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[IbizaPocholo]

Morale at Mixer is low, and new management is making it worse, employee says - OnMSFT.com

The town hall may have only deepened the despair, shaken the trust and dampened the passion current employees are having when clocking in for work.

www.onmsft.com

As has been reported, Mixer has had a rough few months that involved the original founders leaving the business alongside a general manager and corporate vice president. However, what hasn’t been reported is that over the last six months, there have been sixteen layoffs due to budget cuts which have shed roughly 25% of an already skeletal team and are causing feature releases to slip schedules. That’s according to a Mixer employee who reached out to us, concerned about the direction and fate of Mixer, in an email sent to us via ProtonMail entitled “Why Microsoft Mixer Will Fail.”

During an internal Mixer town hall last week, executives spoke to its skeleton crew of employees to address the growing sense of frustration and low morale within the business, unfortunately, their words left a lot to be desired. The employee included a video of part of the meeting. Leading up to her town hall appearance last week, newly appointed general manager Shilpa Yadla had been meeting with employees one on one, presumably to assuage fears and concerns, but on stage, her words may have had the adverse effect.

While tackling the concerns of the Mixer employee pool, Yadla referred to their feedback as “blah, blah, blah” and surmises legitimate issues as “negative feedback.” Yadla also mentions in the town hall that while she has empathy for the group she has no tolerance for “negativity” or “negative feedback” and that she is not there to “sympathize with anybody.”

The employee includes this in the email to us:

Post townhall, many of the team are angry and in shock and the hallway conversations are: “wow, now I really want to work for her, thanks for listening”. Yadla ends her inspirational speech with the quote that Satya frequently uses: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”. Not sure this is what Satya meant by culture.

While we can’t be 100% sure that this email to us is legitimate, we reached out to the sender to confirm that they were indeed working at Microsoft on Mixer, at least according to them.

 

[wolffy71]

While some comp for twitch would be good most likely, it just doesn't seem like its gonna come from mixer. Maybe youtube, but them overtaking twitch might be the worst of all.

 

[10000]

so she did listen to the team members problem and concern one on one then dismissed them all in harsh manner on her so-called inspiring speech, presumably lower the morale even more

I just couldn't believe things like this happens at leading giants such as msft

 

[bRacing]

That right there is a born leader. A born terrible leader. But a born leader regardless. I look forward to seeing where she fails next after Mixer either folds or fires her.

 

[Fox Mulder]

I’m totally shocked Mixer headed this way. /s

Running a skelton crew, lacking features, not available on other platforms or smart TVs. They spent millions on getting Ninja exclusively though.

 

[zeorhymer]

No tolerance for negative feedback? How the fuck would she fix the problems if she doesn't give a shit about the problems?

 

[Stray Parts]

Not surprising, look at market data, Mixer is just too small.

They wasted money on luring big streamers who's communities go right back to Twitch once their done and don't stick around on Mixer, with all that money when they could have bought out dozens of lower tier streamers all connected to one another so the community can bounce around on Mixer and not go straight back to Twitch.

Dlive is also going down the drain, it had some nice ideas but did not have the money to bank roll any of the above, so only people banned on Twitch ever bothered with it but that simply wasn't enough.

Facebook Gaming is the real dark horse, actually growing by quite an amount, some potential there for a actual Twitch rival.

 

[Jason28]

do you want some gookie gookie ? try my gookie gookie

 

[ultrazilla]

Hey as long as this guy is happy at Mixer:

 

[Thaedolus]

When I see performance problems my first thing is asking my employees what they need and how I can help them to succeed, because that’s my only job as their management. That’s not some LinkedIn hokey bullshit, it’s what my previous bosses have done for me that inspired loyalty and desire not to fail them in me...I’ve tried to emulate that...

If my management said “well, you have two choices: focus or cry about it” I’d have walked the fuck out to cry about it.

Spoiler

and find a new job

 

[Enjay]

That right there is a born leader. A born terrible leader. But a born leader regardless. I look forward to seeing where she fails next after Mixer either folds or fires her.

People like this tend to fail upward so most likely she'll end up at google.

 

[Hawking Radiation]

I sometimes wonder how people get into these jobs in the first place.

 

[Jigsaah]

Its a shame. Mixer genuinely has a lot going for it. It's better quality than Twitch far as bitrate is concerned. The chat system encourages more interaction while Twitch's only effectively encourages lurking...which is fine, you don't have to talk in the chat, but it helps the streamer to grow when viewers are rewarded in real time for simply speaking up.

I know how low morale can tank an entire organizational culture. It happens at my job too, so I feel where these employees are coming. Hopefully someone can break the mold, because it's a rut that's hard to dig yourself out of.

 

[GymWolf]

Hey as long as this guy is happy at Mixer:

the new generation love this cunt...we have dark times ahead of us boys...

