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Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

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891–900 of 1001 posts

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#891

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 /…

It would be nice if revenue and employee count were completely independent. Heck, you could fire everyone except one person and have an incredibly high ratio! (Don’t fire that last person or else you’ll get a divide by zero error.) Interestingly, he’s already tweeting out complaints about a massive drop in revenue. His theory is that this is caused not by his erratic behavior, but instead by activists who hate free s…

That tweet really makes me think he has gone paranoid / crazy.

“Activists groups pressuring advertisers trying to destroy free speech in America ?”

The dude is a conspiracy theorist now ?

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#892
post #2

If true, I find the 'print out the code you wrote in the last 30-60 days' very grim and a very blunt tool for evaluating productivity.

The most productive engineers I've known all crank out a ton of code in any week. It's almost like an addiction for them to push commits on a daily basis.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#893

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…

IMHO freedom in US is usually in fact 1) free for people who have $$ or 2) poor people who advocates for 1) for whatever the reason. Basically freedom means less regulation from governments, which is only good for super riches and large enterprises. If you are not you should welcome more government regulation to counter the other elephant in the room. Two evils is always better than one.

Amazing how the US is in knee-deep sh*t and Americans are still downwoting people when they say what you said...

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#894

The way employees were treated was beyond disgraceful. Really feel sorry for my younger self who believed that Musk truly cares about Humanity. Never ever hero worship a billionaire while thinking he will change the world. They are all ego manic pos hungry for more and more control. Small things you can do a) If you care about environment don't buy an over expensive electric car. Think about efforts to improve Public…

"The way employees were treated was beyond disgraceful." Sorry I may have missed this in the article–was it something beyond being laid off? Being laid off sucks (it's happened to me) but it's a normal part of business operations.

Yes.

https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/04/twitter-faces-a-class-acti...

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#895
post #9

In my view no single medium (the media is the message) has done more to weaken the quality of public discourse in the world than Twitter. But maybe Facebook proves that even if you're allowed to use prose crazies dominate so maybe the issue is deeper

I read this kind of comment all the time on HN, it’s so confusing to me. I only joined twitter 2 years ago because there are a large number of high quality tweet threads on finance, ML, NLP, breaking news etc. A lot of the time I get information earlier on twitter than I do on any other platform. If anything, for me, twitter has strengthened the quality of public discourse. If some big event happens I can read an exp…

If you don't mind me asking, which accounts are you following for your financial news? Thanks!

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#896

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont understand the SpaceX argument since he was an actual original founder if I'm not mistaken, I could see the Tesla argument, but those people never provide any true insight into how he is riding on Teslas former success whenever I run into those (not to mention, if it was so good... why did they need a new CEO). I think it's pretty obvious he is a capable individual, overly ambitious at times, but hey, he someh…

Keeping factories open during the initial COVID lockdowns because of your personal belief that it's "just the flu", and thus putting the lives of your employees at risk, seems like a direct analog to peeing in bottles to me.

Tesla was only singled out for that because of their location. They weren't the only auto plant still operating or reopening when they did.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#898

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…

Ironically, "free speech" as a broader principle can also be interpreted to mean a private company should not be compelled to carry or broadcast anyone else's speech if they don't want to. Any private company can choose what kind of community norms and tone they want to set, and moderate accordingly. Some platforms may allow hate speech, others not. Some may allow porn, others not. Taking editorial control away robs that forum of its own free speech agency.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#899

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…

> It's not surprising or controversial that Twitter would try to contain a leak of its own internal comms (a screenshot of their slack). It's not surprising or controversial, but it's in direct opposition to the idea that Twitter should allow all legal speech.

> It's not surprising or controversial, but it's in direct opposition to the idea that Twitter should allow all legal speech.

The world is full of hypocrisy and Elon has his share. But I don't really care if the guy is a hypocrite; I'd be more interested in discussing if the move is right. If it violated internal company policy, or revealed internal identities or anything of that sort, then maybe it was the right move?

I'm just glad I don't have to make these decisions.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#900
post #666
post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually your employer has confidentiality and non-disparage clauses in your employment contract and separation agreements. So "This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules." probably would be more like "This Tweet violated your contractual agreement to your employer".

This is exactly right and it's ridiculous people don't see this. Free speech isn't equal to breaking confidentiality agreements on a platform owned and operated by the company you work for.

But so does this mean on Twitter, leaks and whistleblowing about Twitter will be censored but leaks and whistleblowing about any other company will not? Because that sure doesn't sound like the neutral "free speech" moderation style Elon has been talking about so loudly nonstop for the past months.
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