LeEco Said To Lay Off Over 80 Percent of US Workforce (cnbc.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: LeEco, a Chinese company that made a big splash in the U.S. last fall, is preparing for a round of layoffs that may happen as soon as Tuesday, according to sources. Two people told CNBC the company is planning massive layoffs in the U.S., with one source saying that only 60 employees will be left after the cut. The company's current headcount in the U.S. is over 500, according to this person. CNBC obtained an email calling employees together for a Town Hall Meeting that will occur in three of the company's U.S. locations, including San Diego, Santa Monica and San Jose, at 10 a.m. PST. The email asks employees to attend unless they're off for the day, in which case they're asked to call in. It's not clear what will be announced at the meeting, but a second source told CNBC that layoffs will be announced tomorrow. Under the restructuring, LeEco will refocus on encouraging Chinese-American consumers to watch LeEco's Chinese content library, one person said.

Comments

Who are they

[houghi]

and they do what? And I should care why?

Re:Who are they

[DrXym]

From the sounds of the original link, they manufactured hardware containing spyware.

LeEco started out in China as a streaming media provider — it has been referred to as the "Netflix of China" — and looked to expand into the US by selling affordable hardware that linked consumers to media content from LeEco's partners. Its first batch of products included two smartphones and several TVs, all of which offered flagship-level specs at affordable prices. The idea, it seemed, was that LeEco would make its money back when consumers tuned in to partner programming.

Signs of things to come.

[Anonymous Coward]

The USA is becoming less and less dominate in the World. Most of the economic growth is in the Third World. And as they continue catching up, we will have more layoffs from both foreign and domestic firms and we will see our standard of living continue to decline.

We had a great run from the end of WWII to about 2000. It was just a historical fluke but we Americans have come to think that it's the norm because of our "exceptionalism". Well we're regressing back to the mean of our historical pre-WWII growth of about 1 - 2%. And there is nothing politically that can be done about it - contrary to what Trump and his supporters believe.

astonishingly bad summary

[SethJohnson]

It would be helpful to readers if the summary contained any info at all about the company's main product or reason why this is significant. Instead, the summary dwells only on the method of the layoffs, which is not original at all.

Re:The Politically Correct Business BS

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a difference in the terms:
Fired = let go for cause.
Laid off = let go due to company downsizing or similar, not due to employee fault.

Sometimes there's a reason people use different words, and it's usually because they have different meanings.

Re:The Politically Correct Business BS

[Pascoea]

Also a difference in Unemployment Insurance claims. You get fired you get no unemployment (rationale being it was something you did that caused you to get fired.) If you get laid off (indicating it was an outside force that caused you to lose your job) you get unemployment insurance payments.

Not a good thing in the long run

[DeplorableCodeMonkey]

Under the restructuring, LeEco will refocus on encouraging Chinese-American consumers to watch LeEco's Chinese content library, one person said.

Note what LeEco is saying here: they're creating Chinese content for US citizens who are of Chinese descent. They're not trying to open up the American market in general the way the Japanese did with anime, video games, etc. This is targeted by ethnicity.

More and more this seems to really be a thing with the immigrant diasporas in the West, and it's going to bring multi-culturalism down hard. Multiculturalists like to say "well the Italians integrated you racist!!" Well, yes they did, but I also know virtually no descendants of Italian immigrants that actually think they're Italian, speak Italian and frankly give a shit what happens in Italy. It is more "cultural flavor" and closer to white Southerners being proud of their heritage than a truly distinct claim on ethnicity.

So take whatever difficulty you'd have integrating a racially diverse set of new immigrants into a still largely homogeneous society, add in a heaping dose of Capitalist encouragement to not give up the old ways and you have a recipe for long term, very severe ethnic conflict. In the long run, there are few things we all share deeply in common at group levels, but one of those things is tribalism. You can indoctrinate that out of us about as well as you can indoctrinate pack instincts out of dogs.