The Co-Founders are directly responsible for and have a tremendous influence over the broad work environment.
Before I start with more recent events, I’d like to bring you up to speed on MediaFire. First, I am a former employee and was laid off in 2014 on what we call “Black Monday.” MediaFire had just launched its new desktop tool called MediaFire Desktop. Due to poor product design by the Co-Founders, it was riddled with bugs, randomly deleted customer data, and didn’t gain much traction. Especially when compared to more stable products being offered.
This resulted in Black Monday, their first round of layoffs, and a continued decline in their value. Approximately 50% of their employees were swiftly let go that day. Shortly after, a Co-Founder stepped down as CEO and was replaced by another Co-Founder. To pivot their decline in market value and again under the direction of the Co-Founders, MediaFire began to build Pool. Like previous ventures, Pool too failed and during a brief conversation, their monetization department, I was told only one person installed this new picture sharing app prior to it being pulled from the market.
Earlier this year, another Co-Founder was suddenly forced to step down as the previous Co-Founder returned to begin another round of layoffs. This time, it’s estimated 80% of their employees were informed they are part of a staged layoff process. Again, this is due to MediaFire’s continued decline in market value as indicated by attritions noticed in uploads, downloads, and overall site visits.
To drastically reduce their overhead, MediaFire closed their office, and migrated to a virtual work at home company. As a previous employee, I view this as a move to fragment employees and discourage discussions as employees staged to be laid off secretly disappeared from their ranks. Then after rumors of MediaFire’s desktop tool continuing to eat customer data, this past weekend it too was deprecated.
I am concerned for the people I enjoyed working with and share this to bring to light the type of Co-Founders MediaFire has, their overall business acumen, and inability to foster a positively productive working environment. For a great service, it seems to have been ran into the ground. Many of the people I admired and visited with each day were left feeling abandoned. Some, still not knowing their fate or expiration date.
I hope glassdoor does not take down this article. It is based on my first hand experiences as a former MediaFire employee, the stories we now share at get togethers, Christmas parties, and chats when we randomly run into each other. None of us wonder what will happen with their new venture, Fast.io. What’s that old adage? History always repeats itself.
