Earlier quoted context omitted.
Periscope was one the main reasons they killed Vine.
Funny that Vine was essentially TikTok and they killed it.
TL;DR: The world wasn't ready to monetize and mass-produce short clips at Vine's time.
Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring
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Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring
#532Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s been like 5 months. I’d imagine he’s still learning about the issues.
He's been at twitter for 11 years and was the CTO, should take a couple weeks to get up to speed on the knowledge delta between CEO and CTO.
You might be underestimating the complexity of being a good CEO (not to say he is) at a public tech company under a lot of global government scrutiny.
Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring
#533Earlier quoted context omitted.
The vesting / payout theory makes no sense, firstly Twitter vesting at that point would be quarterly, so the company would be saving at most 1/16th of what those employees had already vested from their initial grant. Secondly, it's the employees who would have the incentive to leave, not the company to fire them. Assuming a typical 4 year vesting period, it's right at this year when their compensation would have _dro…
It's true that there's a lot we don't know. Executive employment contracts are bespoke and quite different to peon contracts. There will be various incentives that might be cash or incentivized stock options ("ISOs") as well as regular compensation that might be RSUs, non-qualified stock options ("NSOs") or both. But we do know: 1. The acquisition is imminent but not closed; 2. Executive contracts often include bonus…
It's not uncommon for companies to "clear house" right before close of acquisitions, especially on exec level. However I don't believe it's for the reasons you mentioned (saving money). Instead it's likely to better align with new ownership (whether perceived or actual alignment) and ensure the company is well positioned for the change.
An established/relatively healthy org like Twitter will likely not be penny pinching at the risk of more fallout/attrition. In fact, I'm sure the convo went something like "if you leave now, you will keep xyz/golden parachute".
This has at least been my experience based on limited experience of being part of a few acquisitions and working closely with execs.
Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring
#534Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I also think the proposal to have Twitter allow all content that is "legal under US law" is a dangerous idea for the platform being a healthy community that most people actually want to participate in. This is key. If @dang suddenly threw up his hands and said "anything goes on HN within U.S. law" this wonderful virtual discussion forum would die and most of us would sign off forever. I say that as someone whose be…
I'm not sure the comparison holds up. Twitter right now doesn't moderate content, really, it only does anything about outright scams, misinformation, etc. Toxicity can mostly run wild and free. Whereas HN has various moderation mechanisms that seek to decrease the amount of low-quality interaction. I.e., I think dropping all moderation from HN would have a much bigger effect than doing the same on Twitter
Twitter absolutely does moderate content. If you say something that the algo interprets as being a suggestion to commit suicide, you'll get an instante 24-hour ban. A tonne of really awful toxic accounts are soft-blocked and their tweets get stuck in the "more replies" box.
And if you're overtly and explicitly racist or sexist, there's a good chance you'll get straight-up banned.
Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring
#535Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are there really no clauses in contracts or laws to prevent something like this? That sounds incredibly scummy.
There's a ton of scummy behaviour with things like this. Skype was particularly scummy. Not only were executives fired to avoid a payout, their options/shares were bought back at a low price (called a clawback agreement) and the company was incorporated in the Caymand Islands (IIRC) so suting them was going to be incredibly difficult. Mark Pincus of Zynga fame decided a bunch of people didn't deserve to get rich on t…
It's so trivial to fire young people and keep them out of court. Not if they're stupid, I wasn't stupid, more if they don't know the magic words. So in my case a lobotomist deleted all kinds of magic words--well "lobotomy" for one. The intention is to fuck all employees over at least one time. Then they get told the magic word and don't get fucked again (except in my case, I need to get fucked twice to learn the magic word twice, at least so far, knock on wood I only have to learn all the magic words twice).[2]
Similar to college students, same thing, we're talking about harm to youngest adults, the 18-22 age category and ongoing if you get cheated out of your career. Those kids. So I tell college students that if they live on campus they're homeless unless they have a second place to live when they get evicted, which can happen at moment's notice with no accountability[1]. So practically every college student is homeless and might end up on the street unless they suck up to the numerous people around them that have them by the balls.
Obviously they're homeless if they have no idea where they'll sleep that night!
