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Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

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Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#361

Post by teeray »

bichiliad wrote: post #344

When there were layoffs at Etsy back in 2017, one of the unintended consequences were that a lot more people quit voluntarily afterwards. Attrition was a lot higher than expected. I have to believe that the people who remain are not all going to want to stay at the company that Twitter is becoming, whether it be for lack of institutional knowledge, peer support, or just because they liked their coworkers and are sad…

I bet there’s two things that cause this:

1) those who quit in solidarity, because they don’t like where things are going

2) those who are saddled with the work of those who were laid off / quit and burn out, causing them to quit (which can snowball to others remaining).

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#362

Post by Der_Einzige »

bogomipz wrote: post #309

I was curious about the second Tweet on that page, which states: >"Yep, the team is gone. The team that was researching and pushing for algorithmic transparency and algorithmic choice. The team that was studying algorithmic amplification. The team that was inventing and building ethical AI tooling and methodologies. All that is gone." Does anyone if this team published any of their research on algorithmic transparenc…

I interviewed for this team and the interview experience was so, so bad. The manager was extremely rude, and I was treated poorly in general.

I don't like Tesla, but Elon having trouble with this team in particular is no surprise.

The ethical AI folks who wrote the fairseq library at Microsoft have done more for AI Ethics and fairness than every single one of twitters AI ethics and responsibility folks.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#363

Post by acdha »

VancouverMan wrote: post #345
taurath wrote: post #89

Since apparently nobody else in the thread has any empathy for those who've lost their jobs, future access to healthcare (in the US and less civilized countries), and financial security, I guess I'll be the first: I feel bad for people who are laid off by the machinations of billionaires. I wish we lived in a society where it wasn't optimal to act like raving lunatics will tear down every bit of security you have at…

I think it would be easier to feel sympathy for these Twitter employees had we seen them show sympathy for the various people that were suddenly banned from using Twitter, and/or other platforms and services, often with the flimsiest of "justifications". In at least some of those cases, it was a matter of livelihood and financial security for the people who were banned, too.

How do you know they didn’t? Are there any specific cases you can point to so anyone else can decide whether to agree with your assessment of how warranted it was? Speaking of which, why is this blame directed at Twitter employees rather than the managers setting the policies? Why are they also to blame for unspecified “other platforms and services” where they presumably are not in policy-making positions?

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#364

Post by chasd00 »

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.

i think 7000 is too high as well but don't forget, in a business, the technology part is maybe 10% of the overall effort. There's a lot that goes into running a business beyond the tech.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#365

Post by reitanqild »

duhast wrote: post #319
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.

Why do you think so?

Look at early WhatsApp until they were aquired.

Vastly more innovative and scaled crazy fast without fail whales or anything.

Or look to Telegram today. Delivering a vastly more complex product with a fraction of the company size it seems.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#366

Post by mdaEyebot »

matthewaveryusa wrote: post #318
mikkergp wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will be interesting to see how Elon defines success. Twitter in it's current form is a dead end, and there's no way "more free speech" is going increase either revenue or users. So if you think Elon is going to succeed at making Twitter a better Twitter as we know it, then I'm confident this take is wrong. Which is why he's focused on the everything X app or whatever. Now, I wouldn't want to underestimate Elon, he…

He won't need PCI compliance. He's going to attempt to make a wechat with cryptocurrency as a method of payment in collaboration with binance. We'll see if it sticks.

It'll probably stick for however long it takes for Musk to publish a history of someone's paid-video purchases in response to a mean tweet.

Not sure what problem a cryptocurrency would solve in this case.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#367

Post by sedeki »

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…

Do you think tech employees have ever been treated too good? This is the reality for a lot of working adults.

Elon Musk would probably suck as a middle manager for the reasons you state. And probably as the big boss too.

I believe his opinions are correct. But I wouldn't necessarily want to work for him. He is a machine.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#368

Post by wussboy »

stokesr wrote: post #336

Notified of your being let go via a personal email? So no opportunity to back up your data, save contacts (which might come in handy for finding other employment), any notes or drafts... Brilliant idea, honestly ...

You'd think a little bit of forethought would cause you to have done that at any point in the last few weeks since this shit-show started, just in case.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#369

Post by yafbum »

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…

I think Apple (esp successful as it was under Jobs) and Amazon (known to put its employees in the wringer) have already made that point. China is going to make that point louder over the decade to come (eg TikTok is successful here, a lot of it on the backs of people working "996" over in China).

Luckily we'll still have Oracle as a counterexample...

Tech companies that treat their employees right might put a veneer of strategy to it in order to make it palatable to shareholders ("we're not wasting your money, we're retaining critical talent"), but I think the real reason that some CEOs and company cultures value treating people right is just for the sake of it, not because of ulterior motives. I guess, as the boss, it's kind of nice to work at a place where people don't hate your guts bc they think you're a psychopathic monster. Being nice to employees is a value that's easier to sustain when there's massive profitability growth but it is not necessarily done in pursuit of profit itself.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#370

Post by trashtester »

jdub wrote: post #76

Musk is capricious, cruel, and clueless. Whether or not you liked Twitter, it's a culturally significant platform, and Musk has almost certainly destroyed any hope it had of surviving. In barely a week. Hopefully it destroys him, too.

> Hopefully it destroys him, too.

Hoping that other people will be destroyed, is pretty dark...

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