
Evernote just slashed 54 jobs, or 15 percent of its workforce - Oystersaremyfav
https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/18/evernote-just-slashed-54-jobs-or-15-percent-of-its-workforce/
======
ltbarcly3
Evernote has almost 500 employees? How is that even possible? There must be at
least 350 product managers. (Ok, that was a joke, but if you look at all their
employees on linkedin like 2/3 have job titles that are in the 'overhead'
bucket. Tons of 'People Ops', 'Brand and Communications', 'Marketing Manager',
'Product Designer', 'Producer'. 37 have a job title that includes 'marketing'.
391 appear to be non-engineering titles, out of 538 employees in the linkedin
results. They have full time Agile coaches!!)

500+ employees with an annual revenue estimated to be below $10MM. That's $20k
of _revenue_ per employee! I mean I can just imagine what it's like there,
insane meetings about metrics where 15 marketing managers show the powerpoint
slides they spent the last week emailing back and forth to highlight the 2%
growth last quarter, while they need to grow by 2000% in the next 48 months
just to stay alive. Then in 3 months they have the same meeting.

Evernote has been severely mismanaged (I've been saying this since 2012, links
below). I wonder how they feel about all the VC money they spent developing
ports for WebOS, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and Windows Phone?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4855689](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4855689)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10859391](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10859391)

~~~
reilly3000
Wow. It takes more than engineers to run a company. Unlike a lot of the
engineering squad, marketers come up with the copy, art, offers, banner ads,
ux, reporting, email marketing and more that convince strangers to become
users and users to become customers. How does an engineering team prioritize
what to work on based on feedback from tens of millions of users across every
country on the globe and most hardware/software platforms. Are engineers
suppose to recruit, train, pay, and manage themselves? Are customers suppose
to support themselves? Or is a script going to take care of that?

B2C companies are hard, partially because it takes lots of C's to make the B
viable, and working with C's is expensive.

~~~
ltbarcly3
Let me tell a story:

Lets say you were just hired as the President of a furniture company. The
owner says he knows it's good furniture but even despite huge investments they
can't seem to sell any furniture. Your job is to turn things around.

You start on the factory floor. The furniture is made by a combination of
machines and human workers. Some people are employed to set up and configure
the machines to make furniture parts. Around 150 people work on actually
making furniture, either assembling it, doing quality tests, or setting up and
operating the automated machinery. Things aren't perfect, but you aren't going
to make any changes on your first day so you make some notes and move on. The
furniture hasn't changed much over the years, it is still basically the same
as it was when the furniture store opened. The furniture gets 'improved' from
time to time, you see a step stool with an alarm clock, a small safe, and a
webcam built into it, but when you ask the foreman he tells you nobody has
ever turned on the alarm clock or used the safe or connected the webcam on any
of the step stools. People seem to mainly use the stools so they can reach
things that are up high. There is a problem where sometimes people slip when
the stools are wet, so they worked out how to add a nonslip pad, but the
product managers have decided that the next feature will be to add scents to
the stools, so you can buy a stool that smells like cinnamon or one that
smells like apples. They have a big advertising campaign already paid for and
they already sent out the press release announcing "ScentedStools", so the
machines need to be set up to start stamping out stools that smell like "Fresh
Linen" by the end of the week. There are daily status meetings to update them
on the progress. If the "Fresh Linen" stools aren't being produced by Thursday
they are going to start having two status meetings per day.

You hear it's someone named Jim's last day, so you set up an exit interview.
Jim tells you that the bosses and people upstairs don't really know what is
going on in the factory. Most days he just sits and reads the news, his
"nontechnical" manager doesn't know anything about furniture or how Jim does
his job so there's no way for the manager to know what is going on other than
to ask Jim. Supervision primarily consists of making sure Jim is sitting at
his desk and looking at his monitor. Since US labor laws don't allow Jim's
manager to set specific hours for him to be at work, his manager has started
scheduling 9AM meetings every day to force people to turn up. Every week or so
Jim has to update some Product Managers upstairs about what is going on, and
he just says they are making steady progress and comes up with some specific
problem to explain why they aren't done, pretty much anything with jargon will
work since nobody upstairs "could tell white oak from red oak". It takes about
5 minutes to give his status update but he's expected to stay for the entire 1
hour meeting, so he brings his laptop so he can read furniturenews.com. He
says he is quitting to take a much lower paying job because he is bored and
doesn't respect his manager.

Next you go upstairs to the office space and find 300 people having meetings
with each other about annual plans and prioritization, writing mission
statements and meeting to discuss mission statements. The 300 people upstairs
are constantly in motion and complaining about how over worked they are. They
each have 5, 6 or even 7 (sometimes more!) 1-hour meetings every day, but you
only see them meet with each other, nobody has any meetings with anyone from
outside the company, nobody has meetings with possible customers, and only
very rarely do you see anyone from the factory floor in these meetings, and
then it is almost always just to give a status update. None of these folks
really understand furniture very well, they can't really tell good furniture
from bad furniture, they literally don't know the difference between solid oak
and cardboard, they don't know how long it takes or how much money it costs to
build a chair. After a few days of meetings you haven't met anyone who cares
about furniture at all, they all seem to want to work at the furniture factory
because it pays well, or they like the prestige of being 'in furniture'.
Mostly they talk about how overworked they are and make the case for hiring a
few more people. If they could hire another person for their team they
wouldn't be so far behind. You aren't sure what they are getting behind in,
are they talking about meetings they can't attend because it conflicts with
another meeting that is more important somehow? Do they need more time to work
on power point slides for the next days meetings? Some of the office folks
have degrees in furniture science, but none of them have ever successfully
built or designed any furniture outside of little school projects.

