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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

#931

Post by unethical_ban »

pessimizer wrote: post #459
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 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. I'd counter that platforms like Reddit, Youtube, or Facebook grew into institutions with extremely light content moderation, and it's only after they were successful and were targeted by politicians and media panics…

Correlation doesn't imply causation. They didn't /need/ to moderate heavily because they didn't attract legions of bad faith actors when they were small, and they stopped growing because growth isn't infinite. And the Internet is a lot different in 2022 than it was in 2007.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#932

Post by adamsmith143 »

IAmGraydon wrote: post #734
patrickdavey wrote: post #679

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tens of millions is only "pretty close to financial security". Wow.

I think there's a part of the HN population that has delusions of becoming billionaires one day, so they talk about tens of millions like it's not much. They'll likely never have either.

Come on, do some math on this. Any engineer at FAANG, even excluding their stock grants, will probably have close to 10M in retirement accounts by the time they retire given max contributions and historical returns.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#933

Post by adamsmith143 »

namecheapTA wrote: post #858
FooBarBizBazz wrote: post #784

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Financial security in the Bay Area requires a house there ($2-3M, nowadays) plus $COST_OF_LIVING/4%. This is easily $5M net worth. It's in "two Googlers and a successful exit at some point earlier" territory. Granted, this threshold is less than $10M, but it isn't orders of magnitude less All of which is to say that it is basically impossible to stay in the Bay long-term unless you make an absolute fuckton of money.…

I used to work in car sales in the bay area. Basically every car salesman and every mechanic at a franchise car dealership owns a home. Maybe they drive 30-75 minutes to work, but they are 25-35 and own a home in California. The older ones own a home within 15 minutes of their job.

That they bought themselves? What's the cheapest home available within an Hour of SF, 500k or more? Do you really think a car salesman barely pushing 100k a year can swing that? Or are you implying that car salesman in the Bay are making top 1% salaries?

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#934

Post by seanmcdirmid »

vmception wrote: post #461
corrral wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously. HN: "Firing a millionaire on paternity leave—and by "firing" I mean continuing to pay for the rest of their leave, plus probably a bunch of severance—is horrible!" 99% of the rest of the US: "WTF is paternity leave? Is that when your boss generously lets you use some of your annual leave for part of the week in which your kid is born?"

Lack of empathy between wage workers, pitted against other wage workers, perpetuates this. These are people that get taxed at 55% (top california income + top federal income + additional taxes). Not the ones with multiple orders of magnitude more money that get taxed at 4%. Their boat is so similar that its embarrassing for you to fall for the division.

> These are people that get taxed at 55% (top california income + top federal income + additional taxes).

Since income taxes are graduated, there is literally no one that pays 55%. Instead, you just approach that rate as your income rises (and never reach it since your front income is taxed at lower rates).

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#935

Post by version_five »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #927
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…

Ding ding ding. Congratulations, you are tonight’s HN winner. The Twitter deal didn’t go through, and you totally called it.

I remembered the parent comment from yesterday and came to say the same thing. It aged very well.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#936

Post by JasonFruit »

SamBam wrote: post #336
JasonFruit wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corrected for inflation, John D. Rockefeller is probably the richest American ever.

Hmm, according to this calculator [1], Rockefeller's net worth of $1.4B in 1937 would be worth $28B today. Elon's is around $240B, so it sounds like 10x the amount. Even by different calculations, it seems like an order of magnitude is a big difference. By GDP, they are both worth around 1% of the US GDP, but the US GDP is many times what it was then, particularly post-WWII. Musk's buying power seems significantly mo…

Your figures are clearly correct. I accepted what an article said without checking into it myself. Thanks for doing the work I should have done.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#937

Post by Karawebnetwork »

Sebb767 wrote: post #735
Karawebnetwork wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit always has had community moderators which ensured that the subreddits were respecting the rules of their communities. For example, on LGBTQ issues subreddits telling people that they are groomers is not tolerated. If it was, people would quickly go away. While on some other subreddit, it might be tolerated but the targeted people are not present and will not see those messages. It is similar on Facebook where…

> This is different on a public platform like Twitter where everyone can see everything. Aren't subreddits public, too? You can also ping people; T_D famously enraged /u/spez enough for him to start editing the comments of other users. I don't think anyone argues that filter bubbles don't exist on Twitter, either. Now, Twitter groups aren't as clearly segregated as subreddits, but I still don't see visibility as a bi…

They can be public but there are also private invitation-only subreddits. Often they have websites as a front to manage new users. Some use forms, other are managed through emails, Discord bots, etc.

But even the public ones, usually they are so distant from each others that they might just as well be different websites.

People interacting in a right-wing one will not encounter the posts of left-wing users unless they directly seek those posts and vice-versa. On Twitter, you could be scrolling your feed and see "The far left hates everyone, themselves included!". As a left-wing user, this could be distressing and put you off.

Meanwhile on Reddit you would have to go out of your way to go on a specific subreddit. This lessen the impact of having people at different extremes of the political spectrum being together in the same platform. I think of it like a house. If I do not enjoy my uncle's political speech at Christmas, I can simply move to the living room and gather with people who share similar beliefs as me. However if I feel like having a debate, I can stay in the room where the uncle is and talk through our differences (similar to going on the "all" page or going directly on the subreddit of the opposite party). On twitter, it's a single large room.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#938

Post by lm28469 »

lesstenseflow wrote: post #270
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Fired while on paternity leave" hurts a hell of a lot less when you're a mega millionaire who will be able to walk into a leadership position anywhere he likes, but it still sucks.

When does getting fired not suck?

When you have enough money to stop working and still be able to comfortably feed and shelter the next few branches of your family tree I'd say it doesn't suck so bad

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#939

Post by ChuckMcM »

richardwhiuk wrote: post #893
ChuckMcM wrote: post #864

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously? Having been on both sides of a number of acquisitions I can tell you that these kinds of personnel changes are made typically at the (possibly indirect) request of the acquiring company. Things like "We've got a really create CMO that we're bringing on, we don't need any headwinds to them getting traction quickly" means "Get rid of the people who think they are in charge of marketing so that our person can…

That would normally happen post close. You are normally mandated to maintain the current operating position prior to close.

I understand the 'normally' part as in "this is how it should be done." And yet in the roughly ten or so acquisitions I've been on the "inside" for (which is to say was at one of the two companies and was related either peripherally or intimately in the transaction from start to finish), every single one of them had some executive shuffling (aka separating) prior to the close.

Clearly, it is biased to Silicon Valley and my experience is probably different than someone who worked in non-tech companies, but if I put it into a rule of sorts I'd say; During a fund raising round executive positions are the most secure and individual contributors the least, during an acquisition these are reversed.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#940

Post by SamBam »

r00fus wrote: post #613
lupire wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bill Gates would be straight up wealthier than Musk if he didn't donate half his wealth to his foundation. If you consider that part of his wealth (in the sense of total lifetime income so far, not figure spending power, so subtracting off personal consumption/spending), you don't have Musk being suprosinly more wealthy.

Considering the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is essentially chaired by the two directly, why wouldn't you consider that wealth (that they get nice tax treatment for donating to) isn't theirs?

Once he has donated it to the foundation, it is no longer fully under his control. It is a charitable organization, and subject to many laws about how the money is spent.

So it's never included in any measure of his total wealth.

(GP's point is that if it were, and also all the past charitable spending was, then Gates works be richer. (

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