[Gaians Against Corporate] - Now with 80% more Dev opinion!

All those unhappy with the corporate style Gaia, please let the CEO know.

Dear CEO and all others at GHQ in power: I am unhappy with the way Gaia has been. Please read on to fully understand.	74.5%	[ 1086 ]
Dear CEO and all others at GHQ in power: I am one of the people who doesn't care either way.	25.5%	[ 372 ]
Total Votes:			[ 1458 ]

[Cid High-Wind]

Welcome to The G.A.C. (Gaians Against Corporate).

EDIT2: I no longer, 100% believe what has been said about Gaia selling out/CEO Craig being evil. I want people to understand my view on this, and that is that I was merely trying to inform others about what may have been going on. After some discussions and ideas exchanged between myself and other devs, I don't think it's as bad as we make it. However, I still want this thread to be a place of information and a voice to the higher ups in Gaia to hear our ideas. You don't have to agree with any of what I say, I just ask that you be kind and open to other thoughts, just as I have been in any opposing threads.

Thank you to all who have been showing the support for keeping Gaia what it used to be. What it was before it became ridden with ads and sponsors, before the real idea of a corporate-styled company came into view. When it gets to the point that people creating these features don't even get to decide on what's done, that's when you've gone to far. Once again, thanks and let's hope the CEO and all those in power see this and know what they're doing to the users isn't right. We're not just a product!

GUILD
DARKNRGY's journal entry talking about related issues

I found this journal entry done by the user/developer foobarbazquux. A lot of people don't know who she is, but she did a lot of back-end stuff to help keep Gaia running.

foobarbazquux

Two days ago, I gave my two weeks' notice as a developer at Gaia. My two year date is April 10, which means that I will have been here two years and one week when I leave. It has taken months of struggling with this decision to get to this point; this has been one of the hardest decisions I've ever had to make. Well then, why am I going?

When I started at Gaia, there were less than 30 employees. Projects were decided upon by Lanzer brainstorming directly with the developers and artists. As a developer, my job included figuring out what a feature would work and look like (i.e., product management and UI), managing the project timeline and making decisions as needed. As the company has grown, we have gotten more specialized teams and these aspects of my work have slowly been lost. Now, the process is roughly as follows: the product managers come up with an idea, they hand it off to UI to make mockups (pixel perfect representations of what a feature should look like), and only then is it handed to a dev to work on. We end up with 80 page long product requirement documents that control what we build even down to the error messages. Because we are not consulted until AFTER this monstrous document reaches our hands, we're put in the position of being the naysayers, people who have to say no because what they want simply cannot or should not be done. That in itself doesn't feel good, but then you add in the fact that we can't actually say "no, we will not build this," it puts us in a very uncomfortable position.

I want my old job back, the one with all the responsibilities and freedoms that were promised to me by Lanzer. Upper management often says here that since we're a big company we can't have that sort of control anymore, but it's not true. There are ways to structure your teams and processes to avoid this problem. Lanzer is trying his best to change things more to the way they used to be; given how corporate many of our newer employees are, I unfortunately do not believe he will succeed. That is why I decided to look for that freedom elsewhere.

So where is elsewhere? I'm heading over to be developer #5 at a small company called Project Playlist. Some of you may have seen their widget on Gaia. Their business model is advertising and being a middleman for selling ringtones and mp3s. As a senior developer there, my job will include everything from addressing scalability issues to database work to application design to user interface design and coding. In my talks with the CEO, he said that his goal is to keep the company small and focused on development of cool stuff, which is exactly what I think should be done. The web 2.0 industry has shown that, despite the tech bubble, a company that makes a solid product doesn't have to be this big, flashy best of the best company to be profitable and be acquired for good money.

To be honest, it's going to suck leaving behind all my friends at Gaia. The development team is pretty close knit, and I love working with the artists and the UI team. There are so many talented, intelligent people doing their best to making cool stuff for you guys. The amount of dedication and passion for community is thanks to Lanzer sharing his dream with us. I want to make it clear that while Lanzer may have made a mistake by opening the door to funding and all that went into it, he did NOT choose this path for Gaia and is actively fighting it with all the power he has. If I had anything left in me and if I believed that it would make a difference at this point, I would stay and help.

