sabata11792@kbin.social 48 points 11 months ago (9 children)

"Heres your hourly reminder to rent worthless garbage we want you to pay monthy for, per server"

load more comments (9 replies)
[–] inb4_FoundTheVegan@lemmy.world 104 points 11 months ago (4 children)

To be clear, I'm not defeneding this pratice but explaining it. This cycle is how large businesses operate to foster growth over time.

  • Lay off people to tell stock holders they are becoming more efficient.
  • wait
  • Hiring spree, announce new features, new directions, hype hype hype
  • wait
  • Lay offs! Trimming overhead! Streamlining! Much efficency! Good business!
  • wait
  • Hyyyyyyype! Discord announces a plan to replace iMessage, Email and the entire concept of texting! Triples their staff! Such hype!

Rinse, repeat

It's horrific for the employees and a scathing indictment as capitalism as a whole. But, this is how large businesses work, not nessecarily a massive corporate slip up.

Here is a lawyer explaining the "dance steps" that the game industries is doing as of late.

[–] danielbln@lemmy.world 13 points 11 months ago (2 children)

That may have been true during the lavish times of ZIRP, but I wouldn't expect to see this dance any longer, at least until money is cheap/free again.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
[–] SuperSpruce@lemmy.zip 77 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Y'know, they were going crazy over the top implementing unnecessary features... Maybe they actually did have too many employees doing useless things, but they should've instead had those employees focus on performance instead

[–] lazynooblet@lazysoci.al 11 points 11 months ago

Probably trying everything they could to get more $$$ but it didn't work out so.... bye.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] Zoidberg@lemm.ee 69 points 11 months ago (8 children)

Unity, Google, Discord. All within a day or two of each other.

For every number of employees laid off, a VP level employee must be fired. Those employees didn't hire themselves. Someone came up with the idea.

If companies don't do this they're not attacking the root of the problem.

[–] interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 22 points 11 months ago (6 children)

They coordinate to create a glut and push all their wages down. Computer touching wagies and so socially stunted they'll never form effective union. If they did, they would jusy defect out of greed.

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] neclimdul@lemmy.world 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Also twitch. Yuck...

Probably some great devs on the market for anyone hiring though.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (6 replies)
[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 46 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Tech CEOs: we need better numbers. Fire a bunch of people! Ahh there we go. Now we’re flush with cash. Well, my work here is done.

[–] someguy3@lemmy.world 16 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

And gut the r&d budget. That's future CEO's problem.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] CosmicTurtle@lemmy.world 8 points 11 months ago

The Jack Welsh way...

That guy is literally, not figuratively, responsible for most of the shitty things that companies do now.

[–] SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 41 points 11 months ago

That will cause some discord

[–] MonkderZweite@feddit.ch 38 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Now how to move the gaming community to Matrix or XMPP.

[–] Sylvartas@lemmy.world 22 points 11 months ago (1 children)

You don't. Gamers, are generally happy to bow to their corporate overlords for some reason.

Source: am a gamer. And I admit I do put up with some of that bullshit too.

[–] Tangent5280@lemmy.world 8 points 11 months ago (3 children)

I think that behaviour pattern has it's roots in the perceived dominance of Microsoft windows in the gaming sphere - we can fix that by encouraging people to game with linux.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] jaykay@lemmy.zip 37 points 11 months ago (5 children)

Before you do that, can you fix screen sharing on Linux?

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] Potfarmer@lemmy.world 31 points 11 months ago

Discord went the way of Skype, it's just a bloated fustercluck now. I don't use it often, just once a month or so to keep up with a group of old friends, and every time I fire it up it has a new update bringing features I don't give a rats ass about.

[–] FlavoredButtHair@lemmy.world 28 points 11 months ago (1 children)

So the nitro subscription is gonna up to increase profits?

