[Invictus0]

There's a large contingent on hacker news that still thinks it's some kind of moral failure to fire people

[Quarrelsome]

some people look at business as making money for the sake of making money. However other people look at making money as a means to better society. This goes back over a century to the Quaker run businesses, like Lloyds, Rowntree, Cadburys, etc.

You can imagine if your ultimate aim was to improve society, then acquiring a firm but having to sack a bunch of employees as somewhat of a failure.

[fsckboy]

>some people look at business as making money for the sake of making money. However other people look at making money as a means to better society.

if the two sides you describe agree on those definitions as mutually exclusive but in union describing the universal set of people, then they are both wrong.

as long as people engaged in a market make their own choices, then money is a direct measure of happiness on the margin. you give somebody your money in exchange for something you want and would rather have: this creates happiness out of thin air.

if you think a better society is a happier society, then going into business to make money is the same as going into business to make society better.

[Invictus0]

Option A: the business goes bankrupt, investors lose money, customers lose the product, all employees get fired.

Option B: the business stays afloat, investors make money, customers keep the product, some employees get fired with a severance.

You think option A is superior?

[serf]

it's not immoral to fire people.

it's immoral to lie to people.

very few people can do the mental gymnastics required to equate " we look forward to realizing Vimeo’s full potential as we reach new heights together " to "you're all getting fired."

at some point in the now far-distant past CEOs used to make heartfelt speeches and memos to a soon-to-be-downsized staff about how hard decisions had to be made and blah-blah-blah; now it's more about sequestering the decision makers away from the damaged goods while projecting daisies and sunshine for would-be investors.

The game has shifted far from the human factor into a purely financial/investor loop. Good for some people but generally worse for people .

And before I hear it : Yes it was always about money, but business wasn't always about investors . That projection of liability to a remote party is exactly the issue.

[hi_hi]

This was exactly my sentiment.

Going from "you're fine" to "you're fired", when it was always going to be "you're fired".

[x0x0]

Bending Spoon's business model has been -- at least for a decade -- buying companies that didn't operate profitably; stopping or slowing ongoing eng investments; and operating them profitably. Often that involves raising prices, but everyone is adults here.

Nobody lied. Vimeo will continue to operate, and probably will even have targeted ongoing development.

[johnnyanmac]

It's a moral failure to fire people without any notice for reasons unrelated to your company failining and not being able to afford you, yes. Let's not mince words here.

There are proper ways to let go of people, but that's not how it's done in the US.

[bagels]

Obviously sometimes a business is unsustainable, and it's unavoidable, but it's pretty sociopathic to not consider that people are harmed by being laid off.

[Invictus0]

They are literally not harmed. The end of an at-will employment agreement is not a harm.