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Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

techcrunch.com

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Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#401

Post by mikkergp »

lupire wrote: post #341
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…

If the guy can make a fully self-driving car, he can make a fully self-moderating social network. He'll either be the GOAT or the goat, but the gamble is clearly on the table, and Musk being Mush will declare victory before the dice even start to roll.

He hasn't made a self driving car, but I think this applies here:

https://xkcd.com/1425/

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#402

Post by john-radio »

A lot of the tweets that are quoted in the article have been removed. For example, Twitter employee Cristina Angeli is mentioned in the story for having tweeted an image of "staff members... flooding an internal Slack channel with blue heart emojis as they wait to learn their fate tomorrow", but that tweet is deleted on twitter itself because "This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules."

This is ironic if you consider all the complaining that Musk does in the public sphere about "freedom of speech" (I know that the first amendment only applies to government censorship, but Musk likes to pretend not to), but it's also significant because -

Smart journalists are going to stop relying on Twitter's API now. News and blog sites love to render Twitter URLs as a preview of the tweet; but if Twitter under Musk is going to start removing tweets that go against its corporate interests of the hour (is it against Twitter policy to post screenshots of any corporate Slack channel, or only Twitter's own?), then people had better take screenshots of the tweets they want to quote, just in case.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#405

Post by medina »

pjc50 wrote: post #107
pavlov wrote: post #68

In four years Musk will be bored to death with Twitter and will sell it to private equity and the Saudis for $5 billion. At that point it will be mostly a platform for porn creators and crypto pumping, the only two verticals where Twitter seems to be actually growing lately.

Given that Twitter the company owes $12bn to Morgan Stanley, that will be a serious problem for them.

MS led consortium (and underwrote largest), 21-27% each spread out across MS, BofA, Barclays, MUFG + smaller to others. (ref: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-07/morgan-st...)

(Edit: typo)

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#406

Post by snarf21 »

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…

Are these layoffs even legal under the WARN act?

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#407

Post by yafbum »

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…

Look up Bosch. It's a very large family-controlled company, and their dividends are 92% allocated to a foundation. I think in time we'll see similar examples in tech.

EDIT: Bosch is a tech company too, just an earlier generation.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#408

Post by kraig911 »

Truly hope that we can use this as an opportunity to make something people want. Obviously we all use Facebook and Twitter because I guess that's all there is. I hope this create an experience vacuum for people on the web because virtual reality snooze offices and/or racially and class deriding ad driven posts that are 140 words are less is not what I thought the future would be.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#409

Post by thinkingemote »

Musk and friends compare Twitter to other tech companies and see that it's ratio of employees to revenue is lowest. He therefore thinks he must halve the number employees and/or increase revenue to get this ratio up.

From the chat log exhibits from the Twitter vs Musk case: https://danluu.com/elon-twitter-texts/#47

A VC (Jason Calacanis) does back of the envelope calculations:

Twitter revenue per employee: $5B rev / 8k employees = $625K rev per employee in 2021

Google revenue per employee: $257B rev2/ 135K employee2= $1.9M per employee in 2021

Apple revenue per employee: $365B rev / 154k employees= $2.37M per employee in fiscal 2021

Twitter revenue per employee if 3k instead of 8k: $5B rev/ 3k employees= $1.66m rev per employee in 2021 (more industry standard)

Elon: "Insane potential for improvement"

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#410

Post by turtlebits »

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…

Too many people are unreasonably attached to their jobs. If you work in a country/state that is "at will", you should take that seriously as if you could lose your source of income at any time.

That includes financial planning and money set aside for these types of events.

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