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Twitter sources say company reached out to fired people asking them to come back

188 points by minimaxir 4y ago

spoils19 4y ago
This is actually another brilliant move by Elon Musk. While some users on here still continue to doubt him, this is showing excellent leadership skills and business acumen that many here fail to grasp.
umeshunni 4y ago
Is the source Rahul Ligma?
minimaxir 4y ago
(title paraphrased since the 80 character HN submission title limit is hard to work with)
version_five 4y ago
If you're going to lay off half the company, presumably you do it mostly by team, cutting parts of the org that are not a priority anymore. You're not reviewing everyone as an individual. So it's not surprising that there are people on laid off team X that are still desirable to the company, that they might try to get back. Another option would have been to take more time and do more of a re-org, moving the people they want to keep around. That has downsides too.
- minimaxir 4y ago
  It was rumored (not 100% confirmed IIRC) that the Twitter layoffs were done by stack ranking number of lines of code written, which disproportionately affected orgs that did not need to commit a lot of code.
  - HWR_14 4y ago
    Wow, that's both believable and sad. So the new CTO of Twitter will be the programmer who went through and changed all the tabs to spaces, and then back again when yelled at, as an intern. Or backwards if Twitter favors spaces.
    - heavyset_go 4y ago
      That might beat the CTO who is the founder's buddy from college and hasn't written a line of code in their life.
      - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
        Those guys are usually in charge of security.
        Firmwarrior 4y ago
        Yeah, they should bring in a REAL security expert, like Rudy Giuliani
    - djmips 4y ago
      Maybe an integration monkey. They have the most commits sometimes.
    - papito 4y ago
      No, the problem is that it is UN-believable. Some tech reporters did a double-take when they heard it from others, and were unwilling to report on this until they got multiple corroborations of this madness. In addition, Tesla engineers were probing Twitter for "top talent", and also involved in reviewing the printed out on paper code. If I were at Twitter, I would be deeply humiliated by this treatment. A bunch of Tesla "stars" rolling in hard to rate the "Twitter clowns". Fuck. That.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - rsynnott 4y ago
        I don't think it's _literally_ unbelievable; notably, IBM used to use lines of code written for compensation purposes back in the 80s. It would indicate that whoever was making the decisions was pretty incompetent, though; even IBM eventually figured out that it was a terrible idea.
  - klyrs 4y ago
    Thinking about today, you're going to keep a small fraction of your 10x employees, the ones who implement a feature a week and don't need to look back on code that just works; also you're going to keep juniors who have no idea what they're doing and write pages of inefficient code where a senior would make a library call. You're going to lose the 10x refactor wizards who delete more than they write, the firefighters who don't really change linecounts, and your 1x developers who think before they type. Might as well just give everybody a typing test. Thinking about tomorrow: this establishes a hilarious incentive. A nonzero fraction of people who know that this was the criteria will change their behavior to suit. More lines of code, you say? Coming right up! I've met some people who work / worked in shops where the number of commits per day was the ruling metric. The smart ones wrote scripts to carve their commits into plausible but small chunks.
  - sillysaurusx 4y ago
    Isn’t it a good idea to avoid spreading this until it’s 100% confirmed? It’s one of those ideas that we’d love to believe is true, but it’s pretty unbelievable anyone would actually do something so monumentally stupid. I agree that it’s possible, but this rumor has somehow become a little too close to “accepted truth.”
    - lovich 4y ago
      Eh, I’m not gonna partake in it, but I’m also not going to judge someone who treats stories about musk with the same reverence for the truth that musk holds
    - minimaxir 4y ago
      > it’s pretty unbelievable anyone would actually do something so monumentally stupid. tbh it's more monumentally stupid to try and rehire employees one day after laying them off.
    - KVFinn 4y ago
      Agreed. There are plenty of monumentally stupid decisions being made (https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1588676939463946241 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1588676939463946241) that we don't need to pile on unproven ones. Threatening your potential advertisers is even more stupid and I wouldn't have believed it if if it wasn't an Elon Tweet made in public. Including the very thread IMO, firing and then saying WHOOPS.
    - x0x0 4y ago
      It's more than a rumor https://twitter.com/gergelyorosz/status/1588907407002185729 https://twitter.com/gergelyorosz/status/1588907407002185729 Gergely is respected and not in the business of repeating rumors.
  - memish 4y ago
    What % confirmed is it?
- JamesianP 4y ago
  They probably did completely cut some teams entirely but also kept some entire teams deemed critical (or maybe that's the ones they want to return). Besides that it generally comes down to instructing every group to pick out X percent (in this case 50) to cut and get it done. I've been at places where they did the required layoffs even in critical groups that never stopped hiring people and had to even step up hiring afterwards.
- jancsika 4y ago
  If you're going to kick yourself in the balls, presumably you kick them both at the same time with your favored leg, making use of the increased precision of that leg's motor skills and balancing as needed on the other. You're not going to jump in the air and try to kick each individual testicle with both legs at the same time. So it's not surprising that there is outsized damage to the lowest hanging testicle due to undue force in an attempt to get both in a single kick. Another option would have been to kick one's balls "Tai chi style," moving the foot ever so slowly toward the groin. But if you're not used to doing that you're just as likely to strain a muscle or trip.
  - Tainnor 4y ago
    I read that in Erlich Bachmann's voice.
