4 ms·

Too many people, too fast. There's no way these are going to be sensible, surgical layoffs. The service is definitely going to suffer.

dmak 4y ago
Fair point. Agreed on the surgical layoffs. I assumed that Twitter's culture was rotting very deeply already since they haven't made much progress for a long time.
- jesuscript 4y ago
  There’s an underlying fact that the committee of people didn’t care about Twitter as a company right? That if you believe in your company and the welfare of your workers, and you believe Elon is a threat to them and your vision of whatever modern communication Twitter serves, then you wouldn’t sell it to him. But they did right? As in the group lacks conviction. There was not a single stipulation in that sale that said “please keep our people on for X amount of time”. They took the cash and bounced.
  - dmak 4y ago
    That was a hard red pill to swallow.
  - papercrane 4y ago
    The board represents the shareholders, of course they were going to take an over market offer. If they hadn't they'd be mired in shareholder lawsuits til the end of time.
  - lmm 4y ago
    Oh sure. The board and upper management were inept and ineffectual, I don't think anyone will argue otherwise. But so what?
  - drc500free 4y ago
    The management and the shareholders are not the same thing. The board represents the shareholders, not the management. If they don't take the offer they get sued for breaching fiduciary responsibility.
chrsig 4y ago
It's twitter. The service suffering is actually a desirable feature.
type-r 4y ago
Is it? In general at every place I've worked the vast majority of the work has come from launching & supporting new products. Existing infra does not really break that often, so if we just want Twitter as it is, that should be doable by 1/10th of the people. I'm not picking just on Twitter -- I feel this is the case broadly. Maintenance of a system that doesn't change is fairly straightforward as compared to innovation.
- afavour 4y ago
  > if we just want Twitter as it is Musk explicitly doesn't want that though, because he needs Twitter to earn a lot more money than it currently does.
  - shaburn 4y ago
    False. He can pump profits keeping earnings flat by slashing costs. See probably removing 1/3 the cost with this single move.
    - afavour 4y ago
      The maths don't even begin to work out there. He just made Twitter take on $13bn of debt to finance his purchase, the company will owe around $1bn a year in interest payments that it didn't used to. The layoffs announced today probably won't even cover that extra interest.
      - shaburn 4y ago
        That's probably a billion in recurring expense of the worst kind. Debt can be satisfied with an equity issuance in the future post restructure.
    - WoahNoun 4y ago
      That doesn't account for the lost ad revenue due to the rise of controversial content.
- smt88 4y ago
wongarsu 4y ago
The verge article mentioned elsewhere in this discussion claims "His team of outside advisors has spent the last week determining which engineers to keep based on their contributions to Twitter’s codebase, according to employees involved in the discussion". Of course how well of a job they can do in a week is anyone's guess, but it sounds like there was a lot more internal and external knowledge involved than just Elon's gut feeling on who's important.
- saagarjha 4y ago
  Sounds like it's actually s/a lot/very little/
Cornelius267 4y ago
It's also just cruel. Twitter employees must be feeling immense whiplash. First they were being bought out, then they weren't, then they were again, then a huge change in work culture literally overnight, now mass layoffs. Elon Musk, it seems, does not think about the humans affected by his decisions. Regardless of anyone's opinions on whether the culture was good or bad, this sort of sudden mass loss of employment will cause pain. Pain that didn't need to happen.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  It's almost like Elon Musk _wants_ to drastically shift the work culture.
  - ycombobreaker 4y ago
    Yes, of course. Stress and Fear are the cornerstones of responsible leadership. You can say that this is intentional, but it just means he is an asshole.
nonethewiser 4y ago
> Too many people, too fast. There is no indication of how many people. > There's no way these are going to be sensible, surgical layoffs. We have no clue whose going to be laid off. You clearly have your mind made up, regardless of reality.
- afavour 4y ago
  > There is no indication of how many people. “About half of Twitter’s workers appeared set to lose their jobs, according to previous internal messages and an investor” https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/03/technology/twitter-layoffs-elon-musk.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/03/technology/twitter-layoff... > We have no clue whose going to be laid off No but we do know this plan was thrown together extremely quickly. We know a few days ago developers were told to print off (!) their code for review. Let’s state the obvious: it takes more than a week to plan an effective layoff of half your staff.
- thinkingemote 4y ago
  The "too many" people is in comparison with other companies and the revenue these companies bring in. Twitter is at the highest end of the list of more employees per money. It might not be the wisest thing, but in comparison with others tech companies and only in this component it's accurate.
baryphonic 4y ago
> Too many people, too fast. There's no way these are going to be sensible, surgical layoffs. If I were working there, I'd want the layoffs to be as swift and brief as possible. Having the sword of Damocles hanging over my head day to day would be unbearable. I'd rather Twitter have one big layoff and then re-focus on the product if it were me. > The service is definitely going to suffer. I see this claim, but don't quite get it. What are engineers doing there? Are they like Homer Simpson pushing a red button every day to keep the site running? It seems like kind of a set-and-forget type of operation at this point, since so few new features are developed. They copied a couple of other social media startups (Clubhouse & Substack) in the past couple of years, and they changed the stylesheet, but otherwise, doesn't seem like much has happened. Have they done a ton of optimization work that we simply don't know about? (And if not, why do they need it?) I just don't get the claim. FWIW, I'm expecting to see essentially no difference in Twitter for at least six months.
- andirk 4y ago
  They're working on that 'edit' button.

