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Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

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Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#711

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.

>descended that elevator

escalator

My favorite was the Twitter account to see if it would get banned by only retweeting Trump's account(s). They wanted to show how the rules were applied differently between accounts.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#712

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…

> I hardly use it, so if it implodes it won't bother me too much.

that’s akin to saying, I hardly drive so I don’t care about the price of gas. Doesn’t bother me.

twitter has influence and reach far beyond what the mDAU implies.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#713
post #13

> “To help ensure the safety of each employee as well as Twitter systems and customer data, our offices will be temporarily closed and all badge access will be suspended,” the email reads. “If you are in an office or on your way to an office, please return home.” Welcome to the dystopian future... I find it a bit galling how companies can force you into home office nowadays if it suits them (you want to avoid your un…

Why would you want to drive into work just to get fired?

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#714

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 first amendment isn't even particularly strong protection - it only forbids Congress from restricting freedom of speech, but doesn't set out any specific rights, or preclude states from setting their own laws restricting rights.

E.g. the Portuguese constitution has much stronger guarantees. It explicitly recognises freedom of exprssion as a right, but it also explicitly recognises freedom of access to information as a right: you have a right to inform yourself, and the exercise of that right cannot be limited by any form of censorship.

It also specifically recognises a bunch more rights associated with media. Some rights protect journalists, such as the right to source confidentiality (which isn't even law in the US, let alone a constitutional right), and the right to elect representatives to their employers'editorial team. On the flipside, there's also rights protecting the public from media interference: regulators have the power (and responsibility) to prevent the consolidation of media ownership, and the media's ownership and sources of income must be made public.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#715
Elon Musk is great at building new things. Time will tell if he can re-invent an existing thing. So far, it's not looking great.

Corporate raiders / PE usually have a well defined thesis and plan to hit the ground running - Elon clearly does not. His plan seems to be "I need to double free cash flow ASAP, we'll figure out how along the way". Trying to figure out how to lay off half of the company, without negatively impacting free cash flow, in a week seems like a fool's errand.

I think his success has gone to his head. But time will tell.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#716

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont understand the SpaceX argument since he was an actual original founder if I'm not mistaken, I could see the Tesla argument, but those people never provide any true insight into how he is riding on Teslas former success whenever I run into those (not to mention, if it was so good... why did they need a new CEO). I think it's pretty obvious he is a capable individual, overly ambitious at times, but hey, he someh…

As an ex spacex employee I can definitely say that it wouldn’t have been half the company today if Musk want in charge. Not a fanboy but trying to give an honest evaluation. Space is crazy hard and doesn’t happen without brilliant people so of course the credit for the success of the company goes to the engineers and everyone that gave some of their best work to making it happen though that type of success doesn’t ha…

SpaceX is unique because there are a whole lot of people who want to work on space exploration and very few big companies that are making serious progress in the field. Many people will put up with lower pay and extreme working conditions just for the chance to be a part of something like that. I don't think we can say the same for Twitter.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#717

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hope there's a decent severance package If Musk's behavior with exec termination is any indication, there will be no severance package.

And then there will be a huge class action in violation of California’s WARN Act. He’s going to have to be paying out at least 2 months pay as severance.

The class action in violation of WARN has already started.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#718

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…

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?

Short works can fall into copyright in the U.S.

Heck, even taking a photo of the Mona Lisa is subject to copyright in the U.S under the theory there is creativity in the composition of the photo.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#719
post #541

Sorry to say this but comments on this thread are very disappointing and show a basic lack of empathy in HN crowd. I am obviously generalizing and I know most of you are not heartless souls. FFS people, a huge number of people have lost their livelihoods, sense of belonging and might fall into financial hardships in current market conditions. Whatever you think of Elon or Twitter employees, its good to be grounded in…

I get it. I'm almost 40 and have been working at tech startups since I was in my 20s. I've been through what they're going through.

The difference is that people are being laid off, terminated, or otherwise losing their jobs every day. It's not a new or interesting phenomenon. What's interesting are the conditions that led to it happening to these people, both inside and outside Twitter. It's novel and may have broad impacts well outside the ~3.5k people who are now looking for work.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#720

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…

Twitter employee on October 21: "Slowly making the migration to Mastodon" Same Twitter employee today (November 4): furiously posting on Twitter about having gotten fired from Twitter. Karma? Ref: - https://twitter.com/ruchowdh/status/1583518479210393600 - https://twitter.com/ruchowdh

What's with the take off of "IYKYK"(in her bio)?

Is it because people feel special advertising that they're part of some elite/secret ring of true knowledge sharers? Literally if the phrase was excluded, it's factualness would still be true.

Basically, I find people who say "IYKYK" to commonly be completely insufferable performance artists.

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