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Mark Zuckerberg explains why so many tech companies are doing layoffs

businessinsider.com

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Re: Mark Zuckerberg explains why so many tech companies are doing layoffs

#41

Post by dogma1138 »

croes wrote: post #37
Brigand wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not publicly traded, value estimates are more like political statements now. To the owner, getting running cost down may have made twitter long term viable.

>getting running cost down may have made twitter long term viable. That may have worked, but Musk limited the reach of tweets by only allowing logged-in users to see the entire thread and comments. Not to mention insulting advertisers.

Ads are still visible when you aren’t logged on, in fact they take a fare greater real estate of the screen now so Elon’s antics aside as far as advertisers go they get a better deal now.

Before the change you could scroll down past the ads for the rest of the thread, now you only see the linked tweet and then ads.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg explains why so many tech companies are doing layoffs

#42

Post by Nextgrid »

Zanfa wrote: post #7
BMc2020 wrote: post #2

Zuckerberg said that companies are no longer shrinking their employee size simply because of overhiring — they're now realizing there can be benefits to being leaner. While a lot of tech companies were reluctant to make cuts at first, they realized it didn't spell the end, Zuckerberg said. Translation: They all saw Twitter cut 80% of its staff and yet is still online.

> Translation: They all saw Twitter cut 80% of its staff and yet is still online. Is it though? Any time there's a Twitter link, clicking on it has at least a 1/3 chance of seeing "Something went wrong. Try again?".

To be fair, this is entirely a result of having too many front end developers and needing to find busywork for them. So instead of the tweet data being sent by the server in HTML, you load megabytes of JS that (if the stars align and it doesn’t “go wrong”) will then request the tweet from the server and display it.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg explains why so many tech companies are doing layoffs

#43

Post by karlgkk »

paganel wrote: post #24
BMc2020 wrote: post #2

Zuckerberg said that companies are no longer shrinking their employee size simply because of overhiring — they're now realizing there can be benefits to being leaner. While a lot of tech companies were reluctant to make cuts at first, they realized it didn't spell the end, Zuckerberg said. Translation: They all saw Twitter cut 80% of its staff and yet is still online.

> They all saw Twitter cut 80% of its staff and yet is still online. I remember the denialism on tech-focused forums like this one about that move, turns out it was the correct one from the owner's point of view. Of course that it s*cked big time for the employees being laid-off, but that's why we need to unionise in this industry and form some sort of solidarity/class consciousness, i.e. realising that the likes of…

There's a few things at play here.

First, Elon cut a bunch of "non-essential" core Twitter staff, like the trust and safety teams. This is going to cause long term brand damage - in fact, it already is!

Second, Elon completely cut all non-core Twitter projects. Twitter was being used by its major investors as a platform to build and test new social experiments and startup concepts. As far as I can tell, this was about 1000 engineers and product people. This was probably a pretty solid cut for someone like him, but also a pretty gross example of the whims of capital - who knows what great idea was killed off.

Lastly, when they say Twitter cut 80% of their staff, they never mentioned what happened after: massive attrition from people who "survived" but could go elsewhere. Way beyond what Elon thought would happen. Way beyond the 10-20% additional resignations after a normal layoff happens. This may have almost killed Twitter

Re: Mark Zuckerberg explains why so many tech companies are doing layoffs

#44

Post by StackRanker3000 »

throw310822 wrote: post #34
blitzar wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They all saw Twitter cut 80% of its staff and go from making money to losing money and their market cap slash by 50+%. If they saw that and thought they "we should do that too", they are idiots.

Twitter losing money is a political decision by advertisers. I don't mean this is a negative way- it might be perfectly legitimate- but it still has nothing to do with the technical viability of the service.

I agree that it has nothing to do with Twitter’s technical capabilities per se.

