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Twitter Is Betting Everything on Jack Dorsey

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Re: Twitter Is Betting Everything on Jack Dorsey

#71

Post by askldfhjkasfhd »

blowski wrote: post #2

> And, by nearly every metric, he had achieved remarkable success. Under his tenure, the company had grown from 300 employees to around 4,100. Eurgh. I never understand how the number of employees you have can be a success metric. By that logic, becoming more efficient would be a bad thing.

I think of it like a rough heuristic. It's a coarse-grained, single metric, but it does have some meaning if you don't use it as the end-all, be-all.

Replying to your comment made me wonder: what would a better metric be? The requirements are that it has to be numeric, a single number, and represent the "success" of any company, in all lifecycles (before fit, growth, mature, yellowpages, etc.)

Re: Twitter Is Betting Everything on Jack Dorsey

#72

Post by askldfhjkasfhd »

talmand wrote: post #24
prawn wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be copping downvotes because people think your arguments that he's "not very capable" and "is bad at business execution" don't hold up?

As a third party I would be interested in hearing why others feel the arguments don't hold up. Just simply clicking the downvote button doesn't make for an interesting discussion.

The overwhelming opinion* seems to be that he's brilliant at what he does. The post said it's obvious he's bad at business. If it's really that obvious, how did everyone else get things so wrong?

A more transparent post would have said something like "Based on my world view, assumptions, and preconceptions, he's bad at business. The common narrative of Dorsey is XYZ. Here's why that's wrong."

Saying "it's obvious" when you're expressing an uncommon opinion doesn't set a good tone for a discussion. Makes it seem like "I'm smart they're dumb I don't need to explain my statement that runs counter to conventional wisdom".

* Not saying it's right, just that this is what the Twitter board / media / insiders / VCs /etc. seem to think.

Re: Twitter Is Betting Everything on Jack Dorsey

#73

Post by virtualized »

blowski wrote: post #54
rwmj wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do 4,100 employees even do at Twitter? It's not that complicated.

To be fair, it must be pretty complicated to actually keep it running. Then you've got all the security, spam detection, designers, UX people, search engine, multi-lingual features. And then you've got the overhead of any medium-sized business - marketing, PR, sales, accounting, admin, HR (have I missed anything?). I guess it does add up. But (so as not to contradict myself) just having all those people doesn't count…

Ten percent of that number still sounds ridiculously high for such a site. They don't even have one competent UX designer. Why would they need dozens of them doing nothing?

Re: Twitter Is Betting Everything on Jack Dorsey

#74

Post by blowski »

askldfhjkasfhd wrote: post #71
blowski wrote: post #2

> And, by nearly every metric, he had achieved remarkable success. Under his tenure, the company had grown from 300 employees to around 4,100. Eurgh. I never understand how the number of employees you have can be a success metric. By that logic, becoming more efficient would be a bad thing.

I think of it like a rough heuristic. It's a coarse-grained, single metric, but it does have some meaning if you don't use it as the end-all, be-all. Replying to your comment made me wonder: what would a better metric be? The requirements are that it has to be numeric, a single number, and represent the "success" of any company, in all lifecycles (before fit, growth, mature, yellowpages, etc.)

If Company A hires lots of juniors while Company B only hires seniors, Company A is going to need a lot more people to achieve the same level of 'success'. So using this as a 'rough heuristic' would suggest Company A is doing much better than Company B, even though their wage bills may be about the same. What's more, we know nothing about the performance of either company.

In another scenario, Company C has outsourced most of its operations work, while Company D does it in-house, so Company D has more employees. Again, this tells us nothing about performance.

What's wrong with using net income as a single number?

Re: Twitter Is Betting Everything on Jack Dorsey

#75

Post by jhayward »

harryh wrote: post #33
jhayward wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This mismatch between expectation and reality is why so many internet companies "die". It's not that their business model failed, necessarily, it's that management, or the board, has set expectations for growth that defy reason. The company then has to embark on an ever-more-doomed set of initiatives to try to meet growth targets, which inevitably fail. Many companies could still be thriving today (e.g., Yahoo), if n…

If you push 10 companies for reason defying growth and 9 of them die but the 1 survivor grows enormously is it worth it? Maybe?

It may make sense at a certain maturity level of a company, e.g. VC investment in startups. I'm talking about large public companies with relatively mature business models.

