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Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

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Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#681

Post by throw2022110401 »

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…

One thing is for sure: It will be absolute hell for those who will have to keep things running in the coming months. For better or worse Twitter infra is extremely comlex. 50% gone would be very rough even if the cuts were made thoughtfully and things were in KTLO-only mode. But that's not the case. Musk has already been pushing changes through skipping the normal process and will likely continue doing so, aggressively. Not a good combination.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#682

Post by WalterBright »

actually_a_dog wrote: post #679
yummies wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It's much easier to have a rule that says "no public posting of internal communications" than "make a judgement call about whether an internal communication is vital or not". And with an upheaval going on at Twitter at the moment, nobody has the time to do the latter.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#683

Post by dunkelheit »

DHPersonal wrote: post #657
dunkelheit wrote: post #632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Is that fair? The criticism about these deleted posts seems to be pointing out the contradiction between the claim of widening the speech available and the way that it is being limited here, not that Twitter has no right to do it.

> Is that fair?

I don't know! Probably not. It is all a political struggle and Musk for sure pursues his own goals in it. But if all this results in a twitter that is more interesting, open and less prudish than before, I think it is worth it. You can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#684

Post by tdeck »

generalizations wrote: post #463
el_benhameen wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kind of figured this was part of the goal at Twitter. 75% of staff was the number that was originally floated, so maybe the thinking here is that after a brutal layoff round, another quarter will say “fuck it” and leave.

And after that, the ones who stay are probably the ones most in line with the kind of culture Elon is aiming for.

Meaning the ones willing to put up with an abusive work environment.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#685

Post by memish »

idiotsecant wrote: post #578
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…

SpaceX and Tesla have no 'resume cachet'. They are widely known in engineering circles as hiring huge numbers of entry level or just barely above entry level engineers, exploiting their interest in technology to work them like rented mules until they burn out, and then discarding them. It's not a negative having worked at one of these places necessarily but unless the next employer is looking for an engineer with sou…

The social media hive mind noise does not reflect serious engineering circles.

John Carmack reflects the latter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQro0rkg2DE

George Hotz reflects the latter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8P_Y8CUcqks

Andrej Karpathy reflects the latter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbxladysbTE

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#686

Post by daniel-cussen »

markus_zhang wrote: post #551
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…

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.

No post body was provided.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#687

Post by VikingCoder »

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 want to buy a book that shows every single Tweet from Donald J. Trump, ever since he descended that elevator to announce his candidacy, through Biden's inauguration, and a little beyond...

...annotated with fact-checking, and historical context.

Probably with a few lines from speeches thrown in as well. To really document the heck out of how insane those years were.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#688

Post by pjc50 »

gwbas1c wrote: post #282
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…

> 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…

His "free speech" views seem likely to result in more misinformation, more noise, and especially more harassment and annoying Firstname Bunchofnumbers making people's mentions even more unusable.

I can't see a path to profitability. In particular, "cutting to profitability" never works in momentum driven tech companies. I think he's underestimated how many people love their twitter community but hate twitter as a platform steward.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#689

Post by dylan604 »

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…

>Smart journalists are going to stop relying on Twitter's API now.

Yay! Journalists that do nothing but build a story around Tweets is not journalism. That's BuzzFeed. The fact that legit news sources decided to follow BuzzFeed is just a very sad comment on the state of affairs we live in now.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#690

Post by sophacles »

devwastaken wrote: post #384
rdtwo wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think that’s true. Twitter is/was the only remaining news medium where experts had a voice. During the pandemic doctors and infectious diseases experts were using it to call or government blow hards. Now that’s going to die as well and we may return to complete darkness.

I saw the opposite. "Experts" being totally wrong and fear mongering without evidence. It was rural governments that said "prove it". Recall how various studies on covid lethality, vaccination and masks were wildly different. The Israel study is a quick one. This is exactly what happened when influenza was new in the 1920's. Yet the "experts" made it sound like everyone is going to die if you are not wearing a mask 2…

If you believe "influenza was new in the 1920's", you have bigger things to worry about than this discussion. I suggest going to check on the paperwork for that bridge you bought.
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