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Musk’s inner circle worked through weekend to cement Twitter layoff plans

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Re: Musk’s inner circle worked through weekend to cement Twitter layoff plans

#661

Post by themitigating »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #302
jupp0r wrote: post #160

Not sure what Musk's intentions are with this. Normally this will lead to the best people updating their resumes and switching over to less toxic places ASAP. You are left with people who are attached to their ancient code or who can't find good jobs elsewhere. edit: typoz

> Normally this will lead to the best people updating their resumes and switching over to less toxic places ASAP Potentially, but not necessarily. Some high performers may reasonably think "finally someone who is going to cut through all the bullshit in this bloated company and demand some accountability". Look through some of the stories when Steve Jobs rejoined Apple; it wasn't that dissimilar. Now, that said, folk…

Unstable leader who makes off the cuff decisions.

As for employees being happy that "lazy" people are being fired, if that's true why are companies so cautious about hiring and firing?

Re: Musk’s inner circle worked through weekend to cement Twitter layoff plans

#662

Post by matai_kolila »

nwienert wrote: post #659
matai_kolila wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not at all what happened. In fact, my bet is Musk will find out shortly, if not already, that Twitter’s bans made a ton of sense and were extremely pragmatic, and had nothing at all to do with politics.

It is what happened: https://theintercept.com/2022/10/31/social-media-disinformat... And they had everything to do with politics. It’s interesting to see people cheer when things go their sides way and then do contortions to rationalize when they don’t.

That article has nothing to do with what I said. Twitter is not banning people for posting conservative viewpoints.

Re: Musk’s inner circle worked through weekend to cement Twitter layoff plans

#663

Post by coffeeblack »

jimt1234 wrote: post #619
iammjm wrote: post #481

I used to be a big Musk fan. But the longer it gets, the more i start to dislike him. He starts turning into a Mad King

I still have a lot of respect for Musk as bold business exec. But my respect for him as a person dropped to near-zero when he promoted the baseless conspiracy theory about Paul Pelosi.

He didn’t. Look at context.

Re: Musk’s inner circle worked through weekend to cement Twitter layoff plans

#664

Post by themitigating »

mft_ wrote: post #612
jupp0r wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. If there was a way to determine the least performing 50% of employees in a matter of two days, they wouldn't be there in the first place anymore. Even if you fire them, that's a surefire way of making sure that the best 5% of people leave the company anyways do to the depressing atmosphere this creates.

> If there was a way to determine the least performing 50% of employees in a matter of two days, they wouldn't be there in the first place anymore. This would assume that the previous management had an incentive to cut costs and remove 50% of their workforce... which is probably not the case at all.

There are tons of incentives to cut costs. It was a public company that had quarterly reports.

Re: Musk’s inner circle worked through weekend to cement Twitter layoff plans

#665

Post by barnabee »

H8crilA wrote: post #339

So, it was a simple corporate raid after all. Welcome back to the 70s: energy markets problems, inflation, and now finally some good old corporate raiding with LBOs. PS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_raid

No idea if it’ll turn out to be just a corporate raid but I’ve become so disillusioned and disgusted with nearly everything about companies like Twitter, Google, and Meta that I do not think a realistic solution exists for the problems they cause that doesn’t involve a complete change of leadership and firing a significant percentage of all of them.

I don’t care what Elon does with Twitter tbh, as long as it’s something different. Good luck to him.

Re: Musk’s inner circle worked through weekend to cement Twitter layoff plans

#666

Post by mandevil »

vxNsr wrote: post #583
sulam wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taylor Leese is a respected Twitter engineering manager who tweeted on Sunday that he was no longer working at Twitter. While it's remotely conceivable that he quit, it's much more likely he was fired. I had reports from friends who worked there that they were asked to stay available over the weekend, presumably for situations like this, or requests from the "war room" group that has been setup.

What is an engineering manager as it relates to actually writing code? One of the things Elon said was that there appears to be 3 managers for every engineer. I understand the need for a few PMs but if there really was a 3:1 ratio that’s just absurd.

I think that at this point, taking something Elon Musk says- especially about Twitter!- as having any sort of relationship to truth is the thing that's absurd.

Re: Musk’s inner circle worked through weekend to cement Twitter layoff plans

#667

Post by jdm2212 »

BaseballPhysics wrote: post #445
habitue wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A tradeoff can exist without implying that the tradeoff is necessary. In other words, America has A but not B, Europe has B but not A, and there doesn't happen to be a place with both A and B, but it's not impossible in principle. Workers would still need to decide if they value A or B more, even if in a perfect world they could have both.

Fair enough. I took the parent comment to be implying that that tradeoff was necessary --i.e. to have high salaries you have to have loose labour laws--as opposed to a simple statement about the current world we live in. If it's the latter, absolutely you are right, and it is certainly the case that tech employees today are forced to make the choice between New York/California tech salaries and strong labour laws, re…

It is necessary.

If you can fire low performers, average performance will be higher, which means average pay will be higher. The risk is that you personally get mistaken for (...or correctly assessed as...) a low performer. Hence, tradeoffs.

Re: Musk’s inner circle worked through weekend to cement Twitter layoff plans

#668

Post by dnissley »

jupp0r wrote: post #623
mft_ wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If there was a way to determine the least performing 50% of employees in a matter of two days, they wouldn't be there in the first place anymore. This would assume that the previous management had an incentive to cut costs and remove 50% of their workforce... which is probably not the case at all.

What makes you think that previous management needlessly employed unproductive workers when they could have easily not done so? Do you think that Elon Musk has some special magic insight that makes him get the same amount of work done with half the resources? I know some people at Twitter and some people at Musk's companies and I don't think they are fundamentally run differently.

My experience is that most companies are pretty averse to firing people in general, even in the US with at-will employment, and even when there are many people who are moderately incompetent (so long as they are not posing obvious risks to the company, e.g. sexual harassment, etc.).

Re: Musk’s inner circle worked through weekend to cement Twitter layoff plans

#670

Post by fn-mote »

kcplate wrote: post #546
llbeansandrice wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because American SWEs are able to exploit the current workers paradigm in the US due to eye-watering amounts of money from VCs and the state of ad-tech doesn't mean jack shit for any at-will salaried employee that isn't paid in truck-loads of equity. There are states in the US where teacher's unions are out-lawed. US workers don't have rights. I have a feeling you might feel differently if not part of the segmen…

> There are states in the US where teacher's unions are out-lawed. That’s a bold statement. Care to back it up?

Hyperbole, but ... a quick look at the Wikipedia article on Wisconsin's 2011 law [1] looks like the next best thing (e.g., yearly votes to retain union).

> Collective Bargaining: The law limits collective bargaining for most public employees to wages. Total wage increases cannot exceed a cap based on the consumer price index (CPI) unless approved by referendum. Increases from the bargaining process for teachers are applied only to the base wages, and do not include the additional salary of teachers. Contracts are limited to one year and wages frozen until the new contract is settled. Collective bargaining units must take annual votes to maintain certification as a union. Employers cannot collect union dues, and members of collective bargaining units are not required to pay them.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Wisconsin_Act_10

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