Amazon’s Twitch to Cut 500 Employees, About 35% of Staff
(www.bloomberg.com)
from L4s@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 10 Jan 2024 04:00
https://lemmy.world/post/10521653
from L4s@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 10 Jan 2024 04:00
https://lemmy.world/post/10521653
Amazon’s Twitch to Cut 500 Employees, About 35% of Staff::Move is designed to stem losses after two rounds of layoffs last year.
threaded - newest
Could it be because it is dog shit? Ad ridden thot farm that killed APIs and exploits people on both ends of the video.
That sounds like it would be right up Amazon’s alley.
They expected pandemic like growth to continue. Instead they made an absurd amount of money and are going to tone it down, socialise a bit of losses to realign the graph to something they can bullshit investors with.
(I was one of Unity’s 1800, so I know the feeling).
Sorry mate. Keep your head up.
No no, It just means the market is shifting, people are now un-interested in streaming. It has utterly nothing to do with Twitch being run into the ground by the out of touch decrees of management.
Anyway, more firings for the workers and fluffier golden parachutes for company nobility.
Try explaining this sentence to someone from 1980s.
#BackToTheFuture
What’s the API ordeal? I don’t use Twitch but I’m curious.
So letting the camgirls strip didn’t save things huh?
“oh no, there’s girls showing their bodies on my gaming app, they’re taking viewers away from my 7 person stream!!!”
Man, I forgot that Twitch is owned by Amazon…
We really do live in late-stage capitalism, don’t we?
Certainly a lot of once beloved online products are reaching late stage enshittification all together. Seems like the Internet is mostly that now, and you have to look hard for anything else.
Not shocked at all. Things have gone way downhill since I started with the platform. Time was, I’d start up a stream, a dev would come and hang out and actively chat while they worked. Occasionally they’d ask about my opinion about things that were being developed. It felt like actual, meaningful stuff… That was back when it was still Justin.tv and just a little bit after twitch.tv released. When I stopped streaming regularly a couple years ago, even getting a straight answer from a rep on simple questions was like pulling teeth. Then I’d have times where I’d get several different and conflicting responses for simple stuff like if what we were planning for an event would be kosher. Even arranging for some site coverage felt like begging the mob for a favor. “Alright, we’ll get you front page, but it’ll be at 4am, and only for an hour!”
If only Amazon had enough money to keep these employees. Like maybe some extra revenue from ads added onto Prime Video or something.
Lol, they just jacked up the amount of ads on twitch itself.
All they had to do was not spunk half a billion on the LOTR show, and they’d have enough money to keep them enjoyed at above market rate for a decade…
It’s a good thing we didn’t raise their taxes/minimum wages/invest in infrastructure. Otherwise they might have fired a lot of people!
/shere, I think you dropped that :)Every time Amazon has layoffs, remember that all Jeff had to do was give away an insignificant portion of his wealth and save the employees and the company.
You are right, Mr. crescendo.
That’s Ms. Crescendo, thank you very much.
And fuck Bezos.
Where can we sign up to fuck Bezos? And will there be lube?
I’ll be happy to do my duty and can keep going until he hands over his money so his workers can get paid.
Can I fuck him with something other than myself? I’d like to fuck him out of money.
Like… With a cactus?
Creeping Devil would work fine.
I meant fuck him metaphorically
But it reminded me of this
<img alt="" src="https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2Fn40Kcy9.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=251a783d7603a2bb012c099e40aca3c0abf195da5dbfb1aaf5d7f727aea1bf40&ipo=images">
lol, I thought about writing it in a “gender neutral way” but it didn’t read as funny. Sorry for assuming your gender. ;)
But again with this statement: You are right, Ms. Crescendo.
No worries, I don’t really mind but sometimes being f online reminds me too much of how everyone on the internet assumes people are m our of convenience or force of habit. I just thought it would be funny as a reply.
It was. =)
PS: Just to stay on toppic for a second here: Fuck Bezos.
While he’s still a leading shareholder, it’s worth reminding that Jeff Bezos isn’t CEO any more. Andy Jassy has been CEO for over two years now.
The fact that few people know/care kinda says it all really…
I interviewed there once. They had permanent massage rooms set up and staffed full time. The people in the place were 80% gaming neckbeards, 10% a mix of regular people, and 10% hot nerd gamer babe types they’d hired as eye candy to run around in skimpy outfits. It was so obvious and pretty embarrassing.
… elaborate on the babes?
Quick, quick, fire everyone before the shareholders realise the entire techbro industry is overvalued by at least 50%!
We’re not a bubble, again, honest!
50? Idk the biggest techbro firms NEVER made any money ever. Fucking Spotify is yet to be profitable. Who exactly are they planning to sell more service to?
50 is generous.
You operate on the assumption that just because a company isn’t claiming profits it’s not growing in value, that is just not how the game is played anymore.
Now, sure, the game they’re playing, “Go into debt to buy everything in sight and claim you’re operating at a loss despite increasing the value of your holdings exponentially” was literally outlawed for being a major factor in the collapse that lead to the Great Depression, but they’ve surely learned from that, right?
If a company makes a profit and they don’t spend it, they’re liable for corporation tax on it. It’s in their best interest to spend it on growing.