I want to leave you with one request... please, if you need to rail against anyone for the way Gaia is now, don't take it out on Lanzer; direct your feedback to those who control our project list: the board, the CEO, the product managers, the art director, marketing, and sales. Most of them have accounts on Gaia, read the forums (esp. Site Feedback) and do mean well; they just need help understanding the community. The board cares about the bottom line, which is income and number of users. You can help Lanzer by making clear, coherent, *mature* posts about what you like and dislike about Gaia and what would convince you, if anything, to spend more money on the site or to get your friends to join. Show a direct correlation between the creativity that Gaia used to embody and revenue.

I will miss you all, even the ones with poor spelling and grammar. I will probably not be updating this journal any more. Good luck to all of you; may you go out there and do great things!

EDIT: I wanted to clarify the part where the product managers come up with an idea. We have regular brainstorming meetings which all employees are encouraged to attend. Lots of great ideas come out of that and the product managers are great about taking notes on all of them without judgment. However, there is limited time to work on things so those that provide (perceived) increased metrics (revenue, time spent on the site, number of users, etc) will make it through to the list of things that will be built. It's mainly at the point where the feature is designed in detail that the dev input is lost.

Am I the only one who feels a very sudden feeling of how uncomfortable this is?

Barb is not the first one they have lost to this...erm, kind of thing. Here's what I think should happen.

We, the users, need to help Lanzer just as Barb asked. We need to come up with our own ideas on how to make Gaia a better place. What can they do to make us want to keep giving our money? Yes, she said it's about income and number of users, but that in itself is important to all companies.

However, do pay attention to this: With people like Barb leaving the company (the ones who want Gaia to be what it was), they're only leaving behind the people who want Gaia to change, to become this sponsor infested place where it really is only about money and getting more of it. This has been a gradual change over time, but we cannot avoid the road Gaia is headed for.

Some of you may have seen me taking my own stand against this, saying I may not be around Gaia for long. If we don't start stepping forward and protecting what we want, then it WILL be lost and we'll have a hell of a time getting it back. As sad as it is, Lanzer isn't in power anymore. He can listen to us all he wants, but he doesn't get final say. The big wigs at the top do.

Remember how disappointed he was about us not getting an Easter event? I have a feeling that if it was100% up to him like a lot of Gaians still believe, it would have been done. But it wasn't. And because of that, he was blamed worse than women getting hung at the Salem Witch Trials. He is just more like a spokes person for Gaia now, and he works on it the same as everyone else. Lanzer is like...a king to Gaia. And as soon as the CEO came along, it's like he handed his throne off to someone else and now wants it back. Oh me and my fantasy imagination.

I think you can find enough discussion here.

(Disclaimer: I do not speak for anyone who currently works at GHQ or foobarbazquux. The journal entry is all her own words which I bolded and underlined parts I thought were important. If she dislikes me posting it here, I'll remove it or replace it with a link or...something. Her entry just opened my eyes further to this problem we face.)

Check out this quote I found in an interview with Craig Sherman:

Quote:

YP: How does Gaia integrate marketing partners or advertisers? What would you say to brands interested in getting into this space?

CS: A major plank in Gaia's business model is sponsorships. Note though that sponsorships will always be secondary to our core mission of building and maintaining an engaging hang-out for teens. That means you won't see billboards and ads flogging products plastered all over Gaia.

Really? *looks at Gaia's home page* Something tells me I should doubt that.

Quote:

Instead, we will work with partners to create experiences that are fun and meaningful to our users as well as beneficial to sponsors. Gaians form a huge and savvy community of teenagers that will respond well to like-minded brands who 'get it.' With input from Gaians, we started by creating a white-list of brands that are authentic to the members of the site and therefore are the companies we want to work with.

