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MakerBot Lays Off 20 Percent of Its Employees
Jason Koebler writes MakerBot fired roughly 20 percent of its staff Friday. Figures from 2014 placed the company's ranks at 500, meaning the cuts could equate to roughly 100 employees. The orders came from new CEO Jonathan Jaglom, Motherboard was told. Employees are apparently being led out of the company's Brooklyn office by security today. "It's about 20 percent of staff," a MakerBot representative, who asked not to be identified because she had not received approval to speak to the press, told Motherboard. "Everyone suspected that something would be coming with the new CEO, and that there would be restructuring coming."
They obviously they printed replacements
Letter To Iran
Just found out MakerBot was a 3D printer maker.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
And in other news, MakerBot CEO Jonathan Jaglom will receive a bazillion dollar bonus, and another ten bazillion dollars in stock options. It's predicted he will end his term as CEO by urinating and defecating and the smoldering corpse of MakerBot before seeking greener pastures to assrape and pillage.
When asked for comment, Mr. Jaglom replied "I'd just like to say fuck you all very much!"
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
There's a difference between being fired and laid off (just ask your local unemployment office). But this summary seems to use the terms interchangeably.
Since a reason has not been given for the workers losing their jobs, either one could apply. But they aren't the same.
But perpetual leisure is our future!
You brainless cheerleading gullible fools?
They patented things that other people in the community designed and claimed them as their own. Makerbot may have been one of the first, but they ended up as scumbags.
Now there are a ton of other companies out there doing it better, Good luck to the new CEO, he's captain of a sinking ship.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Looks like we've hit peak 3d printer, at least as far as the near-term is concerned.
I'm wondering if this will be analagous to the daisy-wheel printer. For certain applications it's the best choice, but those are very few and far between, and are entirely based on fixed fonts and software made to do a standard set of rows and columns with fixed-width characters. They work great for printing multi-part forms and for where one wants text that's more readable than dot-matrix, but that's about it.
These first generation consumer-grade 3d printers are like that, but worse, because there's not much in the way of a business market compared to those paper printers. They were bought by businesses that specifically needed rapid prototyping, or they were bought by hobbyists that got into it as the latest craze. There's only so much of either, so once that small market is saturated there's less need for companies supplying whole printers.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Employees are apparently being led out of the company's Brooklyn office by security today.
This has always rubbed me the wrong way. These people worked hard for the company and then they get thrown away like garbage, or worse potential threats. Why can't we treat people with respect and understanding. It is a serious personal trauma to get laid off... I always thought the way security escorts you from the building was kind of a "kick-em-while-they're-down" dick move.
I got laid off from a company during the financial crisis (10% of my company was laid off). I was accompanied to my desk to pick up my jacket and I was out the door. I had to make a freaking appointment to collect my personal belongs from my desk the next day. Everyone in the office tried to hide while me and the other victims cleaned out our stuff (our logins were already disabled). I guess they thought they would catch whatever it was the killed us.
I really hope they don't have any trouble finding other work, From the sound of people being lead out of the office by security it sounds like this was a show up for work "surprise" you've been laid off sorta day and that has to seriously suck :(
The same can't be said for my feelings towards Makerbot, I can't say I've ever really cared for them.
Let the bubble begin to burst....!
Not now. This company is going to fail hard with their drop in morale and the increased quality of competitors. No way am i going to buy from a company that looks like it's tanking.
They took yer jobs!
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
MakerBot can print new employees for pennies on the dollar.
OK, it's a pet peeve, but I hate it when people use "fired" for people let go through no fault of their own. One gets "fired" for fucking up, one is "laid off" due to someone else fucking up.
I called Makerbot to get an education price quote on a printer & materials to compare with other 3D printer manufacturers. I had to call back 4 times before the guy actually sent me a quote, and all I wanted was a printer & 10 spools of filament. He was supposed to send me some sample prints as well, and never did. Needless to say, Makerbot lost any consideration for what is going to be our first of several purchases.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Companies like XYZprinting are eating Makerbot's lunch with machines that have just as good resolution, but cost a quarter of what Makerbot charges. You can no longer afford to charge premium, exorbitant prices for consumer-grade 3D printers.
now to hire 50-100 H1-b to replace them.
