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Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

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Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#601

Post by flashgordon »

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…

So looking at other siblings comments in this subthread, sounds like Elon is a genius, rigor in future Twitter, high calibre talent blah blah blah.

Even if that may end up being true that suggests Twitter today is full of mediocre/subpar employees. Were Parag and other execs just rewarded for bringing Twitter to a sacrifice at the altar? Dang indeed!

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#602

Post by seydor »

_djo_ wrote: post #595
seydor wrote: post #203

Quoted post unavailable.

I remain constantly surprised that people on Hacker News of all places can be so wrong in their underestimations of how technically challenging a company's problem space is. Building and maintaining a distributed system like Twitter is far from easy, as any one of the talks their engineers have given and papers they've written should tell you. Let's at least base this discussion on realistic and reasonable determinat…

> a distributed system like Twitter

how is it distributed?

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#603

Post by suzzer99 »

hn2017 wrote: post #322
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…

The reason he's laying off people. Due to his financing, he has to pay $1 billion per year just in interest. "Love to borrow money to buy a company and then saddle that company with the debt so I can lay off thousands of people" https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1587457450311122945

It should be illegal to buy a company with money you borrow against the value of that company. When your primary financial goal is servicing debt over building long term value - the incentives become completely misaligned.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#604

Post by bentt »

idiotsecant wrote: post #578
bentt wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a few years, if not sooner, Twitter will be right there with Tesla/SpaceX in terms of resume cachet. Everyone will see their culture has been transformed to one of rigor and performance. The "A" players will surface and they will do more with half the staff (or less even) than they ever did with 7500 people... and it will be noteworthy. Musk will be in the mix heavy for about 6 months. He'll make executive hires t…

SpaceX and Tesla have no 'resume cachet'. They are widely known in engineering circles as hiring huge numbers of entry level or just barely above entry level engineers, exploiting their interest in technology to work them like rented mules until they burn out, and then discarding them. It's not a negative having worked at one of these places necessarily but unless the next employer is looking for an engineer with sou…

Yeah, and then there are those that make it and stay. I doubt you hear from them. Anyone still at SpaceX/Tesla feel free to pipe in.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#605

Post by estomagordo »

dmix wrote: post #441
thinkingemote wrote: post #409

Musk and friends compare Twitter to other tech companies and see that it's ratio of employees to revenue is lowest. He therefore thinks he must halve the number employees and/or increase revenue to get this ratio up. From the chat log exhibits from the Twitter vs Musk case: https://danluu.com/elon-twitter-texts/#47 A VC (Jason Calacanis) does back of the envelope calculations: Twitter revenue per employee: $5B rev /…

Only 3 years ago Twitter had 5000 employees. They now have 8000 in 2022. That's a massive headcount growth for a company whose stock price declined significantly since then.

That is also the time period when they started showing a profit.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#606

Post by mmustapic »

ChildOfChaos wrote: post #588
tshaddox wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is ironic if you consider all the complaining that Musk does in the public sphere about "freedom of speech" (I know that the first amendment only applies to government censorship, but Musk likes to pretend not to) It’s not ironic or remotely unexpected if you’ve taken notice of any of his actual actions involving freedom of speech.

It's starting to feel like Musk is playing this political game to me. Pretending he is championing the little guy, that he/twitter/everyone is somehow being repressed and they/he is fighting against it. His recent tweet on how 'activists' are the cause of twitters recent revenue drop for example. Even with the blue check marks, he is framing it as it being open to all and the little guy taking the power back, all you…

It is quite common for some kinds of politics (you can deduce which ones) to create an enemy of the common people from thin air, and use it to justify your actions.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#607

Post by scarab92 »

pyrrhotech wrote: post #565
dmix wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only 3 years ago Twitter had 5000 employees. They now have 8000 in 2022. That's a massive headcount growth for a company whose stock price declined significantly since then.

And no notable features have been released

It seems like most of the layoffs are in trust, comms, creative, policy, wellness and those supporting these functions.

If the rumours of 50% downsizing are correct these functions were way bigger than I expected.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#608

Post by estomagordo »

morelish wrote: post #526
arrrg wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you fire the right people? Where is the information about who to fire and who to keep coming from?

You don’t. You just fire the number based largely on cost and let the remaining people pick up the pieces.

I think you mean the remaining people leetcode?

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#609

Post by commandlinefan »

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…

> "freedom of speech" (I know that the first amendment

Freedom of speech is different than the first amendment. The first amendment prohibits the government from limiting freedom of speech, but the concept itself is more general than the law.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#610

Post by lucideer »

nostromo wrote: post #534
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…

> "freedom of speech" (I know that the first amendment only applies to government censorship, but Musk likes to pretend not to) Freedom of speech is not the first amendment and vice versa. Freedom of speech is an ideal that applies to all people and all spaces, public and private, while the First Amendment only applies in America and to the government. People think they sound smart when they say freedom of speech onl…

> Freedom of speech is an ideal that applies to all people and all spaces

Is it though?

Those outside of the US who subscribe to this ideal seem heavily influenced by US culture in my experience. I'm not aware of non-US sources of the idea.

Add to that I've never really seen anyone espouse this ideal that actually understood (or could articulate) what "free speech" even means...

Certainly in the context of Musk's campaign, neither he nor most of his followers are genuine in their support for "free speech". Musk in particular has been a staunch supporter of censorship in practice, and has only paid lip service to free speech for clicks.

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