Malwarebytes Lays Off 100 Employees Ahead of Business Split (techcrunch.com) 20
Cybersecurity giant Malwarebytes this week laid off 100 employees as it prepares for a major restructuring that will see the business split into two, TechCrunch reported. From the report: The layoffs come almost exactly a year after Malwarebytes eliminated 14% of its global workforce. A former employee who asked not to be named told TechCrunch that the layoffs come just weeks after the company's chief product officer, chief information officer, and chief technology officer were let go. An archived version of the Malwarebytes leadership page shows that these positions no longer exist at the company. Multiple posts on LinkedIn showed that a number of additional employees were laid off this week. One former Malwarebytes employee described the layoffs as "an unfortunate annual tradition."
Exciting place to work! (Score:1)
One former Malwarebytes employee described the layoffs as "an unfortunate annual tradition."
Well now that must be fun every year for the employees.
Re:Exciting place to work! (Score:5, Interesting)
Well now that must be fun every year for the employees.
I lived through this and it's terrible.
Back in the early 2000s, I was working for your typical dot-com bubble startup. The company went from 9 to 360 employees between 1999 and 2001, and sure enough, after the bubble burst, the company started firing people in waves.
I remember it vividly: the first time it happened one Tuesday morning, our CEO invited us in the break room for coffee and donut and for "some news about operations". Long story short: 10 employees got their pink slips that morning. Of course their contribution was invaluable and he was sad to let them go, but it was to ensure the survival of the company. Yeah right... Why them of course was anyone's guess, and a big blow to the poor suckers' self-esteem.
Some weeks later, it happened again. Same thing: Tuesday morning, coffee and donuts. This time people got a little alarmed, and rightly so: a few more came out of the break room with their pink slips.
And again, and again. Tuesday morning donut lottery we called it.
It happened 8 times. Each time, those of us who were still there wondered if we'd get axed. Those who did often went back to their office crying to clear their things. Those who didn't breathed a sigh a relief, knowing that they still had a job... for now. Very stressful.
I survived the 8 rounds, only to find the doors closed with a chain a padlock one morning, and the officers nowhere to be seen. They left with whatever was left in the till and the creditors got the court to send the sheriff to secure the remainder of the assets.
Re: Exciting place to work! (Score:3)
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You jest, but this terrible period is seared into my memory. 22-some years later, whenever my company invites us for a mystery meeting, I feel a pang of anxiety. My company is flush with cash, I trust it completely and I know nothing bad will happen, yet I still get a feeling of impending doom each and every time. And it's been like that at all the places I've worked at since that time.
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> The company went from 9 to 360 employees between 1999 and 2001
I think a lot of people don't have realistic expectations at some point. When you're in a situation where a company grows massively, you need to be sure to see the same growth in revenues and especially, in net revenues. If not, that's a disaster.
I remember 8 months ago, everyone was lambasting Elon for shrinking Twitter back down to 3000 employees, down from 8000. Yet anyone who bothered to research understood Elon simply brought back 20
Re: Exciting place to work! (Score:1)
Problem with your analysis is that Twitter has had a ton of problems because of those musky layoffs. He laid off people doing real work along with no doubt some amount of dead weight, and Twitter suffered for it. The front page didn't work correctly for weeks on end, literally. That's pathetic.
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> Problem with your analysis is that Twitter has had a ton of problems because of those musky layoffs.
Twitter has had a ton of problems because they finally started doing something to the site. Twitter hadn't had a new feature in forever, even with a bloated workforce and in the last 8 months, the site has gone through multiple revisions to increase tweet lengths, editing, the revamped Blue subscription, creator revenue sharing. Tons of new and exciting features the old team just weren't doing. They w
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You can have dead weight that needs cutting, and you can do too much cutting, at the same time.
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Been there with a computer company. There was even a time where it was monthly that they'd send the henchmen around. They'd walk the building, stop by your desk, tap you on the shoulder, then watch as you cleaned out your personal items and escort you out of the building. THAT'S a morale booster, let me tell ya.
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I feel your pain!
What are the new businesses? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What are the new businesses? (Score:5, Informative)
The split — which was not previously made public — will see Malwarebytes separate its consumer and corporate-facing business units. The consumer business will focus on tools such as identity protection and VPN, while the remaining business will focus on enterprise-facing software like managed and endpoint detection, Kleczynski tells TechCrunch.
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Like Symantec when Broadcom took its enterprise and consumer spun off to NortonLifeLock before renaming to GEN Digital.
Nice! We get to watch corporate blackhats... (Score:1)
They *JUST* bought Cyrus Security (Score:2)