Oh, and where exactly was MTV and The Hills and Nickelodeon on that list?

Quote:

In this spirit, Gaia recently conducted a promotion with New Line Cinema to promote its movie "The Last Mimzy." Gaians could conduct a short quest that involved previewing the film's trailer and retrieving a virtual Mimzy plushie to accompany their avatars. It was a relatively modest promotion, but it was extraordinarily well-received by the community. Not only were the number of users who participated huge, but they were truly engaged. For example, a number of Forums sprang up to discuss themes addressed in the movie.

Though this was posted last summer, it still shows how it was supposed to be, versus how it is now. I still don't agree with this, if anything.

This was posted in an SF thread:

CEO Craig Sherman

Thanks guys for the passionate posts - even the ones where you think we are - or in many cases I personally am - going in the wrong direction. You guys are incredibly committed and smart and even if some of it is painful to read, I really do appreciate it.

You know I joined gaia - for my full time job - because I fell in love with the vision of the founders and the amazing creativity that Lanzer, L0cke, VO, and some of the other members of the original team had. I still believe in that passionately. And I listen to what you guys are saying every day.

We've grown from 30 people to about 115 over the last two years. A lot of the reason for a larger team is to fix things (remember gold granting was disabled for a year because our systems were not secure enough to stop bots), to re-write lots of invisible things that were close to the breaking point (like our whole message posting engine since there's no outside software that can scale to the size of our community and it would have just plain stopped working by now if we hadn't addressed it), to make things work faster because gaians were frustrated (like Avi-loading times which we finished about 1 month ago; and flash-games loading which we're still about 2 months away from completely fixing our game-server issue which has plagued us for 3 years). And we have about 20% of the company's resources (money, people time) working on battle for over a year now. We also went from 1 person in 'customer service' to about 12 now and have improved Mod tools and will continue to. (scamming cases used to take over 3 months to resolve and we're now down to less than a week).

Large organizations become more 'process-oriented' (which really means 'bureaucratic') - and gaia isn't totally immune to this. The reality is that no one person (except probably Lanzer and L0cke) has as much freedom and personal autonomy and power as they had when we were only 30 people. But I think we work pretty well as a team here. And actually, it's still one of the most creative, most collaborative, and most fun places to work (many of the people at the office have told me that). L0cke and Lanzer and a lot of the creative team actually drive the essence of almost every new feature or product improvement - and a lot of the devs have a ton of input and impact on what we build. It's a heck of a lot better than a place like Neopets! I'm sure of that. And I promise we will keep it that way.

Your suggestions about ITO (giving people more room to innovate) are totally smart and we've been talking about doing more of that recently. Anyways, PM me or just keep writing here and other places on the site.
- fin / craig sherman

New posts by Fleep and Jakobo

Fleep

Yeah, I didn't work here very much in the olden days. I came on board I think 2 weeks before Craig did -- but Gaia was still very much a small company for many months after that point (and I know what it's like to work at a small company -- many/most of them are the same way FBBQ describes the old Gaia).

But Gaia isn't that small a company any more, and the same rules cannot apply. You need at least some kind of structure (unless you're a company that's making so much money it doesn't need to care about waste -- and that's not the case with us).

Regardless of my experience with what Gaia used to be, I can talk about what it is right now. Gaia doesn't need to be the same company it was to be a great, fun, and creative company. I'd be more worried if it never changed.

Fleep

Dankin

Gamine

Dankin

I wanna hear the inside scoop go public from a tired and stressed out developer, rather than Mr. Charm all the time. rolleyes

Who says Fleep isn't tired and stressed out? =P
I think the kind of response you're expecting is an almost unprofessional one, and it's not exactly fair to expect them to behave in a manner that almost might put their jobs in jeopardy and then accuse them of being robots when they choose not to...

Point taken. I should rephrase myself, basically someone who may not feel as positive as Fleep does...That guy loves his job to no end, and that's great, but what about another take on things??

