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Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

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Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#431
post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vesting / payout theory makes no sense, firstly Twitter vesting at that point would be quarterly, so the company would be saving at most 1/16th of what those employees had already vested from their initial grant. Secondly, it's the employees who would have the incentive to leave, not the company to fire them. Assuming a typical 4 year vesting period, it's right at this year when their compensation would have _dro…

This may be Parag's hail mary play to appease his new master and keep his lucrative job. I would not be surprised if his next move is to publicly extol the virtues of Free Speech and the First Amendment.

There is basically no way that Musk keeps him on, so I don't buy this. He will be replaced in due time once the acquisition is complete.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are competitive cars vs tesla for electric It is my belief that those "competitive cars" wouldn't have happened if it hadn't been for Tesla.

But why? Did tesla open source key scientific innovations in the scaling of batteries? Don't think so. See e.g. The seres f5 from Huawei. I don't know wether it's great but about the main metric, it has a higher range than teslas (1000km)

This is a bit of a "why dropbox when i can rsync" comment.

Tesla brought glamour and practicality to a field stymied by boredom and theoretical concerns. They pledged to build an EV people would actually want to use, bringing all the latest tech to drive UX with no regard for tradition. They set to solve consumer problems, and they are succeeding in doing that.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#433
post #258

The two execs fired were: - Kayvon Beykpour, Head of Consumer Product (3 years, 11 months) [1]; and - Bruce Falck, Revenue Product Lead (5 years at Twitter, 3 years and 11 months in this position) [2] Kinda weird that both people were just shy of serving 4 years in their current roles. When I see moves like this my immediate thought is always, it's to save or make money. For example, there could be an options pool in…

Aside from that 3.93 is slightly less than 4, it's odd that both employees were in their current position for the same amount of time. I.e. they were part of the same cohort. What was Twitter doing in June-ish 2018 that resulted in them hiring multiple people in key roles? Was there an expansion, or a re-org, or executive turn-over?

Or just overfitting two data points?

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#434
post #258

The two execs fired were: - Kayvon Beykpour, Head of Consumer Product (3 years, 11 months) [1]; and - Bruce Falck, Revenue Product Lead (5 years at Twitter, 3 years and 11 months in this position) [2] Kinda weird that both people were just shy of serving 4 years in their current roles. When I see moves like this my immediate thought is always, it's to save or make money. For example, there could be an options pool in…

Are there really no clauses in contracts or laws to prevent something like this? That sounds incredibly scummy.

As an employee, or potential employee, you can always request a contract that guarantees employment for a certain period, or immediately vests all options upon termination. Most employers would only agree to such terms for the most valuable employees.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#436
post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It still confuses me that being part-owner of an old dot-com payment company, part-owner of a mid-sized car company (by number of cars sold), and part-owner of a (very good) rocket company make a person richer than anyone has ever been in the history of the planet, but that's probably because I just haven't looked into it enough.

> a person richer than anyone has ever been in the history of the planet Tesla's P/E ratio is currently 106. I have no idea why Tesla is so expensive.

Only makes sense if Tesla becomes something else other than a car manufacturer (robots, robotaxis, etc).

If it's just about EVs they should soon be priced below Ford. Even self-driving is insufficient as long as a driver needs to pay attention. Other companies are catching up - who cares if they need more hardware and can't do just vision, it's becoming cheaper.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#437
post #373
post #258

The two execs fired were: - Kayvon Beykpour, Head of Consumer Product (3 years, 11 months) [1]; and - Bruce Falck, Revenue Product Lead (5 years at Twitter, 3 years and 11 months in this position) [2] Kinda weird that both people were just shy of serving 4 years in their current roles. When I see moves like this my immediate thought is always, it's to save or make money. For example, there could be an options pool in…

The vesting / payout theory makes no sense, firstly Twitter vesting at that point would be quarterly, so the company would be saving at most 1/16th of what those employees had already vested from their initial grant. Secondly, it's the employees who would have the incentive to leave, not the company to fire them. Assuming a typical 4 year vesting period, it's right at this year when their compensation would have _dro…

It's true that there's a lot we don't know. Executive employment contracts are bespoke and quite different to peon contracts. There will be various incentives that might be cash or incentivized stock options ("ISOs") as well as regular compensation that might be RSUs, non-qualified stock options ("NSOs") or both.

But we do know:

1. The acquisition is imminent but not closed;

2. Executive contracts often include bonuses on acquisition and/or accelerations for change of control;

3. There are numerous examples of companies cleaning house to avoid payouts prior to an acquisition closing;

4. Generally a company on the verge of a likely acquisition just keeps the lights on and doesn't make any big moves so things like hiring freezes make sense; and

5. The circumstancial evidence that both executives just happen to be shy of their 4 year anniversary (in their current roles).

Conclusive? No. Kinda sus? Absolutely.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#438

Growing up outside of the US, I feel kinda cringed when he said he was "INSANELY proud of our collective teams achieved". Such an interesting cultural difference.

it's cringeworthy in the US outside of the job-finding/bragging echo chamber this kind of post normally shows up in

I also believe there would also be a large segment of the US that finds these "job-finding/bragging echo chamber" Twitter posts cringeworthy regardless of context. They appear oddly performative and obligatory. Stay tuned for the follow up "I'm incredibly excited to announce that today I am joining ___" post.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#439
post #50
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think this isn't what is required as part of the acquisition plan?

That's not how acquisitions work. Elon made the offer, it was accepted. Now the company has to continue to operate without his influence until the deal actually closes.

I’ve been on the receiving end of an acquisition boot more than once.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#440

I've been using Twitter since it's main novelty was that it was a successful Ruby on Rails app, and honestly I've been trying to figure out where the exit is for my personal use of Twitter lately. If the acquisition goes through, Twitter won't make enough money to service it's debt, and the things they will do to fix that are pretty much guaranteed to lower the quality of the platform, which frankly has never worked…

> it will make it difficult for Twitter to maintain a healthy community, and the platform could quickly devolve into a scarychan-style sewer that only the craziest people on the internet will want to dwell in

Twitter is the furthest from a healthy community I've ever ventured. It's full of nutters.

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