Plex, the free streaming app, laid off approximately 20% of its staff, TechCrunch has learned, which will affect all departments, including the Personal Media teams.
“This is by far the hardest decision we’ve had to make at Plex,” CEO Keith Valory said in a statement. “These are all wonderful people, great colleagues, and good friends. But we believe it is the right thing for the long-term health and stability of Plex.”
The streaming app gives users a single destination to upload and organize content (video, audio and photos) from their own server while also allowing them to stream it via mobile app, smart TV or desktop.
In recent years, however, Plex has invested in free, ad-supported streaming (FAST) and live TV offerings. The FAST market has become saturated as many companies have entered the space. Plus, the overall advertising industry has taken a hit, making it harder for companies to earn enough revenue.
Valory noted in his statement that the company was significantly impacted by the slowdown. “While we adjusted our business plan last year after the shift in equity markets to get us back on a path to profitability without having to cut personnel expenses, the downturn in the ad market in Q2 put significantly more pressure on our business and ultimately it became clear that we would need to take additional measures in order to maintain a confident path to profitability within the next 18 months,” he said.
He added that the company is still expected to see 30% growth this year.
According to a Slack message from Valory, obtained by The Verge, which first reported the layoffs, Valory noted that 37 employees would be impacted.
Additionally, it seems that Plex may have had another round of layoffs earlier this year. Five months ago, a former account executive posted on LinkedIn that they were “affected by company layoffs.”
As of January, the company had 175 employees, and its revenue was in the double-digit millions.
Updated 6/29/23 at 12:10 p.m. ET with a statement from CEO.
“This is by far the hardest decision we’ve had to make at Plex,” CEO Keith Valory said in a statement
As someone who’s been laid off, it always annoys me when people at the top try to act all hurt. Their name was never brought up as a potential layoff. The decision wasn’t nearly as hard as getting laid off.
Those who made the decision to go after the FAST market and lose money aren’t the ones getting laid off, it’s the ones who followed and built it. The risky outcome was never on the heads of those deciding to take the risk.
‘Some of you may die, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take’
That doesn’t make it easy, knowing you have to make a choice that negatively impacts people that have dedicated time and parts of their lives to your project. Having to make a choice that impacts others is not easy and only a sociopath wouldn’t give a shit. Despite what many think on sites like this, often many leaders, especially in smaller companies like this that started as a passion project are not those types of people etc. They often don’t have the same personality traits you HAVE to have to climb a ladder at say, IBM or Dell etc.
That’s not to say it doesn’t suck for the people being laid off. And that you can’t have empathy and sympathy for both sides. It’s not a competition or a binary choice.
Oh boo hoo. They still get to go to work tomorrow. They still get a paycheck. They don't have to go through the hassle of job seeking, interviewing, and the rejection letters. They don't have to go home and wonder if they'll make it through this time. They don't have to see the worry in their spouse's eyes, wondering if they will be able to pay the bills in the future. The worst they'll usually get is one of the people they're screwing over telling them, deservedly, to fuck off.
And no, two weeks severance isn't enough. It's almost an insult really, as it can take that long to get interviews scheduled.
That’s missing the point entirely. The statement isn’t playing a victim card at all. It’s recogition that it’s a shitty position to put someone in.
Expressing empathy and sympathy for those that the decision affects and stating/iterating that it was not an easy choice isnt something I take as “woe is me” or playing the victim card.
The outcome and road ahead sucks for those affected no matter what. But sometimes all anyone can do is show some mercy and not be a dick with how they approach it.
Now, that said, it’s entirely situational and I don’t actually know the culture at plex as an employer (only as a customer). So this could totally be nothing more than lip service.
But understanding and differentiating the difference between lip service and sincerity does matter.
Empathy doesn't pay the bills. I can't call up the bank and say "hey I can't pay the bill this month, but my ex-boss is really sorry about all this."
Google and Friends gave people 6 months of severance. Thats enough time to get your life back on track. But two weeks is basically just "here have another single payslip to go away forever."
Again not the point and no one said it did. But doing things with respect matters. And nothing lasts forever
Also 2 weeks is pretty standard, and isn’t terrible in an at will situation. Have you ever given a company 6 months notice?
Also if you are working full time at a company like Plex and living hand to mouth that’s not really on plex.
How are layoffs respectful? "Yeah we overspent or aren't quite as profitable as we'd like, so we've determined that you're redundant or unneeded or some other adjective that shouldn't ever be used on a human, and so we're going to have security perp walk you out of the office like you were caught stealing something, and we'll have someone box up your shit and break some of it and mail it to you in 4-8 weeks. Please sign this paper that says you wont talk about what we did to you and we'll toss a few bucks your way."
I've even seen companies where people got informed they were laid off when they couldn't log into their Slack account or whatever else. No other notice. Just dripping with respect.
I didn't get laid off from Plex. I've been laid off from other companies, large and small, and had friends laid off while I was a "survivor". My favorite time I was laid off was a few months after my wife had a baby, and a week after I told my boss she was pregnant again. That one extra paycheck sure helped me pay off the 2 month NICU stay for baby #1! I really felt respected by that company. Really liked it when the CEO sent out a form letter talking about how hard it was on him and how he lost a whole nights sleep figuring out who to screw over, instead of cutting costs in other areas.
