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Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

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Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#591
post #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 lawsui…

You are assuming both: that there was in fact 60 days notice (how!?) and that there is in fact a severance package. Yet, why would you not be openly communicative of this if you intend to give it?

So how is it legal nonsense if the lawsuit has good faith reasons to believe that neither of your assumptions hold?

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter is the most interesting on the internet, by far. If the discourse quality sucks, you're following the wrong accounts.

All the nobody asinine replies are noisy. It can definitely do better.

Isn't that the point of the subscription? People that don't pay will be buried and you won't see them.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#593

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…

> THe issue we all have here is this: if Musk is successful then treating employees nicely will fall out of fashion. How bold, to speak for everyone ;-) I really don't see this as a "treat employees nicely" issue. I'm open to being convinced otherwise. But... Elon's premise from day 0 was that Twitter was mismanaged -- bloated, misguided, bad as a business and broken as product. This echoes the sentiment even by many…

> If an employee's layoff is inevitable, it is much nicer for that is be part of a mass layoff like this,

you mean an illegal one?

I suggest you try it.

Look the issue is this, Musk is creating a climate where it is expected that people effectively sleep at the office. Do you have a family? well you don't anymore.

and through all of this pain, shit stirring and general "disruption", there is no strategic leadership, or clear headed product leadership. Unless you count "pay to spam/harass" & scaring away your advertising partners as a product strategy.

Layoffs are not a strategy, they are a side effect.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#595
post #203

Quoted post unavailable.

I remain constantly surprised that people on Hacker News of all places can be so wrong in their underestimations of how technically challenging a company's problem space is.

Building and maintaining a distributed system like Twitter is far from easy, as any one of the talks their engineers have given and papers they've written should tell you.

Let's at least base this discussion on realistic and reasonable determinations of the company and its operations.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#596

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 you're giving Musk too much credit by classifying this as not "treating employees nicely" - he's mismanaging things in every way possible. The individual treatment of employees is such a small subset of it (e.g. Bezos also mistreats employees but seems much more grounded & competent than Musk).

My real curiosity from the whole affair is gauging the actual impact a CEO can have on a company's success / failure. No doubt Twitter's had issues as a product for a long time, long before Musk came along. Whatever direction the company goes next, will be be due to or despite Musk's input.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Twitter have any way to prevent/punish using screenshots instead of the Twitter embed thing when you put Tweets on your website? Twitter can probably not use copyright to fight this, a Tweet probably does not fall under copyright because it is too short, right?

I'm sure the BBC did exactly that for ages, iirc because somebody who got their tweet embedded by them changed their display name to "big dogs cock" or something.

That sounds like a flaw in the embedding technology — surely the display name should be whatever it was when the tweet was created?

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#598

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? I'll bite on this one. For reference, I personally believe Elon Musk is a degenerate blowhard who has literally zero concept of what life actually is like for billions of people on the planet, nor does he care. I believe he belongs to the class of people known as 'parasites'. Here's my take: 1 year: Initially, we'll see improvements. Dead wei…

>1 year: Initially, we'll see improvements. Dead weight is cut, along with some live branches, but we see improvements. More free and open speech, I believe he will follow through on that. Fringe groups have a louder voice and can find people to join their causes, leading to further polarization of politics across the globe, and especially in the US.

Twitter has no real impact on polarization on politics especially in the US. The problems of the US are first past the post elections, the broken 19th century style primaries, people literally not having enough money to take a day off to vote and/or being too burnt out daily to give a shit about politics.

The result is the extremes get a very very loud voice since they are the only ones with nothing better to do. Twitter suddenly being more "free and open" means the extremes get an even louder voice.

Your average person making up most of the population just wants to kick back and relax from the daily grind. Not go argue on twitter.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#599
post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "freedom of speech" (I know that the first amendment only applies to government censorship, but Musk likes to pretend not to) Freedom of speech is not the first amendment and vice versa. Freedom of speech is an ideal that applies to all people and all spaces, public and private, while the First Amendment only applies in America and to the government. People think they sound smart when they say freedom of speech onl…

Every time this debate comes up, someone suggests that companies like Twitter are in violation of the first amendment when they remove a user's post. To me they often sound like the ignorant ones.

> in violation of the first amendment

I've never seen this. I have seen people point out that Twitter isn't promoting freedom of speech and the somebody else conflating that with the first amendment of the U.S. constitution though.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#600

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…

So looking at other siblings comments in this subthread, sounds like Elon is a genius, rigor in future Twitter, high calibre talent blah blah blah.

Even if that may end up being true that suggests Twitter today is full of mediocre/subpar employees. Were Parag and other execs just rewarded for bringing Twitter to a sacrifice at the altar? Dang indeed!

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