Then you go out behind the factory and see a massive mountain of furniture
stacked up to the sky. The factory workers have been building furniture every
day for years. People all agree that it is good furniture, maybe the best
there is. Nobody ever buys any of it. It's not sold in any stores. No hotels
buy it. No businesses buy it. Lots of people are lined up as far as you can
see to pick furniture out of the pile for free.

How do you fix this company?

~~~
jwdunne
Wow. You know, I read your original comment with the opinion that it was very
programmer-centric but this narrative made me think deeper about what you're
trying to say.

I think Evernote sucks and they need to refocus, things that have already been
said to death. But it's amazing how a narrative, storytelling, can make me re-
examine my own initial opinion like that.

~~~
nwatson
>> I think Evernote sucks and they need to refocus ...

I don't think Evernote sucks in whole ... I very happily pay for Evernote
annually-renewed premium subscription, and it's great at doing what I rent it
for ...

\+ it accepts documents, scans, photographs, text in notes that I can put in
categories

\+ it clips web page content through browser extensions and saves them as
notes

\+ it accepts emails composed and sent to it, and emails forwarded to it,
turning them into notes

\+ it does great OCR on scanned/photographed notes and documents

\+ it does great matching on searches, from both explicit text and OCR'ed
content

\+ the browser interface is great, the Android, macOS, Windows apps are pretty
decent

... and that's all I want.

Evernote's seen their missed opportunities and has tried to catch up:

\+ they want to be Slack with channeled- and threaded-messaging -- Slack works
better

\+ they want to be the business document repository -- I much prefer
Confluence (or other Wikis) for structuring and storing long-term relevant
information

\+ they want to be an issue tracker

\+ ... every other collaboration thing under the sun

They've been pushing hard on all these multi-user shared-content angles. It
seems like both a technical and marketing challenge -- they likely are too
boxed-in and the jump a customer needs to make to envision using Evernote's
new business/multi-user/collaboration features is too big.

------
burtonator
I tried to like Evernote.. I really did. I live and breath in PDFs and read
constantly. I actually had to give up and build my own platform.

[https://getpolarized.io/](https://getpolarized.io/)

I've basically been coding mad and heads down for 2 months building it. I
think we will have a release candidate in another week or so...

My hope / goal is to make a BETTER Evernote that's open source and lasts 20-30
years.

We have some AMAZING Open Source apps like VLC that just seem to last the test
of time.

I think we deserve better!

One of the other things I wanted was something that was inherently hackable
with a plugin API. The data is stored on disk and persisted via JSON so it's
easy for write 3rd party apps that use the data.

It also works with git, dropbox, etc if you want cloud sync. I'm probably
going to build in native cloud sync though and probably use Amazon Appsync
since it supports offline sync easily.

~~~
distortednet
I think a note app should be designed around the idea that the first action
you take by default is always taking a note, and that actions should be made
available where appropriate as a reaction. Shockingly, not many apps do this
that I am aware of. Taking notes in an expeditious manner isn't always a
design priority, and I don't think that's a needed sacrifice to make in a note
taking app. That's why I never used evernote, anyways.

~~~
finaliteration
I feel like Bear[0] comes pretty close. I’ve been using it for the last few
months and it’s one of the few apps I’ve found that actually allows me to just
go in and take a note/jot down a quick blurb as needed.

I tried to use Evernote and it just never stuck with me. It felt like it was
too much overhead just for capturing quick ideas.

[0][https://bear.app/](https://bear.app/)

~~~
danieldk
I liked and used bear when it just came out, but it is moving at a glacial
pace when it comes to adding certain important features, such as adding
support for tables and equations.

Bear has a very good story when it comes to sync with the iPhone. But if you
need cross-platform support, tables, equations, and such features org-mode,
Typora, etc. are much better options.

~~~
coldtea
> _such as adding support for tables and equations._

If tables and equations are "crucial" it's not just about a notes app
anymore...

~~~
bosie
why can't a note have tables and equations? Both seem quite useful (equations
especially as that's just a compressed sentence in a way)

~~~
coldtea
We can, but they introduce tons of challenges in rendering and display, change
the serialization format (whereas basic stuff can just be edited and viewed as
plain text) etc.

Besides where does one stop in a note taking app? One could also ask for
footnotes, bibliography management, graphs and plots, handwriting recognition,
PDF management, and so on...

------
dasil003
Evernote is an example of a great product that is incompatible with the VC
model of funding (also see Twitter). Once you take VC it's not acceptable to
be a niche product that does one thing really well, you have to worship at the
altar of cancerous growth. The VCs would rather the product be ruined than
miss an opportunity for 100-1000x, and if you don't agree they will install
adult supervision to do their bidding.

~~~
pishpash
What can Evernote do that can't be done by OneNote? If anything, free OneNote
(or some other equivalent) killed it.

I don't see what is special about Evernote that guarantees its viability.

~~~
tjohns
They each have their specialty.

Evernote is better for filing documents / archiving things - whether those are
PDFs, web pages, business cards, physical mail, etc. OneNote is better for
free-form notetaking and editing. Each page feels like an open canvas.

In particular: I can't drop a file directly onto the OneNote icon to archive a
file - I have to make a "page" and drop it into the page's canvas. OneNote
doesn't provide tagging. It enforces a certain organization that only makes
sense for notes (notebooks > sections > pages). Attachments always feel like a
second-class citizen inside of a page (which isn't to say OneNote's attachment
handling is wrong, it's just designed for storing handouts in class alongside
your handwriting, as opposed to archiving every piece of paper on your desk).

In my use case, I use Evernote (with a ScanSnap scanner) to archive every
piece of physical mail I receive. It's great that I can just throw in a pile
of mail, push one button, let the scanner bundle it into PDFs/JPEGs/contact
cards as appropriate, apply metatadata, and OCR/index it. I tried to move this
workflow to OneNote, and couldn't get anything as smooth.

