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Twitter Expected to Begin Layoffs and Stop Headquarters Expansion

nytimes.com

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Re: Twitter Expected to Begin Layoffs and Stop Headquarters Expansion

#51

Post by pavornyoh »

bachmeier wrote: post #38
pavornyoh wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with @bpicolo when it comes to support. If you have a problem with most of the big companies in terms of support and they are delaying a response, all you have to do is reach out to the support team on Twitter and they respond ASAP. Companies such as AT& T, Chase, Citi, Bank of America, Amazon etc..

AT&T is truly the shittiest company I've ever dealt with. Maybe I should try the magic of Twitter...

@Bachmeier, I agree. And oh, they are right there with Comcast in my opinion when it comes to bad service. They are very good at making small mistakes like overcharging you know on a bill. So Twitter will do wonders for you :).

Re: Twitter Expected to Begin Layoffs and Stop Headquarters Expansion

#52

Post by InclinedPlane »

calcsam wrote: post #8

This is bad, if not entirely unexpected, news. What is out of the ordinary is the public markets' reaction: the stock is down 3% in after-hours trading. Typically when a company announces layoffs its stock goes up. More mature companies have sometimes slashed headcount on the way to a better market situation. But when younger companies announce layoffs, the markets stop assuming they have lots of growth ahead and adj…

I suspect that's just people having their delusions of rampant future growth and expansion of twitter being crushed in the gears of mundane reality. These moves are perfectly fine for a normal company that intends to continue operating at about the same level as it is currently indefinitely. But people view every tech company through the lens of apple, google, amazon, etc. They expect growth, they expect new stuff, and so on.

The truth is that with modern technology you can build a company that has hundreds of millions of high-volume users and yet is not very expensive to operate. Companies, and their revenue, don't necessarily scale the way we're used to from the experience of industrial companies.

Re: Twitter Expected to Begin Layoffs and Stop Headquarters Expansion

#53

Post by tedks »

wyclif wrote: post #11
swingbridge wrote: post #3

A sad day for Twitter, but a dose of reality for a lot of the fluffiness in the market at the moment. Companies need to have real revenue and produce real profit and then need a valuation based on sane multiples. Twitter got behind that curve badly and ultimately this is what happens.

Yes, it's sad for employees being let go, but it's good news for Twitter. I don't think Twitter is going anywhere; it has a huge user base and a lot of people think of it as a branch of the internet. By cutting surgically (removing, as you put it, the "fluffiness"), Jack might very well be able to bring some fighting spirit back.

Yes, it's sad for employees let go, but it's good news for AOL. I don't think AOL is going anywhere; it has a huge user base and a lot of people think of it as the internet. By cutting surgically (removing, as you put it, the "fluffiness"), Jonathan might very well be able to bring some fighting spirit back.

Re: Twitter Expected to Begin Layoffs and Stop Headquarters Expansion

#54

Post by blantonl »

yid wrote: post #24
xienze wrote: post #9

4100 employees for a service dedicated to moving around 140 character messages? Yeah, there might be a little fat to trim there.

> 4100 employees for a service dedicated to moving around 140 character messages? Yeah, there might be a little fat to trim there. Absolutely! You could probably get a single rack to handle storage and broadcast of millions of tweets per minute, perhaps hook it up to a Teradata appliance to handle search and storage at that throughput. Throw it in a nice distributed database indexed by user. Then just another couple…

True. But where is the focus on making money?

Re: Twitter Expected to Begin Layoffs and Stop Headquarters Expansion

#55

Post by meeper16 »

xienze wrote: post #9

4100 employees for a service dedicated to moving around 140 character messages? Yeah, there might be a little fat to trim there.

I completely agree. Twitter was never really a technology company to me considering it was essentially just a mimic of a wrapper around an email list.

Re: Twitter Expected to Begin Layoffs and Stop Headquarters Expansion

#56

Post by pkaye »

robryan wrote: post #25
xienze wrote: post #9

4100 employees for a service dedicated to moving around 140 character messages? Yeah, there might be a little fat to trim there.

Without knowing the breakdown I assume that there are a lot of people working in marketing type roles where they are working with big business and celebrities to get them using the platform.

Their website says that 50% percent of their employees are engineers. (https://about.twitter.com/company)

Re: Twitter Expected to Begin Layoffs and Stop Headquarters Expansion

#57

Post by jsprogrammer »

yid wrote: post #47
xienze wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, I'm hearing a lot about hardware there but not seeing where thousands of people are needed to keep it all up. Again, WhatsApp -- 50 employees.

In 2014, WhatsApp reportedly made $14 million in revenue. By comparison, Twitter made $479 in revenue in just Q4 2014. I think company size generally scales super-linearly with revenue, so a total staff in the thousands seems reasonable for a post-IPO company. Are you suggesting that WhatsApp's model of organization is the norm for a sustainable organization? I think it's a clear outlier in many respects.

Does it really matter what WhatsApp made in revenue? The owners got a $16 BILLION payout.

Are you suggesting that WhatsApps business model was based on annual revenue?

Re: Twitter Expected to Begin Layoffs and Stop Headquarters Expansion

#58

Post by kzhahou »

yid wrote: post #24
xienze wrote: post #9

4100 employees for a service dedicated to moving around 140 character messages? Yeah, there might be a little fat to trim there.

> 4100 employees for a service dedicated to moving around 140 character messages? Yeah, there might be a little fat to trim there. Absolutely! You could probably get a single rack to handle storage and broadcast of millions of tweets per minute, perhaps hook it up to a Teradata appliance to handle search and storage at that throughput. Throw it in a nice distributed database indexed by user. Then just another couple…

IIRC Instagram had ~13 employees when they were acquired by FB, and they were obviously already huge.

WhatsApp had ~30 when they were acquired, and were also huge. ("Huuuuuge!", says The Trump)

Those teams are gods of scalability. Twitter is.... kinda the opposite.

Re: Twitter Expected to Begin Layoffs and Stop Headquarters Expansion

#60

Post by eclipxe »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #42
swingbridge wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well a lot of other people are saying "It's crazy that a company with that few people and that little profit can be worth that many billions." Hence Twitter's problem at the moment.

Somewhat curious if this is the beginning of the unicorn pop.

Yes, it is.
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