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Twitter Plans Hundreds More Job Cuts as Soon as This Week

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Re: Twitter Plans Hundreds More Job Cuts as Soon as This Week

#241

Post by ethbro »

pud wrote: post #198
edoceo wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar story, we should be friends :) Care to comment on the work/life balance you have?

Me too. Hi. If an entrepreneur is worried about "Work Life Balance", I think he/she is in the wrong business.

> If an entrepreneur is worried about "Work Life Balance", I think he/she is in the wrong business.

If your only business advantage over your competitors is a willingness to sacrifice your life for money, then you'd better either be okay with doing so indefinitely or be making enough money you can call it quits before you're too old to maintain that pace.

Re: Twitter Plans Hundreds More Job Cuts as Soon as This Week

#242

Post by koliber »

artursapek wrote: post #6

I've always sort of had this question that continues to feel naive - but I'm not sure I know the answer: why do so many companies feel like they have to grow perpetually? Why can't Twitter just be happy being Twitter, knowing its limits and making a stable profit? Instead it's more users, more VC money, more staff... constantly burning as quickly as possible. There's a ceiling on every business; it's all bound to com…

On a longer timeframe, if you don't grow, you die.

Scenario time...

Let's say I have a company that is growing pretty well. After some time, I feel the easy growth stops. Let's say this is the "right size" point you are alluding to, and I was able to recognize it, spot on. I stop hiring and just work with the existing resources that I have. In theory everything should be good for a long time.

Unfortunately, I do not exist in a vacuum. I have competition, and this competition continues to expand. Eventually, if they continue to invest and grow, even past their "right size", they will take away my market share. As they grow stronger, I will grow weaker. This may cause my company to lose enough sales that I will have to fire people.

The fallacy is that there is a "right size" that will continue to be the "right size" through time. A market is a dynamic system that does not stand still. What was the right size at one point, may be too large or too small in the future, due to things beyond my direct control.

As a smart businessman, I have to understand this. I have to expand when there is room, and try to outperform the competition when the market is crowded. I need to downsize when the time is right to protect the rest of the business.

What you are saying is easier done on a smaller scale. There are many so-called "lifestyle" businesses which live by a philosophy that is closer to yours and farther from Twitter's. On a global scale, it much more difficult to follow the "lifestyle" business philosophy and succeed.

Re: Twitter Plans Hundreds More Job Cuts as Soon as This Week

#243

Post by Ryan_Shmotkin »

nikcub wrote: post #155
trymas wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not, but it could if twitter would stop spending huge piles of money that makes them go nowhere.

That is exactly what many on Wall St have been telling them to do for years. Despite the popular perception of investment bankers, they do value "patio11 style businesses" more highly than the Twitter style of spending and losing billions of dollars and not going anywhere. I actually don't think anybody values the later.

The answer is in your example. Patio's business was barely profitable for a few years until closing down.

Growth or death is true for most businesses, just need to decide on the growth acceleration

Re: Twitter Plans Hundreds More Job Cuts as Soon as This Week

#244

Post by aub3bhat »

makomk wrote: post #234
aub3bhat wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because your competitor can raise those million dollars, and eventually your 20k profit per month becomes 20k loss per month. You can build all your imaginary arguments about magical businesses that make 20k profit per month while being self-sustained with holocracy, cruelty free, authentic, organic etc. etc. But the reality is that doing big things at bigger scale requires huge capital. If you are willing to pass up…

Then the investors will get tired of subsidising the other company, it will get more and more user-hostile and quite possibly run out of money altogether and shut down, and users will be worse off in the long run.

Oh yeah and eventually Diaspora will overtake Facebook. Oh wait...

If the VC model did not work it would have simply gone out of business. The reality of business is that doing things at larger scale requires capital. Sure you might be able to pull-off your lifestyle, but its going to be hard to motivate employees when the VC funded competitor gives them michelin star chefs, 50% higher salaries and a shot at windfall in few years. Sure twitter might be laying off few employees now. But before that it made its founders billionaires and several employees millionaires.

