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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

#841

Post by kondro »

misiti3780 wrote: post #563
autospeaker22 wrote: post #549

I keep thinking it'd be much cheaper for Elon to have paid to build an entirely new Twitter that has the features he's looking for. Let's say Elon had set aside a budget to hire some of the best developers he's ever worked with or heard of, and lets give them an imaginary salary of 1.5 million total comp per year, at about 10 devs for easy math. And let's say another 500k for bennies. So our operating expense for top…

All of the people (or most of the people) that matter would not have left Twitter for Elon's new company. Tons of people have tried this. Remember Dalton Caldwell's App.net. That didn't even get off the ground and it had a ton of YC press. Network affects are real.

You're right. But how much marketing can $44B and time buy you to replicate these network effects?

There are plenty of people trying to replicate the success of the existing social networks, but they're all doing it for $10's - $100's millions.

How much traction would you get if you paid the top 5,000 Twitter accounts $5 million to post exclusively on your new social network?

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

#842

Post by pclmulqdq »

dragonwriter wrote: post #745
danans wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 all teams are properly staffed. He's got huge debt and declining revenue - both of his own making - so he doesn't have time for employees to self-select based on minor incentives. He has to strip down the car fast while someho…

> He also wants to recreate the place per his own vision, so it makes sense to get rid of as many people carrying the previous culture as you can and then start hiring as necessary with the kind of people you want So, he's destroying all of the institutional knowledge, the brand image, and the existing business relationships, while pivoting to a radically different market. He wanted a fresh startup to sink $44 billio…

I think you're right about the whole "fresh startup" idea. Some of his comments around Twitter have suggested that he might be treating this as his road to being a trillionaire by owning the public square in the US.

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

#843

Post by majormajor »

georgyo wrote: post #523
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…

I worked at a place that did this in 2009. The problem with this method is that many people DID relocate to keep their jobs. And then were layed off two months later. Imagine uplifting your life for your job, and then being told you need to find a new job anyway.

A more deliberate (some might say sneaky, but I'd prefer it if I was in the situation) move would be to take an extra week or two to have some of your management do some feeling out of who would be 100% opposed to remote so you could include them in the layoff list, but also don't force people to uproot just to be laid off.

But at least you could avoid some of the "unregretted attrition" of people you decided to keep.

(This assumes Musk isn't intentionally sequencing things to limit the "official" size of the layoff while actually wanting to cut a significantly larger percentage.)

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

#844

Post by artificial »

memish wrote: post #836
dragonwriter wrote: post #745

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He also wants to recreate the place per his own vision, so it makes sense to get rid of as many people carrying the previous culture as you can and then start hiring as necessary with the kind of people you want So, he's destroying all of the institutional knowledge, the brand image, and the existing business relationships, while pivoting to a radically different market. He wanted a fresh startup to sink $44 billio…

It's weird how many people are experiencing sudden onset amnesia. Prior to Elon getting control, everyone understood Twitter was a mess, was losing tons of money and not able to get anything done for the past decade. Obviously it needs a major shakeup.

Even ~10 years ago it was a money fire (https://money.cnn.com/2016/03/21/technology/twitter-10th-ann...). Trump was one of the best things that happened to the platform.

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

#846

Post by alexpetralia »

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…

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23112929-elon-musk-t...

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

#847

Post by baobabKoodaa »

throwayyy479087 wrote: post #539
jedberg wrote: post #496

The number one result when you search for Twitter on HN: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever (buzzfeednews.com) 2953 points by minimaxir on May 12, 2020 | hide | past | favorite | 1353 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23155647

I’ve been told many times that Twitter is a private company and can do whatever it wants. Or does that only apply to the Red team?

Does "whatever it wants" include making contractual promises and then breaking them? Because I wasn't aware private companies had the right to rescind contracts at will.

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

#848

Post by thr0wawayf00 »

rmbyrro wrote: post #637
thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I keep thinking it'd be much cheaper for Elon to have paid to build an entirely new Twitter that has the features he's looking for. It'd be even cheaper if he had the sense to not play chicken with Twitter's board only to get called on his bluff. Nothing about how he's handled Twitter thus far suggests that he ever took his offer to buy them seriously. He was showboating from the beginning and screwed up, and thous…

I think he did want to buy since the beginning. He's got bigger plans for it beyond short messages. The free speech thing is just marketing.

Then why did he fight for months and months and ostensibly spend millions in legal fees to back out of the deal? I just can't square that with him truly wanting the platform. If he wanted it from the beginning, the acquisition would've been completed in what, May? He made the offer in April.

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

#849

Post by ThunderSizzle »

kyleee wrote: post #797
dragonwriter wrote: post #745

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He also wants to recreate the place per his own vision, so it makes sense to get rid of as many people carrying the previous culture as you can and then start hiring as necessary with the kind of people you want So, he's destroying all of the institutional knowledge, the brand image, and the existing business relationships, while pivoting to a radically different market. He wanted a fresh startup to sink $44 billio…

"the brand image" of twitter, lol, go on

Apparently quite a few HNers think very highly of Twitter...

I haven't came across any one that thought most of Twitter was good. It's a cesspool of cancel culture and hatred.

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

#850

Post by Aeolun »

spamizbad wrote: post #582
danans wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 all teams are properly staffed. He's got huge debt and declining revenue - both of his own making - so he doesn't have time for employees to self-select based on minor incentives. He has to strip down the car fast while someho…

> He also wants to recreate the place per his own vision, so it makes sense to get rid of as many people carrying the previous culture as you can and then start hiring as necessary with the kind of people you want. Twitter isn't going to have the same "pull" as organizations like Tesla or SpaceX where you can attract top-shelf talent by virtue of working on some of the most interesting problems. Twitter is... Twitter…

> under Musk

There it is. There’s enough fanboys around that he doesn’t have to worry about butts to put in seats.

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