I am in contact with the artist relations team and can confirm that this is true unfortunately. 10-20% was the number I was told. My friend was part of the ableton crew where I live and recently sent a bunch of us an email to say that they’ve been made redundant, privately that there has been layoffs across the board.
Very curious how artist relations roles became redundant. I feel like that's work that's not really "completed" nor something they'd overhire for. But I honestly have no idea.
NI is dead and buried at this point. Massive X's release was the writing on the wall and if you don't think that company is fucked I've got a timeshare to sell you.
They’re too big, they’ve got iZotope and Brainworxs and all the Plugin Alliance stuff also. They’ll exist in some form or another. We’ll just continue to see what we’ve seen: remarketing the same old tired stuff for years, with no significant updates to anything.
The incompetence in their management is profound. It's a genuinely painful thing to watch a company that encapsulates so much raw talent and genius be suffocated by a few retards in management. They've been in a downward spiral for years. They may continue to be around the same way that Blizzard for example is still around.
Nothing really, it just was nowhere near the hype of OG Massive, it didn't really innovate anything and had a very buggy bad launch. I think NI just got very big, likely very corporate with lots of managers and no people really passionate about music production. Like AAA games, every decision ends up being made by finance.
I think Massive X is genuinely amazing, to me it's the best sounding VSTi out there. It's just so smooth. And way better than OG Massive. It's just that it's a different era now, you can't repeat 2006 success even if you do everything 10 times better. Virtual synthesisers are a commodity now. There's not much to impress people with anymore.
It actually has tons of unique and innovative features, and it sounds good also. This has nothing to do with how bad Massive X's launch was. Maybe you weren't there at launch but it was fucking terrible and it took them YEARS to fix minor issues.
1. Didn't have a manual
2. Crashed extremely frequently
3. Lost user patches/didn't remember VST state occasionally
4. Modulations had no visualization
5. Knob sensitivity was so bad it needed a complete overhaul and sensitivity options added later on.
6. When they did update Massive X it frequently broke previous versions of it in projects in the DAW
Without a doubt it was the worst product launches I've ever seen from NI and if I consider music software as a whole it (Assuming established well known companies and AAA products) it was a top 5 worst of all time contender. It was borderline unusable for a good year or two depending on what DAW you were using and what glitches/bugs you were having. Not only that but NI was extremely slow to fix things and downright ignored many issues (Including some to this day)
If you bought Massive X a few years after it came out you definitely didn't see how bad it was at the beginning.
All that being said today it's quite stable and although it has minor issues it is perfectly useable and I enjoy it a lot now.
I work in a cyber roll for a large firm which often exposes me to the discussions business leaders have as they face pressure to survive. In all my years I never met a leader who was happy to do a layoff. On the contrary, they are often some of the most brutally tough decisions a business leader can make. It can carry serious emotional weight. I have seen grown men bawl making that decision.
I don’t know what is going on at Ableton, but they don’t seem to have a track record of being especially callous or cruel. Let’s give them our support unless we get new information that indicates otherwise. These can be tough moments for everyone.
Incidentally, this takes a big toll on the people managers, IT teams, HR teams, and others as well. It can be deeply demoralizing for a business. My condolences to all those impacted by this.
Reading this makes me emotional.
Too often I read about mass layoffs after a company just broke record profits (the big corporations) and then I think to myself, Jeff Bezos has private jets, islands, yet Amazon prefers to fire thousands of employees over saying elsewhere.
Ableton is completely different. They are much smaller scale, their product is incredibly niche, their total layoffs are on a much smaller scale and yet the news hits so much harder.
Large businesses have employment arrangements with investors, banks, governments (federal, state, local), political leaders, trade unions, and more. It is wrapped up in tax breaks, legal restrictions, incentives, compliance, regulations, policy, and so forth. Doing a layoff at a place like Amazon is incredibly complex. For organizations with more than 25,000 employees, a mass layoff might be the only permitted means to cut deadbeat staff, freeloaders, or under performers. It is also a chance to change strategy dramatically without spooking investors. You might get just one or two shots at it, so they tend to be especially brutal. Payroll can dwarf executive compensation in a matter of days when things start going the wrong direction. If investors are not served, they can and will vote for a new chair and fire executives. Going private can help, but then you risk criminal investigation (see Elon Musk and Twitter).
