Cycling industry layoffs: Strava and Wahoo cut 15% of workforce

A lot of these tech lay-offs are for the same reasons yes, and they are related to the fact data storage and processing is getting costlier. Data centres eat up huge amounts of energy and its something thats only going to get more expensive and that has to be passed on. A few of the big tech companies are scaling back for a few other reasons too. Netflix over estimated its subscriber projections because of Covid making viewing figures higher than expected. After lockdown people abandoned it. Meta lost lots of revenue due to its stance on censorship and safeguarding seeing advertising drop sharply. Strava has been quite happily getting along with its core business until now and its feeling the pinch. But snce they are a rather passive website it must only be due to overheads in keeping it running. 

I'm unconviced by some of your reasons.

Data Centres are dirt cheap - many running on hydro.

Meta is wasting Bn's on the Metaverse twaddle and their shareholders are revolting so "something (anything) must be done" irrespective of whether those Techies worked on Metaverse (in fact they probably didnt because its idiot boys Zucks pet project).

That may be a way forward. What if you can only post onto leaderboards if you have an active subscription? But then what do you do with all the current data from non subscribers? Would you boot it off - even KOMs? They can store it offline and then retrive it if you activate it again. 

Maybe only rides over a particular distance should actually qualify for being stored. Also maybe cull lots of short KOMS, and anything with a negative average gradient (seriously, how is it a KOM if you're going downhill?) I think Strava has been the dumping ground for so much and a lot of would reasonable to axe. Id rather they scaled back the platform to something much more relevant and useful than start laying off staff or putting up costs etc. 

Off the back wrote:

 Also maybe cull lots of short KOMS, and anything with a negative average gradient (seriously, how is it a KOM if you're going downhill?) I think Strava has been the dumping ground for so much and a lot of would reasonable to axe. Id rather they scaled back the platform to something much more relevant and useful than start laying off staff or putting up costs etc. 

A mountain is a mountain whether you're going up it or down it and some of us are more gravitationally challenged than others, in other words LEAVE MY DOWNHILL KOMS ALONE!!!

One of Strava's biggest overheads is their AWS bill for hosting. It's for that reason, leaderboards were removed from the free tier in 2020, as calculating and recalculating positions places a massive load on compute resources. The storage, not so much of an overhead as processing. The move made sense at the time as it meant that freeloaders were not consuming as much resource as subscribers, but still contributing to their "big data" harvesting which I'm sure is anonymised and sold on to third parties. 

I for one would miss it if it went away, and would pay a little more if needed. Although some of the features can be had in Garmin Connect, for example, discovery of new routes via popularity heatmaps, it's the segments, the social features and the data analysis from VeloViewer I really like. 

I find the main problem with Strava is the lack of moderation of KOMs etc. I had a paid account for several years but gave it up because all the data I need I can get off my Garmin and read on Connect in terms of performance, the only thing I was paying for was the amusement of seeing how other people performed against me, being able to see how people my age and weight were doing and so forth. Over the last couple of years, particularly in London, every leaderboard is polluted with ebikers (of whom I am occasionally happy to be one but I always register my ride as being on an ebike), people in cars or on motorbikes or even people on planes - I assume they've just left the ride open by mistake, it's a bit bizarre to find the leader over Tower Hill is 460 kmh! If they could find a way of at least trimming off the results of people who apparently have a better w/kg output than Pogacar I'd gladly go back to a paid account, at present paying for it would just be a waste of money for me I'm afraid.

Just flag those rides if they're obviously wrong. It's easy to do and they mostly disappear if you do, assuming you're correct in your assessment.

Miller wrote:

Just flag those rides if they're obviously wrong. It's easy to do and they mostly disappear if you do, assuming you're correct in your assessment.

Obviously I could do that, but take a look, for example, at the screenshot below of the top ten for the Albert Bridge - Battersea Bridge segment on my commute: at least seven out of ten of those numbers are either impossible or highly dubious due to ridiculously high speed and/or speed that doesn't match the wattage (a 70kg rider on a 7kg bike would need 800+ watts to achieve 54kmh on the flat, 164 would be below 30 kmh). There are roughly forty segments like this on my commute, most with similarly dubious leaderboards, so reporting would become a fulltime occupation. Surely Strava can tweak their algorithm so that clearly ludicrous results like 86kmh on the flat, or 65kmh with 64W power, are automatically struck off?

Rendel Harris]</p>

<p>[quote=Miller wrote:

... ridiculously high speed and/or speed that doesn't match the wattage (a 70kg rider on a 7kg bike would need 800+ watts to achieve 54kmh on the flat, ....

what if they were drafting a bus?

wycombewheeler]</p>

<p>[quote=Rendel Harris wrote:

Miller wrote:

... ridiculously high speed and/or speed that doesn't match the wattage (a 70kg rider on a 7kg bike would need 800+ watts to achieve 54kmh on the flat, ....

what if they were drafting a bus?

Fair point...though that segment I detailed above is a 20mph road so it'd be a pretty naughty bus driver!

86 km/h in a built-up area? Bullshit. The hijacking by motorbikes was mentioned in an article in September, though this stuff is not new.

And why do people create stupidly, pointlessly short segments in stupid places? I follow a few people I know on strava and even on rural roads there can be multiple overlapping segments in a very brief distance, maybe 3 or 4 segments covering part or all of a short rise (and given silly names).

