Gasper Vidovic

VP of Product @DataboxHQ. Interested in products & technology, lawyer, icon designer and founder of

[Gasper Vidovic @morphix]

@mike_matas @rominakavcic Mike, i have great admiration for LoveFrom, the interior looks great, but the outside has nothing to do with Ferrari. Might be a desaster.

[Gasper Vidovic @morphix]

This is what we have been building the last few months @databoxHQ

[Databox @databoxHQ]

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[Gasper Vidovic @morphix]

@DisrespectedThe Funny to see 3 Slovenians behind the US president, and 2-3 rows behind the richest man alive is trying to be in the frame 🤣

[Gasper Vidovic @morphix]

@BrettFromDJ 393

[Gasper Vidovic @morphix]

@vpieters Wow, thanks for sharing this ;)

[Gasper Vidovic @morphix]

@Domestique___ @GettySport 🥇Roglic
🥈Carapaz
🥉Mas

[Gasper Vidovic @morphix]

@elonmuskADO Twitter.

[Gasper Vidovic @morphix]

@Keviduk 8px

[Sergio Pereira @SergioRocks]

Why I don't use Scrum to manage my Remote Teams?

TL;DR: It adds at least 8 hours of meetings per Sprint. That's 2 full days of lost productivity, per team member, per month!

This is what I do instead:

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

Layoffs are everywhere: Amazon, Google, Apple, Instagram, Discord, Citibank, Duolingo, Citigroup…

But, things are not as bad as they seem.

Tech layoffs are trending down, as the chart shows.

There’s something else happening, which is “the end of the good times” in tech, with a strict focus on profitability.

Let’s investigate under the hood, company by company:

• Amazon

Amazon made 3 major cuts in unprofitable divisions.

This year’s first cut of 900 is far less than the 27,000 total last year. Which makes these cuts, overall, rather small.

Amazonians see bottom performers cuts every year. They even saw some just two months ago in November.

• Google

Googlers everywhere are going through a new annual rite of passage: the annual reckoning.

Quiet pink slips hit employees in a suite of underperforming or loss making divisions.

This year’s cut at Google was far less than last year: 1,000 vs 12,000 last year.

• Apple

“Apple hasn’t had a layoff!” you say.

But Apple has had its own form of forced attrition.

In its Siri division, which is getting absolutely walloped by voice ChatGPT, 121 members were told to relocate or lose their jobs.

• Meta

Instagram cut 60 Technical Program Managers.

But these people are being given 60 days to find a new job.

So it’s far from a full layoff, and more in the Apple bucket of “job pressure.”

• Discord

Discord cut nearly 17% of the company, as it struggles to live up to its $15B valuation.

The company had grown 5x since 2020. It even raised in 2021 and is looking to go public soon.

This meant there was likely pressure on Jason to live up to that valuation.

• Citigroup

Falling out of the normal pattern of tech companies, Citigroup made a huge cut.

This came on the back of the company’s worst quarter in 15 years.

It reported a $1.8B net loss.

• Duolingo

Duolingo laid off 10% of its contract human translators last week.

The company is replacing them with AI.

This is actually a case of a company protecting and investing in its tech org, but relying on less on humans.

• Playtika

The Isralei gaming giant has had a rough go of it, cutting 300-400 more employees after a cut of 900 employees in December 2022.

And in its most recent quarter, net income plummeted 44% year over year.

Down 77% since IPO, this is another case of a struggling company.

Takeaways from the Layoffs

1. It’s the end of the good times in tech

→ It seems we can expect regular cuts from now on. The unparalleled job security of a Google or Apple is slowly eroding, but mainly at the edges.

2. If you’re in an underperforming or loss making division (or company), consider a move

→ This has always been the case for career growth, but now it’s also a compelling thing to do for job safety.

3. As a leader, be prepared to not just grow but also shrink - as a skill

→ For 10 years we just kept growing our orgs, now we also need to be able to manage the culture after making a forced exit on our team.

[Gasper Vidovic @morphix]

@craftworkdesign B

[Peter Kazanjy @Kazanjy]

Had a really nice skip level with a new hire the other day where I explained to them that showing up and reliably doing their job without error and with a good attitude is a "C".

The ensuing silence was pretty palpable.

I followed up by sharing that a "B" is innovating within a framework they've been given.

An "A" would be innovating above and beyond the framework they've been given.

If they want to advance, they need to be an A - and everyone needs to identify them as an A.

If you have ambitious staff who have advancement expectations, help them understand what excellence actually looks like - because I bet you that their last 5-10 years hasn't taught them it.

[Gasper Vidovic @morphix]

@BORAhansgrohe Looks nice. We want to see @rogla in it :) Jan 1st?

[Gasper Vidovic @morphix]

@merijnzeeman @rogla @JumboVismaRoad Don’t be a hypocrite Merijn. You gave him no option but to leave…

[Gasper Vidovic @morphix]

@BORAhansgrohe @rogla Wonderful news! Congrats Primož!

[Gasper Vidovic @morphix]

@BenjiNaesen @michelle_hambly You’re losing all my respect for you…

[Gasper Vidovic @morphix]

Hey @Apple @tim_cook , why don't you bring the iPhone Mini back? I have bought *every* iPhone version since the introduction until last year. Looks like I won't have anything to buy from Apple anymore. A 5.4 inch screen is simple the best and can be operated by one hand.

[Gasper Vidovic @morphix]

@SpoelJo @cxcling @rogla He still needs to run away from TJV asap, unless he wants to be a domestique for Jonas or captain in a few unattractive races.

[Santiago @svpino]

Scrum is a cancer.

I've been writing software for 25 years, and nothing renders a software team useless like Scrum does.

Some anecdotes:

1. They tried to convince me that Poker is a planning tool, not a game.

2. If you want to be more efficient, you must add process, not remove it. They had us attending the "ceremonies," a fancy name for a buttload of meetings: stand-ups, groomings, planning, retrospectives, and Scrum of Scrums. We spent more time talking than doing.

3. We prohibited laptops in meetings. We had to stand. We passed a ball around to keep everyone paying attention.

4. We spent more time estimating story points than writing software. Story points measure complexity, not time, but we had to decide how many story points fit in a sprint.

5. I had to use t-shirt sizes to estimate software.

6. We measured how much it cost to deliver one story point and then wrote contracts where clients paid for a package of "500 story points."

7. Management lost it when they found that 500 story points in one project weren't the same as 500 story points on another project. We had many meetings to fix this.

8. Imagine having a manager, a scrum master, a product owner, and a tech lead. You had to answer to all of them and none simultaneously.

9. We paid people who told us whether we were "burning down points" fast enough. Weren't story points about complexity instead of time? Never mind.

I believe in Agile, but this ain't agile.

We brought professional Scrum trainers. We paid people from our team to get certified. We tried Scrum this way and that other way. We spent years doing it.

The result was always the same: It didn't work.

Scrum is a cancer that will eat your development team. Scrum is not for developers; it's another tool for managers to feel they are in control.

But the best about Scrum are those who look you in the eye and tell you: "If it doesn't work for you, you are doing it wrong. Scrum is anything that works for your team."

Sure it is.

[Gasper Vidovic @morphix]

@duledoz Pa daj no... kdo bo to verjel.