NianticDanbocat let go?

PkmnTrainerJ-INGPkmnTrainerJ-ING Posts: 5,125 Ambassador

First of all we have @NianticCasey-ING move on to other Niantic projects and now we have had @NianticDanbocat let go?

I’m not going to link to their LinkedIn profile but a post shared 2 weeks ago notes;

The most painful part of being suddenly let go yesterday was not about being "out of work" (thankful for that privilege), but the sudden severance of my emotional and intellectual ties to coworkers and products that I grew to passionately love. That was hard, NGL. I woke up this morning about to check slack, out of habit. Oof. I took a bet on Niantic, and I lost. That isn't to say my time at the company was regretful. I'm so proud of what I accomplished with the team, the experiences I gained, and the personal connections that were made (I will miss you!). And while I still need some days to deal with the grief, on top of what 2022 has already gifted, I do know that exciting opportunities lie ahead.

With Wayfarer being a small but essential team, I didn’t think that the 8% of staff being laid off would affect this team. Best of luck with whatever you do next Danbocat if you’re still checking in on a personal account!

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Comments

  • PkmnTrainerJ-INGPkmnTrainerJ-ING Posts: 5,125 Ambassador

    Funnily enough, Casey has been on the forums more recently than Danbocat. Do we get the return of Casey?

  • grendelwulf-INGgrendelwulf-ING Posts: 301 ✭✭✭✭

    I wonder if there was dissatisfaction with the erratic and often fraudulent growth of the poi database.

  • flatmatt-PGOflatmatt-PGO Posts: 2,139 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I would think the solution to this would be to hire more people and give them more resources rather than firing someone whose job description wasn't even directly related to maintaining the database... but then we have to remember what company we're dealing with, I suppose.

  • mortuus-INGmortuus-ING Posts: 213 ✭✭✭

    so its up to all ingress players to be forced to do ar scans ? since pogo players only cares for shiny pogo monsters and not do dull chores as scanning....

  • RyuuVanDraco-PGORyuuVanDraco-PGO Posts: 160 ✭✭✭

    Seems like Niantic got no money to pay people and if an already slow system becomes even slower that seems totally ok...

    But hey, at least got money to pay rents in San Fran...

  • BlameJamal-INGBlameJamal-ING Posts: 52 ✭✭✭

    @PkmnTrainerJ-ING NIA has come out and said that scans don't contribute to POI's being removed. I think they need to do a better job of broadcasting this to a wider audience. More channels and different platforms other than just the community forums.

  • PkmnTrainerJ-INGPkmnTrainerJ-ING Posts: 5,125 Ambassador

    Oh I am aware but there’s certainly still sects of Pokémon GO players that believe it is the case.

  • FeThorn-INGFeThorn-ING Posts: 71 ✭✭✭

    Really makes me wonder how niantic can keep making decisions that are so obviously detrimental from a business perspective.

    It won't matter how much they want people to go out in boiling heat, frigid cold, etc to play the games & coordinate with other players if they can't keep them running reasonably well, which they already have issues doing...

  • MargariteDVille-INGMargariteDVille-ING Posts: 2,846 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Niantic hires "surveyors" to scan things in "key cities". It's probably low pay, but it's not all volunteer.

    I believe scan locations led to the wayspot moves in NYC, Seattle, and more - the wayspots were moved to the place people (mostly surveyors) stood when they scanned them. Since the Empire State Building and the Space Needle are huge, you can infer less by the scanner's physical location. They stood in plazas near the tall wayspots. That doesn't mean the wayspot was in the plaza.

    This year, Ingress anomalies are all about battle beacons. You can scan a portal 7 times to invoke a free battle beacon. And, the 13th scan invokes a free fracker, which brings down the energy of all the resonators. So, if you time it right, you can recharge during its free battle beacon - and get anomaly credit.

  • Hosette-INGHosette-ING Posts: 3,469 ✭✭✭✭✭

    To be perfectly fair to Niantic (wait, did I just say that?) we don't know why she was part of the layoff. I believe her role at Niantic was product management, and anything she did in forums or on social media was probably secondary to her primary work. Maybe the company's focus shifted away from her specialty, or maybe... well, there are many possibilities.

    You know the old story about the blind men and the elephant? The only part of the elephant we have access to on this one is like the left ear.

  • holdthebeer-INGholdthebeer-ING Posts: 199 ✭✭✭✭

    The story about blind men and the elephant is good analogy for portal scanning. I uploaded 50 high quality (did my best lol, but can't tell for sure not seeing the end result) of a goal post. Can lightship understand that white metal pipes represent "Soccer Field #2"?

    And speaking of product management and focus shift, what is the product in this context? Database of portals (both plain and VPS-activated), and/or the platform? Or, the product also includes players which are supposed to play with AR stuff, but for some reasons don't like to play with the camera in public locations? To me, it does not look like wayfarer/platform problem, but well

  • Gazzas89-PGOGazzas89-PGO Posts: 2,619 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Well thats surprising and disheartening. I though danbocat was in charge of wayfarer, im guessing I'm wrong.

  • PkmnTrainerJ-INGPkmnTrainerJ-ING Posts: 5,125 Ambassador
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