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Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

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Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#351

Post by JKCalhoun »

miohtama wrote: post #335
KaiserPro wrote: post #308

THe issue we all have here is this: if Musk is successful then treating employees nicely will fall out of fashion. Tech was a bastion of "treat your employees right, and they'll be productive". Musk is not a proponent of that. He is a micromanaging, capricious, easily distracted, arrogant and vindictive CEO. If twitter thrives then we can expect copycats to try and spread his shitty work philosophy (like everyone ido…

Unfortunately treating employees nice has never been a necessity, and we have Amazon as a prime example.

To be sure, they treat employees nicely because they have to - lest their competitors get them.

Altruism has never been a part of it.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#352

Post by wussboy »

Barrin92 wrote: post #153
tomp wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? On which other platform can you directly communicate (or at least listen to, unfiltered) to the worlds dictators, political leaders, and billionaires?

that's literally the very mechanism that weakens public discourse because it turns discourse into a 280 word soundbite popularity contest. Productive and democratic discourse consists of people assembling a community of their peers eye-to-eye to solve local issues, not billionaires and dictators addressing a mob like Mussolini on the Palazzo Venezia with a megaphone.

Any idea of significance has subtlety and complexity, both of which are anathema to Twitter.

Rage, on the other hand, can be perfectly encapsulated in a few characters.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#353

Post by chasd00 »

losvedir wrote: post #180

And so the grand experiment begins. I feel bad for the folks losing their job because that always sucks, and I hope there's a decent severance package. Now we'll see what happens to Twitter... I hardly use it, so if it implodes it won't bother me too much. But I am curious to see if all the "how do you need X people to do Y?" commenters are correct in this case. The app is simple but doing simple things at scale is h…

> Anyone want to make predictions about the state of Twitter in a few years?

what I hope is that it shrinks to about 1/20th its current size. And then many many smaller platforms spring up. I think one thing that makes social media hard to manage is the sheer scale. It's likely much easier to manage/moderate a smaller social network than a huge one. Also, it wouldn't be as dramatic to be kicked off a platform because then you'd just go somewhere else.

if not that, then i hope Musk moves it from the users being the product to the users being the customer. Charge $10 for 1,000 tweets but keep it free to read. Or maybe charge money for rate of tweets like $10 gets you 5 tweets a day. Make it cost money to engage. Twitter would probably shrink (which is good IMO) but also make more money ( which is good ) and make mobrule, massive information warfare etc cost actual money.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#354

Post by VerminOctopus1 »

edderly wrote: post #301
losvedir wrote: post #180

And so the grand experiment begins. I feel bad for the folks losing their job because that always sucks, and I hope there's a decent severance package. Now we'll see what happens to Twitter... I hardly use it, so if it implodes it won't bother me too much. But I am curious to see if all the "how do you need X people to do Y?" commenters are correct in this case. The app is simple but doing simple things at scale is h…

I think it'll be fine. You don't need 7000 people to run a micro blogging service. It's really that simple.

Not sure how this is relevant given that Twitter is not a “micro blogging service”

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#355

Post by yodsanklai »

KaiserPro wrote: post #308

THe issue we all have here is this: if Musk is successful then treating employees nicely will fall out of fashion. Tech was a bastion of "treat your employees right, and they'll be productive". Musk is not a proponent of that. He is a micromanaging, capricious, easily distracted, arrogant and vindictive CEO. If twitter thrives then we can expect copycats to try and spread his shitty work philosophy (like everyone ido…

It's a free market. He'll keep employees who adhere to this culture and those who think the pay is worth it. Others will go work somewhere else.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#356

Post by inglor_cz »

KaiserPro wrote: post #308

THe issue we all have here is this: if Musk is successful then treating employees nicely will fall out of fashion. Tech was a bastion of "treat your employees right, and they'll be productive". Musk is not a proponent of that. He is a micromanaging, capricious, easily distracted, arrogant and vindictive CEO. If twitter thrives then we can expect copycats to try and spread his shitty work philosophy (like everyone ido…

SpaceX does not seem to have a problem attracting talent and even poaching it from competitors.

The difference might be in the fact that Musk founded it and allegedly takes part in the recruitment process himself. Maybe he wants to do the same at Twitter. Turning an already existing company with an already existing company culture around is much more complicated, though.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#357

Post by CountSessine »

VerminOctopus1 wrote: post #354
edderly wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it'll be fine. You don't need 7000 people to run a micro blogging service. It's really that simple.

Not sure how this is relevant given that Twitter is not a “micro blogging service”

What is it then? That seems like the best description to me.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#358

Post by naasking »

lupire wrote: post #333
KaiserPro wrote: post #308

THe issue we all have here is this: if Musk is successful then treating employees nicely will fall out of fashion. Tech was a bastion of "treat your employees right, and they'll be productive". Musk is not a proponent of that. He is a micromanaging, capricious, easily distracted, arrogant and vindictive CEO. If twitter thrives then we can expect copycats to try and spread his shitty work philosophy (like everyone ido…

What's sad to me is, OK, if being a real hard-driving exploitative ass really is what it takes to organize people to make amazing products (mostly Jobs, a little of Musk), why aren't there any good people who do that to make their employees do great things for the world, and then put the profits to good use? (better use than Musk's "buy a $1M car and crash it immediately" style .) I think a lot of people would be OK…

> why aren't there any good people who do that to make their employees do great things for the world, and then put the profits to good use? (better use than Musk's "buy a $1M car and crash it immediately" style .)

You mean like the guy who's trying to address the main existential risks facing humanity right now? Last I checked, Musk created Tesla to counteract the existential risk of climate change, Neuralink to counteract the existential risk of AI, and SpaceX to counteract the existential risk of asteroids and other planet-killing catastrophes. Maybe that's why the people at his companies stay despite being pushed so hard?

He could definitely stand to be less of an ass, but I can at least recognize that Musk is actually doing the kind of good work that you're talking about.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#359

Post by tibbydudeza »

s1k3 wrote: post #198
tibbydudeza wrote: post #174

I got laid off but least I had the dignity of being told in person, given time to hand over my projects, allowed to remove my personal stuff from my work laptop (did not have any) and a generous severance package - it was about a month. So thankful I don't work in the US.

If you worked for a high profile company that just went through a tumultuous acquisition with a polarizing figure. Do you suppose you would have been given the same dignity? These actions aren’t about you the individual. They’re about protecting the business against malcontents. With large polarizing companies this is a likelihood. Not so much with random company b with a couple hundred employees.

It is the 2nd biggest retailer in our country - 90,000 people.

I am a professional adult not some immature kid that is gonna delete databases or servers - did not even lose my dev rights to our SAP systems or company email until the last day.

Maybe if you treat your employees like babies.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#360

Post by LadyCailin »

SavageBeast wrote: post #91

Now is a good time for us all to chill, take inventory as the year draws to an end and uncertain economic conditions have us all a little on edge. Change happens, it's uncomfortable at first but it can be made to work for you too. Change isn't always bad. Can anyone look at Twitters performance as a public company and say that no changes were warranted? Twitters "mission" wasn't exactly being well executed either. So…

The lesson here is that he is not exempt from the consequences of his statements. And good! Hopefully he learns a lesson. When someone has such a gigantic platform in which to influence the lives of so many people, he absolutely should be humble and thoughtful about what he says. If it takes a $44 billion dollar lesson to teach him that, then oh well.
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