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.
Why are all these large tech companies failing this week? Is AI really decimating the internet on all fronts?
They’ve been failing for a while. It’s capitalism failing, not some magic tech entity concept like AI.
and it's by design too
The problem isn't AI, but interest rates.
Silicon Valley lived for a long time with an investor market that didn't really have anything better to invest their money in, so they would invest in a series of Internet companies with the hope that one of them would make it rich. Now that lending money can make you more money, it isn't worth it to invest in companies or ideas that don't make money right now.
The VC funding that Silicon Valley relied on dried up. If you are a startup, you need to be profitable before you burn through your cash. If you aren't a startup, you don't have to worry as much about new tech cannibalizing your core businesses, so they are more willing to cut product lines.
It's been going on for nearly a year now, but the layoffs tend to happen in waves because the stock market and investors in general tend to be very reactionary. Also a lot of companies released their quarterly earnings recently
investors / business / money people are stupid hogs who are blindly guessing and making the stingiest possible choices at any turn, they don't know shit or do shit
Pigs get fed. Hogs get slaughtered
lol you posted this 4 times. Lemmy.world was really buggy, I think I did the same a few times before moving instances
Pigs get fed. Hogs get slaughtered
Pigs get fed. Hogs get slaughtered
Pigs get fed. Hogs get slaughtered
Money isn’t as cheap anymore as it used to be. Tech companies have been struggling for about a year now. Even the larger ones have to show profits these days (not defending them, just explaining as I’m working in tech as well)
Its not a tech issue, its a finance issue.
The tech industry has always been highly speculative. What we saw in the 2010s was only made possible through venture capital and high digital advertising budgets.
Now that there's uncertainty and investments are expensive due to high interest rates, VC and advertisers are pulling back. As a result, we're seeing a bunch of business models that have never been viable on their own have to try and support themselves for the first time.
It's a greed issue. They are expecting 30% growth, and aren't satisfied with that, so they are cutting jobs too.
Growth isn't profit, if I lose $0.10 per widget and I grow my business from selling 1 million widgets per year to 1.1 million widgets per year I'm losing more money than I was before the growth.
I don’t know if I’d call Plex a “large tech company” though
Yeah they had ~175 employees in January, and this layoff was like 37 people. A shame, but not large scale
I would as they store massive amounts of data
What do you mean?
Not just this week but the past year or so
During covid many companies hired a ton of people due to the growth of many industries, particulalry consumer electronics and platforms like Plex and Netflix, and places like Amazon, Google, etc. Because many people were off work, there was greater demand. Obsiously infinite growth is not possible, and when things slowed down after covid, they moved to dump the employees they no longer needed
It doesnt necessarily have anything to do with AI; AI implementations are still extremely rough and moves to implement them at this point means providing an inferior experience. That said, some companies have been implementing AI, which will likely lead to worsening layoffs down the line
The current prime interest rate means it’s more expensive to borrow money right now, which means PE and VC are not throwing money at tech firms that aren’t traditionally profitable anymore. Plex likely runs at a steep loss and relies on private capital to stay afloat.
The era of free money is over. You can easily get >4% returns just parking your money in fixed income, so investors want to see cash flow and the easiest way to boost margin is to cut your largest expense (aka headcount). AI is just a convenient excuse.
It isn't AI, it's the economy. Companies that got money from investors regardless of their profitability now have to survive on their own profits which forces them to restructure