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Twitter in chaos as employees accept Musk’s invitation to quit their jobs

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Re: Twitter in chaos as employees accept Musk’s invitation to quit their jobs

#161

Post by systemvoltage »

wilsonnb3 wrote: post #103
systemvoltage wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't seen any indicators of Twitter failing besides 2FA failures; but every time I read anything on HN, it is doomed to fail. I feel like some of the resentful people here will try to hack into Twitter possibly get caught and see jail time? May be they will do something bad because this kind kind of irrational hate for a billionaire is not normal. Hell, even Peter Thiel doesn't get this vitroil. It reminds me of…

> I haven't seen any indicators of Twitter failing besides 2FA failures; If you ignore everything we are hearing about mass employee exodus and critical teams having no engineers left. > Why do you guys hate Elon with your guts with such an intense passion? To put it bluntly, because he is an asshole. I honestly don’t know how anyone likes him after he called a cave diver who helped save a bunch of children a pedo ju…

Why are billionaires immoral? That seems completely backwards. They created value not by coercion, but by commerce and improved the world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtJwAYJ9B08

The whole pie has gotten larger since the industrial revolution and has lifted people out of poverty at an unprecendented rate through Capitalism.

The current zeitgeist in places like HN and in progressive circles is worrying. There was just a recent thread about how India lifted people out of poverty and people were downvoting pro-Capitalist comments even though that's the truth no matter how you twist it.

Re: Twitter in chaos as employees accept Musk’s invitation to quit their jobs

#162

Post by PartiallyTyped »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #145
KVFinn wrote: post #62

Did Musk describe 'Breakthrough Twitter 2.0' in a separate message that hasn't been made public? "Stay at Twitter because we're moving to 80 hour work weeks and cancelling Christmas" can't be the argument by itself, right? It's got to be something like "Stay at Twitter because we're building exciting new project X, but we'll need 80 hour work weeks to pull this off..."

> It's got to be something like "Stay at Twitter because we're building exciting new project X, but we'll need 80 hour work weeks to pull this off..." Not only that, but "... and they'll receive larger compensation and/or share of the company."

A share of what company?

The company has no vision, no real captain, nor is it public.

Re: Twitter in chaos as employees accept Musk’s invitation to quit their jobs

#163

Post by memish »

sorenjan wrote: post #108
memish wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't have stock? Also maybe don't say your employer is a "petulant man child" in Slack or otherwise undermine them and you'll be fine. The idea that an employer should keep people that actively dislike like him or her is insane.

> The idea that an employer should keep people that don't like him or her is insane. It's not insane. Only keeping people that kiss your ass is how you get echo chambers and lose touch with reality.

Of course, but it's not binary. It's not a choice of people who hate you or love you unquestionably. There's a middle ground between those.

I don't buy into the notion that the chief engineer of SpaceX, which puts rockets in space, and CEO of Tesla, which efficiently produces electric cars, doesn't know how to stay in touch with reality. The evidence is in direct conflict.

Re: Twitter in chaos as employees accept Musk’s invitation to quit their jobs

#164

Post by MarkMarine »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #77
KVFinn wrote: post #62

Did Musk describe 'Breakthrough Twitter 2.0' in a separate message that hasn't been made public? "Stay at Twitter because we're moving to 80 hour work weeks and cancelling Christmas" can't be the argument by itself, right? It's got to be something like "Stay at Twitter because we're building exciting new project X, but we'll need 80 hour work weeks to pull this off..."

Working for one of Elon Musk's companies sounds brutal, but I can understand the appeal of burning hot and bright on something truly innovative. I would feel proud and motivated to work like crazy on something like Starship, but this is Twitter. I suspect Musk's strategy of appealing to people who want to change the world and be on the bleeding edge of technology won't hold up the same way as it did for his other com…

He was also offering them a chance to have options in clear growth companies that would make you financially secure after you put some time in. Twitter has no such promise, he is saying it might go into chapter 11, and he added all that debt. Why would you sign on to that, when on the backside you'll have options in a private company riddled with debt and no clear exit or growth path.

