Twitter Plans Hundreds More Job Cuts as Soon as This Week • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter Plans Hundreds More Job Cuts as Soon as This Week

#311

Post by krinchan » Tue, Oct 25, 2016, 2:51 PM UTC

user5994461 wrote: post #251

jusben1369 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah. I think patio11 just joined Stripe, one of the fastest growing startups around :) Anyway, besides many of the usual answers, talent is a key one often forgotten. People want the chance to do new and ever changing things so as to be challenged. It's hard to retain good people when they know it's going to be a smaller company with modest growth. What often kills companies with slowish growth is that they lose thei…

> What often kills companies with slowish growth is that they lose their best people to other companies with a more dynamic environment. Till the best people get tired of stuff everchanging and breaking, combined with the lack of resources and the 70 hours startup week. Then they drop the 'dynamic environment' and come back to Big Goompany :D

I can't tell you how true this is. A lot of my friends still in the startup world call me a "burn out" and accuse me of having "no ambition."

Yeah, I have no ambition. Yet I can totally take a week off and head to Puerto Rico. Not only does the world not end, but I don't get called with an emergency while I'm hiking through the rainforest to find a swimming hole.

I get to go out every weekend. I go out on Sundays. I go out whenever. I pretty much key in 40 hours and work 35 hours a week (10 a.m. to 5 or 6).

Yeah, maybe I don't get paid above $200,000, but my life is straight out of some Oprah "Live your best life" book. So bite me. I'll take no ambition over that startup life any day.

Re: Twitter Plans Hundreds More Job Cuts as Soon as This Week

#312

Post by fwn » Tue, Oct 25, 2016, 2:52 PM UTC

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #77

niftich wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's risky -- it's hard to compete with 'free', because it takes no money and very little effort. If Twitter charges even just a little for influencers to post, lots of them will just shift more of their announcements to Facebook status updates -- a somewhat similar feature of the other social app everyone already has installed. Despite no one platform offering exact feature+UX parity with Twitter, there are several…

I'm used to seeing junk on Fb and constantly ignore it; I don't think Twitter suffers from that.

In both cases, Twitter and Facebook, the content you see is entirely based on who you follow.

Re: Twitter Plans Hundreds More Job Cuts as Soon as This Week

#313

Post by Tiktaalik » Tue, Oct 25, 2016, 3:06 PM UTC

flukus wrote: post #129

madengr wrote: post #10

You'd think they would have figured out targeted ads by now. If I follow people who post about RF/Microwave, antennas, SDR, and ham radio, one would think I'd see ads from Keysight and Tektronix, but no, it's garbage like football and pop music. FAIL! I also don't like that I don't see all the tweets from a person. They are pruning the timeline. Good riddance to twitter.

I think tumblr is struggling with this too. The closest thing to targeted ads I see are very broadly (nation level) geographic targeting.

When you consider how 100% single interest oriented many tumblogs are it's just shocking how badly targeted the ads on Tumblr are.

Re: Twitter Plans Hundreds More Job Cuts as Soon as This Week

#314

Post by cicero » Tue, Oct 25, 2016, 3:10 PM UTC

I was at a presentation for high school students last week. At the end, the presenter gave out contact information for Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. There was no mention of Twitter.

Re: Twitter Plans Hundreds More Job Cuts as Soon as This Week

#315

Post by bduerst » Tue, Oct 25, 2016, 3:12 PM UTC

nikcub wrote: post #199

rattray wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Woah, they only have 3800 employees and spend 2.7Bn/yr? That's 700k per employee. What's all that money for?

Stock options. It starts at the top: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cuplqd1XEAEre6n.jpg:large Being paid $72M p.a to oversee ~$500M p.a in losses. Great job if you can get it.

To be fair, that guy was previously CFO for the NFL. I'm not saying it's the right decision but they probably had to pay him that much just to draw him away.

Re: Twitter Plans Hundreds More Job Cuts as Soon as This Week

#316

Post by bduerst » Tue, Oct 25, 2016, 3:13 PM UTC

detaro wrote: post #144

madengr wrote: post #10

You'd think they would have figured out targeted ads by now. If I follow people who post about RF/Microwave, antennas, SDR, and ham radio, one would think I'd see ads from Keysight and Tektronix, but no, it's garbage like football and pop music. FAIL! I also don't like that I don't see all the tweets from a person. They are pruning the timeline. Good riddance to twitter.

I at least get tech-related ads, but they are surprisingly useless as well. People trying to sell me tips to market my (non-existing) content better. Companies trying to be "hip" for young people. Ads that clearly haven't been translated by a native speaker. There is some monitoring service whose ads I get shown ALL the time. The ad says "The Pingdom Alternative" in large letters and I can't even remember the name of…

I've used twitter ads to some success, but the cost per acquisition was higher than other social media so after several rounds of optimization I ended up dropping it. I wouldn't write them off just yet, though.

Re: Twitter Plans Hundreds More Job Cuts as Soon as This Week

#317

Post by optimuspaul » Tue, Oct 25, 2016, 3:18 PM UTC

aub3bhat wrote: post #247

_wp3r wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would suggest that Twitter is a niche. It is in a brand management and customer engagement niche, and without some giant platform change, I think that trying to profit by increasing the number of eyeballs is always going to be challenging to the bottom line if the business value does not dramatically increase. The noise in twitters ecosystem from all those users, while interesting and good for research data sets, w…

Twitter a billion dollar company, a social network used by presidential candidates and tens of millions of people is a niche?? Do you understand the dictionary meaning of the term "niche" if anything Twitter is opposite of it.

totally agree. Twitter may have a limited set of features which may make it seem "niche", but it's market is basically everyone.

Re: Twitter Plans Hundreds More Job Cuts as Soon as This Week

#318

Post by wcummings » Tue, Oct 25, 2016, 3:18 PM UTC

aub3bhat wrote: post #247

_wp3r wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would suggest that Twitter is a niche. It is in a brand management and customer engagement niche, and without some giant platform change, I think that trying to profit by increasing the number of eyeballs is always going to be challenging to the bottom line if the business value does not dramatically increase. The noise in twitters ecosystem from all those users, while interesting and good for research data sets, w…

Twitter a billion dollar company, a social network used by presidential candidates and tens of millions of people is a niche?? Do you understand the dictionary meaning of the term "niche" if anything Twitter is opposite of it.

Twitter's niche is media types, for sure.

Re: Twitter Plans Hundreds More Job Cuts as Soon as This Week

#319

Post by optimuspaul » Tue, Oct 25, 2016, 3:19 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #260

aub3bhat wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter a billion dollar company, a social network used by presidential candidates and tens of millions of people is a niche?? Do you understand the dictionary meaning of the term "niche" if anything Twitter is opposite of it.

The entirety of Twitter is a subset of one feature of Facebook - that's why its referred to as niche.

features don't make it niche, user base does and twitters user base is anything but niche, it's potentially the connected whole world.

Re: Twitter Plans Hundreds More Job Cuts as Soon as This Week

#320

Post by criddell » Tue, Oct 25, 2016, 3:23 PM UTC

throwthisawayt wrote: post #78

laluser wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they liable for those promises though? I am legitimately curious to know if they are contractually obligated to grow at a certain rate or be at certain valuation at this point in time.

They are liable in the sense that they report to a board chosen by their investors. So if I bought or invested in company XYZ at a valuation that assumed a lot of growth and company XYZ suddenly stopped pursuing that growth I would probably vote out current management. So yes most companies are beholden to investors; don't raise money if you don't want a new boss.

> I would probably vote out current management

That presumes that you think new management could successfully grow the company. Twitter's growth might be done.