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What a contrast in leadership when you compare the way Twitter is doing this (rumor is right before bonus/stock vesting and cold impersonal email) and how Strip

What a contrast in leadership when you compare the way Twitter is doing this (rumor is right before bonus/stock vesting and cold impersonal email) and how Stripe is conducting their layoffs (empathy, 14 weeks severance, bonus payouts, etc.) Which company is going to have an easier time hiring after the dust settles and they have a growth stage again?

cocochanel 4y ago
whichever pays more
- aenis 4y ago
  Nah, people do remember what companies do and many avoid shitty companies. I work in HR, and on macro scale this is clearly visible. Some of our clients have a hard time filling roles despite paying competitively or even generously. Sure, for some people thats not an issue, but it is a thing, and it gets more visible with engineering roles, for some reason.
  - luckylion 4y ago
    Yeah, that's why they all avoid working at Apple, Google etc because those companies illegally conspired to keep their salaries down.
    - watwut 4y ago
      Google does not have reputation for particularly toxic workplace. They are not super clean of course as you mentioned, but their reputation is not bad at all. And while Apple has worst reputation then google, it is still fairly good one.
      - luckylion 4y ago
        Sure, my point was that "past behavior" barely matters. Compensation, social status and work expectation is what makes people go for or avoid companies. If Google didn't pay as much, fewer people would bother jumping through hoops. If Apple had an oil-industry level social status, Californians would think twice about working there (or they'd get a cover job to use when talking to neighbors and friends). How they fire people means very little, because very few people in tech think of themselves as the ones being fired in the near future (most likely also why few people in tech are into unions, they don't feel as replaceable as factory workers).
        watwut 4y ago
        But that is the thing, I dont think you are right. You picked up companies with good reputation as examples ... they pay well and have good reputation, of course people want to work there. There are companies with actually bad reputation and they either have problem to find staff or have to pay a lot more while still having issues.
        luckylion 4y ago
        They literally formed an illegal conspiracy to harm their employees by suppressing salaries -- this type of thing apparently simply doesn't matter much if they keep offering some of the highest salaries in the industry. And neither will this behavior at Twitter, I believe.
        watwut 4y ago
        > They literally formed an illegal conspiracy to harm their employees by suppressing salaries Yes and that is bad. And still, if you work inside one of those companies, the environment does not have reputation of being toxic. It just dont, in case of google the reputation is that they treat you well most of the time, but it is slower speed then, say facebook. And facebook does not have toxic reputation either. Their reputation is not bad, actually. People who work there criticize some, but also are generally content and happy. Because, even with that agreement, neither company is overly toxic.
      - aenis 4y ago
        Exactly. There are better examples. Take for instance booking.com. They unceremoniously dumped lots of their employees at the beginning of the pandemic despite being flush with cash. Then they tried hiring people back. Guess what, lots of people didnt want to even hear how much they are offering. There are other such companies. But yes, there are people who would not, for instance, work for AWS due to their, shall we say, internal culture.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    > Some of our clients have a hard time filling roles despite paying competitively or even generously. By definition, if they were having a hard time filling roles, they were not paying competitively enough to offset their bad reputation. I bet they could have easily filled the role if they added a zero or two to the compensation offer.
- watwut 4y ago
  I have seen multiple people making decision of "this place pays more, but the environment looks toxic" or "this place pays more, but the business seems borderline unethical" and taking lower offer. I think that is why famous toxic places had to have very high salaries - cause the people were not interested otherwise.
  - naijaboiler 4y ago
    People will do this in a good job market. In a bad one, even crappy employers will have their fill of willing employees. Too many in her have never experienced a bad market
zer0tonin 4y ago
I seriously doubt Twitter will have a growth stage again
- anthropodie 4y ago
  Hell I don't like what Elon does most of the times but you have to admit he did built successful companies from ground up in fields no one was even looking into. Twitter might succeed or it might fail but Twitter in its current form both as a company and social media paltform was bad.
  - smcl 4y ago