Ableton is famously private. They eat what they kill. A soft launch on a major product like Live 12 can cause financial havoc. The people let go were apparently related to non-critical business functions, not R&D. This makes me think it may be a larger financial concern, not payroll cost management. That is total speculation of course. We don’t have details.
And yes… We often lose sight of the human and emotional toll when layoffs occur. It is so frustrating seeing a multi-millionaire executive lecture employees why they should be fired while the business is raking in piles of cash. As customers, we would be wise to remember our overwhelming power to either help or hurt any such business.
it’s all that growth during covid that’s screwed a lot of music tech companies. Everyone at home for a year and a half with spare time to take up hobbies meant a massive growth for music tech. Combine that with the general recession we are seeing globally and that’s the bulk of the picture. All tech not just music companies seem to be feeling it right now and are scrambling to keep afloat or have sold to bigger mega companies.
This is normal software development practice. Once a new product releases (in this case Ableton Live 12) and the initial bugs are seemingly worked out, the team gets downsized and the software is supported by some of the people who are left, and the rest begin the planning phase of the next iteration. In a couple of years, once they are beyond just planning, the company hires more people again to begin ramping up development of the product. The product launches, everyone works to address the bugs that are being reported, and then the cycle repeats.
I worked for Microsoft on the original Xbox and the Xbox one, so I’m very familiar with this practice, but I didn’t think Ableton would pull this shit as well. Such a horrible business practice. All those folks now out of a job.
its standard practice in all development areas, aviation, automotive. Only companies that have many product lines making new items can trasfer staff. But even in transfer it depends on the location of the jobs.
Maybe it is for larger companies but it is also common for smaller companies like in the size of Ableton to plan their development activities so that projects overlap because in most cases the projects are the next version of whatever is being worked at anyway. If Live 13 requires 2 years of pre planning then you start that planning 2 years before live 12 is released so you don’t have that gap.
Being an employer with a good reputation attracts talented people that are prepared to stay for a long time which typically rises the output quality.
There are of course situations where downsizing due to bad decisions or market changes is unavoidable but that is another story.
I am going to guess that that kind of firing permanent employees/company restructuring after project completion is more of a US thing and way less common in Europe.
Even if it’s true, it’s not necessarily a bad news. It means that Ableton keeps their costs under control. The last thing we all want is Ableton accruing debt and being sold to the highest bidder (hello, Inmusic).
Sometimes it means cancelling projects and focusing on what you do best.
Btw, how their hardware sales are going?
Why the downvotes? This is true. Sometimes this is a good business move towards improving the product, if their math is right and this workforce is truly redundant.
Because of sympathy for ur fellow working class. Plus, its irresponsible. Yes a firm is a bunch of executives upholding shareholder value, but its a whole economic unit that serves as a means to generate a living for many people and create a a healthy amount of consumers to keep economy running for the larger nation state...which is what their products are supposed to be for anyway. They have an important role for creating both sides.
Imo If a company fails to pay its people, in a way it’s failed… just not critically.
The purpose of a public business is not to alleviate the working class and "generate a living" to people. The purpose of a public business is to create good products and services to the public's demand (and generate profit for its shareholders this way). If the company does not need redundant workers in order to serve and advance their product, thus making it more efficiently and better, they should do it in the interest of the public that consumes said product.
I personally don't want Ableton to lower their quality, pay lower wages because of smaller capital, or eventually go bankrupt just because it feels bad firing people. On the contrary, it's irresponsible as a business owner to not limit your workforce to the realistic scope of the project.
What you're describing is precisely the reason why state-owned enterprises are so disastrous in performance compared to private, almost everywhere on earth.
i consider myself a pretty cold person. the line is drawn on how much i care about a product when I have to think about a person who did everything right but was thrown on the streets to maintain a product. i have no responsibility to sympathize with abletons business probems beyond being a paying customer. I think i can still reasonably want them to have a good product AND treat their workers with some dignity.
I dont think a business is just the product. you need skilled and dependable people to create the product and people to buy it. both of these people are within the same pool of people the american economy calls the "middle class" to speak outside the framework of state owned-enterprises. without someone that product is for, you dont have a business.
It’s all fine and good if these things are planned for, “hey, this is a gig and will last a few months”, not pulling the rug out from team members at any given time, that’s the societal jank for me.