Heh, for starters, I'm frequently burned out biggrin Whenever I work on an event, it usually means a couple of 90+ hr weeks. I recently had 4 concurrent projects going on, and believe me, it was no walk-in-the-park.

I try to be as professional and courteous as possible in dealing with users, and I've been pretty free with my concerns. If what you want to hear is "Gaia's going to hell! Everything's going wrong!" you're not going to hear it from me, because I don't believe it's true. There have been a couple of times where I've gotten so fed up that I just let my emotions get the better of me, and the results are never pretty.

There are times when this job becomes very hard, but in the end I've come to accept that (as I've mentioned before) this is an excellent company that I love. I love my workdays (even though they're often filled with stresses, annoyances, and challenges), I love my coworkers (even though everyone makes mistakes), and I love this site and its users. Many people here feel the same way, and those are the kind of people you want working at Gaia.

Jakobo

Since we're having an even discussion on the pros and cons of having the corporate side to Gaia, I felt it was worth adding my two cents in. I think that having a corporate influence is indeed important to growing Gaia, however, the need to try and grow Gaia is rooted in the same corporate influence. It's a really bad cycle when you think about it- to grow you need the company aspect which mandates you try and grow. But, this is part of the price that comes with taking funding. (*1)

When you as a company take money from outside investors, the rules change slightly. All of a sudden, you are held accountable to people who have put rather large sacks of cash in your corner, hoping for success. You've got an obligation to act in the majority shareholders' best interests. The rub of course, occurs when the business needs of Gaia Interactive and the community needs of Gaia Online don't align. The board of directors, Craig, and upper management do their best to try and keep things working, but when stuff falls apart, because of how close the community is to the company, ******** are pretty obvious on all levels. The reaction of the community when Easter was missed / downplayed / whateverwearecallingit was a wake up call to people here about how far apart company and community had drifted.

Let's get into the initial post, talking as best we can about each point. Full disclaimer of course, while I am an employee, my views are not that of my employer, etc, etc, yadda yadda. heart

To our overall daring statement, I would say that to say Gaia is better now, and making the assumption that all of Gaia is better now "than it was in 03" is a folly. Some things we're definitely doing better, some things have fallen into a state of disrepair. Most notably of these things is the dedication to the community, the emphasis on feature improvement, and the emphasis on personal projects (which is where about 60% of Gaia's infrastructure came from- experimental developing). So I'd have to disagree with the statement all of Gaia is better now. However, with open discussion of the issues, I believe Gaia can get better, both the company and community.

Cash Shop Items: Cash Shop Items have to walk a careful balance between Monthly Collectibles and Store Items. If a CS item becomes too cool, it might eclipse the MC for that month, but if the CS items are weak, nobody will spend their IRL $ on them. The evolving items were a random brainstorm that came from the art team once we learned we couldn't do animation in our avatars, and there was no development time to do anything else that made CS items unique. The CS gets more frequent updates, but the store typically gets more items.

Sponsors: Since 03, lanzer has wanted to help make sponsors a natural unobtrusive part of Gaia. The announcements, forum space, virtual spaces, etc are what we have to offer along with the items. I don't know if people remember the whole /mediakit URL being exposed, but there was quite the ruckus over the concept art of a "coke hat" and how we'd be selling out. Having been here the entire life of the sponsorships, I think I can say that the entire time, the community is being thought of. Thanks to the success of sponsorships, our sales group also has a lot of clout in telling companies "look, we know how this stuff works on our site, really!"

FBBQ Quitting: Having been with FBBQ through her entire Gaia life, I've seen the changes she has discussed. There was nothing critical in there, and I think everything (including this thread) has blown it widely out of proportion. There is less creative freedom, yes, and it is connected to all of Gaia's business interests being married to our features. It's a necessary thing (see above about appeasing shareholders), but the cost is losing the ability to just "go code a prototype" of an idea to see if it would work. Her request for people to focus on people other than Lanzer I happen to agree with. Lanzer alone cannot affect change on the site, and showing an ROI on the community is indeed one of the strongest ways for the community to show its value. The development environment FBBQ talks about having had 2 years ago I can verify did exist, as it does in most small startup like companies. She'll go do amazing things at Project Playlist, there is no doubt in that.