I use both. I use OneNote for notes in class, and Evernote for long-term
archival/recall of everything else.

(Personally, I think that DevonThink is a closer replacement to Evernote than
OneNote is.)

~~~
brantonb
My boss today wondered why he made a particular decision for a commit he made
3 years ago. He pulled up Evernote, searched for the bug number, and had his
notes from when he was working on it. Mystery solved.

With OneNote, he’d have to have some sort of filing system to organize that.
With Evernote, he knew it was there and he could search for it if he needed
it. That’s not to say you can’t search in OneNote, just that the archiving
model of Evernote works far better for his workflow.

------
dem_nukem
I've been a loyal evernote user for 5+ years now and IMO, its unequivocally,
the best note taking app out there(including Keep, OneNote, Apple notes,
Wunderlist etc). Looking at the comments, I am surprised that evernote isn't
as popular among HN'ers as I thought it would be.

Having said that, I can see skepticism surrounding the app based on erratic
updates they've been shipping for a while now.

The app has been ruined by :

\- Wildly Inconsistent UI (Windows app > MacOS)

\- Switch to table layout (monster margins look ugly and quite frankly,
unbearable)

\- Uncertain updates (more often than not it'll break an existing feature)

Few months ago, I mistakenly updated the Mac app and it was such a painful
experience, I had to dig into archives and reinstall 2016 version to restore
some sanity. As someone who is heavily dependent on the app, these changes
have been frustrating. I'll be jumping ship the moment a viable alternative
appears.

~~~
lhl
I have just under 15K notes and have been a Premium customer since 2008,
however, these days I find myself barely touching Evernote at all, and have
switched to primarily using Notion.so, with Pocket and Zotero for
snapshotting/handling research, and a bit of Dropbox Paper (I had a soft spot
for Hackpad).

From my perspective, Evernote has gotten consistently worse over the past few
years (some of this is due to the core product not scaling as people put more
notes in - the search craps out and the organization sucks):

* No way to easily exclude say web clippings from search; in general the search results are inadequate (and doesn't factor in recency or frequency appropriately) of cache things intelligently - this effectively makes Evernote a PITA for anything but write-only usage

* Rather than helping people categorize things, they've made it progressively harder by making Notebook organization clunkier. I never got into using tags because it didn't make very good suggestions, and there's no hierarchy. With dysfunctional search, in the end it's all just a "pile."

* The original appeal of Evernote was seamless syncing across all platforms, but I'm almost entirely on Linux these days and there's no official client or good alternative, and the web interface is awful. That pretty much killed my usage for good, but every time I launch the iOS app, it seems to launch slower. There's way too much friction for creating notes.

I'll probably be exporting and cleaning house sometime soon. While the web
clipper is great, I can probably find a better alternative (or just switch to
Zotero for everything, as it does fine page snapshotting and the
collections/subcollections largely work like you'd want). The OCR is probably
the nicest thing I'd miss, but besides occasionally scanning some receipts or
other papers, I'm not sure there's anything else I use it for. Also, their
security/privacy updates from last year also made me hold my nose.

There are some neat open source projects that have started up recently, but
I'm also starting to think about my notes and research in a more long term
view (keeping and syncing, but also publishing).

~~~
irishcule
How did you find the learning curve with notion? I found it on here a few days
ago and thought it looked amazing, gave it a few days trial but now I feel
like I am just wasting time with it trying to do the things that I want.

Simple things like not being able to put different colors on text in the same
block or even just putting a simple table (no not a database) into a block
have put me off it. Also it is difficulty (re: impossible) to copy and paste
notes over from another application without it getting all messed up.

~~~
lhl
There are definitely some rough edges - like you mentioned, copy and paste is
awful (tbf this is very hard to implement, it's all edge cases), there's no
web clipper yet, and for me, personally, I get annoyed by the '/' shortcut
(also the search has gotten slower and slower (not sure if this is due to
growing corpus or other issues) and there are some other niggles (not doing a
great job auto-expanding where you're nested when you jump to a page for
example), however they are consistently improving the product in lots of very
noticeable ways: [https://www.notion.so/What-s-
New-157765353f2c4705bd45474e5ba...](https://www.notion.so/What-s-
New-157765353f2c4705bd45474e5ba8b46c)

And it does really the few things that I most care about:

* Seamlessly syncs/accessible on all my devices (I wish it did better offline access though)

* Has a rich, modern WYSIWYG editor (w/ markdown shortcuts, supports attachments and different types of embeds, comments/etc)

* Has a tree hierarchy on the left - I would prefer faceted nested collections (you can't put a note in two folders), but it's much more effective than single-pane organization like GDocs or Dropbox Paper

I've used a few the tables a bit and it's pretty rudimentary - if you don't
need the organization, from what you've outlined, honestly it sounds like
GDocs still might be what you need (I've always had a lot of GSheets I link
out to from my notes - sucks it's not all in one place, but for notetaking, I
think the more important thing is that I have a way to organize/find pointers
to things, which GDocs completely fails at).

------
usgmr
I wanted to love Evernote, even swore by it for a time, but after a few months
of extensive use, it becomes apparent that they don't care about customers
outside of their business plans. Feature requests as old as 5 years get
ignored while they keep pushing out features that would make Evernote more
like a powerpoint alternative than a note-taking app.

Personally I want to think this is happening because better alternatives have
been popping up. There's bear and omnifocus and, recently, notion.so that does
a lot more than Evernote for a relatively cheaper price.

