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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

#82
post #56
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 )

The engineers may still work to support advertising/marketing/sales.

Deciding which ad is the most optimal to show benefits from every input (metadata?) you can make available and analyze.

That must require some multiple of effort vs. making sure 140 chars get shown where they're directed to go.

Re: Twitter Expected to Begin Layoffs and Stop Headquarters Expansion

#83
post #4

I'm sad for my friends at Twitter but, this shouldn't come as much of a surprise.

Is indeed sad for the people that are let go, but at least the market is hot and they will probably find new jobs soon.

Yeah, honestly I'd think it were sad if they were, say, manufacturing employees who were laid off and had poor prospects, but in today's market any decent engineer or product person who worked at Twitter would be snapped up in a second.

Re: Twitter Expected to Begin Layoffs and Stop Headquarters Expansion

#84
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but thus far Facebook has responded well to existential threats by buying companies like Instagram, WhatsApp, etc.

Is that how it works now? Companies with great products but not a sustainable long-term biz plan exit by getting bought out, and larger companies with a greater product but also no far-long-term biz plan buy those companies and survive by having them as fallback products?

[deleted]

Re: Twitter Expected to Begin Layoffs and Stop Headquarters Expansion

#85
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but thus far Facebook has responded well to existential threats by buying companies like Instagram, WhatsApp, etc.

Is that how it works now? Companies with great products but not a sustainable long-term biz plan exit by getting bought out, and larger companies with a greater product but also no far-long-term biz plan buy those companies and survive by having them as fallback products?

Sounds like the beer industry. Five companies own half the world market. And new breweries are easy to start. If yours gains traction, you get acquired.

And that's in an industry where the products are close to fungible, without depending on network effects.

Re: Twitter Expected to Begin Layoffs and Stop Headquarters Expansion

#86
post #48
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is indeed sad for the people that are let go, but at least the market is hot and they will probably find new jobs soon.

That is true if the layoff is specific to Twitter and not a harbinger of a general downturn

There is another bloated company with an unclear growth story right across the street from Twitter, and it happens share same CEO. How long can Square keep up its act?

Re: Twitter Expected to Begin Layoffs and Stop Headquarters Expansion

#87
post #69

Genuine question - why do recruiters hire new people when the company is laying off?

because new employees worker harder and get paid less. old employees are getting lazier and less productive

Lazier and more productive, you mean.

Re: Twitter Expected to Begin Layoffs and Stop Headquarters Expansion

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that how it works now? Companies with great products but not a sustainable long-term biz plan exit by getting bought out, and larger companies with a greater product but also no far-long-term biz plan buy those companies and survive by having them as fallback products?

Sounds like the beer industry. Five companies own half the world market. And new breweries are easy to start. If yours gains traction, you get acquired. And that's in an industry where the products are close to fungible, without depending on network effects.

People go to the store and exchange money for beer. You seem to be missing the point.

Re: Twitter Expected to Begin Layoffs and Stop Headquarters Expansion

#89
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, a…

They turned off their APIs to application developers. What they should have done is ramp that shit up and figure out how to monetize the query traffic or figure out a way to decentralize their infrastructure to allow everyone to run Twitter together.

Re: Twitter Expected to Begin Layoffs and Stop Headquarters Expansion

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like the beer industry. Five companies own half the world market. And new breweries are easy to start. If yours gains traction, you get acquired. And that's in an industry where the products are close to fungible, without depending on network effects.

People go to the store and exchange money for beer. You seem to be missing the point.

[deleted]
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