    You have to admit that he invested in some companies in fields that no-one was looking into. He's made a few big bets that have paid off extremely well. That's not nothing, and is impressive but it's not building a company. By all accounts he's a bit of a micro-manager, but I suspect there's only so much he could micro-manage or actually contribute directly in ventures like SpaceX or Tesla (he did make a door-handle patent tho). Twitter on the other hand is another matter - no huge technical barriers stopping him from getting his hands dirty, no lives are at stake or regulatory bodies that are going to tell him "no that is dangerous" - so we're finally seeing what Elon unleashed looks like. So far it can probably be described as "chaotic" at best, it remains to be seen whether this chaos will disperse and Twitter will emerge leaner and better. My belief is that he doesn't understand Twitter and its users quite as well as he thinks, and that Twitter will slowly get a bit more annoying and less profitable until he loses interest or gets distracted by something else. We will see, I use Twitter a lot so I hope that I'm wrong.
    - randomsearch 4y ago
      Are you saying musk’s role in SpaceX and Tesla is as an investor? That seems so disingenuous that it’s impossible not to conclude this post is purely emotional. If you hate Musk, fine, but please just stick to the facts and articulate why you hate him. I don’t understand why there is so much emotion around Musk. He has done good things and bad things. He has done incredible, near possible things. He works ridiculously hard. He’s rich. He has said and posted things he shouldn’t. I don’t feel that I am in a position to say he is a terrible person. I don’t even know the guy. I wouldn’t want to live in a world without SpaceX and Tesla. I am genuinely fascinated by this hatred. I’ve tried to compile a list of why people might hate him: - posted a conspiracy theory on Twitter (which he did then delete) - childishly insulted a diver - is a shameless self promoter - fires staff brutally - makes huge and sometimes unreasonable demands on his workforce - disagreed with covid policy, partly on the argument that the fatality rate is low and there’s not much you can really do about it Ok, these are bad. But he’s hated as if he is the new Hitler. I don’t get it. I’d really appreciate it if someone could rationally explain why Elon is deserving of such great hatred.
anthropodie 4y ago
People might choose based on their preferences: You want stability? Join stripe You want to be sharp? Join Twitter
- wildrhythms 4y ago
  What does it mean to be sharp in this context?
  - anthropodie 4y ago
    For me, if I were at beginning of my career I would have definitely joined Twitter. Because I have to work harder, compete harder, learn faster just to save my job. I think that sort of culture would make you sharp than others in your field very early in your career. Then when you go and work at company like stripe, its easy.
    - Blokje5 4y ago
      That type of culture might also cause a burnout ending your career early.
    - dasil003 4y ago
      Do you mean working at Twitter now under Elon or historically? Because I’m not sure that Twitter has historically been more demanding.
    - threeseed 4y ago
      And good luck to Twitter if they are looking to implement a Hunger Games style culture. However this type of attitude to work is extremely immature, counter-productive and proven to be harmful to both individuals and the company. People are most productive over the long term when they feel encouraged, supported, self-motivated etc. Positive emotions not negative ones like fear, coercion, hostility etc.
      - tomp 4y ago
        > However this type of attitude to work is extremely immature, counter-productive and proven to be harmful to both individuals and the company. Because SpaceX and Tesla totally crashed and burned and are doing so much worse than Boeing and Volkswagen?
mitemte 4y ago
Are there no laws about minimum notice or severance pay? I’m glad Australia has decent laws to protect workers. It’ll be interesting to see if Australian Twitter staff who are locked out of their accounts have been laid off and what happens next. https://www.fairwork.gov.au/tools-and-resources/fact-sheets/minimum-workplace-entitlements/notice-of-termination-and-redundancy-pay https://www.fairwork.gov.au/tools-and-resources/fact-sheets/...
- jleyank 4y ago
  Yeah there are laws : https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/termination/plantclosings https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/termination/plantclosings. Probably state laws as well. These require notice of severance or post payment and protect against discrimination. Twitter can try to claim that they’re all being fired for cause, but that’ll just end up paying a whole lot of lawyers.
- Tenoke 4y ago
  In cases like this typically they'd just fire you and pay the salary through the minimum notice period without requiring nor allowing you to show up. I see no reason to think that's not the case here.
kortilla 4y ago
> Which company is going to have an easier time hiring after the dust settles and they have a growth stage again? The one with the better offer, taking a possible layoff payout into account. The comp ranges can be so drastically different between companies that a possibly generous layoff (that is no means guaranteed if Stripe has to do this when circumstances are more dire) is negligible financially.
- threeseed 4y ago
