11–20 of 52 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You think the top performing 25% are going to want to stick around when you fire 3/4 of their coworkers?
What if you double their salaries?
And that assumes they can even cut the right 75%: what if the measure they use to determine the “valuable” employees turns out to be wrong? How do you even begin to undo / address that when everyone is being paid 2x?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How does a company like this need 7,500 people?
Because it's a set of massive engineering systems, applications, advertising market, social institution, etc.? Big, complex sociotechnical systems require a lot of human beings to keep moving along.
The ad platform is just barely usable, with an only slightly better UI than LinkedIn.
Its core product has not changed meaningfully in 10 years.
The company down much of its developer-facing offering years ago.
There are e-commerce websites with a more complex stack than Twitter.
This is a product that can run on 1,000 people and nothing about the user experience will be different.
There is probably so much administrative, HR, and operational bloat that the company probably rivals most universities.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What if you double their salaries?
At which point you’re taking on a huge risk for less savings, savings that’ll shrink over time and introduce new challenges: after-all, doubling the remaining employee’s salaries gives those employees all the power when it comes to negotiating — suddenly, each and every one knows just how valuable and important they are… and the company has much less room to negotiate to retain them. And that assumes they can even cu…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because it's a set of massive engineering systems, applications, advertising market, social institution, etc.? Big, complex sociotechnical systems require a lot of human beings to keep moving along.
This is not a company with multiple products. The ad platform is just barely usable, with an only slightly better UI than LinkedIn. Its core product has not changed meaningfully in 10 years. The company down much of its developer-facing offering years ago. There are e-commerce websites with a more complex stack than Twitter. This is a product that can run on 1,000 people and nothing about the user experience will be…
Revenue $5,078 (in millions)
Cost of Revenue $1,798 35.40%
Sales and Admin $1,760 34.67%
R&D $1,247 24.55%
Interest $52 1.02%
Unusual Items $441 8.69%
Their biggest expense 34.40% is "Cost of Revenue" followed by "Sales and Admin". For a company like twitter "Cost of Revenue" includes operations and Customer Care.
I don't think that they can cut 75% at once, just the severance payment will be huge and they may not have the money for that.
With R&D being only 24% it is possible to make large cuts in "Cost of Revenue" and "Sales and Admin" and keep more of the engineering team.
How does a 75% workforce cut even work logistically for a company not on its deathbed?
How does a 75% workforce cut even work logistically for a company not on its deathbed?
1) cut 35% of engineering team, including all L4s and L3s, and people who have scored 2/5 or lower on perf reviews 2) Cut 100% of marketing team, Elon is marketing team now. 3) Cut 100% of policy team. Elon is policy team now 4) Cut 80% of sales team. Elon is sales team now. 5) Cut 95% of Product team. They don't ship anything too much time talking, not enough time shipping 6) Cut support team by 90%, only highest ti…