A plan to reduce staff by 75% and double revenue in three years doesn't make a lot of sense to me. There's almost certainly a good deal of wasted money at Twitter, like at every large tech company. Dumb bets like NFT profile pics come to mind. But not to the tune of 75%. I cannot see how they can meaningfully operate, let alone meaningfully evolve to generate _more_ revenue, one of the largest social networks on eart…
> A plan to reduce staff by 75% and double revenue in three years doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Elon's plans may not be all that well thought out, as history has evidenced.
Documents detail plans to gut Twitter’s workforce
31–40 of 52 posts
Re: Documents detail plans to gut Twitter’s workforce
#32Here are Twitter financials for the last year. 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 sev…
> 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. What if the plan is just to scare away as many current employees as possible now, before the deal is completed, thereby minimizing layoffs? I know a lot of engineers who have already left, but the prospect of a 75% cut may inspire more. Heading into a possible/probable recession, it may be…
Re: Documents detail plans to gut Twitter’s workforce
#33Re: Documents detail plans to gut Twitter’s workforce
#34How does a 75% workforce cut even work logistically for a company not on its deathbed?
Sometimes a 75% workforce cut is exactly what a company on its deathbed needs. In the case of Twitter they wouldn't even need to fire anyone. Just make employees sign a statement reaffirming their commitment to free speech and the 1st Amendment (ala forced DEI statements at other companies) and 75% of Twitter employees would likely depart on their own.
Re: Documents detail plans to gut Twitter’s workforce
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think they're assuming MAGA types come back in force and that advertisers will be unable to resist the lure of so many eyeballs, but I have my doubts about the demand for dumpster fire branding opportunities.
are there really that many of them? the numbers we’re seeing from truth social and it’s similars seem to indicate otherwise. my guess is, we’ll see far more users abandon twitter than we see of maga users swarming.
So while there are not that many MAGA types, they tend to punch above their weight in terms of what passes for debate on social media. Conversely, I'm nots ure as many liberals would leave as threaten to, because where would they go - Mastodon? Discord? People use twitter because it's a large flat platform rather than one with a lot of silos. That's why things can go so viral so quickly, but also why there are so many dumpster fires; anyone can find and address/respond to/ be seen by anyone else, with no need to know the address of the super sekrit server where the cool kids hang out.
I do think the likely outcome of all this is best visualized as a smoking crater surrounded by poop emojis, and have my doubts that large advertisers will want to associate their brands with it. On the other hand all sorts of other trash is commercially successful for reasons that completely elude me.
Re: Documents detail plans to gut Twitter’s workforce
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A plan to reduce staff by 75% and double revenue in three years doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Elon's plans may not be all that well thought out, as history has evidenced.
Ah yes, the doddering fool tripped into wealth
Re: Documents detail plans to gut Twitter’s workforce
#37Here are Twitter financials for the last year. 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 sev…
> 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. What if the plan is just to scare away as many current employees as possible now, before the deal is completed, thereby minimizing layoffs? I know a lot of engineers who have already left, but the prospect of a 75% cut may inspire more. Heading into a possible/probable recession, it may be…
If you lay them off there are lots of expenses. If you scare them off then they will leave for free.
He is attempting to shake the tree before taking over on purpose.
Re: Documents detail plans to gut Twitter’s workforce
#38I can’t imagine many engineering teams that would hold up very well if 75% of the team vanished —- you would lose so much knowledge of your own codebase for starters, and morale would be a disaster. 90% of those who remained would start thinking of switching jobs out of pure pessimism. Then again, I bet it won’t happen. The actual cuts will be far smaller once it’s actually time to do it… Unless his finances are too…
Re: Documents detail plans to gut Twitter’s workforce
#39How 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…
Re: Documents detail plans to gut Twitter’s workforce
#40How does a 75% workforce cut even work logistically for a company not on its deathbed?
Sometimes a 75% workforce cut is exactly what a company on its deathbed needs. In the case of Twitter they wouldn't even need to fire anyone. Just make employees sign a statement reaffirming their commitment to free speech and the 1st Amendment (ala forced DEI statements at other companies) and 75% of Twitter employees would likely depart on their own.