Also all of them have dark modes while Evernote doesn't.

~~~
kitsunesoba
Between Apple Notes, Bear, and OmniFocus I have no reason to use Evernote.
They all do what they focus on well, cost less over time, and are proper
native apps to boot.

For OmniFocus in particular I also have the assurance that its maker isn’t
just going to up and vanish any time soon. They’ve been around since the
NeXTSTEP days and are quite healthy.

~~~
thanatropism
I'm looking at the Omni products and they seem all great. But I might be
transitioning from iPhone to Android in the next 24 months and am afraid of
losing a lot of investment.

------
hellofunk
Evernote to me just seemed like a worst case scenario of technology jumping
the shark. Note-taking should be a simple matter, and there are good apps out
there that make it nearly as easy as a pencil and paper. But Evernote is not
one of them. I gave it a try and I felt like I was jumping through hoops and
learning curves for basic things, which just seemed silly for note-taking and
related tasks.

~~~
jopsen
Also who would want vendor lock-in for their notes?

~~~
robotrout
I would love an opensource replacement for Evernote. But it must allow me to
clip images into it. Life is not always just text, and most of the programs
that people claim they use to replace Evernote are text only.

Evernote also allows me to embed PDFs (or any file really), which is nice, but
as a minimum spec, I insist on the ability to drop in images.

~~~
kilroy123
Joplin looks promising. Can even import from Evernote. I'm going to give it a
try.

[https://joplin.cozic.net/](https://joplin.cozic.net/)

~~~
laurent123456
(Joplin's dev here) Can confirm that Joplin can embed images - you can copy
and paste an image directly by pressing Ctrl+V in a note, or attach them. It's
also possible to attach any other file, PDF, etc. and open it in an external
viewer on mobile or desktop.

Evernote import is also supported and as far as I can tell works well for many
users. If you find any glitch or issue though, feedback is welcome.

The app is still under development with, at the moment, a focus on bug fixing
and improving the desktop and mobile usability.

~~~
sharmi
Joplin is the only alternative to evernote that has a webclipper. Happily made
the switch. Thank you very much.

------
vikingcaffiene
Evernote is more than just a note taking app. It's a full on document filing
and storage solution. It's a one stop shop for a paperless office and miles
ahead of other cloud based providers like Google Keep and OneNote on that
front. Its just too bad that no one making product decisions there knows that.

I've been a premium user since 2011 with literally thousands of notes all
categorized, tagged etc. I finally decided it was time to jump ship and
migrated everything over to DEVONthink. Assuming you only need to have it on
apple products (its iOS/MacOS only), it has everything Evernote has and then
some. Its got some awesome system integrations as well as some cool scripting
capabilities that allow you to extend it to suit your needs. Oh and you can
encrypt the data stored in it and store it wherever you want. You can even
choose different locations for different databases.

I didn't know this when I bought it, but DT is also way more capable than EN
at handling large complex file types like Logic sessions and such. You can
open and play them right out of there like any other file. I've been looking
for a way to better manage all my multitrack recordings and be able to sync
them between my home and music studios. Looks like DT might just do the trick.
Highly recommend.

------
krazydad
Gonna mention Quiver (The Programmer's Notebook) as it hasn't been mentioned
yet. I've been on Evernote for about 10 years and have a few thousand notes in
it. This news is discomfiting and I look forward to checking out some of the
contemporary alternatives. Lately, I've been putting more technical/nerdy
stuff into Quiver, which understands code and does syntax highlighting and all
that good stuff. I don't like it as much for the free-form stuff I do in
Evernote, but for code snippets it's great.

~~~
vertis
For the lazy, here is where you find Quiver:
[http://happenapps.com/](http://happenapps.com/)

------
tomatotomato37
Anyone have any more infomation on what jobs exactly were cut? There's
difference implications on whether it's a geneal whole company layoff versus
laying off a single department versus discontinuing some expiremental side
project and the staff involved therein.

~~~
anontechworker
My guess is that there were some engineering job cuts at least. I’ve had some
views from Evernote engineers on my LI profile today. Could be coincidence
though!

------
sekasi
This whole story is so familiar, yet so devastating.

Great specific product that solves one, or a few, problems very well,
maintained by a passionate group.

Into

'Ok' broad product that tries to solve 50 problems in an 'ok' way, maintained
by a group that doesn't care all that much.

Not all products are destined for mega million profit. Trying to make them
into that very often ruins the kernel of truth. It's really disappointing.

------
qwerty456127
I've tried Evernote a couple of times and don't even understand why people use
it and why does it take more than a couple of devs to maintain, it seems sooo
simple (yet hardly intuitive) and lacks any smart features I sought when
looking for a personal information management tool.

~~~
colechristensen
I want to keep notes, many of them.

I have a scanner that with the push of a button scans records and sends them
to Evernote, I then shred the paper. Receipts, invoices, various mailed things
all go into Evernote.

I also use Evernote web clip to save a copy of a web article (or often a
recipe) which I would like to either finish later, have for reference, or
share with someone.

I also save notes about computer things. Research for all my options to do X,
or commandline snippets to make Y happen.

Then I can scroll back in history and it helps recall to see the things I have
been doing.

~~~
kstrauser
Side note: I use DEVONthink for all of those. It's not cheap, but neither is
Evernote Premium. Also, DEVONthink's AI for classifying new data items,
summarizing them, and searching in them is outstanding. Subscribe to a few
choice RSS feeds and you have a personal database full of new, discoverable
research.

~~~
colechristensen
Looks interesting, but the Apple-only makes it a non-starter for me.

------
hsavit1
With their market share, Evernote has so much potential to make helpful and
innovative products, yet they screw it up so badly. They rarely add features,
and when they do, they're never the ones the users want. I'm determined in my
lifetime to create an alternative that actually reflects the needs of people
who are idea creators.

