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Evernote firing lots of staff?!

BrooklynBen

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BrooklynBen

BrooklynBen 45

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Any comments on this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36609641&fbclid=IwAR3YRlw36bgKlSR3oV9wKNkaIcC0o8eMWBX2-DWS4TkNYph9uOsp0nHBIrQ ?

As I'm using Evernote to OCR and search/organize tens of thousands of pages of historical documents for my dissertation, I'm somewhat concerned about Evernote's long-term viability. I've been a paid user— my wife too, also wrote her diss using Evernote— for years. 
This concern comes on top of my distaste for New Evernote, which killed the tabs (I used extensively), limited fonts,  made stupid screen-wasting decisions, and uses Electron.

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agsteele

agsteele 2,951

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Only ycombinator seems to be reporting this.  (well actually Reddit has reported that ycombinator has said this...)

I've not seen anything to indicate that this is true.  We'll have to see.

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agsteele

agsteele 2,951

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Ten minutes after my earlier post, Evernote Experts have received notice that Evernote is moving its centre of operations to Europe so all USA based staff have been laid off. I wasn't aware of this before the the staff.

The staffing will now be based in Europe.

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gazumped

gazumped 11,677

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12 minutes ago, sjrixon said:

I've so many questions!!

I don't care who owns a company* or where they're based - as long as it does what I need,  I'm happy.

* OK - with one or two notable exceptions involving the apparent sanity - or otherwise - of the individual(s) in question...

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WilliamL

WilliamL 654

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I don’t think any of us rejoice to hear of job losses - it sucks! Bad! Sadly by choosing to sell the company to a European based buyer this seems inevitable. The gains are just obvious, communications, regulations etc. it’s a shame and i hope the staff affected quickly find work. 

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Pete Note

Pete Note 0

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4 hours ago, agsteele said:

Or from the horses mouth...

https://evernote.com/blog/moving-the-evernote-center-of-operations-to-europe/

 

Basic platitudes though. News story had more info.  Curious where their largest user base is located.  Need to figure out how to transfer out my data in preparation for future issues.  If forcing things like page numbering under the premium package are suggestive of the future plans, it's not promising.

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dsspindler

dsspindler 3

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I am upset that I was not allowed to cancel after they Closed the US developer staff. I would not have paid, what I consider exorbitant premium for Evernote. I will move to another platform, probably Joplin, and I will just consider myself unlucky that I lost my money.

Dave

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gozzilla78

gozzilla78 43

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Why all this pessimism about the take-over by Bending Spoons? I mean: it's difficult to make Evernote worse than it is now... And since they invested some pretty penny to buy Evernote, I see it's in their interests to make it shine again.

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Boot17

Boot17 1,457

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29 minutes ago, gozzilla78 said:

Why all this pessimism about the take-over by Bending Spoons? I mean: it's difficult to make Evernote worse than it is now... And since they invested some pretty penny to buy Evernote, I see it's in their interests to make it shine again.

Probably mostly a rhetorical question, but I'll take a stab at it anyway...

Because it's change. People don't like change. Also, often when a tech company gets bought out, its products are left to die.

Maybe people were already on the fence and want to keep Legacy and it has become clear that it is definitely on its way out.

Maybe the price is now too much for the value they get out of the app.

I personally liked the direction the app was going prior to the acquisition. I think it could be easy to make it way worse. And along those lines, since the acquisition we've had some new big issues that have made it arguably worse --  huge price increases, missing data, Red Screen of Death, overwhelmed technical support, and others. Maybe they went too fast with pushing out real-time sync, layoffs, coupling AI with the real-time sync, etc. I dunno.

I'm hoping it will be better. I'm hoping that it will continue on the same great trajectory that I think the team was on prior to the acquisition. And I hope these sentiments from here https://toolfinder.co/guides/moving-from-evernote (emphasis mine) turn out to be true:

Quote

Evernote's demise has been spoken about broadly. With Bending Spoons at the helm of Evernote, this is the beginning of Evernote in my own opinion. There are a few reasons behind this prediction for Evernote - let's begin with the first one.

