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Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

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Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#551

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…

IMHO freedom in US is usually in fact 1) free for people who have $$ or 2) poor people who advocates for 1) for whatever the reason.

Basically freedom means less regulation from governments, which is only good for super riches and large enterprises. If you are not you should welcome more government regulation to counter the other elephant in the room. Two evils is always better than one.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#554
post #448

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…

In a few years, if not sooner, Twitter will be right there with Tesla/SpaceX in terms of resume cachet. Everyone will see their culture has been transformed to one of rigor and performance. The "A" players will surface and they will do more with half the staff (or less even) than they ever did with 7500 people... and it will be noteworthy. Musk will be in the mix heavy for about 6 months. He'll make executive hires t…

Bahaha. Rigor and performance?? Teslas kill people. SpaceX is cool, but pays fuck all because it’s cool.

I once watched the YouTube video of musk talking about battery prices and buying raw materials on the London exchange, and I thought, wow this guy is so insightful, no wonder his companies do well. It’s not till later that I found out that everything he says is someone else’s idea that he takes credit for.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyone want to make predictions about the state of Twitter in a few years? 1: Profitable 2: More signal, less noise 3: Significantly less misinformation 4: (Maybe) A reliable way to get news Personally, I'm eating popcorn on this one. I think Musk got himself in trouble for letting his big mouth yap, and he fired the execs as revenge. As a software developer who's seen good and bad organizations, I'm very curious a…

He has already added 1b in annual expenses.. More than Twitters' annual profits.

%50 headcount reduction will be more than 1b in savings.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#556

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…

>Jobs wasn't like Musk or Bezos, cared deeply about employees

I doubt if any CEO can pull it off for the long run without being caring enough about his/her inner circle. Even ruthless dictators have to be 'mostly' nice to their inner circle ( guards, butlers etc.).

The larger point being that often they can be ruthless with people who are not in the 'inner circle', sometime justifiably so and sometime not so justified. I'm basing all of this on typical human behavior, not specifically on Jobs/Musk/Bezos, of whom I know nothing. You will see this trait even in families, the stereotype of the current ruthless man being a gentle and loving father to his kids.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#557

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…

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…

>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.

Twitter was on its death bed until Trump signed on and became the shit-posting President. This is not an endorsement of Trump or bringing him back, but the type of "free speech" people are talking about saved Twitter, made it a pile of money, and made other media/press companies billions of dollars covering the chaos.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#558

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…

> 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)

It’s not ironic or remotely unexpected if you’ve taken notice of any of his actual actions involving freedom of speech.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#559
post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a few years, if not sooner, Twitter will be right there with Tesla/SpaceX in terms of resume cachet. Everyone will see their culture has been transformed to one of rigor and performance. The "A" players will surface and they will do more with half the staff (or less even) than they ever did with 7500 people... and it will be noteworthy. Musk will be in the mix heavy for about 6 months. He'll make executive hires t…

Even if all of that is true, I'd be surprised if Musk manages to make a positive return on his investment. However good you are, if you pay way too much for something, you're worse than someone who just didn't overpay and made no other changes.

I think it's about more than money for Musk. It's about influence and nudging the world closer to how it "ought to be". This is why wealthy people buy newspapers that will never make money. It's about power and influence.

And I agree with OP - all this will be forgotten when Twitter is considered an elite place to work in a few years. Love him or hate him, but the guy attracts really talented people that want to work with really talented people.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#560

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…

> treat your employees right, and they'll be productive

Until complacency settles in, blubber accumulates and the productivity takes a nose dive.

You don't have to like Musk to agree that 7500 employees seem like few Ks too much for what Twitter is.

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