In the overwhelming majority of cases, the CEOs are unwilling to make any personal sacrifices, but perfectly willing to sacrifice other people's livelihoods. How often have you seen a CEO say "we missed numbers this quarter, so I'm taking a 20% pay cut" or "We realized we don't need a gigantic downtown office with coffee bars on each floor, so we're going full remote and saving millions." Instead its always "We're cutting 20% of the workforce, so sorry if you're one of them!"
There’s so much projection in here it’s too much to reasonably unravel.
You aren’t entitled to a job in perpetuity. From what I can tell no one has been perp walked and that rarely happens with layoffs unless you give them a reason to. Most want to make it as amicable as possible.
Also, its not reasonable to think the CEO of plex taking a 20% paycut would offset 20% of the workforce. Those aren’t even equitable comparisons. In fact he seems to have pretty forward thinking opinions on hiring
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-distributed-workforces-win-keith-valory
I don’t know what he makes and don’t really care to look it up. But the rest is jsut crazy. Plex has taken risks across the board, they may not be working out.
https://www.fastcompany.com/3067901/plexs-bold-plan-to-take-on-the-streaming-goliaths
And now that the market has turned funding is drying up, which they have relied on
https://www.fastcompany.com/90625189/plex-funding-streaming-new-features
What’s your solution?
Like having an office manager tell you to gtfo, instead of the CEO who was "deeply sorry" for all this, or calling everyone to the floor, reading off a list of names, and then saying "If you heard your name, this is your last day with the company", or the people who find out by not being able to access their work accounts (google, outlook, slack, whatever). Sure is amicable.
I guess I'm just projecting, after all, not all of us are temporarily embarrassed CEOs, who understand just how hard it is to tell someone that they've gotta do a lot of bullshit for the next n weeks, and we're deeply sorry (but not sorry enough not to do it).
Smacks of the same energy Spez gave off when he's "listening to people's concerns" while demodding people right and left and being unwilling to budge on the amazingly arbitrary API cut off.
And I don't need to be a master chef to tell you that refried dumpster chicken is bad food.
Layoffs indicate one thing and one thing only: the leadership made some wrong choices along the way, and so they're going to step on the people that had no input into the process that got them there, so they, the people who made those bad choices, can stick around and continue to make more bad bets. No amount of "mercy" or "empathy" can ameliorate the fact that they're screwing other people over in their own interests.
A key example of this is that in virtually every single layoff severance package, they never move the vesting cliff forwards. Been there less than a year and not at your 25% cliff? Guess what, those n months you spent are worth fuck all. If they were as sorry and merciful as they claim they were, they'd move the cliff up and give you the appropriate percentage of your options. Laid off 2 months before your cliff? Cool, here you go, you get 20.75% of your total (assuming 4 years with 1 year being 25%) vesting package. But no, they just take those shares from you as if they had fired you, because thats all a layoff really is: mass firings
And the people that mass fire people to save their own asses aren't entitled to sympathy. They are the bad guy in this situation.
Since you asked for some things that make laying off people less shitty for the people who actually suffer and not the "poor" CEOs, here's some low cost things you can do that don't fuck people over quite as much. IIRC Shopify did some of these when they had to cut workforce:
None of that sounds too egregious, yet its never done by the "deeply sympathetic" leadership.
Those at the top are the sociopaths lol.
So anyone that has grown within a company and into leadership or executive positions are sociopaths full stop?
That’s not really a healthy outlook to have tbh.
It's not a black and white thing. it's a probability thing. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5389508#
I’m aware of the theory. And even acknowledged it in my initial reply in this very chain….
Oh, ok. Alright then
Of course it’s not an easy decision. But don’t go all “woe is me” when you’re not the one actually suffering. Own the mistake. Promise to do better.
Expressing empathy and sympathy for those that the decision affects and stating/iterating that it was not an easy choice isnt something I take as “woe is me” or playing the victim card.
The outcome and road ahead sucks for those affected no matter what. But sometimes all anyone can do is show some mercy and not be a dick with how they approach it.
Now, that said, it’s entirely situational and I don’t actually know the culture at plex as an employer (only as a customer). So this could totally be nothing more than lip service.
But understanding and differentiating the difference between lip service and sincerity does matter.
Empathy and sympathy is talking about how awful it is for people to have to lose their job. Especially in this market. What they’re doing is talking about themselves and how difficult it was for THEM to make the decision. I don’t care about them. I care about those who lost their livelihood.
You’re right that it wouldn’t be an easy decision. It must be awful. But losing your job is still way worse.
When COVID started really popping off, management at my old job gathered all the technicians together in the shop. They read a bunch of names off a piece of paper while everyone stood around confused, then they said "If you heard your name, this is your last day with the company." Absolutely heartless.
They then put out a canned public message about how hard the decision was, and how every employee is a member of the family.