Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 1001 posts

Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work

#341

Post by apendleton »

rbetts wrote: post #252
thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #194

According to leaked email on CNBC, Musk said that Twitter needs 50% of its revenue to be subscriptions in order to surivive: > That is why the priority over the past ten days has been to develop and launch Twitter Blue Verified subscriptions (huge props to the team!). Without significant subscription revenue, there is a good chance Twitter will not survive the upcoming economic downturn. We need roughly half of our r…

Q2 revenue was $1.18B on 237.8M mDAU. If they want $590M (50%) in subscription revenue, that's 24.5M subscriptons @ $24 per quarter. So they'd need to convert about 10% of the reported mDAU to subscribers? https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/twitter-announces-s...

I don't think what he's proposing is to replace any ad revenue -- he's trying to grow revenue and take a company currently in the red into the black. I think he means to keep all the ad revenue, and then add that much again in subscription revenue. So: 20%, I guess? Or even more to make up for advertiser attrition? Which seems like... a ton.

Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work

#342

Post by rurp »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #183
kibwen wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that there are pros and cons to remote work, and that it should be possible to have a frank discussion about where the balance lies. However, that is sadly irrelevant to this news item, as Musk isn't banning remote work because of any logical consideration of its merits. He's banning remote work because he's an authoritarian micromanager who believes that workers are to be treated like cattle.

Quoted post unavailable.

Just because certain scummy behavior is legal doesn't make it ethical or a good business decision. Given what I have seen of his behavior I want absolutely nothing to do with Elon and his companies, either as a customer or employee, and am sure many others feel the same.

Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work

#343

Post by toomuchtodo »

cokeandpepsi wrote: post #327
slg wrote: post #208

Let's say you run a company and you want to reduce staff. Let's also say you want to make an unpopular decision (or multiple unpopular decisions) that you know will drive a certain percentage of your staff to leave the company. Wouldn't it make the most sense to announce those decisions before making layoffs? Let people self select whether they want to stay and work for you and then make your layoffs after to ensure…

Jason: Back of the envelope... Twitter revenue per employee: $5B rev / 8k employees = $625K rev per employee in 2021 Google revenue per employee: $257B rev2/ 135K employee2= $1.9M per employee in 2021 Apple revenue per employee: $365B rev / 154k employees= $2.37M per employee in fiscal 2021 Jason: Twitter revenue per employee if 3k instead of 8k: $5B rev/ 3k employees= $1.66m rev per employee in 2021 (more industry s…

Twitter employees: “we’re going to vote to unionize”

When you have nothing left to lose, why wouldn’t you? It brings the federal government in to provide support, on their dime no less. Worst case is everyone leaves, the NLRB finds against Musk, and he has to give folks their jobs back while Twitter is burning.

“The strongest steel is forged in the fires of a dumpster.”

Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work

#344

Post by jansan »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #313
VLM wrote: post #269

Interesting strategic window: You can't innovate and software engineer using 1950s style "butts in seats". Maybe this is a signal twitter isn't going to innovate, develop, and maybe even operate, internally, at least going forward. You need code for a new feature? Buy a startup that already wrote it. You need to keep something running? Contract out instead of employees. Very few companies have a full time plumber or…

What has Twitter innovated on in the past decade? While I don't agree with the way Elon has been making this move, it's sure looking like he's trying to clear the place out so he can establish a new culture. These policy changes are likely to scare mobile, top-performers off to other companies. This likely clears out a lot of internal dissent and heal digging to make room for new "top performers". I wouldn't be shock…

What has Twitter innovated on in the past decade?

Bootstrap

Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work

#345

Post by inerte »

klodolph wrote: post #218
thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #194

According to leaked email on CNBC, Musk said that Twitter needs 50% of its revenue to be subscriptions in order to surivive: > That is why the priority over the past ten days has been to develop and launch Twitter Blue Verified subscriptions (huge props to the team!). Without significant subscription revenue, there is a good chance Twitter will not survive the upcoming economic downturn. We need roughly half of our r…

Revenue of $5bn. Let’s say that you burn half of it down, so you’re making $2.5bn with ads, and $2.5bn with subscriptions. If there 200M DAU, then that means you want to make $12.5/year, per user, for subscriptions. I don’t see how that would be possible, even under the most wildly optimistic scenarios.

The good news is that if your revenue drops, so does your share of subscription. In that sense he's already helping the goal by doing the first part!

Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work

#346

Post by DiggyJohnson »

kibwen wrote: post #79
kypro wrote: post #23

I am split on the remote work thing from a productivity / creativity perspective. I do think there are times when I'm less productivity working from home compared to the office. I also think as a team we're less creative. Some of the best stuff I've done in my career has come out of casual conversations with my team about the stuff we're building. I've noticed I don't think about what I'm building as much when workin…

I agree that there are pros and cons to remote work, and that it should be possible to have a frank discussion about where the balance lies. However, that is sadly irrelevant to this news item, as Musk isn't banning remote work because of any logical consideration of its merits. He's banning remote work because he's an authoritarian micromanager who believes that workers are to be treated like cattle.

No post body was provided.

Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work

#347

Post by lightbendover »

VLM wrote: post #269

Interesting strategic window: You can't innovate and software engineer using 1950s style "butts in seats". Maybe this is a signal twitter isn't going to innovate, develop, and maybe even operate, internally, at least going forward. You need code for a new feature? Buy a startup that already wrote it. You need to keep something running? Contract out instead of employees. Very few companies have a full time plumber or…

> You can't innovate and software engineer using 1950s style "butts in seats"

This seems to be pulled from thin air. Nobody would have murmured it 3 years ago. You really think the whole world changed that much in the past 3 years that you can lay down such a superlative?

Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work

#348

Post by ghaff »

aeyes wrote: post #254
kleiba wrote: post #123

Prior to Musk’s arrival, Twitter had established a permanent work-from-anywhere arrangement for its workers ...for some definition of the word "permanent".

Did you sign a new contract making your work location "remote"? If not then it was never going to be permanent.

In the US at least, even if you're categorized as remote, the company can almost certainly pull you back to an office and fire you if you won’t. It probably wouldn't be considered as "for cause" (IANAL) but a company can pretty much unilaterally change work conditions, responsibilities, etc. so long as no labor laws are violated.

Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work

#349

Post by otikik »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #183
kibwen wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that there are pros and cons to remote work, and that it should be possible to have a frank discussion about where the balance lies. However, that is sadly irrelevant to this news item, as Musk isn't banning remote work because of any logical consideration of its merits. He's banning remote work because he's an authoritarian micromanager who believes that workers are to be treated like cattle.

Quoted post unavailable.

“He has every right to call them Negroes, after all he owns the plantation”

Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work

#350

Post by cragfar »

ben7799 wrote: post #284

It feels like remote work is a distraction here.. it's more like Musk realizes he bought a company that was in a lot more trouble than anyone out in the public can understand and he's scrambling for anything. Everyone is all worried about what this means for remote work at other companies when it might not mean anything at all since the other companies don't have the same circumstances as Twitter. Also we're all defe…

It's weird how people are trying to divine his actions. He's been against remote work at every point. He tried to keep the Tesla offices open when the Covid Lockdowns were starting.
Post reply on HN