Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#781

Post by joshribakoff » Fri, Nov 04, 2022, 5:36 PM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #397

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.

> I think it'll be fine. You don't need 7000 people to run a micro blogging service. It's really that simple. When you're generating and distributing and moderating multiple TB of tweets in real time every day to billions of people and also feeding other corporations parts of that data... maybe you do.

Maybe, maybe not. I don’t think the number of engineers needs to scale with the servers. You can scale out servers without scaling out your number of engineers. As far as moderation, Twitter is already poorly moderated and moderation can be outsourced.

The types of things that require scaling out engineers is supporting video embeds from 100s of different video hosting platforms.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#782

Post by paganel » Fri, Nov 04, 2022, 5:36 PM UTC

trashtester wrote: post #443

paganel wrote: post #208

In all the brouhaha about the Twitter acquisition this piece of info had personally escaped me: > Musk’s deal to buy Twitter included making the company take on $13 billion in debt from banks, which means Twitter will owe about $1 billion a year in interest payments puts things in a slightly different perspective. I had somehow assumed that all the acquisition money had come in from Musk himself together with a bunch…

There is not much difference. This is just one way to structure that. Basically, this is like a mortgage, where if Twitter goes bust, the bank takes a loss. But if Twitter just falls in value compared to the purchase price, the bank gets their money back. For Musk (and potential other owners), this means he doesn't have to offer any other collateral than Twitter for that loan.

I was mostly thinking on the recurring price of paying that debt, which, if I’m not mistaken, in cases like this one falls entirely on the acquired company (Twitter, in this case). This is irrespective of Twitter’s financial status, that money has to be paid on a recurrent manner.

That’s an extra cost on future Twitter of which I was not aware of, a cost entirely brought by this acquisition.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#783

Post by s1artibartfast » Fri, Nov 04, 2022, 5:37 PM UTC

anonAndOn wrote: post #562

Does this mass layoff comply with the WARN Act and California's mini-WARN?[0] What about all of California's protected classes?[1] The pregnant ladies let go before their FMLA seem especially aggrieved. Maybe some lawyers here can chime in: How soon will we see some class action lawsuits? [0] https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/layoff-protections-c... [1] https://www.employmentattorneyla.com/blog/2017/june/what-a…

Class protection doesn't mean you cant fire minorities and pregnant women.

It means you can't fire people for being minorities and pregnant.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#784

Post by DesiLurker » Fri, Nov 04, 2022, 5:38 PM UTC

throwawaydec20 wrote: post #728

neel8986 wrote: post #614

The way employees were treated was beyond disgraceful. Really feel sorry for my younger self who believed that Musk truly cares about Humanity. Never ever hero worship a billionaire while thinking he will change the world. They are all ego manic pos hungry for more and more control. Small things you can do a) If you care about environment don't buy an over expensive electric car. Think about efforts to improve Public…

Suckers are born every sec. I had many arguments with Musk rats with no success.

I was one of those suckers though I kept it mostly to myself (& dont own tesla stock or a tesla). I still do feel Musk's contribution in accelerating EV adoption is invaluable and help markets get over a 'internal combustion local minima'. Also he didn't have to use his pile of money to land rockets and make space launch cheap so I give him credit for that. BUT thats where it ends for me, IMO we need a barely winning, underdog Elon much more than this flamboyant, impulsive, A*h0le billioniare.

what I worry about now is that musk fanbois are willing to bend the rules (in peacetime not covid panic or early days of EVs) for him will set a horrible pressident for workers in general.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#785

Post by DesiLurker » Fri, Nov 04, 2022, 5:39 PM UTC

s1artibartfast wrote: post #625

mlatu wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

didnt elon get a loan from a saudi crownprince and paying interest of around a billion$ per year?