  > The one with the better offer Is the only thing that determines whether you take a job the salary ? Because for many people how much you get paid is important but far from the only factor.
  - akudha 4y ago
    Are we deluding ourselves here? Why do you think hundreds of thousands of extremely bright people work for horrific/products companies like Facebook, Palantir etc? Money. Money talks and talks very loudly. Most people have a price at which they will sell out. Those who don’t, are too few to make any significant difference
    - threeseed 4y ago
      Because despite you thinking they are horrific companies many other people don't. Billions of people love and use Meta products every day and their tech stack is one of the world's best with technical challenges almost no other company faces. Palantir also has many parts of their business that benefit society e.g. combating human trafficking etc.
      - habibur 4y ago
        > Because despite you thinking they are horrific companies many other people don't. The same goes for twitter.
      - instagraham 4y ago
brightball 4y ago
If I remember correctly, the rumor about layoffs ahead of vesting said he was going to do it before Nov 1st. That part at least, seems to have just been a rumor.
- tinyhouse 4y ago
  It was a rumor. I think it didn't happen because of the WARN act. Even if happened before Nov 1 he would still need to pay the vest.
hardware2win 4y ago
It wouldnt change anything for me tbf There are laws that take care of it in my country
PM_me_your_math 4y ago
Has stripe lost billions of dollars for 8 out of the last 10 years?
- dragontamer 4y ago
  Rookie numbers. The new owner of Twitter took on $13 Billion in debt, which probably costs $1.3 Billion+ in interest payments alone. Twitter has gone from a hundred-million loss / year into a Billion+ per year loss in the past week, because of the decisions related to this buyout. That is the problem. $200 million loss per year is manageable. $1500 million loss/year is not.
  - PM_me_your_math 4y ago
    Twitter's loss in 2020 was over $1,100,000,000. In the last 10 years, twitter has lost almost $4,000,000,000, posting profits in only two years (2018,2019). Twitters losses in 2021 were over 221MM, and 250MM to 700MM between 2013 and 2017. So the myth that Twitter was a healthy company is only promulgated by agenda driven opinions, not factual ones.
    - dragontamer 4y ago
      And this year (and all years here on out), Elon Musk in his brilliance added $1,300,000,000 to that loss, because he took on a $13,000,000,000 loan to buyout the company. That's all I'm saying. The $1.3 billion/year in interest payments alone is a magnitude more loss than Twitter ever had before.
prepend 4y ago
Isn’t the difference that Slack is profitable while Twitter is not? I worked for a couple startups and the severance package for companies losing money was pretty bad. The package for profitable was ok. And the package for insolvent was “your last paycheck was your last.”
jmyeet 4y ago
Add to this, rumor has it Elon fired the 3 executives (CEO, CFO, chief legal counsel) with cause to try and avoid paying out the golden parachutes (eg the CEO would otherwise get $40-60m+). I guarantee that'll end in a lawsuit and probably a settlement for less. But I expect that to impact executive hiring. As for hiring peons, it's hard to say. A bigger factor (IMHO) is Elon himself. Fans will probably go there. Those who don't like him probably won't. I expect that to have a far bigger impact than firing a bunch of employees right before bonus time several years earlier. My read of the situation is that Elon never really wanted to buy Twitter. I mean he did try and get out of it but the Twitter board crafted a good contract and I believe Elon realized he was going to get dumpstered by the Delaware Chancery Court. So what does he do now?? The private equity playbook is my guess. He'll massively cut costs, repackage it somehow, claim victory (for "free speech" or whatever) and then sell off a minority stake or even the whole thing. He may even try and do the tech thing where he sells most of the equity but retains all the voting power. In such an environment, short term hiring probably isn't on the cards.
- cloutchaser 4y ago
  Frankly I am pretty sure there is a long list of talented execs who don't care how Parag was fired and would love to work for Musk. He's too successful now with too many fans for this to have an impact. People know he demands a lot and can do crazy things. That's just part of the package.
- trashtester 4y ago
