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Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

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Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#491

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.

Does Twitter have the ability to have a mission vision that people will sacrifice for? That's what keeps the recruiting pipelines full for the other companies and allows for the "we put up with Elon's BS" culture.

Tesla, saving the work through EV

SpaceX, projecting humanity into the cosmos

Twitter, ?

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#492

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…

Alternatively, if Musk is successful then it will show that a lot of firms are bloated and this rot is maintained under the guise of "treating employees nicely", in the same way that union featherbedding is considered a "nice" practice.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#493

And the class action for WARN Act violations has already been filed. Sounds like the Chief Twit didn't give 60 days warning OR severance, as required by law. https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/4/23440304/twitter-mass-fir...

If you actually read the lawsuit - it was filed preemptively to ensure that Twitter give 60-days severance/notice period.

There is no evidence listed in the suit that says these employees were not given such notice.

Further, it specifically states that employees assumed that they were laid of without severance because they were locked out of their accounts and hadn't been yet presented a severance package.

The lawsuit is routine legal nonsense.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#494

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…

Jobs wasn't like Musk or Bezos, cared deeply about employees, despite the famous youthful tantrum stories (probably also true, but salacious so more famous): my friend's wife had a hard to diagnose condition (autoimmune it turned out, I believe) and Jobs offered unlimited use of his private jet to get her to any doctor anywhere. I was similarly told to be with my very sick parent, no time constraints, and I was part…

I feel like Hacker News might be the only forum online where you can reliably find ridiculous one-off anecdotes like this on a regular basis.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#495

And the class action for WARN Act violations has already been filed. Sounds like the Chief Twit didn't give 60 days warning OR severance, as required by law. https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/4/23440304/twitter-mass-fir...

And we all know that fines are just fees for rich people.

This is a non-substantive comment more appropriate for other social media platforms.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#496

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.

Interesting to see if VC's/Angels will be chatting up some tweeps as they exit.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#497
post #9

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

During the initial COVID outbreak, it was one of the only decent information sources I could find.

Twitter's nice because it gives you fast and easily available tools to curate your own feed. I could quickly follow a variety of professionals across different disciplines and regions to parse together some useful info.

You have to work at it, but anyone who assumes quality information will passively flow to you is mistaken and being misinformed in some way.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#498

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…

Quoted post unavailable.

Insanely profitable trillion dollar company that the entire world depends on ? Let me guess you're in saas sales or some other unproductive garbage like that

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#499
post #333

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…

Lots of companies are in this space doing what they can, but they’re focused on actually doing the work and getting their hands dirty as opposed to Musk’s wide noise making. Look at immunotherapy and age research, the trying to find a cure and mechanism for Chronic Fatigue (an illness which disables millions), the people who documented the genome of humanity, and NASAs astronomy stuff. There are biologists trying to prevent further extinct amphibians. There’s linux, and git, and countless open source software we use daily.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont understand the SpaceX argument since he was an actual original founder if I'm not mistaken, I could see the Tesla argument, but those people never provide any true insight into how he is riding on Teslas former success whenever I run into those (not to mention, if it was so good... why did they need a new CEO). I think it's pretty obvious he is a capable individual, overly ambitious at times, but hey, he someh…

As an ex spacex employee I can definitely say that it wouldn’t have been half the company today if Musk want in charge. Not a fanboy but trying to give an honest evaluation. Space is crazy hard and doesn’t happen without brilliant people so of course the credit for the success of the company goes to the engineers and everyone that gave some of their best work to making it happen though that type of success doesn’t ha…

"It’s just batshit crazy, moon shot type of ideas and then the brilliant people that he’s been able to recruit are able to make it happen"

you can read this sentence and come away with the conclusion that he doesn't do anything, or that he is responsible for everything. To me, it mostly seems like he has a bunch of money / financing so he can pay people to try lots of often very dumb ideas and some might work. His core "skill" being an accumulation of immense wealth.

you might say "you need both ideas and execution, and he is an ideas guy", which is correct, but i think the level of credit (and compensation) is wildly skewed towards the "ideas guy" in this case

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