  • Bending Spoons - This company isn't your average app development firm. Once they were acquired Evernote I did some digging, they have a great track record of turning around apps, even buying one off of GoPro to re-focus. 500M downloads across their apps and huge funding rounds that companies like ClickUp and others score. Investors like Ryan Reynolds too and many other high profile individuals. The grounding for Evernote and the skills are stronger than ever.
  • AI Development - Development in AI is a skill of Bending Spoons, they are one of the leading app development companies in this and if you're willing to see what Evernote can do with AI and your past notes, this could be exciting. Development in this area will take some time, but the innovations here could outweigh development from note-taking apps adding GPT-3 and 4 plugins to their current tool in the long-term. [I love AI stuff, but I'm personally skeptical about this one.]
  • A Change of Team - Discovering that the remaining Evernote team had been fully laid off was sad news, I knew many of them and of course layoffs like the one with Evernote is sad upheaval for many. But sometimes a change in personnel is a change in thinking. 

Evernote will likely become much more of a consumer application than it was.

 

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dsspindler

dsspindler 3

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I can tell you the reason that I am leaving. I almost left when Evernote almost doubled in price, but combined with laying off all Americans that were working for Everrnote, that sways me to drop it.

David

 

Thanks for the suggestion. I will try that.

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WilliamL

WilliamL 654

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10 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

Is an Italian less worthy than an American to work on a piece of code ?

And what’s your position about EN laying off their staff in Chile as well ? Unimportant because „far away“ ?

Just askin‘ …

This is what really bothers me about some of these attitudes - they display an unchecked bigotry towards other nations, in this case Europe. It’s actually quite appalling and needs to be called out in my view. 

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gazumped

gazumped 11,677

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Again,  just for the record - while it was very sad for the individuals involved,  I believe they got a pretty good deal in salary and health benefits to keep them going  - and I bet their expertise will be in some demand with all the other companies in the note-taking market...

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CalS

CalS 5,281

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It is interesting in today's do it anywhere work environment that such a chunk would be let go.  Could be cost, competence, resistance, BS thinks they do it better, or something else.  When everyone goes any not absorbed as yet implicit knowledge goes as well.  

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PinkElephant

PinkElephant 8,126

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The simple reason is you are working for a company that doesn’t want the results of your work anymore.

This can be objectively right or wrong, this can be because they see better options or simply can’t pay you any longer. It won’t change the outcome, which is a more or less harsh landing watching for another opportunity. So respect for everybody who gets into such a situation, and has to handle it.

If the company is really better off after going through the pain of restructuring is another question. Often they find out that the knowledge that is not formalized and documented is at least as important as what’s in the job descriptions. This starts with „Who is still there knowing about …“. If the answer is „Nobody“, it can be an irreversible loss of knowledge.

What is relevant for me is whether the service I pay for is still delivering the value I have ordered by subscribing. This I my question about the whole story.

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gazumped

gazumped 11,677

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2 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

What is relevant for me is whether the service I pay for is still delivering the value 

Yeah - we can't know what politics and practicalities apply internally.  There may or may not be good reasons for the split - but as @PinkElephant my main concern is:  does everything I need still work? (Within normal Evernote variables for the meaning of the word "work"...)

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dsspindler

dsspindler 3

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Well, it may be a little closer to me than others, however, I went through the same thing twice. I did not like it, one bit. Granted, within a few years, both times, I was in better shape, but those in between years were tough.

I just figured that if enough people dropped En, then perhaps they may rethink their "cost cutting" move.

David

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gazumped

gazumped 11,677

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1 hour ago, dsspindler said:

I just figured that if enough people dropped En, then perhaps they may rethink their "cost cutting" move.

Sorry - it's a done deal;  but those individuals came off with a year's healthcare and some good salary bonuses.  The general opinion seems to be taht they did pretty well...

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AlbertR

AlbertR 537

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15 hours ago, janndk said:

... use their expertise and start a new note taking app

... or take all Legacy stuff and offer customers to either continue with that or start over with EN10.
OK, this possibility is dead since EN layed off people. It would have been a nice idea before BS took over all.

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janndk

janndk 500

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1 hour ago, AlbertR said:

... or take all Legacy stuff and offer customers to either continue with that or start over with EN10.
OK, this possibility is dead since EN layed off people. It would have been a nice idea before BS took over all.

Maybe they will soon have to ask ex-staffers to come back.

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HeBoIz

HeBoIz 241

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50 minutes ago, janndk said:

Maybe they will soon have to ask ex-staffers to come back.

I would not expect this:

BS seems to have managed most of the first big issues with RTE-sync after introducing in May without staff layed off in February - as told operating from Italy. So they might trust in their own crafts and no big chances for turning the wheel back. After all they have to build and establish their own strategy and philosophy for future Evernote which will not be bound to strong on the past.

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