  Here is one possible outcome: Elon splits up Twitter into two parts: 1. An infrastructure element that creates an open API/protocol for sharing/pushing messages, contacts and media between content/social media platforms. The basic idea is to have a generic interface similar to email. 2. A content company that provides aggregation, search, moderation (possibly based on user preference) and possibly editorial features, as well as a front-end for users. Basically what gmail is to email. As soon as Republicans gain control of congress (and possibly the presidency), he starts lobbying to make it mandatory for all social media platforms to allow their users to connect through the API/protocol under (1) with a generalized account, similar (or identical, at least in form) to email addresses. This would kill the monopolies of Facebook, Insta, Tik-Tok, etc, by allowing a user to use only one of them to connect with user on all of them, similar to how they can use an email client of choice. Twitter could then charge some small fee for communicating over this protocol, or could simply sell the protocol company to the government, who could make the protocol publicly owned, like email/smtp. Would this make him a huge profit? Not likely. At best he would get his investment back, perhaps. But it could help break down some echo chambers and counteract some of the crazy polarization that's currently going on in the US. And if I'm reading Musk correctly, profit is no longer his primary motivation, if it ever was. Rather, it seems that he has some Messiah complex where he wants to be seen as the guy that saves the world. Whether you see that as a sign of genuine altruism, a severe case of Narcissism or just a sign that he's really an insecure nerd that seeks social validation, is up to you.
meragrin_ 4y ago
Well, when you have employees with irrational hatred of the new owner, you have to take some precautions.
- zenexer 4y ago
  Irrational? It would seem to me that their fears were warranted.
- cmatthias 4y ago
  I think there are some very rational reasons for hating or at least strongly disapproving of the new owner. For example, if the new owner of the company I worked for demanded on a Saturday that a new feature needs to be ready for testing by Monday, I'd be pretty upset. Or, if I was on a team working on the problem of trust and ethics, and the new owner personally and un-ironically posted a completely false and inflammatory "news article" about a current event, and then several days later laid off my entire team, I wouldn't consider it irrational to be quite upset.
DeathArrow 4y ago
I don't see more empathy from Stripe. And since no one has come out of the process of mass layoffs yet, we don't know if Twitter isn't going to provide severance and bonus payouts and etc. On the other hand, Stripe was much more productive and is workforce wasn't so inflated.
- sillysaurusx 4y ago
  I was thinking it over, and one way Stripe nailed Twitter is communication. Stripe’s severance was clearly communicated up front. Twitter’s leadership is like the proverbial headless chicken. It’s quite the contrast. I think there’s a lesson here. A well-drafted email could’ve saved twitter a lot of heartache. Then again, maybe the email drafter got laid off too.
- joeblubaugh 4y ago
  Stripe had 3x the staff of Adyen doing the same revenue
johnchristopher 4y ago
I was thinking of the covid layoff at Airbnb, which seemed to have been handled better (iirc).
MrDresden 4y ago
Android engineer with 12 years experience beneath their belt here. Would never consider Twitter as a possible employeer after what just went down.
onetimeuse1234 4y ago
Take this: You take over a company that was full of bad behaving managers and employees. The previous CEO supported this situation. The new CEO who bought the company need to quickly turn the ship around. Severance, bonus payouts? Yes, if the staff you take over was really good and they deserve it. Is it the same case with Twitter? Can we compare Stripe and Twitter on this level?
- bayindirh 4y ago
  From a neutral point of view, if the behavior of current employees is the result of the management grooming them to behave like this, is the resulting behavior is employees' fault? I don't know internals of Twitter. I'm just asking a theoretical question.
- macNchz 4y ago
  > You take over a company that was full of bad behaving managers and employees. Is one week of ownership enough to actually understand this and identify those people? It seems they had a preconceived notion of how much revenue the business should have per employee, and that’s a key driver of this: https://mobile.twitter.com/sf_mills/status/1575838785371222016 https://mobile.twitter.com/sf_mills/status/15758387853712220...
ekianjo 4y ago
> Which company is going to have an easier time hiring after the dust settles and they have a growth stage again? Not all companies die after massive layoffs. Sometimes all you need is to contract before building a better place again. Whoever is hired next by Twitter is going to be coming for the future potential, not for what happened during the layoffs.
matwood 4y ago
We don't know details yet, so it's hard to contrast anything. The pre stock vesting rumor was before 11/1. That date has passed. It's also interesting that nearly every tech person I read thought Twitter was over-staffed prior to Musk taking over. Now he's doing something about it, and people are pearl clutching.
mozman 4y ago
What if twitter were so bloated they were effectively providing corporate welfare? Truth is we don’t know. I see it as someone is finally taking action to turn Twitter around. They’ve been floundering for years.
recuter 4y ago
I suppose it depends whether you view a company as kindergarten for adults or a place of business. Is there such a thing as a warm personable firing email? You think HR drones are your buddies whose role is to make you feel good? Egads.
s1artibartfast 4y ago
If you compare them on financial terms, I think the twitter employees are in a better spot Stripe gave one more month of severance, but twitter employees get to cash out of company stock.

