Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#631

Post by nonethewiser » Fri, Nov 04, 2022, 4:06 PM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #534

john-radio wrote: post #402

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…

> "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…

Can't we just all agree that freedom of speech should be some narrow technicality that can legally be ignored in most circumstances?

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#632

Post by dunkelheit » Fri, Nov 04, 2022, 4:06 PM UTC

john-radio wrote: post #402

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"

Another ironic thing is the number of people who lectured anyone disagreeing with twitter's content moderation decisions that twitter is a commercial enterprise that can do whatever it pleases (usually this means yielding to activist pressure) and who are now acting indignant when Musk acts like he owns the place (which he does).

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#633

Post by clusterhacks » Fri, Nov 04, 2022, 4:06 PM UTC

spyremeown wrote: post #544

I have a question: why companies like Twitter need so many people? I'm sorry but it doesn't seem that hard to replicated Twitter functionality and scalability (with the right people on team). What are the engineers actually doing the whole day? Why do they need so many lines of code? All mysterious to me.

My experience is that software businesses and teams have an internal pressure to grow the number of software engineers on staff. I have seen three things swirl together to cause that.

1 - During periods of company growth (increased revenue and profits), there is a tendency of leadership to not have their hands on the wheel. You tend to see growth in company "cost-centers" instead of "profit centers." So you'll get new efforts that don't directly contribute much in increasing revenue. Early in my career I wasn't tuned into the need to really build your work and projects directly into profit center activities.

2 - Internally, I have seen people grow the number of staff underneath them as an almost weird way of justifying a promotion (eg, "executive VP mucky-mucks have N employees and I'm now managing N employees, promote me to executive VP mucky-muck").

3 - I have seen smaller companies really focus in on the revenue and/or profit per employee number to guide hiring plans. So during a good period of revenue/profit growth, a CEO/owner-type will say something like "It looks like every engineer I add at $1X0,000 is resulting in $[2|3|4]X0,000 additional revenue or profit - let's just keep adding engineers." These napkin calculations are devoid of deeper market analysis.

If you went one-on-one with every single software engineer at a big tech company or in a smaller org, you probably wouldn't find many who aren't busy with work. You just probably would find a bunch on "nice to have" work instead of real revenue generators.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#634

Post by idlewords » Fri, Nov 04, 2022, 4:07 PM UTC

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #467

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.

It's possible you need 100 engineers and 6,900 moderators.

I believe a lot of the moderation is contracted out and isn't part of employee headcount.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#635

Post by anotherman554 » Fri, Nov 04, 2022, 4:07 PM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #534

john-radio wrote: post #402

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…

> "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…

"Freedom of speech is an ideal that applies to all people and all spaces, public and private"

Since we can't agree on a definition of "freedom of speech" this doesn't mean much.

In practice it seems to mean something is a "freedom of speech issue" when a speaker wants someone to not face social consequences for some action (For example an Elon Musk fan saying he shouldn't be charged with investor fraud because "freedom of speech"), and when a speaker wants someone to face social consequences they stay conveniently silent. (Say, an Elon Musk fan not complaining when he fires an employee for something they said).

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#636

Post by kenjackson » Fri, Nov 04, 2022, 4:07 PM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #534

john-radio wrote: post #402

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…

> "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…

The concept outside the context of legal sanctions is an odd one though. It's much like the anti-cancel culture argument. It seems some want freedom of speech with absolutely no chance of any consequence whatsoever. I think there's a reason why the more broad sense of freedom of speech has never been codified.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#637

Post by nonethewiser » Fri, Nov 04, 2022, 4:07 PM UTC

sib301 wrote: post #561

nostromo wrote: post #534

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.

I see people refuting this a lot. I don't see many people asserting it. Reeks of strawman.

The real debate is if society should value free speech.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#638

Post by JasonFruit » Fri, Nov 04, 2022, 4:08 PM UTC

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #577

yanderekko wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Smart journalists are going to stop relying on Twitter's API now. I somehow have a feeling that this is not the first time in history that an embedded Tweet in a news story has been removed, either by Twitter or the author.

People who post to drama sites routinely take screenshots of tweets and posts from other sites because it's an easy way to have permanence even in the face of hostile moderation. This will just extend to normal journalists now.

At risk of finding out, what is a "drama site"? Do people actually have websites devoted to… drama?

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#639

Post by yummies » Fri, Nov 04, 2022, 4:08 PM UTC

john-radio wrote: post #402

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…

I think there's a much simpler and less juicy angle here: someone posted a screenshot of an internal communication, and it got removed. It's not surprising or controversial that Twitter would try to contain a leak of its own internal comms (a screenshot of their slack). This isn't "Twitter took down a disparaging post about Twitter", it's that they tried to stop the sharing of internal data.

That being said, I don't disagree with the sentiment here in the sibling comments, this just isn't the steelman you're looking for.

Best of luck to all remaining and recently parted Twitter folk.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#640

Post by delfinom » Fri, Nov 04, 2022, 4:08 PM UTC

grumple wrote: post #466

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…

There's already a bigger org doing this - Amazon. They are constantly hiring and struggling to replace those who leave - even during their new corporate hiring freeze. Tech workers are still in very high demand. And the younger generation seems much more willing to unionize or refuse poor working conditions.

Amazon is a completely asinine company that not only recognizes the need and difficulties to continue replacing turnover, they continue to actually maintain a turnover goals and mechanisms.

I really do think they are going to speedrun themselves to labor pool exhaustion in a first for a company in the US. Their management seems fully head in sand.

But hey, even Bezos said in an interview that he doesn't see Amazon lasting forever, even 30 years tops.