dmak 4y ago

Fair point. Agreed on the surgical layoffs. I assumed that Twitter's culture was rotting very deeply already since they haven't made much progress for a long time.

jesuscript 4y ago
There’s an underlying fact that the committee of people didn’t care about Twitter as a company right? That if you believe in your company and the welfare of your workers, and you believe Elon is a threat to them and your vision of whatever modern communication Twitter serves, then you wouldn’t sell it to him. But they did right? As in the group lacks conviction. There was not a single stipulation in that sale that said “please keep our people on for X amount of time”. They took the cash and bounced.
- dmak 4y ago
  That was a hard red pill to swallow.
- papercrane 4y ago
  The board represents the shareholders, of course they were going to take an over market offer. If they hadn't they'd be mired in shareholder lawsuits til the end of time.
- lmm 4y ago
  Oh sure. The board and upper management were inept and ineffectual, I don't think anyone will argue otherwise. But so what?
- drc500free 4y ago
  The management and the shareholders are not the same thing. The board represents the shareholders, not the management. If they don't take the offer they get sued for breaching fiduciary responsibility.

chrsig 4y ago

It's twitter. The service suffering is actually a desirable feature.

type-r 4y ago

Is it? In general at every place I've worked the vast majority of the work has come from launching & supporting new products. Existing infra does not really break that often, so if we just want Twitter as it is, that should be doable by 1/10th of the people. I'm not picking just on Twitter -- I feel this is the case broadly. Maintenance of a system that doesn't change is fairly straightforward as compared to innovation.

afavour 4y ago
> if we just want Twitter as it is Musk explicitly doesn't want that though, because he needs Twitter to earn a lot more money than it currently does.
- shaburn 4y ago
  False. He can pump profits keeping earnings flat by slashing costs. See probably removing 1/3 the cost with this single move.
  - afavour 4y ago
    The maths don't even begin to work out there. He just made Twitter take on $13bn of debt to finance his purchase, the company will owe around $1bn a year in interest payments that it didn't used to. The layoffs announced today probably won't even cover that extra interest.
    - shaburn 4y ago
      That's probably a billion in recurring expense of the worst kind. Debt can be satisfied with an equity issuance in the future post restructure.
  - WoahNoun 4y ago
    That doesn't account for the lost ad revenue due to the rise of controversial content.
smt88 4y ago

wongarsu 4y ago

The verge article mentioned elsewhere in this discussion claims "His team of outside advisors has spent the last week determining which engineers to keep based on their contributions to Twitter’s codebase, according to employees involved in the discussion". Of course how well of a job they can do in a week is anyone's guess, but it sounds like there was a lot more internal and external knowledge involved than just Elon's gut feeling on who's important.

saagarjha 4y ago
Sounds like it's actually s/a lot/very little/

Cornelius267 4y ago

It's also just cruel. Twitter employees must be feeling immense whiplash. First they were being bought out, then they weren't, then they were again, then a huge change in work culture literally overnight, now mass layoffs. Elon Musk, it seems, does not think about the humans affected by his decisions. Regardless of anyone's opinions on whether the culture was good or bad, this sort of sudden mass loss of employment will cause pain. Pain that didn't need to happen.

nonethewiser 4y ago
It's almost like Elon Musk _wants_ to drastically shift the work culture.
- ycombobreaker 4y ago
  Yes, of course. Stress and Fear are the cornerstones of responsible leadership. You can say that this is intentional, but it just means he is an asshole.

nonethewiser 4y ago

> Too many people, too fast. There is no indication of how many people. > There's no way these are going to be sensible, surgical layoffs. We have no clue whose going to be laid off. You clearly have your mind made up, regardless of reality.

afavour 4y ago
> There is no indication of how many people. “About half of Twitter’s workers appeared set to lose their jobs, according to previous internal messages and an investor” https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/03/technology/twitter-layoffs-elon-musk.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/03/technology/twitter-layoff... > We have no clue whose going to be laid off No but we do know this plan was thrown together extremely quickly. We know a few days ago developers were told to print off (!) their code for review. Let’s state the obvious: it takes more than a week to plan an effective layoff of half your staff.
thinkingemote 4y ago
The "too many" people is in comparison with other companies and the revenue these companies bring in. Twitter is at the highest end of the list of more employees per money. It might not be the wisest thing, but in comparison with others tech companies and only in this component it's accurate.

baryphonic 4y ago

> Too many people, too fast. There's no way these are going to be sensible, surgical layoffs. If I were working there, I'd want the layoffs to be as swift and brief as possible. Having the sword of Damocles hanging over my head day to day would be unbearable. I'd rather Twitter have one big layoff and then re-focus on the product if it were me. > The service is definitely going to suffer. I see this claim, but don't quite get it. What are engineers doing there? Are they like Homer Simpson pushing a red button every day to keep the site running? It seems like kind of a set-and-forget type of operation at this point, since so few new features are developed. They copied a couple of other social media startups (Clubhouse & Substack) in the past couple of years, and they changed the stylesheet, but otherwise, doesn't seem like much has happened. Have they done a ton of optimization work that we simply don't know about? (And if not, why do they need it?) I just don't get the claim. FWIW, I'm expecting to see essentially no difference in Twitter for at least six months.

andirk 4y ago
They're working on that 'edit' button.