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Quick off the cuff math, if you figure $200k all-in per employee, that's $100mm/year they'd save by going from 1000 to 500. They lost >$500mm in 2014[1] so tha

by mason55 11y ago

Quick off the cuff math, if you figure $200k all-in per employee, that's $100mm/year they'd save by going from 1000 to 500. They lost >$500mm in 2014[1] so that would not make a large dent if their goal is to achieve profitability. The problem is that they don't seem to have any path to growth. If they slash headcount in half and you've got most of those people dedicated to keeping the lights on then it's hard to imagine a future where they get much bigger and if investors see no path to growth then their stock price is going to take a beating. [1] https://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=TWTR+Income+Statement&annual https://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=TWTR+Income+Statement&annua...

morgante 11y ago
> Quick off the cuff math, if you figure $200k all-in per employee, that's $100mm/year they'd save by going from 1000 to 500. Your math is off by an order of magnitude. Twitter spends >$100M per quarter on stock-based compensation alone. [0] Just what do you think Twitter's major expenses are in "Research & Development" (for example)? I guarantee you that employees are by far their number 1 line item (as they are for most tech companies). Twitter's Q3 2015 expenses were ~$500M. Do you really think that the majority of that wasn't salaries? [0] http://seekingalpha.com/article/2253623-twitters-stock-based-compensation-expenses-raise-another-red-flag http://seekingalpha.com/article/2253623-twitters-stock-based...
- npizzolato 11y ago
  Off by an order of magnitude? Are you suggesting Twitter spends 2 million per employee per year?
  - lern_too_spel 11y ago
    At least half a million per year per employee on average. 200k won't even pay salary, let alone benefits and taxes.
    - spacecowboy_lon 11y ago
      A good rule of thumb is a FTE (Fultime employe) costs 3x their salary so 500-600k isn't to far off.
- mikekchar 11y ago
  Rather than imagine what Twitter spends on what, you can find out for sure: https://investor.twitterinc.com/ https://investor.twitterinc.com/ All public companies have to report that stuff and it is usually free to download from their website. It is an incredibly useful skill to learn to read annual and quarterly reports. You can find out if your company is about to tank ;-)
meddlepal 11y ago
My problem with Twitter has always been what the fuck does it do that requires 1000 employees to run? I don't use Twitter so I may be missing something huge here, but my understanding of the service: 1. User A posts messages either to themselves or by addressing another user. 2. Users B, C, D .. Z subscribe to messages from A and see them on their own feeds. There are no concerns about message QoS and you don't need a consistency so you can basically blast out messages and if B views it before C then no biggie. Twitter's basically a pub-sub messaging platform without any kind of need QoS... what am I missing? Why does this require 1000 employees or even 500? it seems like something that could absolutely be run by 50 people with software (feature, optimization) engineers concentrated in one location and operations (test, deploy) teams spread out across the globe at major hot spots. Obviously you also have some stuff like sales and marketing, but I still don't see how that requires 1000 employees.
- derefr 11y ago
  I've always assumed most of Twitter's employees are either customer support, or "community managers" for various high-profile accounts. That's the sort of thing that has no economy of scale whatsoever.
- dsymonds 11y ago
  Large scale distributed systems aren't that simple. I don't know any internal details of Twitter, but from what I've gathered they are trying to hit the kind of QoS you are dismissing. Imagine some celebrity with millions of followers says something controversial: it would be confusing to a lot of people if they start getting retweets or discussions of that tweet significantly before they see that tweet themselves. And that's just one scenario. I don't know about the 500 vs. 1000 employee question, but Twitter is a big engineering challenge.
  - morgante 11y ago
    > Large scale distributed systems aren't that simple. Nobody's debating that. If it weren't a "large scale distributed system" then the debate would be about 3 employees vs. 10. The core experience without scale could be made by a single engineer. But running a service like Twitter doesn't require 4,000 employees, even at scale. Facebook has "only" twice as many employees, despite a 10x more complicated product and 12x as much revenue.

by mason55 11y ago

morgante 11y ago

> Quick off the cuff math, if you figure $200k all-in per employee, that's $100mm/year they'd save by going from 1000 to 500. Your math is off by an order of magnitude. Twitter spends >$100M per quarter on stock-based compensation alone. [0] Just what do you think Twitter's major expenses are in "Research & Development" (for example)? I guarantee you that employees are by far their number 1 line item (as they are for most tech companies). Twitter's Q3 2015 expenses were ~$500M. Do you really think that the majority of that wasn't salaries? [0] http://seekingalpha.com/article/2253623-twitters-stock-based-compensation-expenses-raise-another-red-flag http://seekingalpha.com/article/2253623-twitters-stock-based...

npizzolato 11y ago
Off by an order of magnitude? Are you suggesting Twitter spends 2 million per employee per year?
- lern_too_spel 11y ago
  At least half a million per year per employee on average. 200k won't even pay salary, let alone benefits and taxes.
  - spacecowboy_lon 11y ago
    A good rule of thumb is a FTE (Fultime employe) costs 3x their salary so 500-600k isn't to far off.
mikekchar 11y ago
Rather than imagine what Twitter spends on what, you can find out for sure: https://investor.twitterinc.com/ https://investor.twitterinc.com/ All public companies have to report that stuff and it is usually free to download from their website. It is an incredibly useful skill to learn to read annual and quarterly reports. You can find out if your company is about to tank ;-)

meddlepal 11y ago

My problem with Twitter has always been what the fuck does it do that requires 1000 employees to run? I don't use Twitter so I may be missing something huge here, but my understanding of the service: 1. User A posts messages either to themselves or by addressing another user. 2. Users B, C, D .. Z subscribe to messages from A and see them on their own feeds. There are no concerns about message QoS and you don't need a consistency so you can basically blast out messages and if B views it before C then no biggie. Twitter's basically a pub-sub messaging platform without any kind of need QoS... what am I missing? Why does this require 1000 employees or even 500? it seems like something that could absolutely be run by 50 people with software (feature, optimization) engineers concentrated in one location and operations (test, deploy) teams spread out across the globe at major hot spots. Obviously you also have some stuff like sales and marketing, but I still don't see how that requires 1000 employees.

derefr 11y ago
I've always assumed most of Twitter's employees are either customer support, or "community managers" for various high-profile accounts. That's the sort of thing that has no economy of scale whatsoever.
dsymonds 11y ago
Large scale distributed systems aren't that simple. I don't know any internal details of Twitter, but from what I've gathered they are trying to hit the kind of QoS you are dismissing. Imagine some celebrity with millions of followers says something controversial: it would be confusing to a lot of people if they start getting retweets or discussions of that tweet significantly before they see that tweet themselves. And that's just one scenario. I don't know about the 500 vs. 1000 employee question, but Twitter is a big engineering challenge.
- morgante 11y ago
  > Large scale distributed systems aren't that simple. Nobody's debating that. If it weren't a "large scale distributed system" then the debate would be about 3 employees vs. 10. The core experience without scale could be made by a single engineer. But running a service like Twitter doesn't require 4,000 employees, even at scale. Facebook has "only" twice as many employees, despite a 10x more complicated product and 12x as much revenue.