No to both. The crown prince already owned a large stake of twitter, and decided to maintain ownership stake after the buyout. They are still a shareholder, like before, not a loan holder. https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattdurot/2022/10/31/saudi-prin...

financing table at the end says otherwise: https://danluu.com/elon-twitter-texts/#47

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#786

Post by max51 » Fri, Nov 04, 2022, 5:40 PM UTC

brtkdotse wrote: post #743

CrazyStat wrote: post #726

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starlink's total bandwidth is about the same as a small regional ISP. There is no way it will ever "control the world's internet". Starlink will serve many places where terrestrial wired or wireless access doesn't make sense, including oceans, very rural areas, uninhabited areas, airplanes, rockets, etc. It will never be able to serve 1% of a high density city. It will never control anything on the scale of the world…

Can't find the article now but it made an interesting point that Starlink is just busywork for SpaceX to keep launching rockets.

I think it's similar to small construction companies using their staff during the winter to work on the owner's new rental properties.

They can easily scale it up or down depending on how other projects/priorities are going and how many people don't have tasks to do. All of the deadlines and KPIs are internal and they don't expose themselves to lawsuits or financial penalties when they have to delay something.

In the case of spacex, it's even more beneficial because they need to launch rockets anyway for testing. Sending them to space empty is a wasted opportunity.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#787

Post by VikingCoder » Fri, Nov 04, 2022, 5:40 PM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #711

VikingCoder wrote: post #687

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh yeah, that's what I meant, thanks.

Obligatory Mitch Hedberg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHopAo_Ohy0

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#788

Post by harlequinn77 » Fri, Nov 04, 2022, 5:40 PM UTC

robotresearcher wrote: post #742

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.

I've seen this statement a lot, and I think it's missing something. Public companies typically have growth as a goal. Twitter was not making a lot of money. Some of these people were working on building a future Twitter that would grow bigger and richer. I'm not saying they were on the path to success, just that I expect a lot of the activity there could be described that way. Five years ago you could say of Uber 'Yo…

To be frank, twitter hasn't changed in 10 years.

So in this hypothetical, the people building the future of the company have achieved nothing during this time and should absolutely be removed or replaced.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#789

Post by systemvoltage » Fri, Nov 04, 2022, 5:41 PM UTC

dopidopHN wrote: post #139

taurath wrote: post #89

Since apparently nobody else in the thread has any empathy for those who've lost their jobs, future access to healthcare (in the US and less civilized countries), and financial security, I guess I'll be the first: I feel bad for people who are laid off by the machinations of billionaires. I wish we lived in a society where it wasn't optimal to act like raving lunatics will tear down every bit of security you have at…

In civilized countries, you don’t loose your healthcare when your loose your job. It’s tie to your human status, not to a contract with a random corporation. Also, civilized societies have come up a long time ago with appropriate social nets that mitigate the hurdle of unemployment. And our food is vastly superior.

I guess then based on your narrow minded moral stance of what "civilized" means, Switzerland would be uncivilized. So would be Taiwan, Japan and Korea.

Your definition of "civilized" just means a socialist state.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#790

Post by mancerayder » Fri, Nov 04, 2022, 5:41 PM UTC

lucideer wrote: post #610

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…

> Freedom of speech is an ideal that applies to all people and all spaces Is it though? Those outside of the US who subscribe to this ideal seem heavily influenced by US culture in my experience. I'm not aware of non-US sources of the idea. Add to that I've never really seen anyone espouse this ideal that actually understood (or could articulate) what "free speech" even means... Certainly in the context of Musk's cam…

>Is it though? >Those outside of the US who subscribe to this ideal seem heavily influenced by US culture in my experience. I'm not aware of non-US sources of the idea.

Individual rights of expression predate the US and are part of a collection of ideals in a long tradition that finally exploded in the Enlightenment in Western Europe. Don't forget how much of a grip the Church had on suppressing books and ideas, including meting out punishment.

The erasing of the history of freedom of speech including, within the US, forgetting the facts within the 20th century where it was primarily conservatives who advocated for suppression and censorship, is a very awful misreading of a general principle, especially by, today, people who identify as left.

Freedom of speech is an ideal intended to protect unpopular opinions. It's an individual right in the sense that the individual may be at odds with others, and just because it is a minority view it should not be suppressed.

Today the Zeitgeist is saying: freedom of speech is a silly American concept, and it's just to defend people on the hard right who should be deplatormed.

False, and false.