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 18 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

They're going to dedicate their entire next year's budget to introduce a new kind of emoji, though.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] Fedizen@lemmy.world 26 points 11 months ago (1 children)

A wave of enshittification has struck Discord

[–] Urist@lemmy.ml 30 points 11 months ago (8 children)

Sorry to say it, but it has always sucked.

[–] chitak166@lemmy.world 14 points 11 months ago

Nah. What sucked was having to type in IP addresses just to talk on voice.

load more comments (7 replies)
[–] PanArab@lemmy.world 24 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Right after they ruined the app’s UI?

[–] Maximilious@kbin.social 22 points 11 months ago (4 children)

Mobile UI is atrocious after the recent upgrade a couple months ago. Wish I could go back.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] DoomBot5@lemmy.world 23 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Small company: yeah, we hired too many people, need to let go of 170.

People: such huge cuts, not touching them anymore

Large company: we're laying off the entire staff of pre-Elon Twitter worth of employees in this one department because they didn't make us enough money.

People: good, your product sucked anyways

[–] Chobbes@lemmy.world 20 points 11 months ago

I mean, I wouldn’t exactly call a company with 1000 employees “small”. It’s not the behemoth that something like Google is, but like… that’s a good chunk of people.

[–] NotJustForMe@lemmy.ml 20 points 11 months ago (4 children)

Still holding out for them to have a $10 a year tier with no added features. The $36 bucks a year entry fee is just too much.

Can someone here explain to me why so many free services directly jump to $3, $5 or $9.99 bucks a month? Why not $10 per year? Surely that's better than nothing?

Just call it supporter tier and that's it. I don't want any icons or upload limits either. I just want to not feel like a leech. ;)

[–] mint_tamas@lemmy.world 12 points 11 months ago (2 children)

If a free tier is offered, why would you be a leech? It’s calculated in their business and free users indirectly bring revenue (the more free users they have, the more they can convert). This concept of being a leech is so alien to me.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] AVengefulAxolotl@lemmy.world 10 points 11 months ago

I dont understand it either. I would happily donate to signal yearly like 10-15€, but 5 every month? No, thats just too much sorry.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

What's really an insult are ad-based tiers from streaming services where they make money from both you and people advertising to you.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] RandomStickman@kbin.social 17 points 11 months ago (11 children)

Any alternative you would recommend? I'm mostly using it for video group call for dnd. Although convincing the group to change to yet another program would be the hardest part.

[–] m_randall@sh.itjust.works 34 points 11 months ago (1 children)

As far as self hosted I’ve heard a lot about matrix but haven’t tried it. Maybe I’ll give it a shot this weekend.

https://matrix.org/

There’s also telegram, slack, etc if you want something else commercial.

[–] Ebsku@sopuli.xyz 10 points 11 months ago (6 children)

I've convinced few of my friends to use Matrix and it has been a really nice platform and now I prefer it to Discord not only because it respects user privacy but also because it doesn't have the nitro bs

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] CoopaLoopa@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

~~Microsoft~~ Roblox ripped off Discord and branded it as Guilded GG. Features-wise for audio and game streaming, they offer higher quality than Discord for free.

Is there any chance you'll get your group of friends to move to ~~"MS Teams for gamers"?~~ anything other than Discord? No chance.

Edited: Correction that Guilded is owned by Roblox, not MS.

[–] fjordbasa@lemmy.world 9 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Guilded.gg is owned by Roblox, where does Microsoft come into play?

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (9 replies)
[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 8 points 11 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


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.”

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.

These cuts are Discord’s largest to date after the messaging app laid off 4 percent of staff last August.

They add to the layoffs that continue to sweep across the tech industry, including deep cuts at Google and Amazon just this week.

The company has been contemplating going public since it turned down a $12 billion acquisition offer from Microsoft in 2021, though I’m told it’s nowhere near close to doing so.


The original article contains 289 words, the summary contains 186 words. Saved 36%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] MaxPow3r11@lemmy.world 8 points 11 months ago

Capitalism!

It fucking sucks!

[–] ryannathans@aussie.zone 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Definitely not getting linux video streaming now

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›