I’d like to call your attention to today’s blog post from Prashanth. Unfortunately, we’ve made the difficult decision to reduce our headcount by roughly 28%. There are more details at the blog, and I will be back later today with another post to answer some questions and provide you with more details. I ask that you allow our teammates some privacy as they negotiate these difficult times.
Please see Practical effects of the October 2023 layoff for more information
This observation has become entirely too regular to spend a lot of words on it, so my answer will be brief: The decision-making at work here is poor, and the communication is both deficient and poorly-planned, even by the abysmal standards of the tech industry in general and SO specifically. Y'all should try to do your jobs better, especially those of you who still have them.
I've read through it, and seen the aftermath.
I'd like to being up a few specific points in the blog post
This is why we have been so focused on our path to profitability, even as we commit to the continued product innovation of Stack Overflow for Teams and the health of the public platform by building out our AI/ML capabilities.
Clearly so far, the pursuit of ML products hasn't resulted in profitability and the health of the public platform is adversely affected by the actions of management so far.
In the past year we've lost four community team members with deep experience in working with us.
I'll leave it to the community members active on Stack Overflow to comment on the effect of ML on their site.
The ROI ... clearly isn't there though.
As we finish this fiscal year and move into the next, we are focused on investing in our product. As such, we are significantly reducing the size of our go-to-market organization while we do so.
Investment means.. putting things in. You've taken things out. Often key parts of the community team. There's multiple initiatives that probably have been set back or scuttled by this.
There's a trust deficit, and as a long time user, a feeling that there's a repeat of the same mistakes we had before.
If you can't take care of a small, core community that's gotten the company to where it is, I'm unsure the leadership's in any place to steer the company to serve millions of users, or to 'reach profitability'.
This is why we have been so focused on our path to profitability
But has it? I don't want to guess how much losses are expected on that path, both human and financial.
I have only three things to say on this.
Firstly that it now feels like SE/SO is tied to a CEO and/or board that's determined to take the ship down with him or them, rather than accept any possibility their decisions are just wrong. I've seen this before in other companies and organizations and I'll see it again. Once this path is started down, it never ends well.
Secondly, my sympathy to those the latest round of sacrifices to plans that aren't (IMO) realistic. Good hunting to you all for new places to work at.
Thirdly. Well my common sense says that if you reduce the workforce you can't make more money. Better to keep trained (and loyal) staff on and find them work that generates income in the longer term. It's management's role to find ways to make money and clearly this is not being done at the most senior level, like the CEO and Board. Laying off staff, to me, reads as "I've no plan B or plan 2, so I'm sticking with plan A even if it's not working and shows no real sign of doing so.".
I suppose one more thing needs to be said : I hope I'm wrong to be pessimistic but I'm not seeing anything positive here.
