Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#501

Post by alistairSH » Fri, Nov 04, 2022, 3:04 PM UTC

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #459

alistairSH wrote: post #403

And the class action for WARN Act violations has already been filed. Sounds like the Chief Twit didn't give 60 days warning OR severance, as required by law. https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/4/23440304/twitter-mass-fir...

And we all know that fines are just fees for rich people.

Sadly, as best I can tell, there are no real fines for WARN violations - at worst, Musk as to pay 60 days income and benefits, as he should have done in the first place. There might be a $500/day penalty as well (not sure if that's per person or total - either way, chump change to most employers that are subject to the WARN act).

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#502

Post by watwut » Fri, Nov 04, 2022, 3:04 PM UTC

khazhoux wrote: post #469

KaiserPro wrote: post #308

THe issue we all have here is this: if Musk is successful then treating employees nicely will fall out of fashion. Tech was a bastion of "treat your employees right, and they'll be productive". Musk is not a proponent of that. He is a micromanaging, capricious, easily distracted, arrogant and vindictive CEO. If twitter thrives then we can expect copycats to try and spread his shitty work philosophy (like everyone ido…

> THe issue we all have here is this: if Musk is successful then treating employees nicely will fall out of fashion. How bold, to speak for everyone ;-) I really don't see this as a "treat employees nicely" issue. I'm open to being convinced otherwise. But... Elon's premise from day 0 was that Twitter was mismanaged -- bloated, misguided, bad as a business and broken as product. This echoes the sentiment even by many…

> Elon's premise from day 0 was that Twitter was mismanaged -- bloated, misguided, bad as a business and broken as product.

And then he bought misguided broken product for 4 time the price and took deep debt for it.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#503

Post by gota » Fri, Nov 04, 2022, 3:05 PM UTC

KaiserPro wrote: post #308

THe issue we all have here is this: if Musk is successful then treating employees nicely will fall out of fashion. Tech was a bastion of "treat your employees right, and they'll be productive". Musk is not a proponent of that. He is a micromanaging, capricious, easily distracted, arrogant and vindictive CEO. If twitter thrives then we can expect copycats to try and spread his shitty work philosophy (like everyone ido…

In other words, if developers had guild mentality the ones left at twitter would have great incentive to actually sabotage the company

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#504

Post by chillfox » Fri, Nov 04, 2022, 3:05 PM UTC

losvedir wrote: post #180

And so the grand experiment begins. I feel bad for the folks losing their job because that always sucks, and I hope there's a decent severance package. Now we'll see what happens to Twitter... I hardly use it, so if it implodes it won't bother me too much. But I am curious to see if all the "how do you need X people to do Y?" commenters are correct in this case. The app is simple but doing simple things at scale is h…

My guess is they will be forced to retreat from a lot of international markets as they don’t have the legal and moderation staff to keep up with regulation.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#505

Post by yanderekko » Fri, Nov 04, 2022, 3:06 PM UTC

john-radio wrote: post #402

A lot of the tweets that are quoted in the article have been removed. For example, Twitter employee Cristina Angeli is mentioned in the story for having tweeted an image of "staff members... flooding an internal Slack channel with blue heart emojis as they wait to learn their fate tomorrow", but that tweet is deleted on twitter itself because "This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules." This is ironic if you consider all…

>Smart journalists are going to stop relying on Twitter's API now.

I somehow have a feeling that this is not the first time in history that an embedded Tweet in a news story has been removed, either by Twitter or the author.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#506

Post by nimbius » Fri, Nov 04, 2022, 3:07 PM UTC

KaiserPro wrote: post #308

THe issue we all have here is this: if Musk is successful then treating employees nicely will fall out of fashion. Tech was a bastion of "treat your employees right, and they'll be productive". Musk is not a proponent of that. He is a micromanaging, capricious, easily distracted, arrogant and vindictive CEO. If twitter thrives then we can expect copycats to try and spread his shitty work philosophy (like everyone ido…

'treat your employees nicely' exists in tech for one reason only: to deter unionization in the face of overwhelming profiteering at the expense of an overworked tech cattle.

