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Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

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Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#901

Post by epakai »

tshaddox wrote: post #581
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 /…

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…

Musk's prime motivator for purchasing twitter seems to have been ideological. Of course people are going to oppose him on ideological grounds.

More succinctly, Musk performed an activist takeover.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#902

Post by [deleted] »

arrrg wrote: post #464
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 /…

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

[deleted]

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#903

Post by MetaWhirledPeas »

aardvarkr wrote: post #334
giancarlostoro wrote: post #281

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…

As an ex spacex employee I can definitely say that it wouldn’t have been half the company today if Musk want in charge. Not a fanboy but trying to give an honest evaluation. Space is crazy hard and doesn’t happen without brilliant people so of course the credit for the success of the company goes to the engineers and everyone that gave some of their best work to making it happen though that type of success doesn’t ha…

> From what I can tell he’s ruining the good parts of the Twitter culture and he doesn’t have a vision.

Maybe? But I think he and others would argue that Twitter was gradually losing popularity and had no direction. So I'm not sure "slow death" is such a great culture to hold onto.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#905

Post by twawaaay »

> Musk’s team has already tried to evaluate the productivity of Twitter employees by asking engineers to print out the code that they have written in the last 30 to 60 days. Musk also brought in Tesla engineers to look over Twitter code.

At one company I worked we had a bug in the software for the device we were manufacturing. There were millions of units at peoples' homes and the bug caused couple hundred of these units to loose the content of their flash, every day. This in turn a huge ongoing loss both financial and reputational for the company.

Because of the nature of the bug, we spent something like 3 months trying to find it. We even built a special lab with dozens of units hooked to specially designed rig to have a chance to observe one unit in the process of getting wiped.

Finally, one guy with an oscilloscope cracked it. It was electromagnetic interference between two different circuits within device causing the flash to receive a command telling it to wipe itself clean.

The fix was one line, two characters really.

I am sure Tesla engineers will do a good job evaluating worth of each one of those lines people printed out.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#906

Post by Cyberdog »

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…

I don't really relate or sympathize with the Silicon Valley types, no. I don't do the yoga and $8 latte-shakes and the Kegerators and Ping-Ping tables; I come into an office I rent myself in a flyover state, do a full day of work, and then go home, usually after sundown, seven days a week, and I make a lot less than those kids in California do. So it doesn't really burn me up to see the less productive ones trimmed off.

I read elsewhere that they all get 60 days of salary as severance, so I'm not interested in hearing sob stories about being fired right before the holidays either.

If you got laid off in these cuts, you'll do fine. Just find another SV company that's hiring, go in there with "Twitter" prominently on the CV and play up a sob story about how that mean ol' racist fascist homophobe fired you because you wouldn't give him a Roman salute or whatever, and you'll be back to working in an office with bean-bag chairs and free vegan flatbread brunches in a jiffy.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#907

Post by davesque »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #612
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.

Everything Musk does in the public sphere is a performance. He's putting on a show, and the show is always crafted according to whatever he thinks will sway the public in the direction he wants them to go.

I think Occam's razor applies here. In other words, it seems the more likely explanation is just that Musk is an egomaniacal rich guy. Imagining that Musk is playing 3D chess with the public psyche is overcomplicating things.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#908

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#910

Post by rurp »

aardvarkr wrote: post #334
giancarlostoro wrote: post #281

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…

As an ex spacex employee I can definitely say that it wouldn’t have been half the company today if Musk want in charge. Not a fanboy but trying to give an honest evaluation. Space is crazy hard and doesn’t happen without brilliant people so of course the credit for the success of the company goes to the engineers and everyone that gave some of their best work to making it happen though that type of success doesn’t ha…

Thanks for sharing a nuanced take and some first person experience.
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