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Musk’s inner circle worked through weekend to cement Twitter layoff plans

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Musk’s inner circle worked through weekend to cement Twitter layoff plans

#111

Post by MentallyRetired »

Alex3917 wrote: post #25

> Longtime Musk associates David Sacks and Jason Calacanis appeared in a company directory over the weekend, according to photos obtained by The Washington Post. Both had official company emails and their titles were "staff software engineer." Do either of these guys even know how to program? Calacanis has been making tech content for decades, and I've never once heard him talk about writing code.

Mahalo was such a success, I can see why getting put on as a staff engineer makes sense. Calacanis was already a twit long before twitter was around.

Re: Musk’s inner circle worked through weekend to cement Twitter layoff plans

#112

Post by [deleted] »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #14

> Another person familiar with the deal who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters last week said the total number of layoffs is likely to be closer to 50 percent. Unless I’m missing something, the only sources for this article are a mix of speculation and anonymous sources who can’t even agree with each other about the layoff.

[deleted]

Re: Musk’s inner circle worked through weekend to cement Twitter layoff plans

#113

Post by drstewart »

xnorswap wrote: post #103
jdm2212 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For salaried, at-will employment, the employer can demand whatever they want and fire you for whatever reason they want. There are exceptions for, like, sexual harassment and racial discrimination, but not for "I disagree with the boss about what is a realistic project timeline".

> the employer can demand whatever they want and fire you for whatever reason they want In the US. I'm glad I work in a country where workers actually have rights.

Good for you.

Re: Musk’s inner circle worked through weekend to cement Twitter layoff plans

#114

Post by s1artibartfast »

falcolas wrote: post #97
sneak wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, there is a fair amount of respect (in business at least) for the idea of “consent to continue the interaction can be revoked with or without cause at any time”. I personally can’t see a good reason why it should be illegal outside the rare edge case where there is only a single employer in a geographical region, and even that unfortunate situation should probably be remediated with a different type of gove…

> Employers should be able to be unreasonable and shoot their business in the foot, no? No. Not when they hold an employees ability to meet basic human needs and their access to Healthcare over their employee's heads. At-will employment is ideologically built on the equal splitting of the power between an employer and employee. The reality is as far from equal as can be.

I see a ton of signs saying help wanted in frot of businesses.

Re: Musk’s inner circle worked through weekend to cement Twitter layoff plans

#115

Post by Rahul_Ligma »

phpisthebest wrote: post #96
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #14

> Another person familiar with the deal who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters last week said the total number of layoffs is likely to be closer to 50 percent. Unless I’m missing something, the only sources for this article are a mix of speculation and anonymous sources who can’t even agree with each other about the layoff.

Quoted post unavailable.

No post body was provided.

Re: Musk’s inner circle worked through weekend to cement Twitter layoff plans

#116

Post by lefstathiou »

brtkdotse wrote: post #24
lefstathiou wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't seem like an insurmountable obstacle. From some Googling: "Employers who fail to provide notification must provide their laid-off employees with back pay and benefits for the period of the violation (which means the amount of time by which their advance notice fell short of 60 days)." The value of ripping off the Band-Aid could easily be worth two months of severance in his mind.

It’s not the severance that’s the issue, it that a bunch of RSUs vest tomorrow.

I need to read into this more…

My understanding is that this was a take private so all stock was acquired already (ie vested options get paid and unvested get terminated at Close).

This is exactly what would happen if you acquired our company. It’s not like a purchaser would have the honor long term vesting schedules. They bought everything already that was available to be sold. Those who didn’t vest were dragged along into the deal.

Re: Musk’s inner circle worked through weekend to cement Twitter layoff plans

#118

Post by TeMPOraL »

makestuff wrote: post #62
jdm2212 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless the sales people are bringing in more than that in sales.

I have a friend who works in sales at a tech company and since all of this accounts are long term customers he really doesn't do much. They like the service so it is basically an auto-renewal. So I guess Elon thinks that advertisers will just auto renew because they like the ROI they get from their spend on twitter. However, what he fails to realize is the media buyers love to be wined and dined with fancy dinners. I…

> However, what he fails to realize is the media buyers love to be wined and dined with fancy dinners. If you fire all of your sales staff they will just take their spend to the next company who can take them to five star meals and other cool outings.

Advertising spend doesn't work like pharmaceutical sales. They will renew precisely because they like the ROI, whether they get pampered or not, because as advertising channels, social media platform are additive. If it gives you positive ROI, you're strictly better off advertising on a network than not advertising on it, because the social networks themselves are mutually exclusive in terms of attention. That is, you can't access Twitter's eyeball-seconds any other way than through Twitter.

Re: Musk’s inner circle worked through weekend to cement Twitter layoff plans

#119

Post by swozey »

dave78 wrote: post #88
swozey wrote: post #9

Evidently Musk had Tweeps work all weekend on the new Verified feature lest they get fired, and some were fired "for cause" anyway. https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1587029446061686784

Most of the national/international media has been scrutinizing Twitter all weekend, specifically looking for signs of layoffs. It seems odd that this person would have scooped them all on that? Not saying it's impossible or anything, but it does make me a little suspicious.

Not that I'd say use them as the only source but they've been a source for other layoffs for a long time and he's usually correct if not always. He's the author of a few Engineering books (The Pragmatic Engineer, etc.) so he gets a lot of inside information from current and past SWEs.

Re: Musk’s inner circle worked through weekend to cement Twitter layoff plans

#120

Post by photochemsyn »

jupp0r wrote: post #107
photochemsyn wrote: post #93

The Washington Post really has lost a lot of credibility since the Bezos purchase in 2013. It reflects a trend of consolidation of corporate media in the hands of America's ruling oligarchs (who exert far more influence over federal policies and expenditures than any Congressperson, and perhaps the President as well). For example, I can't imagine the WaPo taking this same tone with regard to a Bezos acquisition or co…

That's why we have multiple newspapers. The other ones can cover for deficiencies of a single one. The Post is doing great investigative journalism still, including this piece.

I understand the argument, but I find this a bit disturbing, as there are some topics that all of the oligarch-owned newspapers will not be willing to cover in depth. There is kind of a 'fringe' that will publish some details, i.e.

"(2020) Amazon: We Totally Don’t Want To Spy On You. Also Amazon: We Just Hired The Architect Of The NSA’s Mass Domestic Surveillance Program"

https://dailycaller.com/2020/09/10/amazon-surveillance-nsa-d...

However, most people view that outlet as a highly partisan right-wing opinion-centric source (with rather limited sources), not at all the 'traditional unbiased news media' - which instead avoid the story, and instead just churn out a stream of pro-government, pro-corporate propaganda 24/7. This is pretty unhealthy IMO, since, ahem, 'democracy dies in darkness', and is the kind of behavior you see from Chinese and Russian state media, not from independent journalism.

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