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Evernote Slashes 15 Percent of Its Workforce (techcrunch.com)
Evernote, one of the most popular productivity apps on the market, is struggling to stay on top of the charts. TechCrunch, after reporting two weeks that the company "lost several of its most senior executives," is reporting that Evernote's CEO Chris O'Neill on Tuesday laid off 54 people -- roughly 15 percent of the company's workforce. O'Neill said it is now focusing its efforts around specific functions, including product development and engineering. From the report: We've just been in touch with Evernote. It pointed us to a newly posted piece by O'Neill in which he outlines the company's strategy going forward, which includes to "operate with a more focused leadership team," to "operate more efficiently," and to "double down on product development -- both quality and velocity." As for its funding situation, an Evernote representative insists that things are far from dire. The company is not fundraising, says this person; further, we're told Evernote has $30 million on its balance sheet and will exit the year without burning cash. This comes after "a person who tipped TechCrunch off to the executive departments two weeks ago characterized Evernote as 'in a death spiral,' saying that user growth and active users have been flat for the last six years and that the company's enterprise product offering hasn't caught on."
To get rid of their Evernote account because I am worried they will sell it to someone.
How many people do you need to develop a productivity suite?
This isn't even the first time Evernote has laid people off. In 2015 they slashed 18% of their workforce. Oh and closed three of their ten global offices. Why the hell do they need ten global offices, or seven for that matter? Sounds like they were using the VC money to buy hookers and blow and give jobs to their snot nosed family.
Meh.
I use them weekly to keep my grocery list. If I had a job I'd send them money but, well, I'm broke. I've got other lists I update once in a while (books I want to buy, video games I want to buy), but my weekly shopping list is my killer app.
I've got 3-4 apps I use all the time on my phone, if Evernote goes away it will really hurt. The rest? Who cares.
Also your Kool Milds and fried chicken.
Exponential growth was the pitch I heard from them about 6 years ago when I attended a local dev meetup in their office. The CFO-at-the-time was trying to convince us that their growth was exponential and wouldn't stop. A few people chuckled, one person "coughed" the phrase "s-curve" and then we all sat in a small bit of awkward silence. I'm not surprised they reached market saturation shortly there after.
Recently canvased other Android/Windows options and cannot find anything better. I use EN both for notes and web clipping. Just to cite one example, OneNote fell flat on its face. I shared a web I was reading on my Android smartphone and it only clipped the URL and not the page content. Bzzzz. Strike one. I then shared from Pocket and it created an image of the page. An image? Really? Bzzzz. Strike two. I then tried to search for text in the saved image and it couldn't find it. Bzzzz. Strike three. I'm sticking with Evernote for the best Android/Windows web clipping and note taking solution.
I kind of feel for them. I used Evernote since it first was hatched and also did the paid-subscription thing for a year or two before I cancelled that.
The problem is there is just too much competition from the OS vendors. Apple has all its iCloud stuff, Microsoft has OneDrive, and Ubuntu has UbuntuOne (I think they call it that) and they both work on each others and other platforms (browser mode if necessary).
Try as I might I just can't think of anything Evernote brought to the party other than they were doing it before the big guys were. Lord knows they tried. But new media types and editor doo-dads just ain't going to get you the defensible position.
I would hate to see them go but not enough to give them money anymore. But it is amazing they kept it going this long.
If Apple do end up buying them, you can expect to see the windows and android versions dropped.
I have their paid service and for the most part it Just Works(tm) and does a great job. The only real complaint I have is the lack of a proper Linux client. None of the OSS clients I have tried worked well. NixNote was closest but not great. On all the other platforms I use it on it has a great and consistent experience and handles things like checklists very well.
I hope they are able to find a way to keep everything going. Granted I don't have anything critical on there but it would be inconvenient to switch in a hurry.
Nothing else out there comes close to working as well for me as evernote across multiple platforms.
Buyout means old rules go out the window.
It clearly depends on the number of useless features that nobody asked for are being developed. Added to that are the side projects most of the developers spend all of their time one (as if they worked for Google).
How much do you want to bet that the people that were laid off were the majority of the "bread and butter" developers?