I disagree that it’s due to political decisions - it’s due to business decisions. To a large extent because Elon dropped the ball when major advertisers were figuring out their ad spend for 2023, but also because of a fear on their part of being associated with more and more unappealing content due to the new policies. Advertisers did not go ”oh, Elon wants more conservative content on Twitter, and because we support the Democrats, we’re gonna stop paying for ads on that platform to punish him”. They are acting in their own best financial interest.

Twitter’s finances are also hamstrung by the large amount of debt that Elon brought with his purchase, so in practice they need to perform even better than before.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg explains why so many tech companies are doing layoffs

#45

Post by selfmodruntime »

ignoramous wrote: post #32
selfmodruntime wrote: post #21

In my (unpopular) opinion and experience, companies are realizing that workshop / course trained employees who were after tech industry salaries as well as middle management types can be largely trimmed off after post-pandemic growth. I guess you don‘t need as many unmotivated employees / management / DEI types as previously thought. All of my friends who feel real love for their work and live and breathe tech are st…

> I guess you don't need as many unmotivated employees / management / DEI types as previously thought. All of my friends who feel real love for their work and live and breathe tech are still employed or have no problem finding employment. In my circles, those who get offers and those who are still employed are artisans par excellence, of course. No exceptions. Luck and circumstances have nothing to do with it. Others…

No. In my circles, those who are still employed are in positions not easily replaced, e.g devops or security. Webdevs and those in game development have suffered the most. As has management.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg explains why so many tech companies are doing layoffs

#46

Post by croes »

dogma1138 wrote: post #41
croes wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>getting running cost down may have made twitter long term viable. That may have worked, but Musk limited the reach of tweets by only allowing logged-in users to see the entire thread and comments. Not to mention insulting advertisers.

Ads are still visible when you aren’t logged on, in fact they take a fare greater real estate of the screen now so Elon’s antics aside as far as advertisers go they get a better deal now. Before the change you could scroll down past the ads for the rest of the thread, now you only see the linked tweet and then ads.

But it makes less sense to visit a Twitter link in the first place.

Without Nitter Twitter links are useless to me.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg explains why so many tech companies are doing layoffs

#47

Post by panarky »

throw310822 wrote: post #34
blitzar wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They all saw Twitter cut 80% of its staff and go from making money to losing money and their market cap slash by 50+%. If they saw that and thought they "we should do that too", they are idiots.

Twitter losing money is a political decision by advertisers. I don't mean this is a negative way- it might be perfectly legitimate- but it still has nothing to do with the technical viability of the service.

If you don't want your brand to appear next to violent white supremacist material, is that a political decision, or is it a business decision to protect your brand image?

Re: Mark Zuckerberg explains why so many tech companies are doing layoffs

#49

Post by AstralStorm »

croes wrote: post #46
dogma1138 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ads are still visible when you aren’t logged on, in fact they take a fare greater real estate of the screen now so Elon’s antics aside as far as advertisers go they get a better deal now. Before the change you could scroll down past the ads for the rest of the thread, now you only see the linked tweet and then ads.

But it makes less sense to visit a Twitter link in the first place. Without Nitter Twitter links are useless to me.

And Nitter instances get seriously rate limited now, so...

Re: Mark Zuckerberg explains why so many tech companies are doing layoffs

#50

Post by johhns4 »

selfmodruntime wrote: post #21

In my (unpopular) opinion and experience, companies are realizing that workshop / course trained employees who were after tech industry salaries as well as middle management types can be largely trimmed off after post-pandemic growth. I guess you don‘t need as many unmotivated employees / management / DEI types as previously thought. All of my friends who feel real love for their work and live and breathe tech are st…

How are you going to identify the ones that are productive though through a layoff? If you just do a general cut across the board based on 'opinions' how do you know that the ones that are left are the useful ones that will keep you lean?

And then it's the fact that most who see productive people being slashed will ultimately reach the conclusion that productivity isn't the most important but being loud enough is.

Feels like a fine line. But yes, if these companies were bloated then something needed to be done. I'm just curious if "departing with very talented people" is the way to go.

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