------
vedtopkar
I was an Evernote loyalist in the early days of the company, but eventually
the apps got too sluggish and too complicated. The product started as a nice
interface that got out of your way, but that went out the door as they tried
to scale and make actual money.

I was then burned by OneNote (the MacOS app is pretty bad, and has terrible
export options).

I now almost exclusively use plain-text files in a Dropbox folder, and I don't
regret it at all.

------
rajuvegesna
This is the problem when a note-taking app tries to make it ‘big’. A good
note-taking app can be a niche business. But when you raise hundreds of
millions of dollars, there is pressure and you are forced to make unnatural
decisions to show growth.

Also, note-taking apps are part of a suite. See Apple, Microsoft, Google, Zoho
(disclosure: I am with Zoho and we compete in note-taking space with Zoho
Notebook). It is a challenge for any independent app provider to compete with
a single app against suites in the long run. It’s surprising Evernote didn’t
expand to other productivity apps beyond note-taking.

~~~
Spooky23
I share your surprise. The magic of Evernote when i used it was tagging. It’s
a concept that could have made office suites or other productivity use cases
better.

------
mobitar
For an open-source Evernote alternative, feel free to check out Standard
Notes. It’s a cross platform notes app with sync and e2e encryption:

[https://standardnotes.org](https://standardnotes.org)

It’s a project I’ve been working on for a couple years, and has made its
rounds on HN in the past. Thought I’d share again for anyone seeking
alternatives.

~~~
sgt
It looks good. How does it handle code? It's always a pain point in Evernote
when one wants to paste some code to keep as a reference.

------
andy_ppp
Here is a suggested plan for Evernote to succeed. Look at what types of note
people are making - do a session with different types of note/subject/user.

For every single thing, make a piece of functionality specific to that note
type, subject or person. Do this hundreds/thousands of times and review what
helps you grow.

Here's a brief list of person types:

\- People: GTD, Event planner, Programmer, OCD, Bullet Journal-er

\- Note Type: Generic Note, Todo List, Wedding, Mood Board, etc.

\- Subject: Scientific/Maths notes, Programmer notes (i.e. python/jupyter
notebooks, observablehq.com), Notes for specific industries, designers, school
teachers, etc.

I can't really give good examples of these until I see the usage but you get
the idea.

It really feels to me Evernote is for one a or two very specific types of
people/use cases/subjects (the founders probably) rather than making something
their users really want.

~~~
pbowyer
I have wanted this for _years_. Think structured notes. If I'm jotting down a
review of a restaurant in Evernote, let me give it a star rating and locate it
on a map. Let me give places I visit the same. Let me choose what widgets show
in a 'Note type' \-- and when I search let me search for these fields.

E.g. "All items in EverNote within 30 miles of X and with a rating >= 4 stars"

I am describing a flexible database with a cracking UI. And nobody has done it
AFAIK (except one startup a couple of years ago that took funding then burned)

Tangential: For bonus points, add other modes to the note taker. A WorkFlowy-
esque outliner, one of those where you add cards to the right of each item to
drill into detail. There's lots of different types of notes people want at
different times.

~~~
andy_ppp
Yes me too - the context awareness is key but it's unbelievably obvious and
you could literally add an unlimited amount of awesome and useful
functionality.

------
steveax
Am I the only one that wants to puke when I hear/read how hard it was for the
exec team to decide to lay people off?

It seems like empathy 101 to me to not make the layoff of an employee about
you, the one that made the decision to probably throw their life into chaos,
but it seems to be almost ubiquitous in these announcements.

------
tequila_shot
No one mention Quip[1] yet? I was a heavy Evernote user until Quip came along.
If you haven't given it a spin, you should.

It's lists, kanban boards, images and a lot of other stuff at one place. Any
TODOs I use Quip these days.

[1][https://quip.com](https://quip.com)

------
booleandilemma
I switched to OneNote after Evernote kept pestering me to upgrade to their
premium plan (and I was already paying for their mid-tier plan).

Evernote guys, please leave your paying users alone.

~~~
carrychains
I switched from onenote to evernote a very long time ago to get away from
microsoft office. After evernote went to shit, though, I didn't have any real
alternatives so I went back to onenote. I wonder if the newest free version
runs in wine.

~~~
noinsight
> I wonder if the newest free version runs in wine.

Microsoft already discontinued OneNote (the Office version). The last version
will be 2016. They're offering OneNote as a modern app now that requires a
Microsoft account and syncs to the cloud - and of course it doesn't have
equivalent functionality.

------
danso
This might be a little off-topic because I only vaguely remember using
Evernote, and thus am not as familiar with its feature set; but does anyone
here use Google Keep? I remember trying it during its soft launch, but didn’t
revisit it (Google Drive and Pinboard are sufficient for me). But I can’t
recall the last time I’ve ever heard someone mention that they use it.

~~~
monocasa
Partner and I use it for grocery lists, that's about it.

~~~
richforrester
Yup.

Google Keep for anything fleeting.

Evernote for keepers.

Google Docs for structured stuff.

------
iamleppert
This entire thread is a gold-mine for product research that they should
probably already be aware of. But it won't be read and the company won't be
improved.

What sense does it makes to have some guy from the heavily sheltered and
insane Google X running a real business and product? He probably doesn't have
the first clue of whatever he is doing.

------
carrychains
Evernote was great for a while. Then they decided to go nuclear with
monetizing it while simultaneously ruining the software with the worst design
changes and features imaginable.

------
msravi
I really recommend Quiver ([http://happenapps.com](http://happenapps.com)). It
supports code blocks, LaTeX, html, markdown, etc., as well as attachments of
any kind (pdf, jpg, etc.) The format is well documented and open
([https://github.com/HappenApps/Quiver/wiki/Quiver-Data-
Format](https://github.com/HappenApps/Quiver/wiki/Quiver-Data-Format)), so you
could potentially write your own parser if it ever becomes unsupported!

