Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#551

Post by nickstinemates » Thu, May 12, 2022, 9:41 PM UTC

Vaslo wrote: post #378

All- some of you are clinging onto the paternity leave. I can't quote whether this is true, but at both Fortune 250 companies I worked for, you were paid out for your entire leave even if you weren't coming back after. So I would bet money he is still being paid for the whole leave, but if someone sees something else, please correct me. There is incentive to pay it out since one annoying side effect can be a person g…

your point makes it even more weird/indecent. there's literally no (financial) cost to waiting. this breeds insecurity for 0 benefit.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#552

Post by adventured » Thu, May 12, 2022, 9:41 PM UTC

fny wrote: post #423

adventured wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

The question is not whether he's been successful. He has been, the question is whether this is the peak valuation akin to Cisco during dotcom and whether he is over leveraged at this point.

Some of that depends on whether Twitter can partially self-fund the acquisition itself over time.

Most likely it can, that much more so if Musk negotiates a lower price. Debt is very inexpensive right now, especially for large corporations with a strong balance sheet. If Musk owns all of Twitter, he gets their $6 billion in cash and their balance sheet has no consequential debt issues.

Twitter is operationally profitable, despite being very poorly run in terms of cost structure. Their margins on sales should be far greater than at present; they have a bloated employee count and have for a very long time. There's no reason Twitter can't spit off $1b in operating income on $5b in sales.

Further, Musk has ~$9b in cash (per Bloomberg), lots of very rich friends (eg Ellison, Google founders, VC billionaires, etc etc) that believe in him, and lots of assets in Tesla and SpaceX he can borrow $10b-$20b against if needed.

That said - I don't think levering himself to the moon is wise and I don't think paying $40b+ for Twitter is smart. Particularly at this point in time (with the global economy shaky, the US economy contracting in real terms, China's economy shaky, and financial markets sinking).

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#553

Post by dghlsakjg » Thu, May 12, 2022, 9:42 PM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #362

dghlsakjg wrote: post #355

Earlier 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.

So if the company has widespread layoffs (not saying that's what happened in this case), then anyone on paternal/maternal leave is automatically immune? > This sends a horrifying message to employees. Yeah, as someone without kids, your proposal certainly sends a horrifying message to me.

It’s not a proposal. It’s how the law works. If there are layoffs, then yes you can lose your job on parental leave, technically as long as the elimination of your position is unrelated to taking leave. I’m not saying that there is no way to do it. I’m saying that it’s a dumb thing to do.

The message should be just as horrifying whether or not you have kids. The message is: “We made a commitment about your terms of employment. We are willing to break that promise openly and publicly with one of our leaders. Do you think we won’t do it to you?”

Anyone at twitter right now should see this as a red flag at a time when everything is in flux.

Management is in chaos in the middle of a politically contentious buyout, and doing things like firing people on parental leave that will necessarily read badly in the press.

If I were at twitter right now I would be getting everything in writing, and lining up a new job that starts the day my RSUs go liquid.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#554

Post by w-j-w » Thu, May 12, 2022, 9:43 PM UTC

cwp wrote: post #548

kyledrake wrote: post #189

I've been using Twitter since it's main novelty was that it was a successful Ruby on Rails app, and honestly I've been trying to figure out where the exit is for my personal use of Twitter lately. If the acquisition goes through, Twitter won't make enough money to service it's debt, and the things they will do to fix that are pretty much guaranteed to lower the quality of the platform, which frankly has never worked…

I think the only real way to do content moderation is to delegate it to users. Let people create something like a subreddit, and then be in charge of content policy for it. Different communities can have different standards, and kicking people out of a given community doesn't ban them from Twitter entirely. There's even some informal version of this already as you can see with the "this part of Twitter" meme.

