• @_number8_@lemmy.world
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    1932 years ago

    imagine seeing a site like bandcamp and having your goal being to take it over and kick people out. literally so psychopathic yet it’s thought of as ‘smart business’ in our society

  • TWeaK
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    1002 years ago

    Probably a good time to go and download copies of everything I have on there…

  • Fat Tony
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    702 years ago

    Man, techworkers are really into getting laid off huh?

    Jokes aside, why is this happening so much recently?

    • @Pechente@feddit.de
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      892 years ago

      Funding is drying up due to high interest rates. That’s why these kinda of layoffs happen more frequently right now.

      • @NOT_RICK@lemmy.world
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        702 years ago

        Also, everyone’s doing it so it’s harder for an individual company to be vilified for it. They get to blame it on “market forces”

        • @echo64@lemmy.world
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          912 years ago

          Funding drying up is real, but if you see an established profit making company doing it, just remember that whenever they do layoffs, share prices rise. The execs get big bonuses for share prices, so sacrificing employees for those bonuses is worth it to them because they are parasites on society.

            • bobalot
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              172 years ago

              The current system is because it has incentives for short term profiteering over steady long term profits.

              There could be tax reforms to more tax capital gains for stocks held for short periods of time and discounts for stocks sold after longer periods.

              This wouldn’t be a magic fix but a good first step.

              • @GeekyNerdyNerd@sh.itjust.works
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                132 years ago

                Another thing that would help would be banning shorting stocks. Shorting makes it more profitable for investors to take a stable, profitable company that isn’t experiencing exponential growth and intentionally run it into the ground than it would be to simply let it generate long term revenues.

                It’s obscene that we haven’t banned it and acts like it writ large. It simply shouldn’t be legal to sell somebody else’s property that they’ve loaned to you with the intention of buying another one once the price drops. It provides absolutely no value to society, is incredibly risky, and creates perverse market incentives where economic recessions and market crashes can be more profitable for some than the good times.

              • Semi-Hemi-Demigod
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                22 years ago

                That still won’t change the economy from exploiting workers to give value to people who’ve done no work at all.

            • Bleeping Lobster
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              92 years ago

              It’s fraudulent as fuck. Hedge funds who are also market makers (oh, sure, they claim to be ‘separate’ yet repeatedly get fined for their behaviour, all while not admitting fault of course). Definitely no conflict of interest there. That’s before we even get into ‘dark pools’: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dark-pool.asp

              When a majority of trades for many companies are conducted with zero oversight, that allows bad actors to manipulate the markets. It’s madness to me that this parallel system is allowed to exist. I just picked AAPL at random, 43% of trades were made ‘off-exchange’ yesterday. ~22m shares traded with zero price action or regulation.

              https://chartexchange.com/symbol/nasdaq-aapl/exchange-volume/

              • @db2@sopuli.xyz
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                32 years ago

                But but but there’s not zero oversight, they’re self-regulated which always works! 🤡

            • Semi-Hemi-Demigod
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              72 years ago

              For a stock to go up, the company has to make more profit.

              To make more profit, they need to pay their workers less than the value of the goods or services produced.

              Therefore, the stock price is a measure of how well a company can exploit its workers.

    • @gohixo9650@discuss.tchncs.de
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      122 years ago

      because of the eternal growth principle of capitalism. Objectively there is a point that a company cannot grow anymore. For example there cannot be infinite bands that will constantly enter bandcamp to increase their numbers. At that point the company holders find different paths, like temporarily increasing numbers by reducing the number of employees. In periods of recession and uncertainty this has a domino effect.

    • @force@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      Around COVID tech gained a lot of popularity and especially stuff like AI/ML became the new trend, so tech companies starting hiring insane amounts of people. In the past year though companies have started realizing “oh shit, we hired way too many people” and started laying off employees (usually the most expensive/highest paid, or the most “useless” i.e. non-tech positions).

