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Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

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Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#631

Post by mdoms »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #593
DantesKite wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're 100% correct. They shut down Vine. TikTok is now a billion dollar industry. As far as I'm concerned, every product manager involved in that decision shouldn't be involved with Twitter anymore, because they display an astonishingly level of incompetence.

Wow, never heard of Vine (call me out of touch grumpy old man user persona!), but reading the wikipedia page, what is amazing it was aquired for less than one of today's early rounds - $30m. Maybe they were "too early"? Post pandemic things look a lot different.

Vine was not too early by any means. It was exploding in popularity when they shut it down. It absolutely would have been as big as Tik Tok if they got the algorithm right.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#632

Post by phillipcarter »

warning26 wrote: post #580
throwaway-jim wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will never understand this. I thought vine was going to be the next big thing right until the day they decided to shut it down.

"Twitter supports videos now, therefore Vine is redundant! Shut it down and 100% of Vine users will post their videos on Twitter!" —Twitter PMs, probably

I think it's a lot more likely that there are/were a horde of PMs there who thought it was a very dumb and short-sighted decision to shut it down at the time. In my experience, it's usually some high-ranking exec who makes confounding decisions through authority in big tech. Not so much the average IC PM who has to spend time understanding their users for their job.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#633

Post by geotus »

SamBam wrote: post #266
ben_w wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, why would you think that? His wealth is mostly owning 20% of Tesla, plus some extra few billions from owning significant fractions of SpaceX, The Boring Company, and Neuralink. Presumably there’s some cash in there as well, but on his scale a hundred million is a rounding error.

It still confuses me that being part-owner of an old dot-com payment company, part-owner of a mid-sized car company (by number of cars sold), and part-owner of a (very good) rocket company make a person richer than anyone has ever been in the history of the planet, but that's probably because I just haven't looked into it enough.

Elon Musk is nowhere near the richest person in history. Augustus Caesar and Mansa Musa IX were multi-trillionaires in comparative spending power.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#634

Post by [deleted] »

dekhn wrote: post #233
TameAntelope wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're discounting the very real possibility that Parag is operating as if the deal will not go through, and is making large strategic decisions in anticipation of that being the case. For Parag, I don't see it "burning his reputation" at all, considering either a) he's right and will face the tall task of helming a Twitter that continues to disappoint its investors or b) he's wrong and it won't be his problem when E…

CEOs of large companies that are forced out during acquisitions often fail upward. It really depends on how they behave right before the close. Effectively, the CEO has to advocate for the company and get the most out of the acquisition, and if they do, they are often rewarded (with seats on board or choice of next job). realistically, he will be able to retire for life after this if he chooses, and will be able to s…

[deleted]

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#635

Post by sudosysgen »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #600
sudosysgen wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no revolution to speak of. Tesla is an evolution in the high-end EV market. In the mid-range market Tesla was late to the punch and faces stiff competition, and in the low-end market they aren't an entity to speak of.

> in the low-end market they aren't an entity to speak of. So... like Apple?

iPhones are in the low-end market because you can buy them used at reasonable prices. You can get an iPhone SE 2020 for less than 200$. You can't get a Tesla used for 5000$.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#636

Post by nr2x »

throwaway_1928 wrote: post #416
dekhn wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CEOs of large companies that are forced out during acquisitions often fail upward. It really depends on how they behave right before the close. Effectively, the CEO has to advocate for the company and get the most out of the acquisition, and if they do, they are often rewarded (with seats on board or choice of next job). realistically, he will be able to retire for life after this if he chooses, and will be able to s…

Job offer or not, $42 million for doing almost nothing is a great deal.

Sign me up.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#637

Post by UncleOxidant »

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…

It's interesting that a lot of people who are on twitter just don't like twitter already as it is. I imagine that's only going to get worse under a "no moderation" regime. I'd been wanting off of twitter for quite some time now as I'm pretty sure it was negatively impacting my mental health. Just this past weekend I decided to pull the trigger and commit twittercide - it's interesting how hard it is to push that 'deactivate' button. But I realized that that's an indication of addiction so I pressed the button and now I'm free of twitter.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#638

Post by IAmEveryone »

dekhn wrote: post #233
TameAntelope wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're discounting the very real possibility that Parag is operating as if the deal will not go through, and is making large strategic decisions in anticipation of that being the case. For Parag, I don't see it "burning his reputation" at all, considering either a) he's right and will face the tall task of helming a Twitter that continues to disappoint its investors or b) he's wrong and it won't be his problem when E…

CEOs of large companies that are forced out during acquisitions often fail upward. It really depends on how they behave right before the close. Effectively, the CEO has to advocate for the company and get the most out of the acquisition, and if they do, they are often rewarded (with seats on board or choice of next job). realistically, he will be able to retire for life after this if he chooses, and will be able to s…

There's a possible difference here between "doing things that Twitter and its owner(s) will profit from" and "doing things as Musks wants them". If the two diverge, the first is the winning strategy, burning far fewer bridges than the alternative.

If it's unclear, people who don't particularly care for Musk (aka people who know Musk minus people who want to be Musk) may well start from the assumption that the current CEO was right. And if Musk-era Twitter doesn't succeed as wildly as some (one) person predicts, they stand to look even better in contrast.

I'm not saying that Musk will necessary fail––he's had quite a bit of success compared to, well, anybody. But he's been involved with a few duds, as well, and has set rather high expectations. It's an almost classic case of decision-making under uncertainty and I'd guess a Twitter CEO has seen a relevant case study or two.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#639

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

throwaway_1928 wrote: post #416
dekhn wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CEOs of large companies that are forced out during acquisitions often fail upward. It really depends on how they behave right before the close. Effectively, the CEO has to advocate for the company and get the most out of the acquisition, and if they do, they are often rewarded (with seats on board or choice of next job). realistically, he will be able to retire for life after this if he chooses, and will be able to s…

Job offer or not, $42 million for doing almost nothing is a great deal.

Not if your one desire is to run large corporations and you're easily bored.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#640

Post by vkou »

croes wrote: post #624
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…

>like bots and the extremely hostile mob mentality There isn't a solution for these two.

There is, but it's called moderation when you agree with it, and censorship when you don't.
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