To decimate his soldiers to discipline them, meaning eliminating 10% of them; rather than get rid of 20% of them!
"You've been replaced by your own robots"
Table-ized A.I.
While unrelated to this actual event, the documentary Print the Legend focuses on several companies, MakerBot included, beginning near their inceptions and through their growing pains. It is an interesting commentary on 3D printing, business and the legal hullaballoo surrounding the 3D printing of gun parts. It's available on Netflix.
By the end of the documentary, the direction MakerBot was headed seemed somewhat unhealthy; the remaining founder, Bre Pettis, had made several 180s at that point.
It's how they "make their mark".
Doesn't matter if it's a good idea, the markets react positively to it, because everyone only thinks of this quarter, and maybe the next.
I hear China is putting 3D printers in all schools and universities nationwide.
Maybe if they picked up some Mandarin they might find a job?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
A friend of mine got fired from his job when the new owner decide to bring his cronies in. It was supposed to be a secret thing but he got advance notice by a someone else.
Before leaving he shredded all the documents he had created in his spare time documenting his work , and formatted and reinstalled NT on his workstation.
Why? Something in his contract about leaving the equipment and desk as he had found them...in 1999.
Thank you and goodnight.
Let me let you all in on a secret. I have seen what Makerbot has been doing. It is not right. I saw this coming a long time ago. You people who are trying to justify what has happened to the 100 employees that were all let go at once. I mean there were group meetings when this happened. You guys should know that you are defending a company that is knowingly selling a product that they know does not work. The developer informed them that it wasn't ready and they insisted on pushing the product out. Results are over 1000 returns only to be repaired and sent back out still in the same quality. Makerbot laid off their top workers. People who busted their asses in sickness and in health day in and day out. Yes some deserved the ax but many did not and they were the ones who refused to kiss management's ass who I must say could not nor had the knowledge of building the products. Sometime the ones that did messed up and blamed it on the subordinates. This was an unfair move because they weren't patient enough to perfect the products that were being sold to customers.
Yours truly
Fuck Slaverbot.
The gun nutz will tell you our society will be more "civil and polite" when everyone is walking around with a gun. The "walk of shame" that is done in the US when employees are terminated is a direct response to the wide spread and easy availability of easily concealed firearms, and is a perfect example of that "civil and polite" society they predict.
I have no idea who MakerBot are. It's bad some people are losing their jobs I guess, but beyond that I couldn't care less.
The fraudulent patents that makerbot has filed will eventually end up in the coffer of Stratasys
http://3dprintingindustry.com/...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ra...
And guys remember, backup copy all IP/source code from companies weekly after a new ceo.
Setup your desktop in such a way, you can walk out and make it not boot the next day, Change bios settings to something that will fry the cpu/ram, save & power off.
Add backup admin accounts to all machines you can.
Change all SSL certificates to expire on 4th July.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Sure they could do the inkjet business model. But why do THAT when they can charge you an arm and a leg for the printer, then chip the fillment and extort you for your first born?
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Apparently NO ONE bothers to actually follow the 3D Printer market as a business. Cubify bought up all the small players and is now the 800-lb gorilla with NO REAL COMPETITION worth talking about. That includes Makerbot.
Now Cubify isn't all that (we have a CubePro and instantly - i.e. within hours of using it - found dozens of bone-headed design features we'd do different and easily could if we wanted to get int that business) but they have revenues and product lines that make money. Makerbot is stuck on the ideology of OSH which while noble, simply doesn't pay the bills and any company that has employees can't afford to live on dreams at the expense of financial realities. Especially not companies that are doing hardware.
Easy to guess. Oh yeah, you know how to count :)
In Europe, the decent (legal) thing to do is give the employee some amount of notice, the same way an employee has to notice the employer. Marching the SS (read that shorthand to mean whichever service you prefer) into the cubicles and "escorting" people out isn't a procedure.
