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…
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Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work
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Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work
#412I 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…
IMHO the ideal situation would be for people to work in their own offices, with doors that closed, and short commutes. Easy to work distraction-free alone, easy to have group meetings and random chats. But real estate costs have made this approach untenable, so something has to give.
I don't know how much commercial real estate costs, but in the region around Twitter's HQ it's about $5-$6k for a 1000 square foot apartment
Assuming it's the same price per square foot for commercial space, that's less than $1000 a month for a 100 square foot office for each employee. Considering these employees are making more than 20x that, if offices could improve their productivity, it seems like it'd be well worthwhile
Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work
#413Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why call it 1950s style when it was most common mode of operation up to 2019? Elon already insisted Tesla engineers work on-site, so this move isn't too surprising. What leaves me puzzled is why would anyone decide to work there. Where's the carrot?
I guess the pay is the carrot. As long as they pay well for the requirements, there will be plenty people to take it. And if the job market deteriorates, they might not even need to pay that well...
Also the mission. If I didn't have a great gig right now, I would absolutely join Twitter, just for the opportunity to add new features and prove that the old Twitter was sorely underperforming and that Twitter can be a force for free speech, which I believe in an absolute right.
Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work
#414Earlier 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.
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HN is full of strong comments like this. A lot worse has been said about many tech people on here (Larry Ellison comes to mind).
Part of the cost of being a public figure and a multibillionaire is that people will talk about you without the same collegial tone that they'd use with their peers.
Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work
#415Earlier 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.
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He literally discussed this over text messages that were publicized as part of the trial discovery.
Someone else has helpfully transcribed it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33552970
The official document is here, see page 21 for the transcribed conversation, see plenty of other pages for his callous thought process: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23112929-elon-musk-t...
Also, I think a review of this site’s guidelines is called for:
> Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead. If you flag, please don't also comment that you did.
> Please don't comment about the voting on comments.
Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work
#416[deleted]
Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work
#417Everytime a new Commanding Officer (CO) showed up when I was in the Navy we tried to bet which type it was: 1) The kind who investigated the goings-on in the ship, interviewed the officers and chiefs, and learned how the ship was being run, then made small changes over time to optimize the operations based on what they learned. Sometimes big changes in one specific area, if it was required (like fixing the ship's cry…
and generally acted like they owned the place
To be fair, he actually does own the place.
Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work
#418It's an employers market right now. With 11k laid off from Meta, and thousands more across tech, Twitter will have no issue finding staff if it needs them (assuming this decision causes even more to leave).
I'm not convinced that Twitter actually needs more than 1k staff though. 100 infrastructure engineers, 600 platform engineers, and 300 support staff should be all it takes to run a lean ship doing what Twitter does.
Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work
#419Surely this is partially a calculated move to further reduce headcount/expenses.
Unlikely. A more calculated move would be to first remove remote work, then reduce headcount to the level you want. The other way not only are they paying larger severance, but also aren't sure what number of people they end up with and what teams will disappear completely.
Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work
#420According to the email, Musk expects subscriptions to make up to 50% of revenue. Assuming that Twitter’s revenue is around $5bn, and the subscription is at $8/month that’s some 26M subscriptions, or 5,7% of its users. I don’t think that a number so high is achievable, unless they pull a rabbit out of their hat.
You're making the assumption that annualized revenue hasn't already dropped precipitously due to a loss in advertising dollars, and the bar for subscriptions to reach 50% is rapidly lowering.
Even if you cut the conversion at half it's still too high. Realistically speaking, anything above 1% is highly optimistic.