Roku looks to be seriously tightening its pursestrings. The company’s laying off a full ten percent of its workforce, over 300 employees, in addition to a conducting a number of other cost-cutting measures, as reported by Variety. These job cuts are just the beginning, as Roku’s also removing streaming content, consolidating office space and reducing outside service expenses. The goal here is a major reduction in the year-over-year operating expense growth rate.
I know an even better way for them to save money. Anthony Wood, the CEO, gets like $20,990,000 in total yearly compensation. Like most these fucks most of it is non-salary, so they don’t pay taxes on it right away if at all.
I fell down the internet rabbit hole. He gets 1.2M in pay. No bonus and no stock award. The rest are options. Last year he has sold 400,000 shares worth $69M. The year before he sold 1,950,000 shares worth $690M… Looks like he had a scheduled sale of 80,000 shares every 2 weeks. Which had been worth about $25M every time. It looks like he stopped it when the same sale started pulling in about $11M. So yeah, assuming a generous $500k fully loaded employee cost, they cut $150M in HC. So canning him would save about 40 jobs. And he’d still be a billionaire.
I think you touch on the real issue, and it’s where the wealth of a company is created. The cashflow and operations is one thing, the investor money is entirely another. People in the company don’t benefit from the investor capital nearly as much as the senior leadership does. The takeaway is how fundamentally broken the economy is right now as investment is wrecking how we do business. “Publicly traded” my ass. I get that companies need capital, and the VC money is one thing, but when we see shit like this it paints the picture of an established company getting enshittified to satisfy late game investors that act more like a parasite than anything else, and undermines the prosperity of business itself.
It’s not late game investors, but short term investors.
I mean I guess it’s both, but short term investors don’t give a fuck about the fundamentals of a company, they care about growth, or at least the illusion of growth above all else.
So you end up with gigantic conglomerates that do everything. Piano makers that sell dirt bikes, movie companies that run theme parks, kettle makers that run the largest financial institutions in the world. It makes no logical sense, but that doesn’t matter…. Line goes up.
Piano makers that sell dirt bikes, movie companies that run theme parks, kettle makers that run the largest financial institutions in the world
I know that’s Yamaha and Disney, but I’m blanking on the last one. I probably know it but don’t know about the kettle side.
You haven’t heard of JP Morgan Chase kettles?
General electric
Absolutely. Roku probably would be doing fine if they stuck with the cute little TV boxes and didn’t have to keep making growth targets for the parasites. That drive for constant growth has made their core product suck more too…
Having used Roku stuff recently, and helping family out with their new shiny Roku tv’s, I couldn’t agree more. You took the words right from me. They enshittified bigtime since the days people genuinely loved using their products.
Roku tv interfaces are still better than vizio and even samsungs slower advertising interfaces.
Like those slimy venture capital groups that take over declining businesses and instead of getting them back on their feet take out tons of loans against them, pocket the cash, then sell off the parts that still work and throw the rest (and the employees) away?
In capitalism businesses have only one purpose. “To last long” ain’t it. The biggest owners and their chief lieutenants must make as much money as is humanly possible. Sometimes that means a long term strategy, and sometimes it doesn’t.
But we can’t have that I guess. I fucking hate corporations so much.
Damn. I wish people who had nothing to live for would just camp outside these guys’ mansions with an AR instead of attacking innocent crowds of people.
Our lives are worse because theirs are better.
You hear this a lot when personal wealth is discussed, “But his wealth isn’t real, it is in the business!” This shows that the wealth is real.
It amuses me when a company will go on about how they need to let people go and cut costs but then they piss away millions on a handful of people. The real issue is that they need to cut costs to keep pissing away money on a few people.
If you slice his compensation in half, that’s about 100 employees he can pay at $100k for a full year.
So employees cost more than just their salaries (if they get things like benefits, 401K match, etc.) So you’d have to cut more than half of his total compensation, which I don’t think either of us would be mad about
I also doubt most of those employees made 100k either so it’s probably still a good estimate.
[$10,000 monthly budget on candles.] Help my family is dying, someone help me please. ~ dril
Wow. That is insane. You better be god’s gift to business brilliance to justify that.
Torrents of The Weird Al movie are about to become quite popular.
Which is funny because he originally encouraged people in countries without Roku to do so.
removes streaming content
What else do they do/have?
You’ll still be able to stream stuff from normal apps. It’s just the apps owned by Roku that will be affected, which, I don’t know about you, but I’ve never used despite having three Rokus
I actually have. I don’t think roku had any content that was not available on other free stream services. It came down to how do you like you ad blocks.
As someone who does not have any rokus, I have also never used those apps :-)
I installed the Roku channel to watch the Wierd AL mocumentary, then promptly uninstalled it after. That was enough for me.
Enjoy the hardware for streaming other services!
A popular and powerful device for streaming other services. And direct integration in certain TVs as the “Smart” OS. Streaming was something they tried to build their offering and widen their reach when Google and Apple started getting decent streaming boxes themselves and TV manufacturers started having usable(while still bad) smart OSs.
