Revenue isn't the only real way to see the value of the company. Corporate social responsibility is just as important - we had to lobby for things like hiring into key community roles, and even annual donations to charities. Stack Overflow is what it is because the community put hundreds of hours into answering questions, curation and other things. While we do not make you money directly (well, outside advertising), the entire value of the Stack Overflow brand and the willingness of hundreds of subject matter experts - maybe thousands - to recommend, and work with your product would depend on goodwill.
Quite often, cutting back ancan even result in revenue and value being lost. Where do you see Stack Exchange in 5, 10 or 20 years?
Stack Exchange hasn't really had domain focus on Q&A in years. It slipped into a company that was heavily marketing driven, rather than the rather lean, innovative company that had massive amounts of trust. We had a partnership, and now we have "We have changed the terms of our agreement, pray we do not change it further"further."
I guess the question is how badly do you need to poison the goodwill of the community, while claiming that we trust you, before things become irreparable.
For the community to grow we need the tools and support to build solid cores and feel that we're welcome in the place we built. And every employee, whether it’s marketing, or folks with direct work in the community - and especially the CEO - needs to realise their actions impact the community. One that's been often hurt, dismissed and pushed aside.
Sustainability needs long term planning, not chasing the next shiny thing. I've seen communities I've been a long time part of - sites like Server Fault and Information Security - lose a lot of regular users. My own community spaces - like Super User and Pets - are a lot quieter than they used to be. The current goals seem to focus on the next quarter while I've literally been trying to get things moving, or 'fixed' in certain respects, for years.
I'm underwhelmed. We've lost 10% of staff, and put 10% of what is left and put it into what turned out to be, at least initially, a deeply flawed, and barely hidden wrapper around ChatGPT or a similar LLM platform. At the current point, itsit's unfit for purpose
In order to do this, the company has succeeded in antagonising a significant part of the active moderation community to the point they are on strike. I've heard many moderators state they're considering quitting causebecause of burn out.