 

[CatLady]

She sounds like a real gem of a boss, working hard to keep employee morale in the shitter. Mixer is having budget problems and laying people off but spending millions to bring idiots like Ninja and Shroud to the platform. Great priorities there, gee, I wonder why the morale is low.

It's a shame too, while I don't watch & couldn't care less about streamers, I love Mixer for live events like the E3 conferences, but at this rate it might not be around for this years E3.

 

[Blond]

No tolerance for negative feedback? How the fuck would she fix the problems if she doesn't give a shit about the problems?

She on that Galaxy Brain thought pattern.

 

[ClearMind]

Another failed microsoft initiative. Xcloud is next.

 

[M1chl]

I sometimes wonder how people get into these jobs in the first place.

Equallity quote.

 

[Entroyp]

Wow. How in seven hells did she get that job?

 

[Arkam]

Morale should be low. Its a crap platform with awful hosts.

 

[DeepEnigma]

She sounds like the perfect diversity hire.

 

[YodaBB]

She needs to go on a course to improve her presentation skills as she doesn't seem to have any blah blah blah blah. In my experience these kinds of people fail upwards in big corporations.

 

[DESTROYA]

She sounds like the perfect diversity hire.

What? You can actually tell what she’s talking about.

 

[MoreJRPG]

Mixer feels like it should actually be owned by Google. No clue what Microsoft was thinking with this one.

 

[TwiztidElf]

The beatings will continue until morale improves.

 

[TLZ]

That right there is a born leader. A born terrible leader. But a born leader regardless. I look forward to seeing where she fails next after Mixer either folds or fires her.

That's a natural born leader to you?

I wouldn't hire her for 1 cent.

 

[MayauMiao]

She sounds like a certain EA exec who famously said "Don't like it, don't buy it".

 

[Caffeine]

morale was low when they were beam. microsoft buying them gave them some longevity. I think they have to understand that there are 2 other platforms taking up most of the streaming space for games, this was an uphill battle since day 1.

 

[Nero_PR]

Just change based on the criticism you received or turn into a branch pornhub and you are all good. Those are your choices aside from going out of business.

 

[wolffy71]

Another failed microsoft initiative. Xcloud is next.

Right? With all their failures Im surprised they are one of the most successful companies in the history of the planet. We all know they are actually terrible.

Its almost makes it seem like they know what theyre doing and everyone on the internet is a dumbass. But nah cant be.

 

[DiscoJer]

Right? With all their failures Im surprised they are one of the most successful companies in the history of the planet. We all know they are actually terrible.

Its almost makes it seem like they know what theyre doing and everyone on the internet is a dumbass. But nah cant be.

Well, bear in mind they basically came into existence because IBM was afraid they'd get hit by the government if they provided both the OS and hardware for PCs. And once they had the PC market, they've used very dodgy schemes to hold onto it.

 

[VincentMatts]

Holy moly

I’ve been in a situation like that. I worked for a really big company that was literally having major layoffs every six months. And I can tell you for fact that the self-esteem of the people working there was very depressing. I mean yes, we did our best but it was very hard to stay positive when there was no light at the end of the tunnel. When you don’t see any hope coming along, the culture of the company just kind of starts dying. You hammering a “positivity” speech won’t change that.

The people sitting there do not want to be lectured about positivity, they wanted solutions. They wanted her to say “I have a plan, and this is what we’re gonna do to bring us back”.

I hate to break it to her, but your platform is not competing with small start ups. It’s competing with Facebook it’s competing with YouTube and it’s competing with Amazon. All these companies have a shit load of money that your positivity speech won’t solve.

Mixer did the right moves at the beginning, they attracted big name talent. But its as if the community did not grow fast enough for MS and so they started cutting. Mixer needs so much work that the talent cannot provide for them.

Ninja uploads YouTube videos pretty much every day, and they practically all hit 1 million views. The guy clearly has popularity. But why haven’t those people joined mixer? Is that ninjas fault? Or is that mixer’s fault? I see ads on my Xbox dashboard promoting ninja. I don’t know if you know this, but as an Xbox owner I already know about mixer and ninja. I don’t need to be advertised that, it being on the platform I use every day and all. it’s as if they have no idea what they’re doing and the people in charge clearly don’t have the right vision.

I mean when I listen to Phil Spencer talk, I hear his plan and I see his vision. And that gives me hope, and it makes me wanna invest in the Xbox platform. I don’t hear any of that from mixer. Or her.

If I were in her position I would’ve made a completely different speech. Yes positivity is important. But it’s not the solution. And she provided zero solutions which is not going to make anyone more positive.