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I setup a mini pc with Linux Mint to act as a streaming device that has worked great!
Also the nvidia shield. It does what roku does but better and offers more.
roku is more than just the hardware, or even the ‘app’ platform (where i’m guessing most of their revenue comes from). they have original content and a decent ad-supported service of their own. and you don’t need their device to watch… works in browser.
decent ad-supported service
You contradict yourself.
You say that like something has happened recently to make it more crowded.
Roku is the leader in this space and they barely have any new competition that they didnt have 5 years ago.
The hardware side, I assume.
I bought a Roku TV when I moved. Used it a few weeks and then realized the level of horrific tracking my pi-hole server was blocking from it. (thanks PiHole) I reset it to factory and no longer allowed it on the network. Now it’s an acceptable TV with a completely dogshit useless remote.
Sort of related- is it even possible to buy a “dumb” TV anymore or are we stuck paying 8x as much for “digital signage” panels now?
Spectre makes a dumb 4K TV. It’s a good panel that doesn’t track usage.
I shouldn’t be this excited about the link, but double-checked the specs on their official site and it’s not even equipped with ethernet/wifi- the world is so shitty these days that I almost squealed like a little girl. Thanks for sharing that.
Why would it need ethernet/wifi if its a dumb tv?
It wouldn’t. That’s the feature I wanted to NOT see on it :D
It’s a just ok panel. Tends to look really washed out.
Dude SAME HERE. When I first setup my pihole I’m like “JESUS CHRIST WHY ARE MY 2 ROKUS MAKE UP over 80% OF REQUESTS!?”
That day I gave them away and moved to Apple TVs. Shit has been so so much better ever since
The digital signage/business displays are still at a premium, but the upcharge is doesn’t have to hit 8x, though you’ll have to supply a source of course, plus also a bracket or stand for the VESA mount. Maybe $200 premium to deshittify?
I admit I was being a bit sarcastic with the price. :)
You can’t buy dumb TVs anymore new, but smart tvs don’t really cost more.
They took a gamble and tried to play the streaming game - and lost
Did any of y’all Roku owners buy their device for the purpose of their streaming content? I know I didn’t - I bought it because of the promise of an excellent UI to organize all of my other already-existing-and-too-many services in an easy streamlined interface even my dad could use.
Yeah. Their expenses to try and add streaming was a waste. Plex did much of the same.
I bought Roku for the set top box replacement. They should continue to focus on that, though there really isnt too much more to do there either. They gotta innovate somehow i suppose and that means taking risk.
I will say they keep adding that goddam roku streaming channel to my list. I have exact an even number of lines of apps. It keeps throwing it off and its annoying.
My only real issue with Roku is the lack of a decent Ethernet port on them. 100mbit ports are too slow for 2023
It does feel like antiquated tech but what streaming service uses even 50+mbps streaming? The services I know of (apple, Netflix, Disney) all max out around 30mbps.
Self hosted (jellyfin, Plex) can use more.
But could the decoder keep up? Decoders come in a variety of sizes and I doubt they’d pay the extra cost to put a 120Mbps decoder in the device when no streaming services require it.
100mbps is too slow for 2023
It’s appropriate for the device’s functionality. 4K HDR is at most 40Mbps. If the device supported large local storage and offline playback, you’d have a point. But given the device’s use case as a streaming client, I doubt you’d be able to find any workload that gets close to saturating the network. Even if you could find a content source that was higher than 100Mbps, it’s unlikely the decoder would be able to keep up.
Bluray rips can be 80mbps+ but I’ve never had trouble streaming them on any device including roku. Important to remember that the bitrate is an average so some scenes will be well above the advertised bitrate.
bitrate is an average
Yes but that’s why the network and decoder are buffered. It’s also why most content is constrained at encode time to target both an average bitrate and a peak bitrate. A 200% constraint is typical, so you shouldn’t find 4K HDR in the wild at over 80Mbps peak bitrate.
The buffers on streaming devices are much smaller on these devices because of how cost reduced they are. You’re way overselling how large they are.
Also, 80mbps is actually a pretty common avg bitrate on 4kuhd blurays. You have 100gb of disk to play with and they generally want to use it as much as possible.
Paid streaming and smart tvs were always a scam to try to get computer-functionality in a TV, but lock it down so you can only serve people garbage.
If you want to stream something, just stream it for free here: https://fmovies.to/
All you need is ublock origin. No credit card required. No signups.
But yeah, everyone jumps to say “x isn’t on y, or z isn’t on t” rather than just share how to watch it all for free.
Or 123series.art and a good popup blocker.
The more the merrier!
I love that there’s loads of these sites.
Been watching a load of old crap on them recently. Stuff like Timecop. It’s like discovering an old world that the regular streaming services forgot.
“Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem.” said Father Gabe years ago. And he’s right. If there was one legit service that had all this stuff, all you can eat streaming, for like £30 a month, all in as high quality as they made it, surround sound and all the trimming, I’d pay it.