Someone makes something great.
They are first-to-market.
Big Corp. buys them out, desiring only their IP.
All of the engineers who actually made the product (& company) valuable are fired.
Big Corp. squanders that first-to-market advantage to gain short-term profits.
Customers who've bought prior-generation products versions beg to have important improvements made to the line of tools.
Big Corp. ignores customer pleas while simply juicing the IP they bought, for every nickel they can get.
Big Corp. refuses to implement any improvements, new features, etc. because they can't. They fired the innovators and implementers to save on salary costs.
Yep, they essentially just find a ripe piece of fruit, and then juice it.
This is what small businesses in the US have been reduced to: fruit trees. Small companies take the risk of being inventive. When something proves to be valuable, it is bought-out, everyone fired, and the market for the product stagnates. I have been on both ends of this stick. I pleaded with a certain company, who sold a $650k tool, to make two minor engineering improvements that would essentially double the market for the device (it would be a tool for two markets, not just the one). These changes would have cost about $500 per tool. The end result? Well, since they had bought-out the small company that originally designed it, fired all the engineers and control-system programmers, the Big Corp. was literally incapable of implementing any improvements (or even bug-fixes) to the system. Recall that they fired all the engineers and programmers, and simply bought the IP and the market the small biz. had cornered.
To cap off this specific example — Another company that truly does innovate has, well, devised a tool that does "the thing" better, and costs 1/3 of what the Big Corp. is charging. They listened when I detailed to them engineering specs. for what customers needed in a next-gen tool. Well, the Big Corp. is about done juicing their piece of fruit, and this other company will soon take over the market . The Big Corp. made their millions, so they move on. I just hope that this "other company" isn't bought-out.
The sad result of this cycle is that American innovation in products is stagnated by Big Corps. that choose to simply juice innovative products, rather than actually improve them to grow the market. In the end, the customer & consumer lose. Oh, and the US as a whole.
you CANNOT get unemployment benefits (they reason that it's equivalent to quitting - if there WAS a diff between "fired for cause" and "quit", and you wanted to quit you'd just perform badly and get fired (which might endanger people and businesses)). This difference between "fired for cause" (NO benefits or unemployment payments) and "layed-off" (unemployment benefits and possible benefits) is why SOME companies have managers who are very good at generating the proper records over an employee's career so that anybody working for the company can be "fired fo cause" whenever management wants it.
Remember: "unemplyment insurance" is NOT actually insurance (the employee does not make regular payments to an insurance company that invests the money and then pays-out to the relatively few who must file claims). UI is a scheme between employers and state governments that requires the employer to cough-up money every month after laying somebody off for a period of time as long as that person is sill unemployed. EVERY employee "fired for cause" instead of "layed off" saves a company THOUSANDS of dollars. I learned all this the hard way decades ago in California when I was layed-off from my first job (business went down and the company layed everybody off). I got my first unemployment check, but when it was time for the second, the agency refused to issue it saying that my former employer notified them that I had a new job (I did NOT yet and was not in contact with them, so the report they filed was clearly phony). I later found out that my former employer was finished shutting-down his business before the unemployment people finished investigating his false filing of my having a new job, and that this was not a tactic unique to that employer. I've never again been layed-off (which did not feel any better than I imagine being fired would have felt), but over the years dealing with operators of other CA businesses I learned about the "for cause" issue and the managers documenting everything tactic to convert lay-offs into firings (also now used in conjunction with H1-B visa tricks).
Business in the US has become increasingly optimized over the decades, and companies with cash on the line have found all sorts of ways to save that cash. Given the amount of their own money that is on the line, those businesses will ALWAYS be one step ahead of the government regulators and lawmakers who do NOT have their own money on the line.
If you don't want to do stupid human tricks for food, you have to move to a less civilized, more humane country.
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
Makerbot sold out when they went from open source advocates, to "pay me now", about 2 years ago. No surprise here. Bre and friends pretended to be all open-source supportive, as long as the open-source community gave them talent for free. And then they got greedy, the end.
It's a short story but it ends quickly, with a predictable result.