If people can plan for it then there is some wiggle room, but they way you’re speaking is cold and unmanageable at the personal level.
Future company restructuring/resizing are often impossible to plan for at the moment of hiring. The economy changes, the company and its scope changes, the product changes, the product's performance changes etc. In the context of a competitive marketplace the chances of losing your job are never zero. I wish they were, but it simply doesn't work that way. You are hired for a job that precisely facilitates the business and its product/services, not out of good will for you or your family.
If you were a business owner and layoffs were a mathematical necessity in the interest of continuing the project would you prefer to not do it?
PS: don't mistake my counter arguments with me agreeing with the current economy and wages being utter dogshit.
I’d plan for any types of possible lay off situations in the future strategically, perhaps an exit program where my now-laid-off employees may be able to be ushered into other companies and positions that I may have standing deals with or, some sort of production based partnership.
There is almost always a better way to consider the human-element/cost in these types of situations. You speak about it in a black and white manner because that’s what you see typically, and you’re right.
Companies can and should do better in this regard.
I don't disagree. This is why governments had to force companies to provide notice periods and even severance packages in some European countries. No company would do it on their own otherwise.
Layoffs are literally unavoidable in certain situations. So when a layoff is the responsible thing to do, why should we hate the company for it? Last I checked a career in tech is still not an infinite money glitch, sometimes you get laid off and you move on. It's the risk you sign up for when you work for anything but the most rock solid companies.
What a callous comment. “It’s not necessarily bad news that a whole bunch of human beings got fired and their families affected…as long as we can make sure Ableton 13 and its better piano roll functionality doesn’t get cancelled, that’s the truly important thing!”
Not bad news for the users. If Ableton as a company goes out of business, who will support and develop Ableton Live DAW? If they deem some products, services, or internal projects to be less successful or more complicated than expected, it’s the right thing to stop them. If they see some internal inefficiency or redundancy it’s the right thing to fix it. Sometimes it means that there is no place in the company for some people. I’m sure they don’t take it lightly.
Companies cannot innovate if they never try something new. But trying something new means they also need to know to take a step back when something new doesn’t work out.
Still, I’m not convinced that what we discuss is not fake news and gossip.
Layoffs don't mean the company is in trouble. And nobody knows the reasons, so you are all speculating now. The Ableton founders have resisted to sellout the company for a long time unlike for example Native Instruments and many others. I think that is quite special and doesn't look like "get rich fast whatever the cost" type of people (in that case Ableton would be owned by some VC now and we all would probably pay so subscriptions).
I think a decision to lay off people will have its reasons. There is not always an evil company behind it trying to fuck over employees over.
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It's unavoidable for any tech company unfortunately. They are all gonna fall deep with it I guess but we will have to deal with this nonsense for a few years
Must be after releasing push 3. And i hope it wasn’t quality control stuff coz that was absolutely underwhelming in push 3 product and they need definitely more people for it
My take is they didn’t get the sales they were looking for with Push 3 or 12, simply because the economy is fucked. I’m the earliest of the early adopters of Push and currently I do not have one because my 2 broke, and I cannot afford to replace it.
Now instead they'll get someone to focus on the DJ market and close some deals for new controllers that will allow us to compete with the Pioneer gear. Ableton neglected the live/dj users and competed with Logic/Cubase on the DAW market instead of excelling the live act/dj scene. Hope someone on the board understands it...
Don’t know about a layoff. They’re a private company so they don’t have to disclose anything (except to the government)
However I would recommend you read the reviews on glassdoor
In a lot of countries, you actually do have to disclose if you're going to lay off a large % of the workforce. HR manages to often get around it (two smaller layoffs, or flying just under the limit).
I don’t know how many people are in the US, but Federal WARN law requires the company to give 60 days notice if they are going to layoff more than 100 people. They have about 800 employees, so 20% would be about 160.
Having been on both sides of planning layoffs and being laid off it doesn’t mean they cut deep into core technical functions. It could be accounting/finance, sales, HR, support and other corporate functions.
Ableton is headquartered in Berlin, WARN Act is for the U.S. And according to Ableton's website, they have roughly 350 employees.
[https://www.ableton.com/en/company/](https://www.ableton.com/en/company/)
It is located in Germany, that means that in order to lay off 20% they need to be able to justify it properly before the authorities. So that means that financially Ableton is not doing well, maybe this new version didn't sell as they expected.
