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Twitter’s CEO Dick Costolo Is Stepping Down

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Re: Twitter’s CEO Dick Costolo Is Stepping Down

#251

Post by themartorana »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #242
themartorana wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and no. It's a monopoly that can't charge what it takes to stay afloat. Raising prices or changing delivery schedules requires an act of Congress! No member of Congress wants to have to answer for that, so the price of sending a letter hundreds - if not thousands - of miles, to be hand-delivered remains under one-half of one dollar $USD . THAT IS INSANE. It's been argued, deftly, that even with a decline in volum…

They can make a profit by paying their workers less. This is really about the USPS workers' union vs. Congress.

And your company could make more by paying you less. But that would be unfair, wouldn't it?

Re: Twitter’s CEO Dick Costolo Is Stepping Down

#252

Post by coldpie »

phil21 wrote: post #218
matwood wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which is wildly successful and doesn't cost us taxpayers a dime. You have to be kidding! The USPS is a disaster and barely works. I'm about to cancel my prime membership because Amazon started using the USPS although Amazon have finally got the message at least for my account and rarely use them now. Look up Prime and USPS if you want to see pages and pages just how bad service is with the USPS.

I used to think people like you had to be lying, because my service with the USPS in the Minneapolis area growing up was absolutely stellar. The value on the dollar was by far the best, and the friendly counter agents would help you figure out how to ship something the way you want. Then I moved to Chicago and understood why the USPS gets such a bad rap. Lines a mile long, counter agents that can be called uncaring a…

Huh. I live in the cities and have always been happy with USPS and am always baffled by other peoples' complaints about it. Interesting to know it's because our local service is outstanding.

Re: Twitter’s CEO Dick Costolo Is Stepping Down

#253

Post by blfr »

themartorana wrote: post #251
SamReidHughes wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can make a profit by paying their workers less. This is really about the USPS workers' union vs. Congress.

And your company could make more by paying you less. But that would be unfair, wouldn't it?

That's exactly what every profitable company does: pay their workers less than they otherwise could. The only alternative is to distribute all profit among employees. (And some people who believe that profiting from other people's work is immoral advocate just that.)

Re: Twitter’s CEO Dick Costolo Is Stepping Down

#254

Post by mathattack »

sirkneeland wrote: post #185
mathattack wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a high class way for him to leave, that may set up other options for him in the future (VC, Professorship, etc) that wouldn't be there if it was an ugly breakup. Given that the stock traded at all time lows, no severance was justified. https://www.google.com/finance?cid=32086821185414

That didn't stop Leo Apothekar for collecting $30 million in severance after tanking HP. Nor did it stop Stephen Elop from collecting $25 million after running Nokia's devices business into the ground/arms of Microsoft (although I think technically that was structured as a "bonus") Reminds me of some quote I heard somewhere: "CEO: where success is rewarded handsomely and failure only slightly less so"

I agree completely. That's why I consider a high class way for him to exit. I was going to make a comment about Apothekar's behavior pre-empting him from having a future business career but actually it doesn't seem to harm him.

Re: Twitter’s CEO Dick Costolo Is Stepping Down

#255

Post by pyre »

wyclif wrote: post #220
pyre wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I always wanted Twitter to be more like a public utility Twitter is a business, how were you expecting this to work? For the USG to aqui-hire them?

It's a business now . You can't go back and reinvent it now, which is clear from my comment above. But that wasn't always so. In 2006 it wasn't so. I remember those early days when only nerds were using Twitter. Now, you can't sustain a business that way, I know that. But Twitter was always supposed to be minimalist and web-enabled SMS. It's a shame, IMO, that because of "monetization" they have to make all these mov…

> I think there was a time when Twitter could have been "rolled in" to the public Internet in a way that would be more open and free of this grasping for a profit strategy.

Hey, I remember such a time. I remember when Twitter was the "in" thing, and "everyone" (read: only techies in the Bay area) was using it. I remember how lots of conventions that are baked into the system today (@ notation for user references, "RT:" for retweeting, etc) were organically generated community standards.