 

[MiyazakiHatesKojima]

Mixer is a complete sausage fest and affiliated with Microsoft, so i'm not surprised.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

MS has this weird flowchart of new product that goes like this:

(1) Something is observed to be popular
(2) Make copy of said something because "It's popular"
(3) The copy is inferior to the original
(4) ???
(5) PROFIT!

This flowchart consistently fails again and again but MS keeps doing it anyways. Some of the failures (Windows Phone) are absolutely spectacular. Stuff like Mixer, people will forget about in a week when it's canned.

 

[Hendrick's]

Wow, 16 layoffs?!?! Time for a government bail out.

 

[MaestroMike]

lmao does she even game ? otherwise GTFO

 

[Yoda]

Looked her up on Linkedin, looks like she's from "Xbox Monetization Services". Before that she was in middle management at amazon for 9 years, but it doesn't say at which org. Certainly not the right person for Mixer, they need to be in growth mode, not margin mode. This is awful PR for Microsoft, it'll increase the cost of exclusivity deals if creators doubt the long-term health of the platform.

 

[vito_don_corleone_]

Morale at Mixer is low, and new management is making it worse, employee says - OnMSFT.com

The town hall may have only deepened the despair, shaken the trust and dampened the passion current employees are having when clocking in for work.

www.onmsft.com

As has been reported, Mixer has had a rough few months that involved the original founders leaving the business alongside a general manager and corporate vice president. However, what hasn’t been reported is that over the last six months, there have been sixteen layoffs due to budget cuts which have shed roughly 25% of an already skeletal team and are causing feature releases to slip schedules. That’s according to a Mixer employee who reached out to us, concerned about the direction and fate of Mixer, in an email sent to us via ProtonMail entitled “Why Microsoft Mixer Will Fail.”

During an internal Mixer town hall last week, executives spoke to its skeleton crew of employees to address the growing sense of frustration and low morale within the business, unfortunately, their words left a lot to be desired. The employee included a video of part of the meeting. Leading up to her town hall appearance last week, newly appointed general manager Shilpa Yadla had been meeting with employees one on one, presumably to assuage fears and concerns, but on stage, her words may have had the adverse effect.

While tackling the concerns of the Mixer employee pool, Yadla referred to their feedback as “blah, blah, blah” and surmises legitimate issues as “negative feedback.” Yadla also mentions in the town hall that while she has empathy for the group she has no tolerance for “negativity” or “negative feedback” and that she is not there to “sympathize with anybody.”

The employee includes this in the email to us:

While we can’t be 100% sure that this email to us is legitimate, we reached out to the sender to confirm that they were indeed working at Microsoft on Mixer, at least according to them.

She’s a shockingly bad leader.

I wonder if this exile to Mixer is some kind of punishment

 

[Dontero]

You want to know why there are no monopolies ?

Because every big company starts to operate like governments, they become inneficient and workers there start to be corrupt not giving their all and work toward single goal. People at the top start to see people as replacable while people at lower think of themselves as replaceable. Those lower people will try then to use company and its assets to profit from it rather than to think about company.

Mixer and google projects are great example of that. Higher ups are interested about stock going up not about making sure projects are succesful. When they finally start to do something they throw huge resources at something but they don't have grit needed to finish those products well because it requires commitment from people.

 

[buizel]

Damn that video. It's going to fail now thanks to her

 

[odhiex]

I don't watch Mixer, I have even rarely watch gameplay streaming, so I could care less about all of these streaming platforms...

but hooo boy!! that townhall video just like a slap to the faces of Mixer's employees. "I have a lot of empathy but I am not here to sympathize with anyone."

 

[nemiroff]

That town hall video.. holy shit, no wonder the low morale..

 

[Barakov]

Looks like Mixer could possibly be dead soon. If she wanted to assuage fears in her employess she went about it in the worst possible way. Shroud and Ninja probably knew that even if Mixer died they could probably go back to Twitch or even Youtube with a bunch of money in their pocket.

 

[Harlock]

By the end of day, why someone change where watch game streaming? Unless they allow naked women, there is not differencial enough.

 

[Mista]

I just couldn't believe things like this happens at leading giants such as msft

It happens the most within leading giants though. They just know how to hide them very well because they're powerful

Small companies in the market doesn't have as much problems as someone that is among the leading giants

If all the garbage gets taken out of all those leading giants, you'll put your hands on your head because you wouldn't believe it

 

[GymWolf]

I know some people find sexy the broken english of indian women, personally? I find her talking like a driller in my ears, why in the fuck you hire a chick that it's almost incomprehensible for a job like this? She needs the fucking subtitles ffs...

 

[Jill Valentine]

 

[GymWolf]

LilBlastyBlast is an excellent pornstar name.

 

[Yamisan]

I forgot Mixer was still even a thing.

 

[INC]

Imagine having to listen to ninjas demands one daily basis, I'd wanna leave too