alt Hacker NewsI guess that was poor framing on my part from the beginning; I used the term deadweight meaning overhead that can be cut, not implying culpability one way or another.
Which positions are culpable or victims is besides the point here (I have other comments on ZIRP related threads if you are interested, where I do make direct accusations).
> ordinary people who were lied to by the actual decision-makers
Were they truly lied to? They got paid for years of service. Now whether they got lied to by Bending Spoons denying there will be layoffs I don't know (or whether the lie matters - for all we know they got a fair severance package, at least in places where that is legally mandated?).
But for those who started their career in the "good days", I would say they got misled by an environment that rewarded raw engineering without concern for the business outcome of said engineering (and often rewarded over engineering in fundamentally unsustainable businesses). Now the business outcome is suddenly becoming the most important thing and these people are taken by surprise.
---
Now it's clear you have some kind of beef with me; I'm either talking complete shit, or I struck a nerve. Maybe a bit of both. Either way I will not pursue this conversation further - best of luck!
I don't have some kind of beef with you. I react personally too in these long discussions, don't begrudge you the impression.
Just saw what I thought was youth, but it was a fellow older fellow*, so chased the interlocution more than I usually would because I was curious and wanted to make sure there wasn't insight I had missed and you were speaking loosely (as is normal, we are not robots)
re: motivation, I took a lot of pride in not taking money back in prime ZIRP, early-mid 2010s and felt it was vindicated by what I saw happen to competitors.
What I saw was proto-"Bending Spoons" behavior. Frankly, Bending Spoons seems ethical and right-headed at its face. i.e. after 30 seconds with their website. but what do I know.
What I saw was private equity rollup iPad-based point of sale software who couldn't justify another round, and let the business owners using their point of sale systems flounder until they got the energy to switch. Explicitly. the rug pull wasn't just on engineering or further development of the system, it was support too. That might sound stupid (who needs support w/software?), but its necessary for point of sale due to credit card processing. Multiple companies, same playbook.
Cheers & apologies, I went too far, I left you feeling like it was a grudge.
FWIW it's also important to me because I want a fellow wide-eyed college-dropout-waiter soaking in HN from a small town to know VCs involved in these messes will continue acting as they have post ZIRP, as you've established.
* via your HN profile, not stalking off site or based on username