Replit cuts staff by 30 amid aggressive AI push in software development | Hacker News Reader

Replit cuts staff by 30 amid aggressive AI push in software development

venturebeat.com

35 pointspetethomas19 comments

I'm very confused what Replit's business model these days actually is. Their landing page says "Build software faster", and mentions some AI development/deployment platform. What is the actual product? Is it an IDE or something more like Heroku? Above the fold they show an example of some order form prototype. What am I supposed to take away from that? Why would I use a service for prototyping instead of my regular dev environment?

I don't mean to be harsh, but I'm really confused (and others probably are to) what they are actually selling.

For a long time I thought they were a cloud IDE "with steroids" to "justify", but I never bought the idea that a webapp would ever be better for professional swe. For that use case, I don't see a valuable thing in a browser environment that can't be delivered in a desktop env.

It seems like their business model is the same as the original Visual Basic: allow more people to write software, so have higher ups pay for replit instead of paying for developers.

It’s a cloud IDE, with 1-click deployments, a great code-focused LLM, and can be used from almost any device. Agree the home page can be tightened up, but if any of that sounds interesting, just give it a try.

I’m a hobbyist coder (not full time dev), and it’s been wonderful for me. Zero time to set up an environment (this is the huge one for me), super easy pushes to prod, and I can use my PC or iPad to code equally as effectively (really).

It might be authentic in this case, but I expect a lot of people will use this story to frame layoffs as positive instead of a sign of weak performance.

Whose performance? You think they cut the lowest 15% of performer or that the management was weak?

Layoffs are always a sign of bad management. 99% of the time layoffs are because someone high up overextended.

In the mythical ~1% where layoffs only affect "low performers", I would argue it is still managements fault for allowing hiring practices that result in the need to cut a substantial percentage of the company.

> Layoffs are always a sign of bad management. 99% of the time layoffs are because someone high up overextended.

That seems like too strong of a statement to make. There's certainly macroeconomic factors that management can't predict, and if they cause layoffs it's a stretch to call that "bad management". You could argue "well maybe they shouldn't grown as aggressively as they did", but under-growing is arguably "bad management" as well. After all, the purpose of a business isn't solely to be a jobs program. If you grew 50% in the past decade but your competitor grew 200% in the same timeframe, that's arguably also "bad management", even if it meant you you were able to avoid layoffs in the last recession.

In fairness, workforce strategy changes should be decoupled from financial performance except in extreme cases. Making money is not a reason to keep people you don't need, nor is losing money a reason to cut people as long as you can still afford them.

Does this also apply to hiring as well as firing? Should companies hire more to make more money in times of growth? Is this a coherent position?

Making money doesn't always mean growth and vice versa. You don't hire Santa Claus impersonators in January even though you just had the best month of the year.

Amjad's way of delivering bad news was very humane, and to the point. The post-separation benefits are also pretty good.

He did a very good job.

https://twitter.com/amasad/status/1791155645091283311

The difference between today and a few years ago is that a few years ago net new headcount would be allocated for whatever strategic decision is being made where as today people in roles that aren't critical to the new strategic direction are exited to make space for heads that are vital to the outcomes of that decision.

Or, this is being used as an excuse to cut people because replit cannot afford to keep them after making missteps.

The frequent changes to pricing and extremely restricted free tier have been pretty off putting, at least among people I know.

It seems like you need to go all in on a paid account if you want to try using replit, and also the exact pricing on that plan may change every ~3 months.

I was expecting this to be the typical euphemistic lawyer-speak but I'm positively surprised as much as the news suck

The staff is being reduced by 30 people, not 30%. And they're getting a good severance package.

Replit had 186 employees[1], so 30 people and 30% (56 people) is not that big of a difference, comparing to some larger companies.

[1]: https://growjo.com/company/Replit

That is a pretty significant difference. 56 would be nearly twice as many.

30/186 == ~0.16.

16% is very different from 30%. Still important, but just a little over half as much.

Nothing says "making an aggressive push" like reducing headcount.

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