One of the worst tech labor years ever continues with the news that roughly half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off. Bandcamp employees are reporting the news via social media.
about half the company was laid off today. some of the most incredible people i’ve ever worked with, including two of my amazing editorial colleagues @diamonde and @atoosamoinzadeh and most of the incredible support staff among many others. this is a loss, no two ways about it
— jj skolnik (@modernistwitch) October 16, 2023
Epic Games bought the indie music platform back in 2022 for an undisclosed amount before selling it barely a year later.
Late last month, Epic Games laid off 16 percent of its workforce, or 830 employees, due to what CEO Tim Sweeney described as overspending. Epic also revealed that it would sell the Bandcamp business to California-based music licensing company Songtradr. In that announcement, Epic disclosed that an additional 250 people would be leaving Epic either through receiving offers from Songtradr or Epic’s divesture from its SuperAwesome ad business. Employees who did not receive offers from Songtradr were notified today and will be eligible for severance.
In an email to The Verge, Songtradr confirmed that 50 percent of Bandcamp employees have been extended offers to join Songtradr and reaffirmed from a previous statement the company’s commitment to keeping the Bandcamp experience the same.
Songtradr’s statement also confirmed that its purchase of Bandcamp had been completed, but it did not confirm if it would voluntarily recognize Bandcamp’s union that employees won earlier this year, despite pressure from employees and the Bandcamp community.
Because money.
When you sell to a big corporation their only goal is to milk every dollar possible.
And it will keep happening again and again until the system changes or people with more conscience than greed decide not to sell to the highest bidder.
It’s not good enough to be profitable. It’s good enough when your current workforce is at its breaking point because you can barely get the required work done. Then you announce record profits, the investment banks expect even more growth next quarter, the employees are thanked with a canned letter from the CEO for their hard work, you cut a division in half while increasing their work, hire a consulting firm that will do a crap job on a project but you don’t have to pay benefits, and then give your employees a negative review for poor time management of an impossible workload and do it all again.
I’m not jaded at all. :(