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Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

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Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#671

Post by eftychis »

losvedir wrote: post #180

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's not like he took over a hard job.

Twitter had a loss but had been profitable before. Twitter has a huge following/user-base worldwide. The hard part of creating the brand has happened.

He just needs not to break it, trim some fat and appease advertisers. (In a possible recession, so that is the hard part of his job.)

The HARD problem Elon has is of his own creation. He leveraged massively to bring this deal to fruition. During a downturn. So if let us say Tesla stock goes down considerably that might be an issue.

If Twitter does not get called for its debt, Elon is going to make lots of money when he "brings it back to the people," out of pure kindness mind you, and it goes public again or there is a secondary offering. He bought it in bad times at "low brand value."

The other value to Elon is he will increase his brand. Elon's value is in his name. Twitter can help him there, as it does daily.

Edit: P.S. Oh, a bit more related: It will get sued. In fact it already is in the process from my understanding for botching/ignoring California WARN act regarding layoffs. So... good way of spending money. And he can not demand them to waive it off with a severance letter.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#672

Post by _jal »

ChildOfChaos wrote: post #588
tshaddox wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It's starting to feel like Musk is playing this political game to me. Pretending he is championing the little guy, that he/twitter/everyone is somehow being repressed and they/he is fighting against it. His recent tweet on how 'activists' are the cause of twitters recent revenue drop for example. Even with the blue check marks, he is framing it as it being open to all and the little guy taking the power back, all you…

> Pretending he is championing the little guy

Are you just noticing this?

Step two is whining endlessly and loudly. Step three he figures out a way to game government subsidies while whining about government.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#673

Post by PM_me_your_math »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #612
tshaddox wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Everything Musk does in the public sphere is a performance. He's putting on a show, and the show is always crafted according to whatever he thinks will sway the public in the direction he wants them to go.

No post body was provided.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#674

Post by gopuck16 »

thinkingemote wrote: post #409

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 /…

How were you able to include/exclude the contractors, apple also has large number of CW that you are excluding so these numbers are bogus imo.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#675

Post by chrisseaton »

webinvest wrote: post #546
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…

First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.“

That's 'First Amendment Freedom of Speech', not 'freedom of speech'.

When people say 'freedom of speech should be protected', they're being more broad than 'First Amendment Freedom of Speech should be protected'.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#676

Post by pjc50 »

matthewaveryusa wrote: post #318
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…

He won't need PCI compliance. He's going to attempt to make a wechat with cryptocurrency as a method of payment in collaboration with binance. We'll see if it sticks.

Isn't this the Facebook Libera plan, which got lolnoped by regulators before it even got off the ground?

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#677

Post by WalterBright »

lowbloodsugar wrote: post #554
bentt wrote: 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…

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.

> It’s not till later that I found out that everything he says is someone else’s idea that he takes credit for.

There are a zillion ideas out there. The idea (!) is to be able to pick the right ones.

For example:

1. never give up

2. don't beat a dead horse

Which idea is correct?

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#678

Post by tdeck »

dan-robertson wrote: post #650
thinkingemote wrote: post #409

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 /…

I think the employees are pretty expensive to keep, even compared to other tech companies. Twitter now has a lot of debt to service from the acquisition and I think the employees now get cash instead of RSUs (paid based on the acquisition price) whereas employees at other tech companies have effectively seen comp decrease as the stock prices went down. So there might be some philosophical attempt to reduce headcount.…

This is a great point. Employees at Twitter may be vesting RSUs that need to be converted at Elon's inflated purchase price. Even laying off those people today and rehiring all of them tomorrow would save the company a boatload of money.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#679

Post by actually_a_dog »

yummies wrote: post #639
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…

Oh, please. This "internal communication" was a bunch of blue hearts if the source is to be believed. What vital business information did that leak?

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#680

Post by PM_me_your_math »

kenjackson wrote: post #636
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…

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.

If you want a free society then that's the only way. If published in today's age, Samuel L. Clemens would have been cancelled by mercurial cry bullies.
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