There's also an android app (called quaver) that someone else (not the
original developer), has built using the open JSON specs. It works, but isn't
that great.

Syncing the JSON data to the cloud keeps all devices in sync. It also has an
import feature that allows you to import your Evernote notes.

------
josep2
I've been an Evernote premium subscriber for 4 years. I love Evernote and use
it everyday. I haven't found a tool with as high quality of a web clipper,
great search and optical character recognition and intergrations with
everything. Will be sad to see it go if it does.

------
technoligarch
360 employees for a note taking app? Really?

~~~
dman
It takes a lot of effort to feed and raise a unicorn.

------
kakarot
Probably a good thing for the company, honestly I didn't even think Evernote
required 54 people _total_ , that seams incredibly bloated for such an
increasingly irrelevant software.

------
bad_user
I like Evernote a lot ...

Evernote has great discoverability of notes. Search works. And when viewing a
note it suggests related notes. With the browser extension it even suggests
notes in Google's Search (too bad I'm now using DuckDuckGo), related to what
you searched for.

I also like the multimedia support, like being able to record audio. Other
people like web clippings. Unfortunately their business isn't sustainable, as
we can see and I'm thinking of switching.

The "encrypted text within a note" is pretty cool too, although I haven't used
it much.

Frankly, I can't find a replacement that works as well. I hope they can
restructure, but with only $10MM annual revenue, I don't see how that's
possible.

So on the alternatives I'm thinking of:

1\. Other proprietary alternatives — like Dropbox Paper, which is nice, but
Dropbox has killed products I liked before, therefore sorry Dropbox, but
you're not fooling me again; this actually goes for other note taking apps out
there; fool me once, shame on me, etc.

2\. Something based on open standards — e.g. Apple Notes is OK, but very basic
when you sync it with FastMail or a Google Account; this is what I was using
before Evernote; I might go back to it

3\. Open Source — Standard Notes (standardnotes.org): love the idea, open
source, end to end encrypted, does daily backups in Dropbox which is awesome;
unfortunately it's not very polished, had issues with it

So if I'm going to switch, I'm going to choose either open source or something
that syncs with my email or Dropbox account.

------
ggregoire
What are the other good alternatives to Evernote with multi-device sync?

I've been using it for so long now. I don't specially like the product but it
does the job. I use it on daily basis for notes, lists, ideas, reminders,
todos, backlog…

My only issue is that the free plan is limited to 2 devices and I've never
felt like paying for Evernote. Not sure why. I just checked the pricing and
it's actually super low. Maybe I should upgrade.

~~~
daniel_iversen
I use Dropbox Paper (work at DBX too) and it’s quite amazing for the long form
research notes - I’ll have like a million projects going and paper documents
is just such a nice way to pick em up, write some stuff and then put it down
again (and embeds online and file media really well). The free version is he
one I use personally and it’s great! But it’s not the best for a large repo of
short personal notes - I too am looking for something there (always wanted to
get “in to” Evernote but just never did) - I actually use Todoist for small
reference notes and material now.

~~~
pbowyer
Dropbox Paper is fantastic, and my favourite shared writing environment
(visually so much nicer than Google Docs)

I'm up to 7000 words in one document. The feature I'm missing in Dropbox Paper
is around organising my notes and research for what I'm writing. Think of
Scrivener or other writers' tool, which knows you're writing on many levels
and need a scratchpad around, and to keep the outline bullet points even after
you've written prose for that section.

I've taken to having a separate Paper document to contain the
research/notes/outline and one for the draft writing. If this is a use-case
you consider for Paper, it'd be awesome to have more support.

If not, then HN can you suggest a better, shared writing environment?

------
majidazimi
The single reason I switched from Evernote to Onenote is that it is expensive.
5$/month for a note taking app? Seriously? With 6$/month, I can get a full
office suit, an email with no ads, plus 1 TB of OneDrive. Evernote is a sort
of app that should make money at scale by offering extremely cheap deals.

------
autocorr
I've found Zotero to be very convenient for managing notes alongside where
they matter for me at least, which is alongside documents and images. You can
also link related entries and add tags. The notes are very basic, so probably
lack many useful features found in Evernotes, but they're good enough for my
purposes. Related to Evernotes financials though, who can say where it's going
to be as a product in the next couple years? The real thing that I like most
about Zotero is that it is open source, has a local data store with a simple
sqlite database, and is developed by a non-profit. If your notes are
ephemeral, there are miriad other options. But if you want to keep them long
term and preserve their connections to other content, I think you have to be
able to easily parse and port them yourself.

------
ensiferum
Yeah, this boggles the mind.

Few decades ago many applications such as C++ compilers, Word Processors,
productivity applications and just applications in general were often built by
a single person!

Now a primitive CRUD app takes hundreds of people of staff.

Say what?

What the f happened to productivity. Looks like someone's driven off the
productivity cliff.

------
free652
Why do I need Evernote if I have Google Docs or Office 365? Both of the
offerings have the mobile apps too.

~~~
colechristensen
Using it for the things I use it for, I prefer the workflow to using Docs.

Evernote does OCR things, can take audio or camera notes, and has a tool to
grab copies of webpages with various levels of cutting out non-content.

>Why do I need Evernote if I have Google Docs or Office 365?

It's a bit like asking why you'd need a PostIt note if you already have a
piece of paper. They're tools that do pretty similar things that specialize in
very overlapping but slightly different tasks.

~~~
make3
my understanding is that office OneNote does a lot of similar things. I
suspect that the answer here is that you don't need Evernote if you have
Office 365

~~~
bonestamp2
Although I use OneNote more, Evernote's bookmark/favorite feature is sadly
lacking from OneNote. If onenote had a panel for favorite notes, that would be
huge.