The world needs a good open source editor. May as well go full open source and then federate it so you can e.g. sync to the evernote cloud. Free and easy money there...
The biggest weakness with EN is the fact that is has no encryption unless you explicitly password protect stuff. Other providers have transparent encryption, or even end to end encryption like Apple's Notes, only decrypted on the client. It is understandable that other note providers (Microsoft OneNote, etc.) may not have this, because they are free, and don't have cloud storage. However, for $100 a year, the provider better have some actual solid encryption of documents, and that is the dealer breaker for me.
I do not see the value of Evernote everything they say they do on their web site I do in email now. I assume this is for people that do not have a modern email account?
It may be time to resurrect fuckedcompany.com
because I want so badly to love it.
In 2008, it was still a killer app. In 2018, it has squandered its position.
The app has gained zero new killer functionality, which itself isn't disqualifying, but the UI hasn't even bothered to remain stagnant—it's gone backward. Evernote is far less usable and user-friendly for its core purposes than it was back when I started using it. Compare:
https://mediafrenzy.files.word...
https://i0.wp.com/thenerdystud...
I hate all the wasted screen real estate. The lock-in to the same idiosyncratic and clashing colors. The way in which basic information organization have been buried in favor of a "just use the search box" mentality, requiring extra clicks for anything. The fact that data is incredibly difficult to get out in bulk (you can export it to a kind of soup that can be sorted out if you're willing to spent a month of your time doing development on your own). It used to be a pleasure to use, for what it was. Now it just sucks.
Even all of this would have been okay if basic features hadn't been gradually migrating behind a paywall even as prices continued to increase—but both things are true.
In short, Evernote started way ahead as a product that was great relative to everything else and very useful. It just needed some polish and iteration. Not only did they stagnate, they went backward, while jacking up the price. The one and only reason to stick with Evernote now is that it supports the five major platforms—Browser, Android, iOS, Windows, Mac OS—and syncs between them relatively seamlessly.
Evernote reminds me in a lot of ways of Livescribe. A company with a great idea out the gate that then stumbled and ran in reverse, creating the impression that they hold their most committed users in deep contempt. Which is fitting, because the two partnered together for some time, so they deserve each other. Most of all, Evernote, like Livescribe, is a company that in no way needs—for the functionality that they ought to deliver—the corporate bloat they seem to have developed.
The moment something else comes along that (1) creates rich notes and (2) can sync to always-up-to-date status on all of the platforms mentioned above, I'll jump ship right away. I'll even pay more, just to spite Evernote for holding my data (practically speaking) hostage.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
The basic note-taking functionality has gone backward. Harder to make notes, harder to find notes, harder to scroll through and read notes, harder to export notes.
A lot of other stuff that I don't care about has been added. Apparently a lot of people don't care about it.
You have a captive audience of millions with their data in your platform. Hard to screw that up, but Evernote did, and they continue to get worse.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Installed Evernote and used it for many notes. Phone updated, had to reinstall. Ever-note I wrote is gone.
The second time that happened, I never installed that pos again. What is the point of a note system that stored your stuff in the cloud to maintain it wherever you go if it doesn't work.
Worst pos since I bought a Casio electronic address book. After the second time it mysteriously reset, losing every contact I had re-re-entered, I turned it off permanetly.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
and FUCK the FOOLS who push it
Fiinote is miles ahead.
But unfortunately, over the years, Evernote has been trying their damnest to drive me away to competing services by constantly introducing features that I never asked for and that are on by default and/or cannot be hidden away in the UI. At the point where the UI became like 3 times as complex as it used to be when I started using Evernote, I just gave up and moved on.
Wonder who they'll be laying off:
https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=Evernote+Corporation&job=&city=&year=All+Years
Probably not one of their "expert software engineers" that they imported from India - obviously couldn't find an senior American dev to work in the #1 most expensive city in the nation for $110K.
I was annoyed by its cramware on my phones. I want you gone.
Since like a lot of people here I use them too. I just don't need it for more than two devices (home, and my phone).
I use it to keep notes for work and store non-critical (i.e. not privileged) account passwords and other stuff and it has been a boon.
