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> Musk orders Twitter to cut infrastructure costs by $1 billion all sound and fury, signifying nothing

by spiderjerusalem 4y ago

chris_wot 4y ago
Didn’t he take out $13billion in debt?
- aenis 4y ago
  Yeah, but lots of the debt is actually on company's books - as is the case with LBOs. This is yet another case of barbarians at the gate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarians_at_the_Gate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarians_at_the_Gate) - corporate raider running a company into the ground.
  - MangoCoffee 4y ago
    maybe we don't know yet. Musk might be able to pull a Dell with Twitter. Dell went private loaded with debts then add more debts by buying EMC and now Dell is public again.
    - jdub 4y ago
      Dell had a way to make money and didn't have a halfwit with zero domain experience in charge.
    - nova22033 4y ago
      https://www.cultofmac.com/448147/today-apple-history-michael-dell-says-hed-shut-apple-refund-shareholders/ https://www.cultofmac.com/448147/today-apple-history-michael... October 6, 1997: Michael Dell makes an infamously bleak appraisal of Apple’s fortunes. Asked what he would do with the struggling company, the founder of Dell Inc. says he would “shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.”
  - kortilla 4y ago
    That only works when the company has enough cash or assets to buyout the new owner for more than they paid. Twitter was definitely not a case of sitting on a mountain of assets that can be broken up and raided.
    - aenis 4y ago
      For sure, as far as LBOs go, this is probably one of the worst ever. Normally the raider pays a bit of a premium over the assets, then divides them, props them up a bit, and collects a profit. I can't imagine this being possible with Twitter. Nothing to break up. Nothing to prop up. And if he gets his way, he will be competing with Parlor for the niche market it caters to. Or 4chan :)
aenis 4y ago
Not sure how lean do they run their stuff - I'd assume at least lean-ish, considering they have (had?) a lot of good engineering talent working on it. Asking for a large reduction while at the same time culling staff seems like wishful thinking.
- lordnacho 4y ago
  I went to visit a team at Twitter that seemed to have very little to do with their core business. They'd bought some company that my company was using (can't even remember, Fabric or some crash profiling thing?) and I got invited to see their fancy building on Market Street. But my sense was there were many peripheral teams that your average Twitter user would never notice if Twitter were to cut them.

> Musk orders Twitter to cut infrastructure costs by $1 billion all sound and fury, signifying nothing

chris_wot 4y ago

Didn’t he take out $13billion in debt?

aenis 4y ago
Yeah, but lots of the debt is actually on company's books - as is the case with LBOs. This is yet another case of barbarians at the gate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarians_at_the_Gate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarians_at_the_Gate) - corporate raider running a company into the ground.
- MangoCoffee 4y ago
  maybe we don't know yet. Musk might be able to pull a Dell with Twitter. Dell went private loaded with debts then add more debts by buying EMC and now Dell is public again.
  - jdub 4y ago
    Dell had a way to make money and didn't have a halfwit with zero domain experience in charge.
  - nova22033 4y ago
    https://www.cultofmac.com/448147/today-apple-history-michael-dell-says-hed-shut-apple-refund-shareholders/ https://www.cultofmac.com/448147/today-apple-history-michael... October 6, 1997: Michael Dell makes an infamously bleak appraisal of Apple’s fortunes. Asked what he would do with the struggling company, the founder of Dell Inc. says he would “shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.”
- kortilla 4y ago
  That only works when the company has enough cash or assets to buyout the new owner for more than they paid. Twitter was definitely not a case of sitting on a mountain of assets that can be broken up and raided.
  - aenis 4y ago
    For sure, as far as LBOs go, this is probably one of the worst ever. Normally the raider pays a bit of a premium over the assets, then divides them, props them up a bit, and collects a profit. I can't imagine this being possible with Twitter. Nothing to break up. Nothing to prop up. And if he gets his way, he will be competing with Parlor for the niche market it caters to. Or 4chan :)

aenis 4y ago

Not sure how lean do they run their stuff - I'd assume at least lean-ish, considering they have (had?) a lot of good engineering talent working on it. Asking for a large reduction while at the same time culling staff seems like wishful thinking.

lordnacho 4y ago
I went to visit a team at Twitter that seemed to have very little to do with their core business. They'd bought some company that my company was using (can't even remember, Fabric or some crash profiling thing?) and I got invited to see their fancy building on Market Street. But my sense was there were many peripheral teams that your average Twitter user would never notice if Twitter were to cut them.