231–240 of 481 posts
Cut half - faster decisions, more money. Will you have more problems, Yes. But you'll never know how bloated you were till you get lean again.
2. Too expensive humans
Most developers at FANGS can be replaced with mediocre devs in iowa or India. They will cut high-priced salaries soon and replace them with entry-level talent.
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Thanks for confirming
Twitter has lost 75% of it's employees, 50% of it's revenue and gained 25% more debt. It's gone from a break even company to financial ruination. Twitter is shutting down data centers and offices. Elon Musk has single handedly collapsed the company. Twitter will shortly be either bankrupt or personally funded by Elon Musk's bank balance by the end of the year.
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> with seeming negligible external-facing impact on the core product. Twitter is said to have lost $2.5 Billion/year in advertiser money, largely because Twitter's sales teams have not been returning emails from worried Advertisers. That's a pretty huge impact on Twitter's #1 revenue stream (estimated to be $5 Billion in 2021). Twitter's core product is advertisements. Without sales staff to keep the advertisers, the…
Interesting that Twitter is shipping features faster than ever after 80% layoffs. Don't think Twitter's revenue issues have anything to do with sales staff. Advertising channels/campaigns can and should be 100% automated.
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Why would they spend any amount much less $3b or $10b to keep people they don’t need/want?
Normally, hiring 11,000 people you "didn't need" would be a warning sign that management was incompetent and require much more than just laying off the unneeded workers. It would suggest that large reforms are needed in planning and hiring. But these days it's just dismissed as an "oops!".
It's a bad signal that Microsoft can't think of any development worth doing.
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They obviously did that because the API is not benefiting them at all from a revenue perspective. If it were, they wouldn't have gotten rid of it. Twitter was run as a charity prior to the acquisition. Just as many VC fat tech companies were
The API benefitted power users primarily who are responsible for keeping their large number of followers on Twitter.
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It's silly to mention the cash on the balance sheet without also mentioning the debt of $77B. In reality, the net cash position is on the order of magnitude of $30B which puts a much tighter perspective on the impact of this cut. 40% of all public companies created since market inception in 1871 have gone bankrupt including many of the bluest of the blue chips. Complacent thinking like this is often the reason. Addit…
I would think the figure of public companies gone bankrupt to be much much higher over that long of a time frame.
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What I took from it – and I think they might be on to something – is that it's opportunistic firing. Firing people at this scale would have been pretty expensive just a few month back, PR wise. Right now, a lot less so. So you might be tempted to think of the current climate as a good opportunity to shed some fat, to the point where you go into it with the idea of hiring back right away and being able to do so at bet…
PR wise to who though? I don't think any of Microsoft's customers actually care. For developer hiring yeah it will hurt their PR, but at the end of the day sorry to say devs tend to go where the pay is highest irrespective of PR.
To give an example in microcosm, this news about layoffs is affecting my decision of what UI framework to use with .NET projects. .NET MAUI was already low on my list because I don't trust Microsoft to commit to supporting a UI framework long-term, but if any of these cuts are to the MAUI team then it will put it out of the running completely for me. I'm sure there are other devs in similar circumstances (and who likely rank MAUI much higher as a candidate than I do) who will weigh this layoff announcement into their decision. And there will be some who ignore it because they see it as a general symptom of the economy, not a sign of trouble at Microsoft etc.
Bloat is real, but there's another labor market dynamic in play here. There was a huge run-up in corporate employee compensation in the tech sector over the last few years. (Some called it a "shortage," remember. Some of it is genuine growth in the sector, some of it was definitely "labor hoarding" by large companies that could afford to carry excess staff in a tight market as a hedge against being unable to fill cri…
I also wouldn't describe it as a "war on talent" when it is actually a "war on wages." This is is also the reason I wouldn't be surprised to find actual collusion here.
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It's silly to mention the cash on the balance sheet without also mentioning the debt of $77B. In reality, the net cash position is on the order of magnitude of $30B which puts a much tighter perspective on the impact of this cut. 40% of all public companies created since market inception in 1871 have gone bankrupt including many of the bluest of the blue chips. Complacent thinking like this is often the reason. Addit…
I would think the figure of public companies gone bankrupt to be much much higher over that long of a time frame.
Its why almost no YC companies have “gone bankrupt,” someone one will usually pay a nominal amount “for a team” and founders are happy for the soft landing.