The interface does in fact feel like it has gone backwards since its creation- adding more complex abilities is cool, but so is KISS. You just kinda have to settle on one or the other and iterate properly and Evernote hasn't done that. It's a shame too because nothing else really kinda fits the bill.
But the other part of this is how exponential growth is required for a company to simply NOT DIE now. If your staffing is meeting your needs, your userbase is more than paying the bills and isn't shrinking/growing slowly... then really you should be fine. Yeah, explosive constant growth would be nice but if you're in the black every year and you/your staff's needs are being met then you should be fine for a non-traded company but welp- capitalism.
Evernote laid off more people (54) than the message count of a front-page Slashdot thread trumpeting its downfall (currently at 44). RIP.
Evernote romped when it was unique in its field. You could build a hierarchy of notes and reminders, classified in whatever way you wanted, synchronized over all your devices and computers. You could embed web links. It was an ideal tool for developing research notes for any kind of writing project.
Then Apple upgraded its Notes app t include the same set of features in both macOS and iOS, and has recently added more. If Evernote went the way of Skype and traded out useful features for social media interfaces, it's not hard to figure out why it lost its popularity.
it's literally the simplest of app, a note-taking app. How many devs/staff does that need?
AWS for storage, so no "DevOps" needed.
What's next, a staff of 100 for a fart-sound app?
I am really starting to despise this "we have to be #1" thing. Nobody can just be good anymore, and the lure of being the best is like a death-knell.
Why? Is being successful and 2nd or 3rd so bad? What happened to longevity and simply building a great product?
The company I am at used to be #1 in our market for our product, for like 5 years in a row... then we were bought by a large company, and they royally screwed us up... e.g. moved our client support team into the corporate structure, so not only was it harder for our clients to actually get support, but they would get people who didn't know our product at all. All of our numbers sank, and we were #4 of 5 is our niche market.
However, we still made a product better than our competitors. So they brought in new leadership, we became our own business unit so we could re-focus the way we were before. Our customers loved it. We were #2 in the market after about a year. Yay!
Not good enough. We need to be in the cloud so we can get new business and regain #1 - because it is the future, and #1 is cloud-based. [even though our product is better, and does 10x what #1's does] Nope, gotta be in the cloud, gotta be cutting edge. Even though our clients are large hospitals and adopt change very slowly. And despite the dev groups strong advice, we are changing our entire technology stack, farming out a lot of the work, and are struggling HARD to get anything done. It's do-or-die to get to the cloud, because... the cloud. And we're losing people, because what seasoned developer wants to change everything they know? Who wants to basically start over, try to pick up the pieces from a failed project, and have management berate them for not producing fast enough?
The software industry is falling prey to this instant-gratification mindset that social media is driving. Not everything needs to fit that mold.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I have been a long time user who recently cancelled their account. The reasons for it: bloated app, no improvement for years, prices going up (why? Nothing changed).
Surprisingly it was hard moving out (they don't really want to export your notes). I am so glad I did.
And surprisingly they don't have any close competitors for a long time. Could have been so easily for them to stay on top if they focus on speed and futures that matter.
Like... what is it?
http://github.com/gbook/nidb
Evernote was dead the day they switched to a subscription model. It is just insane that anyone pays as much for a notetaking app with a few gig of cloud storage as MS charges for Office365 with TB of cloud storage.
The sooner evernote finishes its death rattle and vanishes from the planet the better, before other devs think their business model has some merit.
Evernote has their logo at the top of an office building in Redwood City. It's been there for a few years. I've never used it. I googled what it is one time because I was curious about the logo. It's something that could be coded up in free time by a few smart high school students. So many things in the "app" world are like that, and yet they build huge companies based on it, with logos at the tops of office buildings. That's what always boggles me. It never makes sense; but the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent so you can't short it either. Sooner or later, houses of cards come crashing down.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I would rather use dropbox with a text file than evernote.
I would use Evernote more if they could provide better assurance that they're not harvesting my data for god knows what.
I'm fed up with companies treating me like the product, ESPECIALLY when I'm already paying them money for their services.