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Comment by ohsnapman | Hacker News Reader

What's up with reductionist posts like this every time a company announces layoffs? Scaling out a global business takes a lot more work than it does to run a no-SLA side project. And you hire people to build out businesses that don't yet exist. When you've overreached, or targets are consistently not being met, you re-org, or, if that isn't possible, you scale back.

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> What's up with reductionist posts like this every time a company announces layoffs?

I hate people like this. "Oh I could build that in like a weekend with Go and React no need for 100s of devs..." Those statements only come from people who never built something even remotely in this size and have no idea how complex this stuff becomes when done proper.

Glad you hate people like me, that's very inciteful :-)

Bandcamp (a competing music platform) only has 47 employees: https://bandcamp.com/about

Well it comes from having been part of companies that were going through this explosive growth phase, and seeing the corrosive effect it can have on productivity if not managed properly. I've seen formerly efficient and productive and happy teams get completely demoralized as truck loads of new people are added but nothing new gets done.

I'm not saying this is exactly what happened there, but as a user of their product I'm disappointed because I simply did not see a growth in features or improvement quality that I would associate with a company that was scaling out like it apparently was?

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