cocochanel 4y ago

whichever pays more

aenis 4y ago
Nah, people do remember what companies do and many avoid shitty companies. I work in HR, and on macro scale this is clearly visible. Some of our clients have a hard time filling roles despite paying competitively or even generously. Sure, for some people thats not an issue, but it is a thing, and it gets more visible with engineering roles, for some reason.
- luckylion 4y ago
  Yeah, that's why they all avoid working at Apple, Google etc because those companies illegally conspired to keep their salaries down.
  - watwut 4y ago
    Google does not have reputation for particularly toxic workplace. They are not super clean of course as you mentioned, but their reputation is not bad at all. And while Apple has worst reputation then google, it is still fairly good one.
    - luckylion 4y ago
      Sure, my point was that "past behavior" barely matters. Compensation, social status and work expectation is what makes people go for or avoid companies. If Google didn't pay as much, fewer people would bother jumping through hoops. If Apple had an oil-industry level social status, Californians would think twice about working there (or they'd get a cover job to use when talking to neighbors and friends). How they fire people means very little, because very few people in tech think of themselves as the ones being fired in the near future (most likely also why few people in tech are into unions, they don't feel as replaceable as factory workers).
      - watwut 4y ago
        But that is the thing, I dont think you are right. You picked up companies with good reputation as examples ... they pay well and have good reputation, of course people want to work there. There are companies with actually bad reputation and they either have problem to find staff or have to pay a lot more while still having issues.
        luckylion 4y ago
        They literally formed an illegal conspiracy to harm their employees by suppressing salaries -- this type of thing apparently simply doesn't matter much if they keep offering some of the highest salaries in the industry. And neither will this behavior at Twitter, I believe.
        watwut 4y ago
        > They literally formed an illegal conspiracy to harm their employees by suppressing salaries Yes and that is bad. And still, if you work inside one of those companies, the environment does not have reputation of being toxic. It just dont, in case of google the reputation is that they treat you well most of the time, but it is slower speed then, say facebook. And facebook does not have toxic reputation either. Their reputation is not bad, actually. People who work there criticize some, but also are generally content and happy. Because, even with that agreement, neither company is overly toxic.
    - aenis 4y ago
      Exactly. There are better examples. Take for instance booking.com. They unceremoniously dumped lots of their employees at the beginning of the pandemic despite being flush with cash. Then they tried hiring people back. Guess what, lots of people didnt want to even hear how much they are offering. There are other such companies. But yes, there are people who would not, for instance, work for AWS due to their, shall we say, internal culture.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  > Some of our clients have a hard time filling roles despite paying competitively or even generously. By definition, if they were having a hard time filling roles, they were not paying competitively enough to offset their bad reputation. I bet they could have easily filled the role if they added a zero or two to the compensation offer.
watwut 4y ago
I have seen multiple people making decision of "this place pays more, but the environment looks toxic" or "this place pays more, but the business seems borderline unethical" and taking lower offer. I think that is why famous toxic places had to have very high salaries - cause the people were not interested otherwise.
- naijaboiler 4y ago
  People will do this in a good job market. In a bad one, even crappy employers will have their fill of willing employees. Too many in her have never experienced a bad market