Easter: I think Gaia came clean on this one about us screwing up on Easter. There are a few events every year that I thought, even as a developer, were a given. Easter, Halloween, Christmas were the cornerstone activities, and missing one definitely sucks. Had many of the devs known something wasn't happening, I'd hope we would have all thrown in time after work to put something together. The events are important to us, as it is one of the few times all of Gaia comes together for a purpose. Given Lanzer's move to collect feedback for the summer event, I don't see balls getting dropped again like that.

I had a good chat with Lanzer today after lunch, I suppose at this point, time is going to be the better measure of the Compunnity's (I so just invented that word) ability to make good to its users, corporate or otherwise.

__________
References:

*1: Funding Info 1, Funding Info 2

A great discussion on corporate obligation to shareholders v morality

A supporting read on Wal-Mart that helped form thoughts in response

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[Tsirris]

Wow. I imagine it would be difficult for one's job to go through so many changes.

I do feel bad for Lanzer. Gaia's gotten so big and it really does keep coming back to money. I don't know how possible it is for something like Gaia to retain its original goals, though.

[Cube B]

I'm suggesting that the Gaia Staff gets some ITO.

(ITO is Innovation Time Off. When staff gets a percentage of their work time to work on what interests them. ^^)

I'm wearing a black skull pin to show my support for Creativity on Gaia.
...Because It's either that or my epic fail mask. And the pin is cheaper. XD

[Emaleth Moon]

That journal entry was really sad. Poor person and poor Gaia sad

[Cid High-Wind]

Tsirris

Wow. I imagine it would be difficult for one's job to go through so many changes.

I do feel bad for Lanzer. Gaia's gotten so big and it really does keep coming back to money. I don't know how possible it is for something like Gaia to retain its original goals, though.

They're at a point where they are so far into what has been going on, they don't have much of a choice about where else to go.

They dug themselves into this hole and it just got deeper and deeper. Having some opinions from the other side would help.

[[ Elevendy Blue ]]

I think alot of gaians like to confuse gaia as a democracy, and not a buisness. confused


They wont listen because a bunch of GDers send 10 paged essays to CEO's listening to their discomfort.
They're a business now, nothing more. Like the dev said, they care about income and member count.
The only way you would be able to make any type of productive change would be to strike them in income and member count.
But even if all of GCD tried, it still wouldnt matter. People hoard MC's spending hundreds by themselves on this website, and nothing you say is going to make users not join.

[Rhi Who]

yes, but I doubt that the CEO care what we want.
when was the last time a company cared what its costomers wanted?
if you wish to pretend that we care press 1
if you know we don't press 2

[Cid High-Wind]

Cube B

I'm suggesting that the Gaia Staff gets some ITO.

(ITO is Innovation Time Off. When staff gets a percentage of their work time to work on what interests them. ^^)

I'm wearing a black skull pin to show my support for Creativity on Gaia.
...Because It's either that or my epic fail mask. And the pin is cheaper. XD

It used to be that devs would come up with what they built. They had a lot of say in what was going on.

Now, they get a say, yes, but other people (seems as though it's mostly management and higher ups, of course) get more say in what is going on and then give they're idea for the dev to make. For a dev at Gaia, it feels like they just get told what to do/make all the time now. Whereas before they had a lot of creative freedom and a lot less restrictions.

If a dev doesn't want to make something, they have no choice. They HAVE to make what they are handed or else they face the boot. I'm beginning to figure out why a lot of the old GHQ people are deciding this isn't worth their time anymore.

They came to work for Gaia because of the creative expressions and freedoms. And now that's pretty much gone. Perhaps there needs to be more say in it for them. As users, we can't exactly do that for them. But we can ask of it.

