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This feels very reminiscent of when Steve Jobs came back to Apple in an official CEO capacity. He laid off 3000 people in his first year as CEO and was ruthles

This feels very reminiscent of when Steve Jobs came back to Apple in an official CEO capacity. He laid off 3000 people in his first year as CEO and was ruthless with axing unnecessary projects and product lines. He also installed key NeXT employees into positions of influence. The rest is of course history. I'm curious to see how this plays out for Musk and Twitter.

metabagel 4y ago
I bet he didn’t lay off 50% of the workforce in the first week.
- sgerenser 4y ago
  They did lay off about a third of their workforce, albeit not 1 week after jobs returned: https://www.mercurynews.com/2014/08/29/1997-apple-bites-the-bullet-cuts-4100-jobs/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2014/08/29/1997-apple-bites-the-... At the time, Gil Amelio was still CEO as well, so can’t necessarily pin this one solely on Jobs.
  - ExMachina73 4y ago
    Very true. Furthermore I'm curious to see where Twitter will innovate moving forward. After S. Jobs "slashed and burned", he set his teams first on the iMac and then iPod in Aug. 1998 and Oct. 2001 respectively. I keep reading articles about how Musk wants to turn Twitter into an "app for everything" similar to WeChat in China. I'm a bit skeptical.
nemo44x 4y ago
When you do a renovation, you don’t try and work around the existing structures. You demolish them and rip it down to the studs - to the “good bones” that hold it all up. Then and only then can you install your newly designed structure inside the old structure. This is how a rebuild is done.
- koluna 4y ago
  There is absolutely no way they managed to do proper due diligence to understand who on the team is essential ("good bones" for the structure) vs. those that are not. It's been a week.
slantedview 4y ago
The difference is Steve Jobs at least knew a thing or two about running a tech company whereas Musk had social media engineers print out code to show his car company engineers.
- sanjayio 4y ago
  You’re saying that with hindsight on Steve Jobs full career. You don’t have hindsight on Elon’s.
- memish 4y ago
  Is the idea here that Twitter is more complicated than building rockets? Or building factories that build millions of electric cars?
  - skeletonjelly 4y ago
    Not the person you're replying to, but it's not "more complicated" per se, technically, but Twitter is as Musk puts it a town square, and if you're going to treat a product that relies on a social network like a car or a rocket...can't see the analogous processes applying here
  - dehrmann 4y ago
    Yes. The tooling required is more expensive, but the engineering going into both is more mature and simpler.

metabagel 4y ago

I bet he didn’t lay off 50% of the workforce in the first week.

sgerenser 4y ago
They did lay off about a third of their workforce, albeit not 1 week after jobs returned: https://www.mercurynews.com/2014/08/29/1997-apple-bites-the-bullet-cuts-4100-jobs/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2014/08/29/1997-apple-bites-the-... At the time, Gil Amelio was still CEO as well, so can’t necessarily pin this one solely on Jobs.
- ExMachina73 4y ago
  Very true. Furthermore I'm curious to see where Twitter will innovate moving forward. After S. Jobs "slashed and burned", he set his teams first on the iMac and then iPod in Aug. 1998 and Oct. 2001 respectively. I keep reading articles about how Musk wants to turn Twitter into an "app for everything" similar to WeChat in China. I'm a bit skeptical.

nemo44x 4y ago

When you do a renovation, you don’t try and work around the existing structures. You demolish them and rip it down to the studs - to the “good bones” that hold it all up. Then and only then can you install your newly designed structure inside the old structure. This is how a rebuild is done.

koluna 4y ago
There is absolutely no way they managed to do proper due diligence to understand who on the team is essential ("good bones" for the structure) vs. those that are not. It's been a week.

slantedview 4y ago

The difference is Steve Jobs at least knew a thing or two about running a tech company whereas Musk had social media engineers print out code to show his car company engineers.

sanjayio 4y ago
You’re saying that with hindsight on Steve Jobs full career. You don’t have hindsight on Elon’s.
memish 4y ago
Is the idea here that Twitter is more complicated than building rockets? Or building factories that build millions of electric cars?
- skeletonjelly 4y ago
  Not the person you're replying to, but it's not "more complicated" per se, technically, but Twitter is as Musk puts it a town square, and if you're going to treat a product that relies on a social network like a car or a rocket...can't see the analogous processes applying here
- dehrmann 4y ago
  Yes. The tooling required is more expensive, but the engineering going into both is more mature and simpler.