I remember one fellow who used to post on here, he was determined to KOM a segment (in Manchester IIRC) but it was through multiple sets of traffic lights and needed a quiet day in school holidays and run through the lights just at the right time so he could get it. It just seemed ridiculous and utterly pointless to me, such a waste of time and energy (both mental and physical).

I don't think that Rendel's example is KOM hunting or moto-hijacking, it's almost certainly GPS error from the buildings and trees, especially if recorded with a phone.

mark1a wrote:

I don't think that Rendel's example is KOM hunting or moto-hijacking, it's almost certainly GPS error from the buildings and trees, especially if recorded with a phone.

Either that or simply somebody who has forgotten to switch their device off before getting in a car (or even a plane!) after a ride. This is why I think it would be useful for Strava to set a reasonable limit on what is achievable and not to allow unfeasible times onto leaderboards; the user in question could then get an email saying we think something's gone wrong here, do you want to delete it or do you want to challenge our banning it? I'm sure in a lot of cases people don't even realise they've done it, not everybody pores nerdily over their rides as I do, I know a number of people who really just use Strava as a convenient log of their mileage for the week/month/year and nothing else.

Yeah... I do accept that flagging one or two rides is feasible whereas trying to do what is essentially a database clean-up is really not feasible. I do sometimes wonder why Strava isn't more proactive about this because polluted leaderboards annoy the keen people who are more likely to have paid subscriptions (as I do).

Sportive results are usually similarly flaky which is also annoying.

Yes, I know it's all 'not a race' and I should 'go and pin a number on'.

I came here to say exactly this. Yes, you can flag them but there are so many now, especially anywhere near a town or anywhere where people drive to in order to do their physical activity (and then forget to switch off tracking before the return) that segments have become a bit meaningless.

I still pay for Strava and I still enjoy using it mainly as an alternative social network but a lot of people I am connected to seem a lot less engaged in it than they used to be.

EddyBerckx wrote:

Can't help thinking Strava could / should limit the free tier to 6 months or less. Unless they are making money selling the data why should those people get a free ride (posted)? 

These things cost a huge amount of money to run...too many people want everything online free yet would have a heart attack if you suggested they personally work for free. If the advertising / selling of data isn't enough and not enough people go on to buy the subscription then kick them off...

The difficulty with cutting loose the long tail of freeloaders (me included) is that they'd break their own business model and risk their near-monopoly. Everyone's on Strava in large part because everyone's on Strava. Kick off most of the users and it opens the market to other providers. They might not make a better go of it than Strava - but I'm sure there's a few who'd be willing to try if millions of users suddenly found themselves 'let go' from the Big S.

PS road.cc, "let go" is such a weasel way to describe people losing their jobs.

Like it or loath it, Strava has played a big part in cyclings  popularity over the last decade. There may be lots of stuff you dont want or need and thats fair enough, but the money from subs pretty much pays to keep it going. But such a huge database needs to be funded somehow and thats where it is starting to suffer. Overheads and daily running of it must be getting expensive to a point of it hitting its profits/shareholders. 

If more people who currently do subscribe cancelled then its dead in the water. The only way to make a regular source of income would be paid ads. Thankfully, right now there is no advertising on there and I would hate to see any. If I had to sit through an ad every time I wanted to look at something it would kill it stone dead for me. Just look at something like youtube for the relentless ads you see to keep that afloat. 

Maybe Strava needs to go down a hardware route ... team up with one of the smaller GPS system developers - have you seen the number of cheap smart watches and cycle computers out there now ? - and bring out it's own dedicated system and make all new accounts locked to their devices.
Build in to the device cost a subscription fee based on x number of years the device is good for before hardware obsolescence sets in, and fund that way.
Garmin offer their Connect system foc to Garmin device users (supports upload from other devices via TCX), so the cost of this platform must be factored in to the cost of the hardware.

While Strava has played a part in cycling, it's also throttled other companies from developing their own systems further ... what's the point when people are just going to load it in to Strava?

For me, Garmin Connect meets my requirements; stats, route planning, segments, leader boards, training and exercise plans ...

Alternatively, it could be that, like nearly all tech companies currently, they are using the current market insecurity as an excuse to rationalise their workforce.

Clear the decks, streamline the workforce, whatever you like to call it. It's about increasing profitability and eeking out greater productivity from your remaining workforce. I am sure it has very little / nothing to do with desperation, or failing finances, and absolutely everything to do with shareholder dividends. 

Get ride of the experienced and expensive senior developer, then replace with a younger, less expensive model in a few months time.

The clue is in the timing. If all the tech companies lay-off at the same time, their remaining staff are more likely to put up with the increased demands / workload placed on them, as there is percevied to be no where else to go.

It's cynical, nasty, big business in action, and something that tech bosses have been talking about and planning for months.

That could very well be true. I will add that Strava has been getting progressively worse over the last few months. At peak periods it grinds to a halt almost. Its certainly not as slick as it once was. The amount of data it has to manage goes up every minute of every day and it grows and grows. That is a hell of a lot of storage and processing power needed. It needs to be retreavable and interactive at the same time. If you stream a movie or TV show thats just storage being pushed out a lot of the time. Strava data is editable, constantly requires updating and thats a much more energy comsuming animal. Energy that is getting costlier. It isnt just Strava this slow down is noticable. BBC seems to really have slowed down. If its a drop in bandwidth to keep its costs down that could be a reason too. Where subscription TV or social media will have chance to adapt or bring in new content where has Strava got to go to bring in money? advertising would be damaging imo. Especially if its invasive ads you are forced to watch before you can see your ride etc.