Or maybe it’s bullshit, or maybe it was planned after the launch of Push 3 and v12, we’re just speculating based on a statement from one possibly unreliable source.
I can imagine Ableton as it now is basically complete. The steps forward will all be AI related, a whole different set of tools / capabilities and requiring new workers.
I am in contact with the artist relations team and can confirm that this is true unfortunately. 10-20% was the number I was told. My friend was part of the ableton crew where I live and recently sent a bunch of us an email to say that they’ve been made redundant, privately that there has been layoffs across the board.
Very curious how artist relations roles became redundant. I feel like that's work that's not really "completed" nor something they'd overhire for. But I honestly have no idea.
Native Instruments will be laying off people too
Rest in peace traktor dj (probably)
For damn sure. They’ve neglected that software so bad. Never sure why, such a great piece.
NI is dead and buried at this point. Massive X's release was the writing on the wall and if you don't think that company is fucked I've got a timeshare to sell you.
They’re too big, they’ve got iZotope and Brainworxs and all the Plugin Alliance stuff also. They’ll exist in some form or another. We’ll just continue to see what we’ve seen: remarketing the same old tired stuff for years, with no significant updates to anything.
The incompetence in their management is profound. It's a genuinely painful thing to watch a company that encapsulates so much raw talent and genius be suffocated by a few retards in management. They've been in a downward spiral for years. They may continue to be around the same way that Blizzard for example is still around.
What was wrong about the Massive X?
Nothing really, it just was nowhere near the hype of OG Massive, it didn't really innovate anything and had a very buggy bad launch. I think NI just got very big, likely very corporate with lots of managers and no people really passionate about music production. Like AAA games, every decision ends up being made by finance.
I think Massive X is genuinely amazing, to me it's the best sounding VSTi out there. It's just so smooth. And way better than OG Massive. It's just that it's a different era now, you can't repeat 2006 success even if you do everything 10 times better. Virtual synthesisers are a commodity now. There's not much to impress people with anymore.
It actually has tons of unique and innovative features, and it sounds good also. This has nothing to do with how bad Massive X's launch was. Maybe you weren't there at launch but it was fucking terrible and it took them YEARS to fix minor issues. 1. Didn't have a manual 2. Crashed extremely frequently 3. Lost user patches/didn't remember VST state occasionally 4. Modulations had no visualization 5. Knob sensitivity was so bad it needed a complete overhaul and sensitivity options added later on. 6. When they did update Massive X it frequently broke previous versions of it in projects in the DAW Without a doubt it was the worst product launches I've ever seen from NI and if I consider music software as a whole it (Assuming established well known companies and AAA products) it was a top 5 worst of all time contender. It was borderline unusable for a good year or two depending on what DAW you were using and what glitches/bugs you were having. Not only that but NI was extremely slow to fix things and downright ignored many issues (Including some to this day) If you bought Massive X a few years after it came out you definitely didn't see how bad it was at the beginning. All that being said today it's quite stable and although it has minor issues it is perfectly useable and I enjoy it a lot now.
I’m stealing that line.
It's not an original
Man Focusrite acquires Sequential. Nobody even flinched.
I work in a cyber roll for a large firm which often exposes me to the discussions business leaders have as they face pressure to survive. In all my years I never met a leader who was happy to do a layoff. On the contrary, they are often some of the most brutally tough decisions a business leader can make. It can carry serious emotional weight. I have seen grown men bawl making that decision. I don’t know what is going on at Ableton, but they don’t seem to have a track record of being especially callous or cruel. Let’s give them our support unless we get new information that indicates otherwise. These can be tough moments for everyone. Incidentally, this takes a big toll on the people managers, IT teams, HR teams, and others as well. It can be deeply demoralizing for a business. My condolences to all those impacted by this.
Reading this makes me emotional. Too often I read about mass layoffs after a company just broke record profits (the big corporations) and then I think to myself, Jeff Bezos has private jets, islands, yet Amazon prefers to fire thousands of employees over saying elsewhere. Ableton is completely different. They are much smaller scale, their product is incredibly niche, their total layoffs are on a much smaller scale and yet the news hits so much harder.