Re: Twitter in chaos as employees accept Musk’s invitation to quit their jobs

#165

Post by rco8786 »

Moctogo wrote: post #72

Wild prediction: Twitter will continue to work as it did even after that ~80% workforce haircut. Make of that what you will.

Highly doubtful. Will it go down immediately? No. Will the bitrot accelerate and things start breaking/deteriorating with no one around to fix them? Yes.

It's hard to argue that Twitter wasn't incredibly overstaffed. Maybe even 80% overstaffed. But ripping 80% of the humans out of the equation basically overnight is not a recipe for a successful transition.

Re: Twitter in chaos as employees accept Musk’s invitation to quit their jobs

#166

Post by ebiester »

bdcravens wrote: post #128
Moctogo wrote: post #72

Wild prediction: Twitter will continue to work as it did even after that ~80% workforce haircut. Make of that what you will.

Many tech companies are over-staffed: R+D pet projects, full time OSS devs, dev rel, etc. Some companies probably have staff who literally do one task like managing webpack config. I disagree with Musk about A LOT, but most companies have opportunities to trim fat before they even touch the core product.

As long as you're willing to accept a company that is not growing in revenue due to new value created, you can build a system entirely dedicated to maintenance of existing features with a small group.

In Twitter's case, however, how long is it until they're sued for child porn (lack of moderation) or get 50 million euro fines for running afoul of Germany's Network Enforcement Act?

Re: Twitter in chaos as employees accept Musk’s invitation to quit their jobs

#168

Post by behringer »

GSimon wrote: post #129
gambiting wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I very much doubt that. Twitter must have had some bloat, but there's no way that 80% of the workforce was bloat. I'd be extremely surprised if Twitter(as in, the website/app, not the registered legal entity) still exists and works by the end of this year.

80% imo could so very easily be bloat. Features/services that are underutilized and haemorrhaging money don't need to be upkept, teams dedicated to curating content like twitter headlines and moderating content don't need to be there (at the scale it's currently at). Staffing for hospitality services at Twitter HQ and all the ancillary services that are unnecessary or under-utilized. As long as the servers are runnin…

The problem is he's getting rid of the solid workforce and keeping the bloat. No decent engineer would work 80 hours a week in the office over 40 in the home.

Re: Twitter in chaos as employees accept Musk’s invitation to quit their jobs

#169

Post by grogenaut »

rem7 wrote: post #109

In my opinion Elon miscalculated the type of people at Twitter. These aren’t people like the ones in Tesla or SpaceX where there is some sort of idealization of Elon. The number of fan boys he has at Twitter must be super low. None of the Twitter employees signed up to work for him, it’s pretty obvious from the public tweets that most of the staff has posted that they don’t have much respect for him. On top of that,…

There's also no clarity on what the upside is "stock like spacex and tesla"... rockets are Long on investing and the future. Twitter isn't even close to on that time horizon. If I was asked to stay to build 2.0 I'd want to know what the plan was and how my equity compensation was going to work in real terms. Especially since months prior I would get equity and could sell it in immediate compensation and now I'm back to an early stage startup.

Even more materially, many of those employees are likely spending over their base on their lifestyle and investments. So say they were making $300k all told and they're now down to $150k base, If they were spending even near the base they've just massively changed their income trajectory even to the point of obvious insolvency. Eg "I can't afford this house anymore". I've talked to some people that are smart on investing and I've talked to others who say they're spending 67% post tax on their "lifestyle" of total comp which is insane to me. Stock moves any which way and you are eating into savings which likely also just dropped.

Anyone in that situation would be out like the rats.

Re: Twitter in chaos as employees accept Musk’s invitation to quit their jobs

#170

Post by anonymousab »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #148
mehrdada wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% agree. Once the dust settles my prediction is productivity will also soar.

Why would this happen? From the outside, it seems like Elon is absolutely decimating employee morale. See for example this thread from an engineer who has no beef with Elon and wants to see Twitter succeed, but still took the severance: https://twitter.com/peterclowes/status/1593458225533313025

If you burn everything to the ground and then basically hire a whole new team to work on a whole new app and platform, then your productivity has nowhere to go but up.
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