There has got to be more we can do than just sit here and type in boxes to these corporate people.

[Arrowchan]

I'm subscribing to this post to remind me how important this is. I've been following a few threads with opinions along these lines, and I think it's my duty as a user who cares about Gaia to come up with solutions. The best solution I have come up with so far is that Gaia needs to meld the existing business model with a fundraising model that really listens to its users. I am planning to post a thread on this in more detail in Site Feedback soon, and I will post here when it is up. Given that I work in the sector, I feel I am well placed to provide this advice and how it can help make Gaia a better place. I'm going to have to do a lot of research, so it make take a few weeks, but I will get it up.

This is serious for me. If Gaia loses its soul and character, I won't want to stay here, let alone spend money here. This is a very sad post and a very important point in Gaia's life. It could go either way from here and the users are going to make a big difference as to where Gaia ends up.

[necroed]

Yeah, I think someone needs to directly approach lanzer in this in the weekly q&A section.

[Cid High-Wind]

[ Elevendy Blue ]

I think alot of gaians like to confuse gaia as a democracy, and not a buisness. confused


They wont listen because a bunch of GDers send 10 paged essays to CEO's listening to their discomfort.
They're a business now, nothing more. Like the dev said, they care about income and member count.
The only way you would be able to make any type of productive change would be to strike them in income and member count.
But even if all of GCD tried, it still wouldnt matter. People hoard MC's spending hundreds by themselves on this website, and nothing you say is going to make users not join.

Telling your friends not to join Gaia is counterproductive. As is not giving money.

The less money they get, the more sponsors we face. Then again, something tells me that even if we were giving enough money, they'd still spam us with ads and sponsors. Why? Because they want to see how far they can take it. If you give a mouse a cookie...

@Rui - *presses 2* At least, that's how I feel now.

[Rhi Who]

Im all for dooing some thing, but what? we can not bye the company.

[Arrowchan]

[ Elevendy Blue ]

I think alot of gaians like to confuse gaia as a democracy, and not a buisness. confused


They wont listen because a bunch of GDers send 10 paged essays to CEO's listening to their discomfort.
They're a business now, nothing more. Like the dev said, they care about income and member count.
The only way you would be able to make any type of productive change would be to strike them in income and member count.
But even if all of GCD tried, it still wouldnt matter. People hoard MC's spending hundreds by themselves on this website, and nothing you say is going to make users not join.

I think some people confuse a business with a dictatorship. One person or a small group CAN make a difference if they represent the feelings of a lot of customers, which I think we do. We're not just representing the GCD, we're representing the thousands of people in all forums of Gaia who are not comfortable with where Gaia is heading.

Businesses do not survive if they do not keep their customers happy. Just saying.

[Setsuna Lazuli]

They depend on the money. Not much you can do about it. The more the beast grows, the more it eats. Got to find a way to feed it.

[Cid High-Wind]

Arrowchan

I'm subscribing to this post to remind me how important this is. I've been following a few threads with opinions along these lines, and I think it's my duty as a user who cares about Gaia to come up with solutions. The best solution I have come up with so far is that Gaia needs to meld the existing business model with a fundraising model that really listens to its users. I am planning to post a thread on this in more detail in Site Feedback soon, and I will post here when it is up. Given that I work in the sector, I feel I am well placed to provide this advice and how it can help make Gaia a better place. I'm going to have to do a lot of research, so it make take a few weeks, but I will get it up.

This is serious for me. If Gaia loses its soul and character, I won't want to stay here, let alone spend money here. This is a very sad post and a very important point in Gaia's life. It could go either way from here and the users are going to make a big difference as to where Gaia ends up.

Glad to see it concerns you, Arrow.

You're right. If Gaia gets rid of what made it what it is today, then there will be a lot of users leaving. There really will be a lot less money coming in, and Gaia will get sold to some company to stay afloat.

I don't blame Lanzer for this. Gaia just started out as a hobby to him and his friends and look where it took them?

@necroed - Problem is, wht do you say?