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6 months ago it was all painted (maybe seemingly, though, by prior executives who weren't speaking for Musk) as if this wouldn't be a big deal for employees, wh
by saurik 4y ago
6 months ago it was all painted (maybe seemingly, though, by prior executives who weren't speaking for Musk) as if this wouldn't be a big deal for employees, which to me makes this idea that people are being rapidly fired "for cause" after a suddenly-imposed weekend work shift deadline extra shitty :/. (Even if I do sometimes claim that Twitter is incompetent as an organization or bloated with idle staff, these are humans that deserve some basic respect with how they handle a transition plan.)
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/25/technology/twitter-employees-elon-musk.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/25/technology/twitter-employ...
> At the meeting with employees on Monday [April 25], executives tried to assure employees that they wouldn’t be shortchanged by Mr. Musk’s acquisition. Mr. Agrawal told employees that their stock options would convert to cash when the deal with Mr. Musk closes, which he estimated would take between three and six months. Employees would receive their same benefits packages for a year after the deal was finalized and there were no immediate plans for layoffs, he added.
- dirheist 4y agoThose being laid off for cause are the 3 senior level executives (the old CEO, the lead counsel, and the content policy head). Those 3 had a 100+ million cumulative severance package which they are now no longer eligible to receive, although none of them are strapped for cash.
- saurik 4y agoElsewhere in this thread, people are discussing a potentially-credible (but maybe you disagree) report on this from Gergely Orosz that does not paint this as "only the 3 senior executives". https://twitter.com/gergelyorosz/status/1587042365084209153?s=21 https://twitter.com/gergelyorosz/status/1587042365084209153?... > I talked with an engineering manager who was at Twitter for 5+ years, and got laid off on Sunday "for cause". They were too exhausted from working over the weekend to talk longer: they first need to sleep.
- fourstar 4y ago
- skinnymuch 4y agoThe majority of work done by white collar people is not wildly valuable either from a cynical point of view (or realistic/truthful if you feel that way pov)
- digdugdirk 4y agoThere are plenty of people who have the skills to provide value to an organization, and just want a safe/reliable payment to provide for their families in return. Its still a sad occasion to see them fired for no/little reason.
- fourstar 4y ago
- bogota 4y ago
- datalopers 4y ago> they are now no longer eligible to receive Musk doesn't meet the cause outlined in their employment contracts. They'll get their executive early termination severance but it'll require some legal action first.
- prepend 4y agoWhat cause is outlined in their employment contracts? Do they even have employment contracts?
- gaadd33 4y agoYep they are filed with the SEC, you can see one of them here: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1418091/000119312521342255/d401229dex101.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1418091/000119312521...
- fishtoaster 4y agoThe average engineer has an employment contract. It would be incredibly surprising if the CEO, lead counsel, and content policy head did not.
- bradleybuda 4y ago> although none of them are strapped for cash Does this mean that they have or deserve different rights under contract law than others do? What if their counterparty is even less "strapped for cash"?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- prepend 4y agoIt’s not an excuse to treat people poorly, but I certainly have less empathy for someone who has $5M in vested stock who gets fired vs someone who makes $15/hour and lives paycheck to paycheck. Both are injustices. The former isn’t much of a risk to life. The latter could literally result in life or death situations.
- themitigating 4y agoSelective empathy is on the path to becoming a sociopath
- prepend 4y agoRelative empathy is part of being a regular human being. If someone has 10 lollipops and loses 1, that’s not “selective empathy” to feel differently than about someone else who has 1 lollipop and loses everything.
- themitigating 4y agoOne job one person, the rest is all assumptions. How much they made, their stock options, financial situation. Maybe they are paying for their nephews cancer treatment or something.
- hyperpape 4y agoMatt Levine has a good explanation (https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-10-31/elon-musk-is-busy-with-twitter https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-10-31/elon-m...), which is that they receive a golden parachute for a simple reason. Their self-interest was to say "la-la-la, we can't hear you" when Musk comes trying to buy Twitter. That would've given them a chance to maintain high paid positions for years. Instead, they sold to him, knowing they'd probably be given the boot. Now, at some level, it still stinks that the CEO is getting paid so many tens of millions of dollars for less than a year's worth of work. To solve that, you'd have to cut CEO pay in the first place, because just removing the parachute would incentivize clinging to their existing paychecks.
- freejazz 4y agoThe board decided to sell, not the C-level suite because they do not have that power.
- iav 4y agoThe C suite has an incredible amount of influence to block a deal with a non-strategic acquirer like Elon. The threat of all executives resigning en masse can knee cap a business.
- rst 4y agoParag Agrawal, as CEO, was also a member of the board. (This is pretty common practice, among both private and public companies.)
- 4y ago
- make3 4y ago"which they are now no longer eligible to receive" I would 100% assume that they will sue
- theGnuMe 4y agoIt would be funny if the cause was "selling Twitter to Musk". :)
- ummonk 4y agoGenghis Khan vibes
- sulam 4y agoTaylor 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.
- vxNsr 4y agoWhat 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.
