What a contrast in leadership when you compare the way Twitter is doing this (rumor is right before bonus/stock vesting and cold impersonal email) and how Stripe is conducting their layoffs (empathy, 14 weeks severance, bonus payouts, etc.) Which company is going to have an easier time hiring after the dust settles and they have a growth stage again?
People might choose based on their preferences: You want stability? Join stripe You want to be sharp? Join Twitter
What a contrast in leadership when you compare the way Twitter is doing this (rumor is right before bonus/stock vesting and cold impersonal email) and how Stripe is conducting their layoffs (empathy, 14 weeks severance, bonus payouts, etc.) Which company is going to have an easier time hiring after the dust settles and they have a growth stage again?
> Which company is going to have an easier time hiring after the dust settles and they have a growth stage again?
The one with the better offer, taking a possible layoff payout into account. The comp ranges can be so drastically different between companies that a possibly generous layoff (that is no means guaranteed if Stripe has to do this when circumstances are more dire) is negligible financially.
In my view no single medium (the media is the message) has done more to weaken the quality of public discourse in the world than Twitter. But maybe Facebook proves that even if you're allowed to use prose crazies dominate so maybe the issue is deeper
Twitter is the most interesting on the internet, by far. If the discourse quality sucks, you're following the wrong accounts.
Everywhere I worked access to systems was revoked before people received their termination communication from HR. This is standard practice in industry to prevent last minute IP theft, or destructive revenge actions at an emotional time.
For the employee(s) being laid off, yes. I've never heard of a company closing their offices entirely during a layoff round.
,,The ML Ethics, Transparency, & Accountability team was one of a kind'' Sure, something nobody has heared of and nobody knows why it should be at a company like Twitter.
> nobody knows why it should be at a company like Twitter. If you don't know you're the problem tbh
If the layoff of this team elicits anger from the “you’re the problem” crowd then Musk is doing something right.
> “To help ensure the safety of each employee as well as Twitter systems and customer data, our offices will be temporarily closed and all badge access will be suspended,” the email reads. “If you are in an office or on your way to an office, please return home.” Welcome to the dystopian future... I find it a bit galling how companies can force you into home office nowadays if it suits them (you want to avoid your un…
What are you talking about? The announcement says people should leave the offices. How is that dystopian?
In the past such a thing wouldn't have been possible because of the need to keep up day-to-day operations. Now companies can just decide if you should work from home or from the office as they please. And home office was initially promoted as giving more flexibility to the employees - looks like the companies are now exploiting this flexibility to their advantage while restricting the employee's flexibility (x mandatory office days etc.).
> Musk orders Twitter to cut infrastructure costs by $1 billion all sound and fury, signifying nothing
Not sure how lean do they run their stuff - I'd assume at least lean-ish, considering they have (had?) a lot of good engineering talent working on it. Asking for a large reduction while at the same time culling staff seems like wishful thinking.
I went to visit a team at Twitter that seemed to have very little to do with their core business. They'd bought some company that my company was using (can't even remember, Fabric or some crash profiling thing?) and I got invited to see their fancy building on Market Street.
But my sense was there were many peripheral teams that your average Twitter user would never notice if Twitter were to cut them.
I'm pretty curious about how and where Twitter employees were distributed. For a company ostensibly worth $44 billion, having 7,500 staff feels pretty damn lean. It feels like Musk isn't just purging people, he's purging the Twitter culture...
For comparison, SpaceX runs an entire private space program on ~12,000 employees. Near-weekly launches. Rocket development+production. Building+deploying Starlink. (Although that's just a number from a quick googling. Maybe they outsource a lot of manufacturing etc?)
That comparison is however completely irrelevant to Twitter.
It may seem to ignorant people that a space program is more advanced than "just a website" but actually running these kind of websites is extremely complex. Especially when you're needing to compete with Facebook and Google at serving ads in a relevant and effective way.
It is really interesting reading through their infrastructure challenges alone:
> “To help ensure the safety of each employee as well as Twitter systems and customer data, our offices will be temporarily closed and all badge access will be suspended,” the email reads. “If you are in an office or on your way to an office, please return home.” Welcome to the dystopian future... I find it a bit galling how companies can force you into home office nowadays if it suits them (you want to avoid your un…