So Stanford in practice has a gigantic homeless population, everyone on campus is homeless, no tenant rights. It looks like it has a small homeless population but really it has a similarly small non-homeless population.
[1] Did I say no accountability? Let me read this shit I wrote. Yeah, it says no accountability. Surely I fucked up saying that, oh no! Famous last words then. There's no accountability! I've been waiting for my trial since Friday, February 6, 2009, well I guess that trial could be called into order on Monday, or on Wednesday, maybe I'm speaking too soon and it's in the pipeline. The dean of freshman verbally swore I'd get a trial, as a guarantee after telling her I had to drop out without one. She gave me girl scout cookies in that meeting, surely it wasn't a lie if she gave me cookies!
Any day now. Older adults always say to be patient and humble. Saying so is an act of impatience and arrogance on their behalf, it's arrogant to call people arrogant, asking for patience is impatient. Just like it's selfish to accuse others of selfishness. To the extent I'm a fucking arrogant guy, and I am (slave of GOD, the last shall be the first), I'm not also giving self-serving advice too.
[2] Oh a new memory came back, at 17:24 May 12, "vicious cycle." A magic word came back to me as I wrote this! Maybe it's a vicious cycle and I'll be getting cheated, told the magic word, lobotomized, and repeat, forever!
Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring
#536Earlier quoted context omitted.
But what's changed? If Parag wanted to go this direction why didn't he do it when he took over as CEO?
A thoughtful CEO doesn’t take the role and immediately start making changes. It takes some time to absorb what’s going on.
It's not like he was an outsider, he was CTO for about 5 years before he became CEO. He knew what was going on in the company.
Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring
#537Earlier quoted context omitted.
The ENTIRE point of parental leave benefit is to ensure that your employment status doesn’t change while you are using it. The business doesn’t have to stop in it’s tracks, but the legal expectation is generally that you will come back to the same job you left. This sends a horrifying message to employees.
> The ENTIRE point of parental leave benefit is to ensure that your employment status doesn’t change while you are using it. That's strange, I always thought that the point of it was to allow parents to spend much needed time with their newborn child.
Anyone can get that time with their child by quitting their job.
The ‘benefit’ part is that you get your job back after a few months.
Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring
#538Earlier quoted context omitted.
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We get it, you hate America. Just don't come here, we'll be fine without you. :)
Fairly specific anti-American jibe gets translated into "you hate America".
Seems you could do with a little more George Carlin in your system. He fucking loved America....apart from the shitty bits that the rest of the world agrees with him about.
Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring
#539Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I also think the proposal to have Twitter allow all content that is "legal under US law" is a dangerous idea for the platform being a healthy community that most people actually want to participate in. This is key. If @dang suddenly threw up his hands and said "anything goes on HN within U.S. law" this wonderful virtual discussion forum would die and most of us would sign off forever. I say that as someone whose be…
That only works because HN is, mostly, politics-free. I'm not a regular Twitter user but afaik that platform is pretty heavy on politics, more than that, it's pretty heavy when it comes to a certain political spectrum, the other side has been mostly de-platformed by now. I don't consider that as a healthy platform to comment on for the general public (even though, I agree, it might be ok for people who happen to shar…
> the other side has been mostly de-platformed by now
This is not true, far from it. Why do you think this?
Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring
#540Earlier quoted context omitted.
But why? Did tesla open source key scientific innovations in the scaling of batteries? Don't think so. See e.g. The seres f5 from Huawei. I don't know wether it's great but about the main metric, it has a higher range than teslas (1000km)
This is a bit of a "why dropbox when i can rsync" comment. Tesla brought glamour and practicality to a field stymied by boredom and theoretical concerns. They pledged to build an EV people would actually want to use, bringing all the latest tech to drive UX with no regard for tradition. They set to solve consumer problems, and they are succeeding in doing that.
Great drive UX as opposed to what? Have you driven a modern Mercedes of the higher price tiers? They're pretty damn great to drive or be driven in (comfort and fun wise), but they don't have gimmicks like the door thing and such. If you're talking about those gimmicks I disagree, and if you're talking about "motor/battery/esc technology" I also disagree, they didn't innovate anywhere, they just hit the right market with their product in my amateur opinion.