- ryanwaggoner 4y agoActually, he said there are 10 managers for every engineer who codes, but I don’t know why anyone would take anything he says seriously at this point.
- itronitron 4y agoMy understanding of Twitter is that it has, or used to have, many internal teams that do 'social media consultancy projects' for prospective clients presumably to facilitate ad campaigns. In that case I would expect everyone on those teams to have manager as a job title, much like 'director' in design firms.
- mandevil 4y agoI 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.
- sulam 4y agoThere is literally no chance that Twitter has 10 engineering managers for every engineer. That is simply absurd. i worked there for over 4 years, and the ratio then was very comparable to every other tech company I've worked at, including large ones like Google and smaller ones (then) like Salesforce. Maybe more interesting, there are a lot of roles that have "manager" in the name somehow. Product Manager is the obvious one, Program Managers exist, and I'm sure there are others, not to mention that every function has managers in one shape or form if they're at all scaled out -- there's managers for designers, lawyers, accountants, etc at a fairly predictable ratio at every company I've worked at. Amusingly, Twitter was one of the most manager-lite companies I ever worked at when I started. In 2011 the ratio was a lot closer to 50:1 than it was 1:10. Perhaps Musk is simply taking everyone with manager in their role and implying they're managing other people. This is not the case and is willfully misrepresenting people's work if so. Par for the course for this guy, though.
- peter303 4y agoMusk's purchase premium increased their stock value a considerable amount.
- linuxhansl 4y agoFiring 25% of the workforce "for cause" looks like a very hard sell to me, and would open up Twitter for a barrage of lawsuits - and rightly so. Even laying off 25% of the workers would be hard to justify at this point. I'm certainly curious where this all is going.
- hef19898 4y agoStories like this make like the employee protection I enjoy even more.
- kingsloi 4y ago/cries in an at-will state/
- Y-bar 4y agoUnions. Not just for fancy Europeans and factory workers. If your colleagues gets fired for some bs reason you and your other colleagues can stand for each other by striking.
- Archelaos 4y ago... and codetermination. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codetermination_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codetermination_in_Germany
- AdamJacobMuller 4y agoI read this as "code termination" instead of "co determination" and was about halfway through the wikipedia article and quite confused before I figured it out.
- adolph 4y agoYeah, its what happens when you get fired but everyone wraps their arms around you in a big group hug so security can't get to you: de-termination.
- Zigurd 4y agoThe senior management who were fired "for cause" are all examples of how golden parachutes are properly used, and they all performed to the highest possible standard: They delivered a full-price payout to shareholders. The "for cause" bit is a transparently vindictive breach of contract. They will get their money and then some. In fact they may know some lawyers who know how to take Elon's money.
- drowning-secs 4y agoYou also need to give two months notice, or compensate for two months time, if you're going to have a big layoff. Laying off 50% of employees is also going to add up. 3,500 employees * $20,000 = $70,000,000.
- H8crilA 4y agoAlternatively you can keep them around for 2 years and pay $840M in compensation. Closing the sarcasm, yes, layoffs have costs (various costs, including to the morale), but there are reasons why organisations do them anyways.
- vxNsr 4y agoIf they keep them on they'll need to pay that anyway, this way they start saving money in 2 months instead of never.
- drowning-secs 4y agoI was comparing doing a “layoff” vs. firing “for cause”.
- jjfoooo4 4y agoMusk stands as good a chance of withholding the golden parachute pay as he did getting out of the acquisition.
- gunapologist99 4y agoMr. Agrawal told employees that their stock options would convert to cash when the deal with Mr. Musk closes, which he estimated would take between three and six months. Employees would receive their same benefits packages for a year after the deal was finalized and there were no immediate plans for layoffs, he added. So, really those two long sentences should be rewritten: Mr Agrawal, as an officer of the company, engaged in rampant speculation, perhaps to reassure employees (or himself) that their jobs were safe for three months to a year, even though Mr. Musk had repeatedly indicated otherwise.
- that_guy_iain 4y agoI think he would have known he was out the door since part of the reason Musk was saying he was buying Twitter in text messages was that he thought Agrawal wasn't up to the job. With a 52 million payout, I also think he wasn't overly worried about how he would do after Twitter.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dboreham 4y ago"no immediate plans for layoffs" means "layoffs in a few weeks".
- cpsns 4y agoExactly. The moment upper management utters the word 'layoff' in any context, or tries to reassure workers it's time to GTFO immediately.
- ryanwaggoner 4y agoWhy would you GTFO because there’s a possibility you might be laid off? Why not wait and see if that actually happens and collect any severance?
- mhewett 4y agoI've been through changes like this several times and the SURE indicator that big changes are coming is when the higher-ups say "Nothing will change". Seriously. I actually think that, below the CEO level, the managers are engaged in wishful thinking, rather than deceit.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- TheDarkestSoul 4y agoMy guess is Musk wants to punish them for making him go through with the deal _he agreed to_. He doesn't want to own Twitter and he's making them feel it.
- la64710 4y agoThere have been some rumors that the new Chief of Twitter wants to outsource these jobs to some other countries.