It's almost impossible to change a business model once it is operating at scale, but management tells capital it can happen all the time.

Re: Twitter Is Betting Everything on Jack Dorsey

#76

Post by talmand »

askldfhjkasfhd wrote: post #72
talmand wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a third party I would be interested in hearing why others feel the arguments don't hold up. Just simply clicking the downvote button doesn't make for an interesting discussion.

The overwhelming opinion* seems to be that he's brilliant at what he does. The post said it's obvious he's bad at business. If it's really that obvious, how did everyone else get things so wrong? A more transparent post would have said something like "Based on my world view, assumptions, and preconceptions, he's bad at business. The common narrative of Dorsey is XYZ. Here's why that's wrong." Saying "it's obvious" wh…

That's not actually a response to my statement, even though it may be true. You're just providing an excuse to downvote without bothering to engage in discussion as to why to downvote. I want to hear the reasons for the downvote.

Just thinking I can downvote and not respond because of the "obvious" problems of the statement is just as bad as your example of saying "it's obvious" about an uncommon opinion is not good for discussion. You're just telling me "it's obvious" why the other guy's "it's obvious" is wrong.

Re: Twitter Is Betting Everything on Jack Dorsey

#77

Post by askldfhjkasfhd »

talmand wrote: post #76
askldfhjkasfhd wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The overwhelming opinion* seems to be that he's brilliant at what he does. The post said it's obvious he's bad at business. If it's really that obvious, how did everyone else get things so wrong? A more transparent post would have said something like "Based on my world view, assumptions, and preconceptions, he's bad at business. The common narrative of Dorsey is XYZ. Here's why that's wrong." Saying "it's obvious" wh…

That's not actually a response to my statement, even though it may be true. You're just providing an excuse to downvote without bothering to engage in discussion as to why to downvote. I want to hear the reasons for the downvote. Just thinking I can downvote and not respond because of the "obvious" problems of the statement is just as bad as your example of saying "it's obvious" about an uncommon opinion is not good…

Back up the bus - I didn't downvote. I start a new HN account well before I ever get that invested.

There really wasn't an argument put forth beyond "he's bad at business, can't you see it's obvious". His tone and lack of content other than an unsubstantiated opinion are why there was no interesting discussion.

I never said "it's obvious" in any way shape or form, but I do believe this is my stop. Have a nice day.

Re: Twitter Is Betting Everything on Jack Dorsey

#78

Post by waddabadoo »

I wish they would do something about the expensive Gnip situation. I understand they need to make money, but just getting to know the prices takes 4 phonecalls, interviews etc.

Also, I noticed from few people who worked there that this company is internally a total unstructured chaos. Nobody knows whats going on.

Re: Twitter Is Betting Everything on Jack Dorsey

#79

Post by simonswords82 »

wslh wrote: post #68
simonswords82 wrote: post #25

Twitter's product is broken in more ways than I care to recount. End users and developers are constantly complaining about it - and they're the power users who see the value in it! Everybody else is "meh" about Twitter despite the potential. Add Jack in to that mix, a guy who who has a lot of passion and intelligence but is split across Square and Walt Disney and I have to say the answer is 'no', betting on him to si…

In my microcosmos I am also being followed by a lot of bots and cyborgs (those ones who have ten of thousands of followers and are following other ten of thousands). This makes me think this ecosystem is not working properly, more, because I post original content. On the other hand, I am followed by a top VC who only follows a few people but is followed by 1/2 million and this "karma" doesn't make any noticeable effe…

Totally agree, the weightings on follower/following ratios are non-existent. Would be nice if quality of following/followers could be valued over quantity.

There's also far too many bots on Twitter now. Feels like Twitter is going to be a shit load of bots talking to one another when all the real humans leave.

Re: Twitter Is Betting Everything on Jack Dorsey

#80

Post by bennettfeely »

simonswords82 wrote: post #25

Twitter's product is broken in more ways than I care to recount. End users and developers are constantly complaining about it - and they're the power users who see the value in it! Everybody else is "meh" about Twitter despite the potential. Add Jack in to that mix, a guy who who has a lot of passion and intelligence but is split across Square and Walt Disney and I have to say the answer is 'no', betting on him to si…

To further your argument I would imagine the search volumes of Instagram (and in particular Snapchat) are lower than the actual popularity of their apps because those services aren't as "Google searchable" as actual websites Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook.
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