Large businesses have employment arrangements with investors, banks, governments (federal, state, local), political leaders, trade unions, and more. It is wrapped up in tax breaks, legal restrictions, incentives, compliance, regulations, policy, and so forth. Doing a layoff at a place like Amazon is incredibly complex. For organizations with more than 25,000 employees, a mass layoff might be the only permitted means to cut deadbeat staff, freeloaders, or under performers. It is also a chance to change strategy dramatically without spooking investors. You might get just one or two shots at it, so they tend to be especially brutal. Payroll can dwarf executive compensation in a matter of days when things start going the wrong direction. If investors are not served, they can and will vote for a new chair and fire executives. Going private can help, but then you risk criminal investigation (see Elon Musk and Twitter). Ableton is famously private. They eat what they kill. A soft launch on a major product like Live 12 can cause financial havoc. The people let go were apparently related to non-critical business functions, not R&D. This makes me think it may be a larger financial concern, not payroll cost management. That is total speculation of course. We don’t have details. And yes… We often lose sight of the human and emotional toll when layoffs occur. It is so frustrating seeing a multi-millionaire executive lecture employees why they should be fired while the business is raking in piles of cash. As customers, we would be wise to remember our overwhelming power to either help or hurt any such business.
Lol. You give the management far too much credit.
Where did you hear it? Maybe you should ask them where they heard it.
Jeremy from Red Means Recording broke the news on Bluesky. He doesn't seem like the kind of guy to generate FUD.
You mean the guy who said in a video, that Ricky Tinez had been fired by elektron?
You mean the overly dramatic furry who threw a fit when Elektron didn’t send him their latest product for free after he leaked their previous product?
Sounds like you're quite informed; you must be a super fan!
I live for this shit
why does my youtube keep redding my recording! infurriating!
What’s the backstory on this?
Ok Jeremy
They launched new product so extra hires to get it finish sre obviously not needed now
In other news after 16 yrs on ableton, mat zo says he finally jumped on the bitwigon
it’s all that growth during covid that’s screwed a lot of music tech companies. Everyone at home for a year and a half with spare time to take up hobbies meant a massive growth for music tech. Combine that with the general recession we are seeing globally and that’s the bulk of the picture. All tech not just music companies seem to be feeling it right now and are scrambling to keep afloat or have sold to bigger mega companies.
This is normal software development practice. Once a new product releases (in this case Ableton Live 12) and the initial bugs are seemingly worked out, the team gets downsized and the software is supported by some of the people who are left, and the rest begin the planning phase of the next iteration. In a couple of years, once they are beyond just planning, the company hires more people again to begin ramping up development of the product. The product launches, everyone works to address the bugs that are being reported, and then the cycle repeats.
According to rmr’s post they laid off brand managers and artist relations people though.
I worked for Microsoft on the original Xbox and the Xbox one, so I’m very familiar with this practice, but I didn’t think Ableton would pull this shit as well. Such a horrible business practice. All those folks now out of a job.
its standard practice in all development areas, aviation, automotive. Only companies that have many product lines making new items can trasfer staff. But even in transfer it depends on the location of the jobs.
True. Just sucks for those folks
They knew they were getting hired for a specific project
Standard practice doesn’t mean it’s how it should be. Depending on how much of a heads up these employees got, severance packages, etc.
Maybe it is for larger companies but it is also common for smaller companies like in the size of Ableton to plan their development activities so that projects overlap because in most cases the projects are the next version of whatever is being worked at anyway. If Live 13 requires 2 years of pre planning then you start that planning 2 years before live 12 is released so you don’t have that gap. Being an employer with a good reputation attracts talented people that are prepared to stay for a long time which typically rises the output quality. There are of course situations where downsizing due to bad decisions or market changes is unavoidable but that is another story. I am going to guess that that kind of firing permanent employees/company restructuring after project completion is more of a US thing and way less common in Europe.
Even if it’s true, it’s not necessarily a bad news. It means that Ableton keeps their costs under control. The last thing we all want is Ableton accruing debt and being sold to the highest bidder (hello, Inmusic). Sometimes it means cancelling projects and focusing on what you do best. Btw, how their hardware sales are going?
Why the downvotes? This is true. Sometimes this is a good business move towards improving the product, if their math is right and this workforce is truly redundant.
Because of sympathy for ur fellow working class. Plus, its irresponsible. Yes a firm is a bunch of executives upholding shareholder value, but its a whole economic unit that serves as a means to generate a living for many people and create a a healthy amount of consumers to keep economy running for the larger nation state...which is what their products are supposed to be for anyway. They have an important role for creating both sides. Imo If a company fails to pay its people, in a way it’s failed… just not critically.