------
altitudinous
I feel that Evernote is to notepad apps the same as Dropbox is to cloud file
storage.

I don't know why Dropbox is still about, and I don't know why Evernote is
still about.

Dropbox seems to have found value in a flooded market although I don't know
why, so it is conceivable that Evernote will do the same.

~~~
cjensen
Dropbox is extremely reliable, and has not given customers a real reason to
switch imho. Evernote is famously unreliable with a "quirky" interface that
often behaves strangely.

The pain of Evernote was enough to make me switch. Dropbox has not yet pained
me enough to switch away from being a paying customer despite the fact that I
have a 1GB OneDrive plan with Office.

Your Mileage May Vary.

~~~
gumby
I tried to switch away from paid 1TB Dropbox to the bundled ("free") 1TB
OneDrive that's bundled with the Office subscription I need to have from time
to time.

Filesystem integration with the Mac was disastrous. Three problems: 1- some
characters are not permitted in filenames; you find this out when synch fails
and have to guess where the problem is; 2 - some files simply silently don't
synch; and 3 - a couple of times a day it would decide it had lost synch and
then would have to re-index the repo, which not only took up cycles (I could
survive that) but meant there was no synching while that was happening.

Whereas I just have almost everything in my DB directory tree and even do all
my development there (builds and all).

At my last company we had Box which is _almost_ identical with Dropbox but
with a much more complex interface to satisfy corporate I/T. Total overkill
for a startup!

------
zaner
If anyone is surprised by that they haven't really been using Evernote.
Honestly, there is so much they could improve about their product and business
model just going through this thread and reading the feedback. It's such a
shame as I believe it had a lot of potential.

I used to use Evernote daily (was even a paying user for a while) and I hardly
ever do anymore.

After the last few redesigns have I have started searching for a decent
alternative and recently came across Nuclino
([https://www.nuclino.com/](https://www.nuclino.com/)). It can do everything
Evernote does and more for a way cheaper price - WYSIWYG editor, markdown
support, hierarchical lists, kanban board, mind maps... Don't think I'll be
going back.

~~~
renx
Evernote has been consistently disappointing with every update recently...

Nuclino looks interesting, I'm going to give it a try!

------
duncanawoods
The note-taking tool business is tricky. OS vendors have great versions
included for free (Apple Notes, OneNote) and there is a surfeit for free and
good-enough solutions.

It makes me fearful about the positioning of my own tool -
[https://thorny.io](https://thorny.io) \- an interactive notebook for decision
making.

It could be categorised as a flavour of note-taking tool because it's like a
cross between an outliner, a spreadsheet, and a logic-programming tool. If it
is treated as a type of note-taking tool then it puts it into the red ocean.
I'm not sure there is space for multiple note-taking tools in people's
workflow. Spreading notes across tools would be a massive pain-point.

------
gumby
I have Evernote but never found it easy enough to use to depend on it. And it
just seems scarily buggy. I'm a paid user too!

I just tried to use it for a new project and when creating a shared note it
kept telling me my email address wasn't validated. Well there's no way to
validate one unless you go to the web site, delete your address and add it
again! It also offered to set up 2FA...only I'd used 2FA to log in! So I got a
new set of replacement keys. This was frightening enough that I exported all
my data.

But what tool shares phone/laptop and permits formatted text, attachments, and
offline use? Apple notes almost gets there, but doesn't.

------
rfreiberger
I've been a user of Evernote since 2011, and previously I would use various
ways of documenting my personal notes/work notes. Why I use Evernote is it's
decently polished, works across OS versions and allows the best mix of storing
attachments. A few months ago I tried a large selection of other note-taking
apps and really wanted to like Standard Notes but it just felt not as polished
and the extensions were not so great. I really think Quiver would be a winner
if it was open to Windows, and I'm starting to think Onenote is the winner.
But most of these lack the tree view of the notes (nested tags/notebooks) or
they don't allow attachments storage.

------
bfirsh
I really want to switch from Evernote to something else, but one of the main
things I use Evernote for is scanning, OCRing, and organising real documents
(mail, receipts, etc).

What is a good alternative for this? I’m willing for it to be a separate
system to note taking.

~~~
eitally
Google Drive. The mobile app does scanning & OCRing (and then you're on your
own to create a content organization structure).

~~~
Hoefner
Sadly, scanning isn't available on iOS

------
SZJX
The software never felt right for me from the beginning and I jumped ship as
soon OneNote became available for Mac (I moved later to org-mode). I remember
a few years ago a talented friend who was accepted by Twitter, Google etc. for
internship was rejected for an internship by them for some reason and he was
really upset. Clearly the management has some serious problems with their
engineering team. No surprise at all to see them struggle.

------
tw1010
What's the reason companies tend to do huge layoffs like this, a bunch of
people at the same time, instead of firing them slowly one-by-one? It doesn't
seem like a big public event like this is optimal to the companys bottom line,
and it's not great for motivation for the remaining employees? Are there legal
reasons you can't hide a "big layoff" as a "slow series of firings"?

~~~
paladin314159
The last thing you want is a slow trickle of people being let go. Then the
only thing on everyone's mind is whether they're next.

------
randomsearch
Used Evernote for years and switched to OneNote when EN became truly awful
(think it was after a major UI redesign and full of bugs).

Have now been using OneNote for longer than I used EN and really happy with
it. Major downside is no Linux client and, although the ON web app is one of
the best I’ve ever used, it still sucks.

Anyone recommend a solution re Linux? Anything out there as good as OneNote
(‘just works’) that also supports Linux, please?

------
tony2016
I have been using Evernote for years. It's complete for me as far I am
concerned. Taking notes and getting synchronized. I am not sure what features
they want to add to have tens of software developers. I also don't understand
why they have hundreds of employees.