Re: Twitter Plans Hundreds More Job Cuts as Soon as This Week

#245

Post by B1FF_PSUVM »

koliber wrote: post #242
artursapek wrote: post #6

I've always sort of had this question that continues to feel naive - but I'm not sure I know the answer: why do so many companies feel like they have to grow perpetually? Why can't Twitter just be happy being Twitter, knowing its limits and making a stable profit? Instead it's more users, more VC money, more staff... constantly burning as quickly as possible. There's a ceiling on every business; it's all bound to com…

On a longer timeframe, if you don't grow, you die. Scenario time... Let's say I have a company that is growing pretty well. After some time, I feel the easy growth stops. Let's say this is the "right size" point you are alluding to, and I was able to recognize it, spot on. I stop hiring and just work with the existing resources that I have. In theory everything should be good for a long time. Unfortunately, I do not…

> I have competition, and this competition continues to expand.

Fallacy is here.

Re: Twitter Plans Hundreds More Job Cuts as Soon as This Week

#246

Post by mrmondo »

I don't really have any insightful input into this other than to say, I hope they're cutting the people they most likely don't need.

Twitter is the only social platform I actually like and still use, and the only thing that could replace it would be similar but decentralised and as widely adopted.

Why / where are they failing - are they failing? I know more people on and using Twitter than ever, many of those have left other aging social networks after finding them irrelevant or too invasive of privacy.

Twitter is simple, Twitter is what it is and it doesn't try to be more than that, it does what it does well and it always has done. This - I enjoy in a product.

Re: Twitter Plans Hundreds More Job Cuts as Soon as This Week

#247

Post by aub3bhat »

_wp3r wrote: post #134
CardenB wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your point? Twitter isn't in that niche, obviously.

I would suggest that Twitter is a niche. It is in a brand management and customer engagement niche, and without some giant platform change, I think that trying to profit by increasing the number of eyeballs is always going to be challenging to the bottom line if the business value does not dramatically increase. The noise in twitters ecosystem from all those users, while interesting and good for research data sets, w…

Twitter a billion dollar company, a social network used by presidential candidates and tens of millions of people is a niche?? Do you understand the dictionary meaning of the term "niche" if anything Twitter is opposite of it.

Re: Twitter Plans Hundreds More Job Cuts as Soon as This Week

#248

Post by aub3bhat »

edoceo wrote: post #167
aub3bhat wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because your competitor can raise those million dollars, and eventually your 20k profit per month becomes 20k loss per month. You can build all your imaginary arguments about magical businesses that make 20k profit per month while being self-sustained with holocracy, cruelty free, authentic, organic etc. etc. But the reality is that doing big things at bigger scale requires huge capital. If you are willing to pass up…

What if that competitor buys you to grab your market share? Or, who funds the freemium one? Investors who push that company too far too fast, so your paid model could outlast another flash in the pan.

"Markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent"

Re: Twitter Plans Hundreds More Job Cuts as Soon as This Week

#249

Post by user5994461 »

WA wrote: post #223
mdasen wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not contractually obligated to grow at a certain rate. However, if the majority of your shareholders are members of the public looking to earn a return, they're your boss. You might be CEO, but if your priorities aren't their priorities, they'll replace you. Even if you own the majority voting control in the company, there's a certain amount of good-faith effort you need to put into growing the profits of th…

Insightful post, thank you. I feel like Wikipedia is the only really high-traffic non-profit, but they're doing something that requires a lot less engineering (ie. most of the page can be easily cached and is the same for all users vs. Twitter). WhatsApp comes to mind as an example of complex engineering (storing and delivering messages for millions) and they pulled it off with a small team at first. And more: once t…

WhatsApp is a simple, single purpose app.

It's not a complex engineering problem at all. Maybe it could be if it were done in the year 2000. It is not nowadays.

[Granted, there is still work to be done to make a decent product, they had great people and they executed very well.]

Re: Twitter Plans Hundreds More Job Cuts as Soon as This Week

#250

Post by nikcub »

nikcub wrote: post #199
rattray wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Woah, they only have 3800 employees and spend 2.7Bn/yr? That's 700k per employee. What's all that money for?

Stock options. It starts at the top: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cuplqd1XEAEre6n.jpg:large Being paid $72M p.a to oversee ~$500M p.a in losses. Great job if you can get it.

more info from their filing[0]:

> During the twelve months ended December 31, 2015 and 2014, we recognized $682.1 million and $631.6 million of expense related to stock-based compensation, respectively. As of December 31, 2015, we had unrecognized stock-based compensation expense of approximately $1.25 billion related to outstanding equity awards

[0] see page 47 https://investor.twitterinc.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=15645...

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