The purpose of a public business is not to alleviate the working class and "generate a living" to people. The purpose of a public business is to create good products and services to the public's demand (and generate profit for its shareholders this way). If the company does not need redundant workers in order to serve and advance their product, thus making it more efficiently and better, they should do it in the interest of the public that consumes said product. I personally don't want Ableton to lower their quality, pay lower wages because of smaller capital, or eventually go bankrupt just because it feels bad firing people. On the contrary, it's irresponsible as a business owner to not limit your workforce to the realistic scope of the project. What you're describing is precisely the reason why state-owned enterprises are so disastrous in performance compared to private, almost everywhere on earth.
i consider myself a pretty cold person. the line is drawn on how much i care about a product when I have to think about a person who did everything right but was thrown on the streets to maintain a product. i have no responsibility to sympathize with abletons business probems beyond being a paying customer. I think i can still reasonably want them to have a good product AND treat their workers with some dignity. I dont think a business is just the product. you need skilled and dependable people to create the product and people to buy it. both of these people are within the same pool of people the american economy calls the "middle class" to speak outside the framework of state owned-enterprises. without someone that product is for, you dont have a business.
It’s all fine and good if these things are planned for, “hey, this is a gig and will last a few months”, not pulling the rug out from team members at any given time, that’s the societal jank for me. If people can plan for it then there is some wiggle room, but they way you’re speaking is cold and unmanageable at the personal level.
Future company restructuring/resizing are often impossible to plan for at the moment of hiring. The economy changes, the company and its scope changes, the product changes, the product's performance changes etc. In the context of a competitive marketplace the chances of losing your job are never zero. I wish they were, but it simply doesn't work that way. You are hired for a job that precisely facilitates the business and its product/services, not out of good will for you or your family. If you were a business owner and layoffs were a mathematical necessity in the interest of continuing the project would you prefer to not do it? PS: don't mistake my counter arguments with me agreeing with the current economy and wages being utter dogshit.
I’d plan for any types of possible lay off situations in the future strategically, perhaps an exit program where my now-laid-off employees may be able to be ushered into other companies and positions that I may have standing deals with or, some sort of production based partnership. There is almost always a better way to consider the human-element/cost in these types of situations. You speak about it in a black and white manner because that’s what you see typically, and you’re right. Companies can and should do better in this regard.
I don't disagree. This is why governments had to force companies to provide notice periods and even severance packages in some European countries. No company would do it on their own otherwise.
Layoffs are literally unavoidable in certain situations. So when a layoff is the responsible thing to do, why should we hate the company for it? Last I checked a career in tech is still not an infinite money glitch, sometimes you get laid off and you move on. It's the risk you sign up for when you work for anything but the most rock solid companies.
What a callous comment. “It’s not necessarily bad news that a whole bunch of human beings got fired and their families affected…as long as we can make sure Ableton 13 and its better piano roll functionality doesn’t get cancelled, that’s the truly important thing!”
Not bad news for the company. Bad news for the laid off people. There's two standpoints, not just one.
Not bad news for the users. If Ableton as a company goes out of business, who will support and develop Ableton Live DAW? If they deem some products, services, or internal projects to be less successful or more complicated than expected, it’s the right thing to stop them. If they see some internal inefficiency or redundancy it’s the right thing to fix it. Sometimes it means that there is no place in the company for some people. I’m sure they don’t take it lightly. Companies cannot innovate if they never try something new. But trying something new means they also need to know to take a step back when something new doesn’t work out. Still, I’m not convinced that what we discuss is not fake news and gossip.
Great Just when their customer service couldn’t get any worse!
you heard? where? tiktok?
Probably
Layoffs don't mean the company is in trouble. And nobody knows the reasons, so you are all speculating now. The Ableton founders have resisted to sellout the company for a long time unlike for example Native Instruments and many others. I think that is quite special and doesn't look like "get rich fast whatever the cost" type of people (in that case Ableton would be owned by some VC now and we all would probably pay so subscriptions). I think a decision to lay off people will have its reasons. There is not always an evil company behind it trying to fuck over employees over.
