Roku looks to be seriously tightening its pursestrings.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
This market is getting saturated fast. Apple TV, Fire TV both pair directly to at least one first class streaming service as they are developed by the same company. Chromecast is still hanging on. Plex offers streaming content now as part of Plex pass. Cable tv boxes can now also do native streaming to select services. Major TV brands are dropping the Roku OS to roll their own shitty android port.
I personally moved to the Apple TV because it’s the only one probably not selling my data and isn’t constantly griping at me with some kind of upsell like the Roku and Fire Tv
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.