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Musk orders Twitter to cut infrastructure costs by $1B – sources

reuters.com

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Re: Musk orders Twitter to cut infrastructure costs by $1B – sources

#101

Post by colechristensen »

SicSemperUranus wrote: post #38
seibelj wrote: post #21

Everyone on the internet knows how to run Twitter better than the richest man on earth who revolutionized both the electric car and private space industries. I wish I could invest in Twitter now but I’ll wait for the cryptocurrency launch.

Your sarcastic implication being that being good at managing car and space companies make him good at managing a social media company? Not only that, good enough to be better at it than his predecessor? Not only that , he's better at it within days of arriving? Occam's razor says he's a big impulsive dummy.

Optimizing a factory is indeed quite a lot like optimizing cloud infrastructure. Different domains but there is a lot of overlapping skill set and having developed that from zero scaling Tesla is exactly the experience that would make an executive good at reducing costs and bringing Twitter to profitability.

Building cars is the place where modern efficiency practices were developed. (Much of it started in post war Japan with American auto industry help, the fusion of cultures developed something quite useful)

Re: Musk orders Twitter to cut infrastructure costs by $1B – sources

#102

Post by tluyben2 »

partiallypro wrote: post #49
frellus wrote: post #20

To be fair, there are going to be plenty of critical leaks coming out of Twitter with a 50% cutting of staff. That's so many whistleblowers, my backyard is completely leaf free now. Frankly, if Musk cuts $1B from the run rate and there isn't a bad outage, a lot of people will look pretty stupid. To be fair, I don't know if Twitter is overspending on infrastructure, but I would guess there are always places to streaml…

I had a friend that worked for a massive company in the Valley which I'll leave unnamed, that told me about them just leaving servers running hot with no throughput for months at a time. So, I guess it's possible. I doubt his estimate was pulled out of a hat (but I could be wrong, or the article could just be pulling that out of a hat/using an unreliable source.) I've taken over AWS and Azure accounts before that wer…

Yep, same here; as a (well paid) hobby, I help smaller companies lower their software bills. When they use 'cloud hosting' instead of a vps or something, that's usually the first point where I can cut 80%+. It is crazy how many things are running there that are not used or needed in almost every company I see.

Usually there are software issues (most commonly, no, not enough or plainly wrong db indexes being the #1 top scorer) which drive rds bills to scary height for no reason at all, but the low hanging fruit is unused cloud 'stuff'.

Re: Musk orders Twitter to cut infrastructure costs by $1B – sources

#103

Post by watwut »

edge17 wrote: post #25

Why does this article claim to know that Twitter might go down due to cost cutting? Isn't there a possibility that their infrastructure is just hugely wasteful? Having never worked at giant web app company, if it were run efficiently then what should we expect their server and infra costs to be? Surely that is the type of Fermi calculation someone on this site can make.

It is possible to simultaneously have unnecessary spending on infrastructure and then cut it in a way that makes whole thing unreliable.

Given large layoffs and general chaos, mistakes and bad cuts are much more likely. Especially when you git deadline and goal saving made by clueless executive.

Re: Musk orders Twitter to cut infrastructure costs by $1B – sources

#104

Post by watwut »

tfsh wrote: post #12
refurb wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why a waste? Sounds like a smart move? Buy a company, drastically reduce unnecessary expenses.

All those unnecessary expenses like content moderation and robust fault tolerant infrastructure.

And team that communicates with advertisers for advertisers.

Re: Musk orders Twitter to cut infrastructure costs by $1B – sources

#105

Post by watwut »

GoOnThenDoTell wrote: post #57
partiallypro wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'd be easily found out by a smart engineer and promptly fired and probably banned by every competitor once word got out.

Incompetence and mistakes are usually hard to prove is malice

one does not want to employ either

Re: Musk orders Twitter to cut infrastructure costs by $1B – sources

#106

Post by darthrupert »

afavour wrote: post #63
8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an app for billionaires and journos to crank out viral memes, not a pacemaker. The world will be ok.

Not really the point here. If you spent tens of billions purchasing Twitter you presumably don’t want the world to be without it. You have a very active interest in making it a success.

Unless you're so beyond caring and vindictive that you're willing to do that just to screw over the shareholders who forced you to buy the company.

Re: Musk orders Twitter to cut infrastructure costs by $1B – sources

#107

Post by hither_shores »

colechristensen wrote: post #99
afavour wrote: post #4

$1bn, the exact amount of debt interest Twitter now has to pay off after Musk saddled it with so much debt. So much of this feels like such a waste. I don’t have any problem with the idea of someone taking Twitter private in order to fix it. But with this kind of debt financing and with a CEO that doesn’t seem to understand the company (and tried to get out of buying it)…

Wait, what debt has Musk made Twitter take on? (being at the helm mere days, I really doubt there's any, debt like that takes longer to raise) Musk himself took on ~$12 billion to finance the deal, that debt isn't on Twitter's books.

It was a leveraged buyout

Re: Musk orders Twitter to cut infrastructure costs by $1B – sources

#108

Post by tomas_nort »

tluyben2 wrote: post #102
partiallypro wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a friend that worked for a massive company in the Valley which I'll leave unnamed, that told me about them just leaving servers running hot with no throughput for months at a time. So, I guess it's possible. I doubt his estimate was pulled out of a hat (but I could be wrong, or the article could just be pulling that out of a hat/using an unreliable source.) I've taken over AWS and Azure accounts before that wer…

Yep, same here; as a (well paid) hobby, I help smaller companies lower their software bills. When they use 'cloud hosting' instead of a vps or something, that's usually the first point where I can cut 80%+. It is crazy how many things are running there that are not used or needed in almost every company I see. Usually there are software issues (most commonly, no, not enough or plainly wrong db indexes being the #1 to…

Could you explain how db indexes are costs having no reason at all?

Re: Musk orders Twitter to cut infrastructure costs by $1B – sources

#109

Post by Thorrez »

tomas_nort wrote: post #108
tluyben2 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, same here; as a (well paid) hobby, I help smaller companies lower their software bills. When they use 'cloud hosting' instead of a vps or something, that's usually the first point where I can cut 80%+. It is crazy how many things are running there that are not used or needed in almost every company I see. Usually there are software issues (most commonly, no, not enough or plainly wrong db indexes being the #1 to…

Could you explain how db indexes are costs having no reason at all?

I assume tluyben2 means that if the db's index is bad the query has to do a much more expensive scan of the database. By adding correct indices this can be fixed.

Re: Musk orders Twitter to cut infrastructure costs by $1B – sources

#110

Post by tluyben2 »

Thorrez wrote: post #109
tomas_nort wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you explain how db indexes are costs having no reason at all?

I assume tluyben2 means that if the db's index is bad the query has to do a much more expensive scan of the database. By adding correct indices this can be fixed.

That is indeed what I meant; with very little effort and not having much knowledge about database internals, you can save a ton of money. It won’t be perfect that way, but goes a long way vs no indices at all. So that’s why ‘no reason’. Aka very low hanging fruit.

Sorry for not being clear and thanks for explaining.

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