But they don’t, so I nick it.
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I have a Roku TV.
I liked it at first because it’s just a vehicle for using Netflix, Hulu, or streaming from a HDMI.
But in the past 6 months, more and more ads keep showing. Things I’m refusing to interact with. Tried blocking and then they circumvented that.
Not only that, but now all apps have to have remove any Screensaver that kept the screen active on that app. For instance, Plex now doesn’t have a Screensaver so if you are listening to music and pause it too long, you lose all progress on that Playlist and it starts all over again. Big bummer that is making me question getting a new Roku later this year.
When it comes to Plex and Roku, I’d like them to work out whatever issue it is that makes it a toss-up whether or not movie subtitles will show up. They work fine on any other device I watch through.
I got around that by hardcoding foreign subs into mp4’s.
DVDs, people. DVDs and Blu-Rays.
Blu-Rays generally are a bad idea. They’re so concerned with piracy that they make things like ripping your Blu-Rays needlessly difficult, especially for recently released to video Blu-Rays.
Honestly it’s easier to just pirate.
Meh… it’s not that hard. Get something that’s libredrive compatible and run makemkv on it. Not had a failure yet.
The real downside is that blurays (esp. HD ones) are too expensive to get a decent collection.
How do you ensure that it’s libredrive compatible?
I just bought one from ebay from a guy that only sells libredrive compatible drives. But there’s a list here https://forum.makemkv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=79712#p79712
Looks like it’s time for me to sell my Roku stock that I bought during the pandemic when their price was constantly going up.
To be fair, it’s pretty telling that I have a TV with built in Roku, but I only use it to access my Apple TV which is faster and smoother.
I take this as a good sign that the data tracking market is growing stale. Like what value can tracking my viewing habits provide anyone, other than Roku, that the streaming platforms aren’t already doing on their own? It’s straight double dipping.
I love the Roku remote and interface. But I have a Google TV and even though I’m sure it’s sending my viewing habits to Google it’s also basically and Android device so you can do many more things with it than a Roku. You can’t install anything on a Roku that Roku doesn’t specifically authorize.
They where only popular bc the other options where also crappy or very expensive. Also I highly doubt anyone bought a roku tv bc it was roku, it’s more like they didnt have a choice.
I definitely did. It’s the best of the interfaces I’ve worked with. Samsung and LG both have abysmal built in OS’s and I do want an internet connected TV.
They’re privacy nightmares, but they work a whole lot better than the competition.
Fully agreed. It’s the best of a bad situation, and their apps do run reasonably well compared to the absolute shitshow that is Samsung.
I read this in some other article, but it seems like the margins are slim for their hardware because while (IMHO) the interface is still best in a very poor class, almost everybody else does it more or less adequately, so they can’t charge much of a premium. They’ve been making more money on their ad-supported streaming, both on-demand and their collection of all the free linear streams that you use to convince your rerun-loving gramma not make you climb into the attic to install an OTA antenna. The SAG and WGA strikes have done a number on how much advertisers are buying and at what prices. While I always wonder if there aren’t other places to cut first (coughexecutivecompensationcough) I don’t doubt that they’re in a way worse place than they were a year ago.
The best streaming device is an old Linux PC with one of those Logitech touchpad keyboards.
The amount of ads on streaming sticks infuriates me.
Good suggestion, particularly for folks around here, but it’s not exactly the same product category as a consumer offering. :-)
I tried to run an HTPC for awhile, but all the random restrictions and issues made it more of a hassle. Stuff like streaming sites capping the resolution when played through the PC, not native apps, etc. It really was a worse experience for me than a dedicated streaming box.
I have never liked Rokus interface… I prefer android TV. Most people don’t realize there is an app only mode on android TV that is exactly that, just apps in a drawer. No ads, no fuss. I also like that there is much easier side loading on Android TV.
I switched from a Chromecast to a Roku TV and I’ve been looking the interface a lot more. There’s probably some settings I didn’t mess with, but Roku’s default setting displays a lot of info in a good space, and it looks good, and I’ve only seen the occasional ad off to the side, not taking too much screen real estate. I also am a sucker for customizable and seasonal themes, though lol.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The company’s laying off a full ten percent of its workforce, over 300 employees, in addition to a conducting a number of other cost-cutting measures, as reported by Variety.
These job cuts are just the beginning, as Roku’s also removing streaming content, consolidating office space and reducing outside service expenses.
The goal here is a major reduction in the year-over-year operating expense growth rate.
The company hasn’t announced which content it would be removing from its various streaming platforms and whether or not these cuts would be culled from third-party providers or from in-house projects like the recently-released Weird Al biopic.
Roku’s so serious about these cuts that it’s willing to pony up $65 million for impairment charges after deleting this content, according to an SEC filing.
However, even Roku admits these figures are uncertain, noting in a Q2 letter to shareholders that the “macro environment continued to create uncertainty,” given the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes.
The original article contains 347 words, the summary contains 157 words. Saved 55%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