No post body was provided.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#555

Post by myko » Thu, May 12, 2022, 9:43 PM UTC

nickstinemates wrote: post #524

the_doctah wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I use hate-speech as an example because the "groomer" as a slur issue is at a peak right now and is fresh in my head. Mm. I think the problem is that censorship advocates like you try to add words like this into the lexicon of "hate speech" and try to have it censored. It's not, and it shouldn't be, and you should be ashamed of even thinking it. It is not other people's responsibility to stay up to date on what may…

on top of this, there is approved hate speech, you just have to use different words/dogwhistles like justice or privilege to activate it

Could you share an example in a sentence? I'm having a difficult time seeing this as hate speech as written.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#556

Post by pnathan » Thu, May 12, 2022, 9:44 PM UTC

fleddr wrote: post #480

Just a spring cleaning that is about a decade late. Twitter under-performs in every aspect imaginable: financially, product quality, product innovation. Nothing ever gets released and whilst this pace has improved in recent years, those "innovations" don't really deliver. They're barely used, copycats from other apps, and so on. Meanwhile, age-old problems are never addressed, like bots and the extremely hostile mob…

I do have to agree that Twitter is either (1) basically perfected or (2) coasting.

I also might suggest that the buyout offer has prompted some very hard thinking internally and strategic changes.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#557

Post by zimpenfish » Thu, May 12, 2022, 9:46 PM UTC

adventured wrote: post #278

gitfan86 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more likely scenario is that some of the financial backers like Larry Ellison will ask Elon to renegotiate the buyout price due to current market conditions and the deal will fall through.

Twitter is worth a lot less than what it's trading for. Musk's bid is rather idiotically high. Twitter's shareholders will be desperate if they start to see the full mauling that other prominent, hyper overvalued tech stocks have enjoyed lately. They will take a lower offer accordingly, whether that's from Musk or other. The stock is going into the $20s if they don't take an acquisition offer from someone.

> Musk's bid is rather idiotically high

Well, it was either $54.20 or $69.00 (I suppose he could have gone for $44.20 but would that have tempted anyone?)

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#558

Post by elicash » Thu, May 12, 2022, 9:46 PM UTC

0xFACEFEED wrote: post #502

elicash wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concern is that there could be a chilling effect resulting in people not taking this leave. If people expect to be fired for using this benefit, they won’t use it.

(M|P)aternity leave cannot ever make you immune from being let go. That would be insane. People are let go all of the time without any warning or cause. Especially executives.

Obviously. I'm just explaining the concern.

There's no allegation from the person fired that taking the leave is why they were fired. But the mere PERCEPTION can have a chilling effect. And I have worked with many people who worry about taking this type of extended leave for exactly this reason.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#559

Post by rchaud » Thu, May 12, 2022, 9:47 PM UTC

the_doctah wrote: post #527

wfhordie wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you’re right. I hope Elon takes over and turns into a cesspit . Burn it to the ground once and for all, let the public stare into the abyss that their fellow humans.

You're assuming it can get any worse than it already is

It can get much worse.

After yesterday's UST/Luna crash, the main Luna subreddit has stopped all posting because of the volume of suicide threats. Only a few of those posts remain and are at the top, with automated messages linking to helplines.

r/terraluna

The average person doesn't realize how manicured the social media experience is. People that want zero censorship are in for a nasty surprise.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#560

Post by mywittyname » Thu, May 12, 2022, 9:48 PM UTC

cwp wrote: post #548

kyledrake wrote: post #189

I've been using Twitter since it's main novelty was that it was a successful Ruby on Rails app, and honestly I've been trying to figure out where the exit is for my personal use of Twitter lately. If the acquisition goes through, Twitter won't make enough money to service it's debt, and the things they will do to fix that are pretty much guaranteed to lower the quality of the platform, which frankly has never worked…

I think the only real way to do content moderation is to delegate it to users. Let people create something like a subreddit, and then be in charge of content policy for it. Different communities can have different standards, and kicking people out of a given community doesn't ban them from Twitter entirely. There's even some informal version of this already as you can see with the "this part of Twitter" meme.

It's ridiculously easy to get banned from some subreddits for saying truthful things. And if leftist groups make a land-grab to secure the popular sectors of this new twitter-verse (read: the portions the news will report on), then Musk is going to look very silly.