zer0tonin 4y ago

I seriously doubt Twitter will have a growth stage again

anthropodie 4y ago
Hell I don't like what Elon does most of the times but you have to admit he did built successful companies from ground up in fields no one was even looking into. Twitter might succeed or it might fail but Twitter in its current form both as a company and social media paltform was bad.
- smcl 4y ago
  You have to admit that he invested in some companies in fields that no-one was looking into. He's made a few big bets that have paid off extremely well. That's not nothing, and is impressive but it's not building a company. By all accounts he's a bit of a micro-manager, but I suspect there's only so much he could micro-manage or actually contribute directly in ventures like SpaceX or Tesla (he did make a door-handle patent tho). Twitter on the other hand is another matter - no huge technical barriers stopping him from getting his hands dirty, no lives are at stake or regulatory bodies that are going to tell him "no that is dangerous" - so we're finally seeing what Elon unleashed looks like. So far it can probably be described as "chaotic" at best, it remains to be seen whether this chaos will disperse and Twitter will emerge leaner and better. My belief is that he doesn't understand Twitter and its users quite as well as he thinks, and that Twitter will slowly get a bit more annoying and less profitable until he loses interest or gets distracted by something else. We will see, I use Twitter a lot so I hope that I'm wrong.
  - randomsearch 4y ago
    Are you saying musk’s role in SpaceX and Tesla is as an investor? That seems so disingenuous that it’s impossible not to conclude this post is purely emotional. If you hate Musk, fine, but please just stick to the facts and articulate why you hate him. I don’t understand why there is so much emotion around Musk. He has done good things and bad things. He has done incredible, near possible things. He works ridiculously hard. He’s rich. He has said and posted things he shouldn’t. I don’t feel that I am in a position to say he is a terrible person. I don’t even know the guy. I wouldn’t want to live in a world without SpaceX and Tesla. I am genuinely fascinated by this hatred. I’ve tried to compile a list of why people might hate him: - posted a conspiracy theory on Twitter (which he did then delete) - childishly insulted a diver - is a shameless self promoter - fires staff brutally - makes huge and sometimes unreasonable demands on his workforce - disagreed with covid policy, partly on the argument that the fatality rate is low and there’s not much you can really do about it Ok, these are bad. But he’s hated as if he is the new Hitler. I don’t get it. I’d really appreciate it if someone could rationally explain why Elon is deserving of such great hatred.

anthropodie 4y ago

People might choose based on their preferences: You want stability? Join stripe You want to be sharp? Join Twitter

wildrhythms 4y ago
What does it mean to be sharp in this context?
- anthropodie 4y ago
  For me, if I were at beginning of my career I would have definitely joined Twitter. Because I have to work harder, compete harder, learn faster just to save my job. I think that sort of culture would make you sharp than others in your field very early in your career. Then when you go and work at company like stripe, its easy.
  - Blokje5 4y ago
    That type of culture might also cause a burnout ending your career early.
  - dasil003 4y ago
    Do you mean working at Twitter now under Elon or historically? Because I’m not sure that Twitter has historically been more demanding.
  - threeseed 4y ago
    And good luck to Twitter if they are looking to implement a Hunger Games style culture. However this type of attitude to work is extremely immature, counter-productive and proven to be harmful to both individuals and the company. People are most productive over the long term when they feel encouraged, supported, self-motivated etc. Positive emotions not negative ones like fear, coercion, hostility etc.
    - tomp 4y ago
      > However this type of attitude to work is extremely immature, counter-productive and proven to be harmful to both individuals and the company. Because SpaceX and Tesla totally crashed and burned and are doing so much worse than Boeing and Volkswagen?

mitemte 4y ago

Are there no laws about minimum notice or severance pay? I’m glad Australia has decent laws to protect workers. It’ll be interesting to see if Australian Twitter staff who are locked out of their accounts have been laid off and what happens next. https://www.fairwork.gov.au/tools-and-resources/fact-sheets/minimum-workplace-entitlements/notice-of-termination-and-redundancy-pay https://www.fairwork.gov.au/tools-and-resources/fact-sheets/...

jleyank 4y ago
Yeah there are laws : https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/termination/plantclosings https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/termination/plantclosings. Probably state laws as well. These require notice of severance or post payment and protect against discrimination. Twitter can try to claim that they’re all being fired for cause, but that’ll just end up paying a whole lot of lawyers.
Tenoke 4y ago
In cases like this typically they'd just fire you and pay the salary through the minimum notice period without requiring nor allowing you to show up. I see no reason to think that's not the case here.

kortilla 4y ago

> Which company is going to have an easier time hiring after the dust settles and they have a growth stage again? The one with the better offer, taking a possible layoff payout into account. The comp ranges can be so drastically different between companies that a possibly generous layoff (that is no means guaranteed if Stripe has to do this when circumstances are more dire) is negligible financially.

