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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

#451

Post by arthurcolle »

lmkg wrote: post #433
jmyeet wrote: 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?

That's when the Chik-fil-a "scandal" happened

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2018/06...

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#452

Post by Ekaros »

SemanticStrengh wrote: post #337
wutbrodo wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> part-owner of a mid-sized car company (by number of cars sold) Because the market doesn't, and shouldn't, value things solely based on a snapshot of current business, as opposed to a projection of future business, based only partially on the current snapshot. A phrasing that gets at the market's thinking looks more like "A car company that effectively created the electric car market, right before the entire industr…

The stock market is not about retributing merit though. When the EV market will be very significant, there will be no strong reason to choose a tesla over dozens of alternatives. There will be Huaweis/xiaomis equivalents for cars.

Not to forget much more strong brands outside the tech circles. It is not like all of Porche, Ferrari, Aston Martin, McLaren and so on just drop dead and stop producing cars. And these have much bigger brand value for traditional customers than Tesla will ever have.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#453

Post by throwaway_2341 »

throwaway_1928 wrote: post #398
dymk wrote: 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.

Honest question. Would a CEO be that desperate to keep his job? I imagine Parag can walk away with plenty after the buyout and do something else that he likes.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#455

Post by Ekaros »

SemanticStrengh wrote: post #304
SamBam wrote: 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.

It's all about the car company. This company only sell cars for a rich elite but the market bubble over it is the most remarkable of modern times.

I'm not sure if the target market will be even the elite, but upper middle class. Which happens to have gotten rich working in semi-associated markets.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#456

Post by jollybean »

jmyeet wrote: 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…

No, this is not about 'a few options'.

They are about to transform the company - and they need the talent to do that.

It's difficult to tell, but it could be that these guys are scapegoats, or they are going to be stumbling blocks to the 'new approach', or they company wants fresh blood there, or might have fresh blood lined up.

Whatever this is - it's in the domain of 'strategic', not likely to due to someone's equity package.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#457

Post by outworlder »

KerrAvon wrote: post #387
shrimpx wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this deal have a serious chance of going through? My estimate, based on the direction of Tesla stock, is this deal will not go through.

Seems unclear whether Musk actually wants it to go through, doesn't it? The presidency didn't fix Trump's relationship with his deceased father, and whatever ails Musk won't be fixed by purchasing Twitter and having to deal with all of the attendant headaches. And it will distract him from Tesla and SpaceX. SpaceX can probably get along without him; Tesla clearly cannot.

I don't think he wants the deal to go through.

Unclear what the end-game is. But paying 3x the annual NASA budget for a social media app is clearly too much. Users have value, but it's too inflated.

If he broke the contract (and lost one billion), added another billion to create a new social media platform(that's quite the funding!) that measured up to his standards, spent an additional 6 billion dollars in advertising in the US (putting him in the number one ad spend – ahead of Comcast), it would still be a bargain. Heck, he could pay for people to switch from Twitter to his platform and still be ahead.

Why bother? Torpedoing Twitter (by blaming the deal going south on them not wanting 'free speech') could energize his supporters – and people in the sidelines – enough to switch away from the sinking ship. And he also gets to sell TSLA shares high (ostensibly to finance the deal) and rebuy low. So, win-win?

If the deal actually goes through, he gets the users, but he also gets a huge mess that he has to clean up.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#458

Post by memish »

kyledrake wrote: post #189

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…

> and the things they will do to fix that are pretty much guaranteed to lower the quality of the platform

The stated plan is to focus on making the platform more transparent and trusted. Why would that lower the quality?

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#459

Post by pessimizer »

kyledrake wrote: post #189

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…

> I also think the proposal to have Twitter allow all content that is "legal under US law" is a dangerous idea for the platform being a healthy community that most people actually want to participate in.

I'd counter that platforms like Reddit, Youtube, or Facebook grew into institutions with extremely light content moderation, and it's only after they were successful and were targeted by politicians and media panics that they moderated heavily, and with that moderation their growth slowed.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#460

Post by tempnow987 »

lesstenseflow wrote: post #267
minimaxir wrote: post #2

> I’m just now learning that Parag fired Kayvon while he was on paternity leave, which is truly awful. > Parag is on his way out too. Why is he firing his product leaders during his lame-duck period? https://twitter.com/CaseyNewton/status/1524790595968901122

Why would firing someone who's on paternity leave be an issue at all? We're talking multi-millionaires who will get multi-million dollar severance. It's pretty hilarious to see the pearl clutching of techno-bourgeoisie over something like this, pretending other tech-lords are getting mistreated over some supposed breach of decorum. The mere fact that he gets to take parental leave puts him head and shoulders above mo…

I thought they paid him something in the 10's of millions range to bring him on through periscope?

I thought the comp packages were more in the single digit millions range for these folks, and stock oriented. My guess is they've taken bigger losses on just the general stock market decline than most, though for those who hold twitter I personally think Elon is wildly overpaying (as usual, see solar city) and they will make out like bandits as a result there.

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