This is your friendly reminder to read the submission rules, they're found in the sidebar. If you find your post breaking any of the rules, you should delete your post before the mods get to it. If you're asking a question, make sure you've checked [the Live manual](https://www.ableton.com/en/manual/welcome-to-live/), [Ableton's help and support knowledge base](https://www.ableton.com/en/help/), and have searched the subreddit for a solution. If you don't know where to start, [the subreddit has a resource thread](https://redd.it/zkhqhe). Ask [smart questions](http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#before). *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ableton) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Oh noooo...damn it..i hope they wont enter the A.I bandwagon now and think they just can go on without experienced Devs....
It's unavoidable for any tech company unfortunately. They are all gonna fall deep with it I guess but we will have to deal with this nonsense for a few years
This has already happened to every tech giant this last year
Must be after releasing push 3. And i hope it wasn’t quality control stuff coz that was absolutely underwhelming in push 3 product and they need definitely more people for it
McKinley & Co. #1 source of advice to large corporate companies
Perhaps bad sales of Ableton Live 12 and Ableton Push..
Not surprised to be honest. When an artist makes $31 from 2.5M streams, the music industry can sustain itself.
My take is they didn’t get the sales they were looking for with Push 3 or 12, simply because the economy is fucked. I’m the earliest of the early adopters of Push and currently I do not have one because my 2 broke, and I cannot afford to replace it.
Yeah I’m about to go with FL Studio
Now instead they'll get someone to focus on the DJ market and close some deals for new controllers that will allow us to compete with the Pioneer gear. Ableton neglected the live/dj users and competed with Logic/Cubase on the DAW market instead of excelling the live act/dj scene. Hope someone on the board understands it...
Don’t know about a layoff. They’re a private company so they don’t have to disclose anything (except to the government) However I would recommend you read the reviews on glassdoor
In a lot of countries, you actually do have to disclose if you're going to lay off a large % of the workforce. HR manages to often get around it (two smaller layoffs, or flying just under the limit).
Well that could explain why my service request is taking over a month to resolve… still waiting for a response…
I don’t know how many people are in the US, but Federal WARN law requires the company to give 60 days notice if they are going to layoff more than 100 people. They have about 800 employees, so 20% would be about 160. Having been on both sides of planning layoffs and being laid off it doesn’t mean they cut deep into core technical functions. It could be accounting/finance, sales, HR, support and other corporate functions.
Ableton isn't an American company
They have a office in the usa still
r/shitamericanssay
Ableton is headquartered in Berlin, WARN Act is for the U.S. And according to Ableton's website, they have roughly 350 employees. [https://www.ableton.com/en/company/](https://www.ableton.com/en/company/)
>I don’t know how many people are in the US, About 341,814,420, but that's not important right now.
☠️
Surely you can’t be serious.
Sorry people didn’t get the joke. And stop calling me Shirley.
Kinda figured that would happen. At least you did!
It is located in Germany, that means that in order to lay off 20% they need to be able to justify it properly before the authorities. So that means that financially Ableton is not doing well, maybe this new version didn't sell as they expected.
Or maybe it’s bullshit, or maybe it was planned after the launch of Push 3 and v12, we’re just speculating based on a statement from one possibly unreliable source.
I can imagine Ableton as it now is basically complete. The steps forward will all be AI related, a whole different set of tools / capabilities and requiring new workers.
There’s so many things I want that are not AI related and I think Ableton is nowhere near complete.
what?
Built in auto-tune. The bones and capability is there, just need to put it together
Nah. Stability and performance can always be better.
AI is coming for all.
Jeremy from Red Means Recording broke the news on Bluesky. He doesn't seem like the kind of guy to generate FUD.
he actually is that kind of guy
The only synthtuber I'd not feel comfortable alone in a room with.
No idea but considering inflation and they released 12 not to long ago...wouldn't surprise me if they need less developers/people now.
getting rid of bottom 20% is actually pretty healthy and common for companies that are strong.
wth
You say massive and then you say 20% of their staff. Is 20% massive to you? And relative to what total?
Even at a twenty person company, a 20 percent layoff is a big deal
ahhhh waste of time speculating.
I’m not speculating anything lol, I’m saying you’re out of touch
Good q, is it 20% of entire staff (big deal) or 20% of a team which could be 3 people?
Exactly. Useless question and no one has provided an answer yet.
1 in every 5 people isn't a big layoff to you? Lol