------
quxbar
That's a shame, to be fair I only use their iOS app now and have all my
desktops switched over to tusk (
[https://github.com/klauscfhq/tusk](https://github.com/klauscfhq/tusk) ).

------
redmattred
For anyone who was laid off from Evernote, there is a service called
[https://layoff-aid.com](https://layoff-aid.com) which helps recently
downsized tech employees (not just engineers) find new jobs

------
the6threplicant
Evernote is one of those applications that I use in a permanent WORN mode
(Write Once Read Never). :)

I'm still waiting for the killer extension where I can take all my restaurant
reviews (for a city) and dump them on a map to see the closest one to me.

------
honkycat
Sounding off: Used to use evernote. Have switched to emacs org-mode and
dropbox syncing.

~~~
sgt
How would the transition be for a vim user with relatively little emacs
experience? I know how to get out of emacs and how to get into the M-x doctor
(it saves me hundreds of dollars on therapy), but that's pretty much it.

~~~
honkycat
I used vim for YEARS and it still hold a fond place in my heart... and my
muscle memory.

I use a flavor of emacs, spacemacs, that has had a TON of work to map it's
controls to "vim-style" keybindings. If Emacs didn't have vim-style editing, I
would not use it.

If you want a more lightweight solution, [https://github.com/emacs-evil/evil-
collection](https://github.com/emacs-evil/evil-collection) is a set of evil-
mode keybindings to get you started.

------
dmode
Not really surprised. I pay for a lot of freemium apps, but never paid for
Evernote. It's hard to create value for "Note Taking". Alternative is
capturing notes in a free google doc or use paper and pen.

------
fastball
Is this a case of mismanagement or over-estimation of market size (note-
taking)?

~~~
gaze
The company is very clearly mismanaged.

~~~
squirrelicus
The product is very clearly a dud

~~~
tootie
It was very popular for a long time. It was one of the first apps of it's kind
and got some loyal users. Then stagnated while tons of competitors blossomed.

~~~
pbowyer
> Then stagnated while tons of competitors blossomed.

Which competitors have blossomed and are also cross-platform? I can think of
OneNote, but the 'clip from web' feature in Evernote is superior IMO. But I
hate Evernote's "rich" (my foot) text editor for being so dumb and so basic,
and the lack of organisation that tags and notebooks give, and am always keen
to find a replacement.

Replacements always seem to have better features, but the cost of getting a
note into them is higher.

~~~
dbbk
Seems to me that a lot of people have moved over to Bear if you use an iPhone
and a Mac.

~~~
pbowyer
I have a Mac, but I use Windows and Android in equal parts.

------
powerapple
Why do they need so many jobs to begin with. It is a nice product and good for
a small company. It is not right to pursue the path of being a company that
big.

------
cft
These walking dead companies have been made possible by QE.

------
EmersonL
Started using Bear and haven't looked back. Obviously it doesn't have feature
parity, but it's good enough for me.

------
yig
My main concern is over their document scanning app Scannable. It's so good.
Please let me pay for it so it sticks around.

------
valarauca1

        the executive departures two weeks ago characterized
        Evernote as “in a death spiral,” saying that user growth 
        and active users have been flat for the last six years 
        and that the company’s enterprise product offering 
        hasn’t caught on.
    

If a company isn't growing, its dying. Six years without customer growth? Its
amazing they managed to rise a down-round, let alone any round at all.

~~~
foobarbazetc
If you have 100MM users 6 years ago and you have 100MM users now you still
have an impressive 100MM users.

(They don’t, but just illustrating that not every business needs hockey stick
growth to be viable).

~~~
itsangaris
Evernote has about 220MM users. Source: [https://www.cnet.com/news/evernote-
raised-prices-got-more-of...](https://www.cnet.com/news/evernote-raised-
prices-got-more-of-us-to-sign-up/)

------
rb666
Good, Evernote never got out of Beta stage, the product is STILL crappy.

I switched to Notion recently, and never going back!

------
DocG
I tried evernote twice years ago. But it lost my note data when syncing after
editing offline both times.

------
olivermarks
Anyone have a good tool to export everything out of Evernote into Google Drive
or somewhere? thx

~~~
vvladymyrov
Evernote can export notes into ENEX XML document itself. I've used
[https://github.com/laurent22/joplin](https://github.com/laurent22/joplin) to
import this ENEX file and access most of the features (formatting, images) but
not other (i.e. password protected values)

------
purplezooey
Just wish they'd release a damn Linux client. Not the web version.

------
i_am_nomad
Evernote sold branded socks at one point. Not just that, but they sold _paper
notebooks._. Think about that: a digital notebook company that "diversifies"
by selling paper notebooks. That really says everything about where Evernote
was headed.

------
mtnGoat
I'm surprised they made it this long. I never liked the app personally and
honestly can't fathom why they had a staff so large.

------
kolderman
Evernote is a company?

------
pastununtrium
Good, now git

------
pnw_hazor
...should've made that native linux client.

I stopped using them after they made it clear they had no interest in
supporting a linux client. Not sure if they have changed their attitude since
then, but that ship has sailed as far as I am concerned.

~~~
paulcole
When your goal is an IPO and billions of dollars for a note-taking app, the
linux audience is a rounding error.

------
pleasecalllater
Evernote has the best selling team ever.

They gave me premium account for a month. I didn't use it. A couple of months
later I wanted to check how it works, so I asked them to enable me the premium
account for 1h or 1 day. I wanted to check how the features work. After a week
I got an answer: the premium account is available when you will pay. So I
resigned. I don't like paying for I-have-no-idea-what.

~~~
pleasecalllater
I love when I get negative points for writing the truth. :)