      It’s not really all that bad for juniors especially because now they get a big boost in their opportunities for work, especially ones that worked at the big companies that overhired a ton like Meta, because they can say “I worked for Facebook/Google/JP Morgan” or whatever the hell on there resume, which will make you EXTREMELY attractive to employers and have your application stand out almost anywhere.

      At least for software development, you’re kind of expected to be hopping jobs a lot because that’s the only way you’re really going to get more benefits and higher pay (unless you get really lucky and find a company that actually cares about retaining current employees! or you become self-employed which is probably even harder). There’s practically an infinite number of jobs, many good ones, in the sphere because of how valuable tech is in the modern world, so you don’t have to worry about not being able to find a position when you get some experience. That’s why many companies will hire people who barely can even program, so long as they can write “hello world” in JS…

      Of course there are other reasons, like outsourcing work, or the company just wanting more profit short-term, or feeling like they don’t “need” as many employees since the tools for the job and the number&quality of applicants have gotten better…

      • @fosho@lemmy.ca
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        82 years ago

        this is incredibly inaccurate. we just hired for a single position and got well over 250 applicants. a junior dev friend of mine says he and none of his friends can find work. with all the layoffs tech jobs are just very scarce right now.

        • @EnderMB@lemmy.world
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          22 years ago

          Fully agree. I work at a big tech company, and we’ve had experienced software engineers really struggle to find work, even in tech hubs like London, Barcelona, NYC, etc. We’ve also had apprentices leave after 4+ years without a return offer, only to find unemployment awaiting them.

        • @force@lemmy.world
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          -42 years ago

          Depends on where you are applying, what I said won’t apply in every single municipality of course.

      • @dustyData@lemmy.world
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        32 years ago

        Prospect hire: “I worked for Facebook”

        Recruiter: “So did the other 400 applicants, we don’t care. How much humiliation and misery wages are you capable of taking before having a medical crisis? That’s the only metric we care about.”

    • @superguy@lemm.ee
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      -92 years ago

      Jokes aside, why is this happening so much recently?

      It’s cyclical and very well understood at this point.

      A business will hire a bunch of people to meet demand and then lay them off to make the company’s earnings look better the following quarter.

      At this point, I have no sympathy for anyone targeted by these layoffs if they work for a company that has been known to do them. Real ‘leopards ate my face’, vibes.

    • Terevos
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      162 years ago

      Who told you that? AFAIK that was definitely never true about computer tech jobs.

  • @jabathekek@sopuli.xyz
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    212 years ago

    Songtradr’s statement also confirmed that its purchase of Bandcamp had been completed, but it did not confirm if it would voluntarily recognize Bandcamp’s union that employees won earlier this year, despite pressure from employees and the Bandcamp community.

    RIP Bandcamp

    • @ilmagico@lemmy.world
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      62 years ago

      I really hope not … one of the very few music stores that are not in the business of screwing customers or artists, or both

  • AnonTwo
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    162 years ago

    Wasn’t this pretty recent? Did they buy the company just to lay people off??

    • VM_Abrantes
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      102 years ago

      I remember hearing that Harmonix was also acquired by Epic Games and there was a lot of speculation of a collaboration to reboot Rock Band using the Bandcamp library.
      One of the lead developers at Harmonix was asked about this on Reddit and they only replied with an emphatic “No.”
      Seeing this now brings the bigger picture into focus.

      • @sheogorath@lemmy.world
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        32 years ago

        One of the shit things about mergers is sometimes you get transferred to another division with a culture that doesn’t gel with you at all.

    • PxtlOP
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      142 years ago

      It’s not Epic doing this, but Songtradr, which is the company that purchased Bandcamp from Epic.

    • naticus
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      2 years ago

      Almost the worst. That still belongs to Embracer, but Epic isn’t far off. But Epic can’t be attributed for this fail since they had sold Bandcamp off already.

  • @Maerman@lemmy.world
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    42 years ago

    And here I am, just about ready to publish my new EP. Any alternatives to Bandcamp out there?