Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

861–870 of 1001 posts

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#861

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

Bhilai wrote: post #541

Sorry to say this but comments on this thread are very disappointing and show a basic lack of empathy in HN crowd. I am obviously generalizing and I know most of you are not heartless souls. FFS people, a huge number of people have lost their livelihoods, sense of belonging and might fall into financial hardships in current market conditions. Whatever you think of Elon or Twitter employees, its good to be grounded in…

> Sorry to say this but comments on this thread are very disappointing and show a basic lack of empathy in HN crowd.

The vast majority of comments near the top don't seem to be of this type, so not sure what you're referring to.

I have a lot of sympathy for Twitter employees who just had to deal with the total shitshow of the past ~10 months, with the media spotlight on them.

But that said, the thing I fundamentally disagree with (and I'm speaking from experience) is that getting laid off if this colossal, tragic thing that many HNers seem to think it is:

1. There will definitely be ups and downs, but getting laid off in a growing industry is very different from getting laid off in a shrinking industry. Many companies are tightening their belts but there are still tons of companies hiring right now, and it's not like most tech workers have the concerns of, say, medical transcriptionists, where the vast majority of those jobs just won't exist in 10-20 years.

2. Tech pays well, and the likelihood of huge layoffs at Twitter have been known for months. While I can empathize with people who were laid off, it's difficult to have sympathy if folks haven't prepared, i.e. saving up a cushion and starting their job search early. It is rare to get this much foresight into a layoff.

3. Tech also tends to give much better severance packages than in many other industries. To be clear, lots of other industries give 2 weeks max, if anything at all.

Again, I have tons of sympathy along the lines of the "man, that really f'in sucks that you had to deal with that" level. I disagree with some of the melodrama I'm seeing that this is something like the worst thing that can happen to someone - one of the linked tweets in the article had a Hunger Games screenshot.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#862

Post by pojzon »

bink wrote: post #700
nostromo wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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…

And freedom of speech also includes to the rights of private individuals and companies to determine what they share on their own platforms, and what they can or cannot be compelled to host or say.

But when someone buys out this company and changes guidelines what can be shared and what not -> ppl get instantly mad and baby rage.

Why? Its a private company..

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#863

Post by ben7799 »

aliljet wrote: post #8

I'm pretty curious about how and where Twitter employees were distributed. For a company ostensibly worth $44 billion, having 7,500 staff feels pretty damn lean. It feels like Musk isn't just purging people, he's purging the Twitter culture...

Depends on how you value the company. Twitter is very overvalued if you look at accounting & finances more than influence and popularity and hype.

Consider revenue and income (losses) and Twitter doesn't look good at all, they look horrible. They don't have that many employees, but they must be very very highly compensated and concentrated in very high cost areas. Otherwise the company is wasting serious money somewhere else, because to lose money on $5B/yr revenue with 7500 employees year after year in a business that's as high margin as pure software is incredibly terrible performance.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#864

Post by smcl »

padheyam wrote: post #756
yummies wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a much simpler and less juicy angle here: someone posted a screenshot of an internal communication , and it got removed. It's not surprising or controversial that Twitter would try to contain a leak of its own internal comms (a screenshot of their slack). This isn't "Twitter took down a disparaging post about Twitter", it's that they tried to stop the sharing of internal data. That being said, I don't…

Agree re: the less sinister explanation. I think only this particular tweet has been removed and the other tweets referred in the article are still up.

This one's still up: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1586885887341645824

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#865

Post by mikkergp »

partiallypro wrote: post #842

I'm not a huge Musk fan, mostly because of his political ramblings and especially revolving around Ukraine; but I find the sudden hatred of him pretty odd. Mass layoffs happen all the time, Square just announced a 14% cut yesterday. In terms of Twitter's current moderation nothing has really changed on the platform, I'm an avid user and have seen no difference. It's not really just Musk, it feels like there is a turn…

What is the new vision for twitter? Musk has ridiculed his customers, acted unpredictably, and fired people unceremoniously while joking about on Twitter.

To me, all of the reaction seems to be completely appropriate given his actions. This is why actions matter! This is why CEO’s get communications training, because in the absence of reading his mind, the world has to react to his behavior. Being a leader of a 45 billion dollar corporation is hard, this is why most CEO’s that do it don’t have two other part time jobs. Maybe it will turn out ok, but I don’t see how you can not see that his behavior warrants scrutiny and pause, and seemingly attribute it all to vague notions of political beliefs.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#866

Post by luckylion »

DesiLurker wrote: post #758
idlewords wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those techies had years in which to organize their workplace under US labor law to forestall exactly this kind of outcome. For the past 20 years, there was no group of employees on earth with more latent power than US tech workers, but this very fact blinded them to the possibility that they might ever lose this power. What feeble efforts there were at collective action were organized around divisive "social justice"…

So its our fault for not making a union? Also nothing to do with 40 year decline in consumer rights & stagnated wages & heavy influence of money in politics. Also, to quote Stephen Colbert, its the ribcage's fault that victim got knifed.

The "stagnated wages" of SV engineers? What?

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#867

Post by chrisco255 »

sib301 wrote: post #561
nostromo wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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…

Every time this debate comes up, someone suggests that companies like Twitter are in violation of the first amendment when they remove a user's post. To me they often sound like the ignorant ones.

The general sentiment is that if tech companies can censor arbitrarily their special section 230 liability protection should be removed. They are no longer acting as an internet service, but as a publisher that curates publications.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#868

Post by josteink »

danans wrote: post #820
mikkergp wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will be interesting to see how Elon defines success. Twitter in it's current form is a dead end, and there's no way "more free speech" is going increase either revenue or users. So if you think Elon is going to succeed at making Twitter a better Twitter as we know it, then I'm confident this take is wrong. Which is why he's focused on the everything X app or whatever. Now, I wouldn't want to underestimate Elon, he…

> Twitter in it's current form is a dead end, and there's no way "more free speech" is going increase either revenue or users. I think this is failing to imagine how bad things could get societally. Imagine if more consumers and advertisers start enjoying consuming and being associated with malevolent, hateful, and violence-inducing speech. Many in the 1930s-40s enjoyed the hateful caricatures of Jews that the Nazis…

> Imagine if more consumers and advertisers start enjoying consuming and being associated with malevolent, hateful, and violence-inducing speech.

> Many in the 1930s-40s enjoyed the hateful caricatures of Jews that the Nazis produced in their propaganda, and hateful people also buy refrigerators and sneakers today.

I may be sidetracking the conversation here, but I must admit I find it fascinating how “hatefulness” online is almost always assumed to be right-wing extremism.

Have everyone forgotten the BLM and Antifa riots going on for months where innocent people had their property, livelihood and in some cases even their lives taken?

That was fully encouraged and endorsed by the left, en masse, and especially so on Twitter.

Was that not “hate”? If not, what is?

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#870

Post by flashgordon »

flashgordon wrote: post #600
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!

Damn sorry folks. Not sure how this got posted twice. Is there anyway I can delete this one (i understand deletions are not on).
Post reply on HN