All of that said, Twitter as a system had major hurdles to overcome to become a utility in the way that you want. But assuming that they published a standard, and created some sort of federated system (e.g. XMPP) how would this be anything but a money-sink? Would Twitter still be in use today? Would Facebook have copied most of what the public wants out of Twitter, and that would be it? How expensive would it be for a major provided of "Twitter Protocol Service" to maintain an SMS gateway? Would anyone actually pay for this service? What about inter-node security? Would we see something akin to the joke that is TLS between SMTP servers?

Re: Twitter’s CEO Dick Costolo Is Stepping Down

#256

Post by aianus »

themartorana wrote: post #251
SamReidHughes wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can make a profit by paying their workers less. This is really about the USPS workers' union vs. Congress.

And your company could make more by paying you less. But that would be unfair, wouldn't it?

Not at all. In fact I would expect them to do so were it not for competitive offers from other employers.

Re: Twitter’s CEO Dick Costolo Is Stepping Down

#257

Post by ryguytilidie »

andybak wrote: post #236
abalone wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to be Elon Musk to be a "product visionary". It's simply someone who's good at envisioning new products. They don't all have to save the planet (and Musk is standing on the shoulders of giants with his). We should also be careful not to base our impressions on sensational stories spun by disgruntled ex-employees who've gone on to do jack squat. Not a lot of "hipsters in a suit" have gone on to found a…

> It's simply someone who's good at envisioning new products We risk running out of superlatives if we take that attitude. Can we reserve 'visionary' for those 'once in a generation' types and not degrade it to mean 'competent product manager'.

Objecting to someone calling Jack Dorsey a visionary because you believe its hyperbole and then calling him a "competent product manager" seems just as, if not more disingenuous.

Re: Twitter’s CEO Dick Costolo Is Stepping Down

#258

Post by checker »

SeoxyS wrote: post #162
binxbolling wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is wildly successful and doesn't cost us taxpayers a dime. If our "leaders" stopped actively sabotaging the USPS, it could be doing even better.

If it was wildly successful, how did we end up with tons of private competitors with a large market share (FedEx, UPS, DHL, OnTrac, etc). The U.S. Is one of the only countries where the state run postal service isn't sufficient. In Switzerland, for example, there is only the Swiss Post. Most countries, to my knowledge, operate with just one major postal network.

All of those companies that you listed are profiting off of USPS capacity.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-mail-does-the-trick-for-fede...

Re: Twitter’s CEO Dick Costolo Is Stepping Down

#259

Post by checker »

matwood wrote: post #187
binxbolling wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is wildly successful and doesn't cost us taxpayers a dime. If our "leaders" stopped actively sabotaging the USPS, it could be doing even better.

> Which is wildly successful and doesn't cost us taxpayers a dime. You have to be kidding! The USPS is a disaster and barely works. I'm about to cancel my prime membership because Amazon started using the USPS although Amazon have finally got the message at least for my account and rarely use them now. Look up Prime and USPS if you want to see pages and pages just how bad service is with the USPS.

What if I told you that USPS was probably carrying some of your Prime packages for Fedex and you just didn't know about it?

http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-mail-does-the-trick-for-fede...

Re: Twitter’s CEO Dick Costolo Is Stepping Down

#260

Post by jazzyk »

blumkvist wrote: post #90
myth_buster wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can be good to your employees and bad for stockholders. One way to do this is to hand out bonuses instead of dividends. Agreed. But don't the employees have higher stakes running on the long term success of the company compared to investors who are known to be in for short term profit and hence can't the former be a better indicator? Eg: Mass employee exodus results in company going bust while the team can still…

Employees often have less business acumen then an old lady selling on the open market. I find it amusing that people who can code think they can do anything and everything. Despite what you like to to believe, those MBAs do have value. Lots of it.

Many MBAs have less business acumen than that old lady as well. Having an MBA is not a guarantee of providing value.
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