It’s just the more you spend, the more likely you are to hit diminishing returns. If you have shops in two towns, you can build another in a third town and make more money. Easy. If you already have enough shops to serve all the towns, building another might just take sales from your existing shops.
The corporations don’t like this so now it’s time to fire everybody and run a shit service with a skeleton crew instead, while jacking up the prices and hope your customers don’t notice they’re paying more for less.
That only became a thing recently with the ability to buyback stock preventing stock dilution, the low cost of buying and selling stock, and a shit bond market.
And if there isn’t a competitor on the horizon, why invest in R&D?
I understand the sentiment but there should be limits to how much you can spend befor having to pay taxes. As an individual I pay taxes on 100% of my income, regardless of what i spend. wft!
It’s an interesting idea and I agree, but at the same time how would you oversee it?
The only way I could come up with was to have all your earnings going into a government held account, and they tax you as you withdraw from that. Maybe even let you invest money into stocks and shares and so on, with no tax owed until you actually withdraw it.
You could pay in $100k a year for a bit, live a frugal lifestyle, then retire early and live on the account, paying barely any tax.
Similar to a pension, I guess, only you’d be able to take money out at any time.
Yeah I’m sure there could be a bunch of possible viable ways to implement this. It’s already implemented for the common man, I don’t see why it couldn’t be done for companies. Using companies and boards of directors as a shield from taxes and responsibilities must end.
This has more to do with interest rates and meeting year over year profit increases.
(Sub)Companies like Twitch also have the added mess of being increasingly unmonetizable.
Everyone and their mother loves to mash “enshittification” into their keyboards and grin. But almost all of that is because those companies have been operating at a loss or near loss for years and need to actually find a way to monetize. And the “easy” routes like advertisements and subscription models tend to be rejected with entire communities and industries built around bypassing that.
Like, on reddit, people were actively paying third party randos to bypass the ads on reddit. And on twitch, people lose their minds over getting an ad during a streamer’s sponsored stream that is a giant ad for a different company.
I literally just turned off Tyler1 after a 2:30 ad started. That’s a fucking commercial break.
Headlines all day twitch… This is AMAZON
#fuckingcapitalists
Its a bit hard to feel bad for them given what an absolute cesspit Twitch is as a company.
Like I understand the people theyre firing wont be the ones making it a shit company, but you still enable it by working there.
Jesus christ
yeah, no. That’s literally not what im saying at all.
For one my criticism is of Twitch the company, not twitch streamers.
Secondly im not saying they deserve unemployment, just i struggle to feel bad for them.
But yeah if you want to completely change my argument to you can be outraged over it, go ahead.
Argue about the specific degree all you want. You were still being an asshole.
Your response to 500 people losing their jobs in an ever increasingly dire job market was to say that twitch being bad is their fault and heavily implying they deserve to suffer. All you are doing is hemming and hawing to the degree because you got called out and realized what a massively shitty thing that is to do.
You can shit on a company without taking joy in the suffering of people just trying to survive in this end-stage capitalistic wasteland.
Reading wasn’t your best subject, was it?
Literally the exact opposite of what I said.
Is what I said. I get I gave you full permission to just change my argument so you can be butthurt about it, but still.
You seem pretty desperate to start an argument here. May I recommend putting down your phone for a bit?
At least edit your comment before pretending you didn’t say some “I am not saying they deserve it, but they deserve it” bullshit
You can try to will at as much as you like but that doesn’t make it true. I never said they deserve it, I never said they are the reason it’s shit. You can deny or accept the reality, either way I don’t really care what you think…
Go outside and get some fresh air, dude.
I don’t buy it. Many people that work there are there because they want to work for a company with lots of users that enjoy their product/service. It shouldn’t be a reflection on them as people, especially as they’re losing their jobs/co-workers, and are now entering a harsh job market.
Twitch is run like a private equity acquisition. The rates they are forced to pay their parent company, Amazon, are above market value. Twitch’s services will get worse and worse for both streamers and viewers until all the equity is sucked dry. Late stage capitalism y’all.
Have you got a source on that?
I’d be shocked if this were the case, since internal rates at pretty much any tech company (source: I work there) are anything from 50-99% reduced.
I hope you keep your job
It’s not internal information. It’s pretty much common knowledge across tech that companies arrange a rate card with their provider. In the instance of Twitch, even though they’re mostly a separate entity to the rest of Amazon, they’ll almost definitely have a rate card set for AWS resources.
I think they meant because 500 people who also work there are losing their jobs.
Ah, my bad, thanks! To be honest, there is so much fear of layoffs at Amazon that most people are either totally numb to it, or are constantly just waiting for their turn/an opportunity to leave.
I feel ya man, I don’t work at Amazon but at a fintech startup, and I’ve survived through so many rounds of layoffs, demotions, and “restructurings” that I’m kinda numb to it all and just waiting for my turn too haha
I heard from a bigger streamer. But I started believing it because feeds degrade lot more than YT. I constantly get connection issues more than any other streaming site.
I’m vested in some of these smaller streamers, so I don’t want them to lose their income. It feels like twitch is exploiting this sentiment because I’m not alone.
.
.
Brutal. Awful to see.
The more moves I see like this, the more I wonder how anyone in corporate finance has a job.