threeseed 4y ago
> The one with the better offer Is the only thing that determines whether you take a job the salary ? Because for many people how much you get paid is important but far from the only factor.
- akudha 4y ago
  Are we deluding ourselves here? Why do you think hundreds of thousands of extremely bright people work for horrific/products companies like Facebook, Palantir etc? Money. Money talks and talks very loudly. Most people have a price at which they will sell out. Those who don’t, are too few to make any significant difference
  - threeseed 4y ago
    Because despite you thinking they are horrific companies many other people don't. Billions of people love and use Meta products every day and their tech stack is one of the world's best with technical challenges almost no other company faces. Palantir also has many parts of their business that benefit society e.g. combating human trafficking etc.
    - habibur 4y ago
      > Because despite you thinking they are horrific companies many other people don't. The same goes for twitter.
    - instagraham 4y ago

brightball 4y ago

If I remember correctly, the rumor about layoffs ahead of vesting said he was going to do it before Nov 1st. That part at least, seems to have just been a rumor.

tinyhouse 4y ago
It was a rumor. I think it didn't happen because of the WARN act. Even if happened before Nov 1 he would still need to pay the vest.

hardware2win 4y ago

It wouldnt change anything for me tbf There are laws that take care of it in my country

PM_me_your_math 4y ago

Has stripe lost billions of dollars for 8 out of the last 10 years?

dragontamer 4y ago
Rookie numbers. The new owner of Twitter took on $13 Billion in debt, which probably costs $1.3 Billion+ in interest payments alone. Twitter has gone from a hundred-million loss / year into a Billion+ per year loss in the past week, because of the decisions related to this buyout. That is the problem. $200 million loss per year is manageable. $1500 million loss/year is not.
- PM_me_your_math 4y ago
  Twitter's loss in 2020 was over $1,100,000,000. In the last 10 years, twitter has lost almost $4,000,000,000, posting profits in only two years (2018,2019). Twitters losses in 2021 were over 221MM, and 250MM to 700MM between 2013 and 2017. So the myth that Twitter was a healthy company is only promulgated by agenda driven opinions, not factual ones.
  - dragontamer 4y ago
    And this year (and all years here on out), Elon Musk in his brilliance added $1,300,000,000 to that loss, because he took on a $13,000,000,000 loan to buyout the company. That's all I'm saying. The $1.3 billion/year in interest payments alone is a magnitude more loss than Twitter ever had before.

prepend 4y ago

Isn’t the difference that Slack is profitable while Twitter is not? I worked for a couple startups and the severance package for companies losing money was pretty bad. The package for profitable was ok. And the package for insolvent was “your last paycheck was your last.”

jmyeet 4y ago

Add to this, rumor has it Elon fired the 3 executives (CEO, CFO, chief legal counsel) with cause to try and avoid paying out the golden parachutes (eg the CEO would otherwise get $40-60m+). I guarantee that'll end in a lawsuit and probably a settlement for less. But I expect that to impact executive hiring. As for hiring peons, it's hard to say. A bigger factor (IMHO) is Elon himself. Fans will probably go there. Those who don't like him probably won't. I expect that to have a far bigger impact than firing a bunch of employees right before bonus time several years earlier. My read of the situation is that Elon never really wanted to buy Twitter. I mean he did try and get out of it but the Twitter board crafted a good contract and I believe Elon realized he was going to get dumpstered by the Delaware Chancery Court. So what does he do now?? The private equity playbook is my guess. He'll massively cut costs, repackage it somehow, claim victory (for "free speech" or whatever) and then sell off a minority stake or even the whole thing. He may even try and do the tech thing where he sells most of the equity but retains all the voting power. In such an environment, short term hiring probably isn't on the cards.

cloutchaser 4y ago
Frankly I am pretty sure there is a long list of talented execs who don't care how Parag was fired and would love to work for Musk. He's too successful now with too many fans for this to have an impact. People know he demands a lot and can do crazy things. That's just part of the package.
trashtester 4y ago
Here is one possible outcome: Elon splits up Twitter into two parts: 1. An infrastructure element that creates an open API/protocol for sharing/pushing messages, contacts and media between content/social media platforms. The basic idea is to have a generic interface similar to email. 2. A content company that provides aggregation, search, moderation (possibly based on user preference) and possibly editorial features, as well as a front-end for users. Basically what gmail is to email. As soon as Republicans gain control of congress (and possibly the presidency), he starts lobbying to make it mandatory for all social media platforms to allow their users to connect through the API/protocol under (1) with a generalized account, similar (or identical, at least in form) to email addresses. This would kill the monopolies of Facebook, Insta, Tik-Tok, etc, by allowing a user to use only one of them to connect with user on all of them, similar to how they can use an email client of choice. Twitter could then charge some small fee for communicating over this protocol, or could simply sell the protocol company to the government, who could make the protocol publicly owned, like email/smtp. Would this make him a huge profit? Not likely. At best he would get his investment back, perhaps. But it could help break down some echo chambers and counteract some of the crazy polarization that's currently going on in the US. And if I'm reading Musk correctly, profit is no longer his primary motivation, if it ever was. Rather, it seems that he has some Messiah complex where he wants to be seen as the guy that saves the world. Whether you see that as a sign of genuine altruism, a severe case of Narcissism or just a sign that he's really an insecure nerd that seeks social validation, is up to you.

