361–370 of 852 posts
It's exhausting how much attention this gets and how everyone has an opinion about it.
Journalism continues to fall in the "bullshit" camp that Frankfurt warned us about:
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691122946/on...
It's up to us to fine-tune our bullshit detectors in the current climate.
So, it was a simple corporate raid after all. Welcome back to the 70s: energy markets problems, inflation, and now finally some good old corporate raiding with LBOs. PS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_raid
Corporate raid is aimed at making changes to the company specifically to increase share price. The idea is that the resulting share price increase covers at least significant part of the cost of getting majority stake. This makes the buyout relatively cheap or even free.
Which of course makes little sense if you are also taking the company private.
I would also like to point out that the whole point of buying a controlling stake in the company usually is to exert some control. And to buy it out completely and take it private is to exert complete control without having to explain yourself (too much).
There is, of course, possibility of the investor buying shares because they are content with current management and do not plan to interfere even after they have acquired majority stake. But this, in my experience, is quite rare.
So, it was a simple corporate raid after all. Welcome back to the 70s: energy markets problems, inflation, and now finally some good old corporate raiding with LBOs. PS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_raid
Interesting that David Sacks and Jason Calacanis are "Staff software engineers" - assuming that's accurate. To my knowledge, neither have worked as professional software engineers. Calacanis is a journalist turned entrepreneur/investor and Sacks is a former management consultant who became a C-suite during the dotcom boom who later became an entrepreneur/investor.
It’s a shame that Twitter is no longer public because I can’t imagine something more profitable than shorting a company than Jason Calacanis is an executive of.
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Elsewhere in this thread, people are discussing a potentially-credible (but maybe you disagree) report on this from Gergely Orosz that does not paint this as "only the 3 senior executives". https://twitter.com/gergelyorosz/status/1587042365084209153?... > I talked with an engineering manager who was at Twitter for 5+ years, and got laid off on Sunday "for cause". They were too exhausted from working over the weekend…
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Its still a sad occasion to see them fired for no/little reason.
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Firing 25% of the workforce "for cause" looks like a very hard sell to me, and would open up Twitter for a barrage of lawsuits - and rightly so. Even laying off 25% of the workers would be hard to justify at this point. I'm certainly curious where this all is going.
Even California still has at-will employment. He doesn’t need cause, or anyone else to agree on what that cause is.
6 months ago it was all painted (maybe seemingly, though, by prior executives who weren't speaking for Musk) as if this wouldn't be a big deal for employees, which to me makes this idea that people are being rapidly fired "for cause" after a suddenly-imposed weekend work shift deadline extra shitty :/. (Even if I do sometimes claim that Twitter is incompetent as an organization or bloated with idle staff, these are h…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Elsewhere in this thread, people are discussing a potentially-credible (but maybe you disagree) report on this from Gergely Orosz that does not paint this as "only the 3 senior executives". https://twitter.com/gergelyorosz/status/1587042365084209153?... > I talked with an engineering manager who was at Twitter for 5+ years, and got laid off on Sunday "for cause". They were too exhausted from working over the weekend…
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It's not intended for the business to continue operating after a leveraged buyout. Leveraged buyouts are typically used where the company has assets that aren't "productive" or is made up of more-or-less independent units that are worth more separate than together. In these cases, cutting expenses by firing people is usually the first step, since the business' revenue stream can usually continue on autopilot for a wh…
There is no share price: all of twitter is private. Maybe if the company is taxated?
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> 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.
Everything in life is tradeoffs. American software engineers get paid more than basically anyone else in the world, but we also have less job security. What's preferable just depends on your risk aversion vs marginal utility of money.
There are states in the US where teacher's unions are out-lawed. US workers don't have rights. I have a feeling you might feel differently if not part of the segment of the working class that happens to be seeing benefits atm.