SleepyHamster
SleepyHamster

Hearing really bad news from BYJUs, firm has silently laid off upto 15-20 K people in months

People in the firm what is happening? Is this the end of edtech and BYJUs? What went wrong?

22mo ago
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PrancingPotato
PrancingPotato

They focused more on sales and marketing rather building right product to market

Being an ex byjus at leadership level I have personally seen products team were forced to build things as per marketing needs not what market demands

Bringing innovation nor raising engineering efficiency nor focus to solve tech debts were considered

Adding fuel to fire, the new leadership imported lot of program managers who merely did calculated no of person vs number of days.

Erosion of good tech folks post the above import impacted the quality and speed by which product has been built.

End of pandemic played a major role making online education obsolete.

Adamant founding team paying the price now

BouncyMarshmallow
BouncyMarshmallow
BYJU'S22mo

Which product did you work on ? Not all product teams in Byjus were like this. There were some excellent PODs as well

PrancingPotato
PrancingPotato

Every-team under new president had the problem and abused.

may be you are part of marketing team..?

SleepyHamster
SleepyHamster

Summarising some of the comments

  • lack of product focus
  • no strong talent pipeline and retention plan
  • excessive spends on marketing
  • non transparent & confused leadership
  • lack of respect / love for employees
BouncyMarshmallow
BouncyMarshmallow
BYJU'S22mo

Also stupid acquisitions where lot of so called Founders ( mostly failed products which no one ever used) warming chairs to get their stocks vested or amounts credited to bank account

WigglyDumpling
WigglyDumpling
BYJU'S22mo

People becoming VP/AVP in sub-30 age is a big issue.

PrancingPotato
PrancingPotato

The problem is people without that capability and leadership quality became VP 😂

CosmicDonut
CosmicDonut

Even before this firing spree, it's been reported on this forum that there is a lot of harassment including of women in Byju's. How true is this??

WigglyDumpling
WigglyDumpling
BYJU'S22mo

Not really.

FluffyDonut
FluffyDonut

Nah.

PrancingWaffle
PrancingWaffle

I am going to talk about an unpopular opinion here. Pressure on profitability is extremely high as of now in all the edtech firms. Investors are not going to give out free lunches anymore. Most of the folks/teams being asked to leave form a part of important but not so critical mass at the moment. Company needs to buckle down and showcase profitably run businesses across divisions. Some of the firing is also due to excessive hiring during covid years and duplicate teams being created as per the whims and fancies of leaders. Course correction was much needed and is happening as per priority.

PeppyDumpling
PeppyDumpling

Course correction is fine but the Engineering team strength is halved since October, 50% cut. Only Twitter might have done more layoffs percentage wise in the world. I will call it a crash landing instead of course correction.

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