meragrin_ 4y ago

Well, when you have employees with irrational hatred of the new owner, you have to take some precautions.

zenexer 4y ago
Irrational? It would seem to me that their fears were warranted.
cmatthias 4y ago
I think there are some very rational reasons for hating or at least strongly disapproving of the new owner. For example, if the new owner of the company I worked for demanded on a Saturday that a new feature needs to be ready for testing by Monday, I'd be pretty upset. Or, if I was on a team working on the problem of trust and ethics, and the new owner personally and un-ironically posted a completely false and inflammatory "news article" about a current event, and then several days later laid off my entire team, I wouldn't consider it irrational to be quite upset.

DeathArrow 4y ago

I don't see more empathy from Stripe. And since no one has come out of the process of mass layoffs yet, we don't know if Twitter isn't going to provide severance and bonus payouts and etc. On the other hand, Stripe was much more productive and is workforce wasn't so inflated.

sillysaurusx 4y ago
I was thinking it over, and one way Stripe nailed Twitter is communication. Stripe’s severance was clearly communicated up front. Twitter’s leadership is like the proverbial headless chicken. It’s quite the contrast. I think there’s a lesson here. A well-drafted email could’ve saved twitter a lot of heartache. Then again, maybe the email drafter got laid off too.
joeblubaugh 4y ago
Stripe had 3x the staff of Adyen doing the same revenue

johnchristopher 4y ago

I was thinking of the covid layoff at Airbnb, which seemed to have been handled better (iirc).

MrDresden 4y ago

Android engineer with 12 years experience beneath their belt here. Would never consider Twitter as a possible employeer after what just went down.

onetimeuse1234 4y ago

Take this: You take over a company that was full of bad behaving managers and employees. The previous CEO supported this situation. The new CEO who bought the company need to quickly turn the ship around. Severance, bonus payouts? Yes, if the staff you take over was really good and they deserve it. Is it the same case with Twitter? Can we compare Stripe and Twitter on this level?

bayindirh 4y ago
From a neutral point of view, if the behavior of current employees is the result of the management grooming them to behave like this, is the resulting behavior is employees' fault? I don't know internals of Twitter. I'm just asking a theoretical question.
macNchz 4y ago
> You take over a company that was full of bad behaving managers and employees. Is one week of ownership enough to actually understand this and identify those people? It seems they had a preconceived notion of how much revenue the business should have per employee, and that’s a key driver of this: https://mobile.twitter.com/sf_mills/status/1575838785371222016 https://mobile.twitter.com/sf_mills/status/15758387853712220...

ekianjo 4y ago

> Which company is going to have an easier time hiring after the dust settles and they have a growth stage again? Not all companies die after massive layoffs. Sometimes all you need is to contract before building a better place again. Whoever is hired next by Twitter is going to be coming for the future potential, not for what happened during the layoffs.

matwood 4y ago

We don't know details yet, so it's hard to contrast anything. The pre stock vesting rumor was before 11/1. That date has passed. It's also interesting that nearly every tech person I read thought Twitter was over-staffed prior to Musk taking over. Now he's doing something about it, and people are pearl clutching.

mozman 4y ago

What if twitter were so bloated they were effectively providing corporate welfare? Truth is we don’t know. I see it as someone is finally taking action to turn Twitter around. They’ve been floundering for years.

recuter 4y ago

I suppose it depends whether you view a company as kindergarten for adults or a place of business. Is there such a thing as a warm personable firing email? You think HR drones are your buddies whose role is to make you feel good? Egads.

s1artibartfast 4y ago

If you compare them on financial terms, I think the twitter employees are in a better spot Stripe gave one more month of severance, but twitter employees get to cash out of company stock.