if twitter employees understand now the excess capital from their labor has been extracted without due pleasantries such as notice or severance, then Musk has done far worse to the tech industry than just lay a bunch of people off, hes galvanized the case for tech worker unions.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#507

Post by i_like_apis » Fri, Nov 04, 2022, 3:08 PM UTC

roflyear wrote: post #256

i_like_apis wrote: post #247

What a bunch of ridiculous whining here. They are laying off a large portion of workers who have previously expressed being hostile to the new leadership. There is bloat, laziness, aimlessness, and the company is being taken in a radically new direction. It’s pretty tactful so far, as far as I am concerned. We haven’t even seen the severance. You have nothing to complain about. First priority is to protect Twitter sy…

They are breaking the law by not giving 60 days notice. Disagree with it all you want it's still the law.

Nope, that is not the law.

I’ve seen more than a few of these things and had a partner in HR. You’re confused.

Employees can be terminated with 0 notice. (Which is how it should be).

You’re probably thinking about some payroll law. Termination is different.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#508

Post by nindalf » Fri, Nov 04, 2022, 3:09 PM UTC

KaiserPro wrote: post #308

THe issue we all have here is this: if Musk is successful then treating employees nicely will fall out of fashion. Tech was a bastion of "treat your employees right, and they'll be productive". Musk is not a proponent of that. He is a micromanaging, capricious, easily distracted, arrogant and vindictive CEO. If twitter thrives then we can expect copycats to try and spread his shitty work philosophy (like everyone ido…

I think deep down we all knew that burning people out has a decent chance of getting you solid results in the short term. The problem comes after, when people who understand best how your systems work will quit because they’re burned out husks of their former selves.

This is obviously not sustainable, because it’s difficult to recruit after you’ve built a reputation as burnout central.

Unless the business is run by a “tech visionary” who is “making the world a better place” and has millions of fans. These millions of fans would jump at the chance of working for him.

Musk burning out Twitter employees by making them do twice as much work is fine, because he’ll have no trouble recruiting. He might be able to turn the business around.

It’s quite possible there will copycats, but they’ll have less success than Musk.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#509

Post by jonathankoren » Fri, Nov 04, 2022, 3:10 PM UTC

khazhoux wrote: post #469

KaiserPro wrote: post #308

THe issue we all have here is this: if Musk is successful then treating employees nicely will fall out of fashion. Tech was a bastion of "treat your employees right, and they'll be productive". Musk is not a proponent of that. He is a micromanaging, capricious, easily distracted, arrogant and vindictive CEO. If twitter thrives then we can expect copycats to try and spread his shitty work philosophy (like everyone ido…

> THe issue we all have here is this: if Musk is successful then treating employees nicely will fall out of fashion. How bold, to speak for everyone ;-) I really don't see this as a "treat employees nicely" issue. I'm open to being convinced otherwise. But... Elon's premise from day 0 was that Twitter was mismanaged -- bloated, misguided, bad as a business and broken as product. This echoes the sentiment even by many…

While the idea that Twitter was mismanaged is certainly part of his motivation, it doesn’t explain Musk’s behavior at Tesla or “SlaveX”. In fact, flipping the table over the first week belies more than a little arrogance and little motivation to understand what he bought. (There’s reports that he wants to cut half of infrastructure costs. Fail whale anyone?)

He’s a billionaire that treats employees like shit.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#510

Post by chasd00 » Fri, Nov 04, 2022, 3:10 PM UTC

guelo wrote: post #424

chasd00 wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyone want to make predictions about the state of Twitter in a few years? what I hope is that it shrinks to about 1/20th its current size. And then many many smaller platforms spring up. I think one thing that makes social media hard to manage is the sheer scale. It's likely much easier to manage/moderate a smaller social network than a huge one. Also, it wouldn't be as dramatic to be kicked off a platform because…

> 1/20th its current size. And then many many smaller platforms spring up That's not how social networks work because the bigger they are the more useful they are to users.

No, the bigger they are the more useful they are to advertisers. The best social network i've ever been a part of is one dedicated to a hobby i'm in with about 1k users max.