  - angelbar 4y ago
    This...
tdub311 4y ago
If someone who was laid off refused to go back, would that affect their compensation with the report that they are still technically employed until Feb 2nd? "Today is your last working day at the company, however, you will remain employed by Twitter and will receive compensation and benefits through your separation date of February 2, 2023."[0] [0]https://www.businessinsider.com/read-blunt-email-telling-twitter-staff-jobs-axed-layoffs-2022-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/read-blunt-email-telling-twi...
- foogazi 4y ago
  > “Today is your last working day” Seems pretty clear to me
  - dehrmann 4y ago
    This might affect unemployment eligibility since it would be a refusal of work.
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > might affect unemployment eligibility since it would be a refusal of work If I offered every unemployed American a job in a cesspool, that wouldn’t magically invalidate their eligibility.
      - itronitron 4y ago
        True, they would also have to be a good culture fit.
- Spooky23 4y ago
  Yes. This sort of thing is used all of the time to get rid of executives… you park the guy in gardening leave, gagged for 6-24 months. When the person gets replaced permanently, nobody remembers the old guy. The only option is to quit, but that has consequences. Laws around this aren’t written for professional/management employees. The rules are designed to protect tradespeople who get laid off every winter, etc. Most of these employees don’t have contracts, so if you refuse to return or don’t like the terms, you’re resigning. And what’s happening inside of the company is that the political networks will be smashed and rebuilt. People will be sucking up to the new overlords to be made junior overlords. There’s no rules around rehire and the market is soft, so you’ll probably see the new power players bring back people loyal to them. This is why I always eyeroll at “10x” HN posters who think they can negotiate with big companies. When the chips are down, you’re a peon, and however smart you are, there’s another guy.
georgeg23 4y ago
This might also be a way to get them to sign new employment contract terms, arbitration, salary etc..
- fzeroracer 4y ago
  If a company is asking you to come back, then you have massive leverage and only a fool would accept a worse contract.
  - pyuser583 4y ago
    Yeah, I’ve had this happen, and I demanded twice my salary. It was a contract position, so you can’t be “let go.”
  - HWR_14 4y ago
    If they fire you as an individual and then bring you back, certainly. If it's part of a layoff done this rapidly, its much more likely that it was just a categorizing error. So you probably don't have massive leverage. That said, you definitely shouldn't accept a worse deal.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - saagarjha 4y ago
    A fool, or someone without many options.
- tryagainacct 4y ago
  Or a way to only retain employees that are willing to work under Musk.
  - MBCook 4y ago
    Wouldn’t people unwilling to work for him self-select out anyway? And by quitting you wouldn’t have to pay severance.
Apocryphon 4y ago
I was actually toying with this idea earlier today- since mass layoffs usually juice up the stock prices (not that it matters for Twitter now that they’re private again), what if a company did that only to quietly hire many employees back later? This effectively happened at many companies unintentionally in 2020 between the initial lockdown onset mass layoffs and the later boom for tech companies.
rhinoceraptor 4y ago
Ah, this must be the git bisect strategy for finding which employees they can get rid of without completely destroying the company. Elon will on average, only need to do O(log n) layoffs!
- stupendousyappi 4y ago
  Only if the employees are already accurately sorted by value.
  - rhinoceraptor 4y ago
    Again, he has a genius method: git log --author="$EMPLOYEE" -p | wc -l
    - 29athrowaway 4y ago
      https://github.com/tj/git-extras/blob/master/Commands.md https://github.com/tj/git-extras/blob/master/Commands.md "git summary" from git-extras works too
    - hedgehog 4y ago
      git log --pretty=%ae | sort | uniq -c | sort -r
      - slyall 4y ago
        sort -nr
        hedgehog 4y ago
        That's more correct, also I realize I just counted number of commits rather than lines added. Close enough though, not like anyone would make any decisions with this list right?
    - v3ss0n 4y ago
      Easy pip install git-fame cd twitter git-fame
refurb 4y ago
Is this like the other rumors that turned out to not be true? Or maybe not? This is such a bizarre spectacle. I'm not sure why there is a such a media frenzy? It's one tech company.
- MBCook 4y ago
  First, Twitter is has huge and oversized importance. It’s vey big in both the tech and journalism worlds. There’s a reason celebrities are on it and tweets show up on the news and in articles. Second, it’s Musk. He’s famous, a celebrity (of sorts), and VERY VERY rich. Not only does he have haters, people seem to love watching the successful fail. “I knew it. He’s not so great. I could have done better.” And finally, it’s just 100% nuts. This is not how the business world works. He over bid on a company as a joke (?) after getting high (?) with the price being a weed joke. Then he tried to back out and got sued. Then at almost literally the last moment he went through with it and has almost DESTROYED the company in a week. It’s a perfect storm of WTF-hate-drama about a world famous company and a publicity hound.
  - NegativeK 4y ago
    > I could have done better. I pretty much never assume this, from grocery bagger to CEO, but in this case I'm absolutely confident that I could've done better. Because not buying the damn thing is obviously better.
- NegativeK 4y ago
  I'm being as kind as I can here: It's one very large, very visible social network that had a very dramatic, drawn out, and absurd takeover executed by someone who is very eccentric.
  - refurb 4y ago
    Right, it gets clicks. But if I think of the impact of Twitter for most Americans and I’m not sure they’d notice if it disappeared one day.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ck2 4y ago
How long do you think until he announces the headquarters are moving to Texas? Twitter was pure ego, he's never going to profit from it, financially or popularity.
- l33tc0de 4y ago
  Is there anything wrong with moving the company headquarters to Texas? It's his company, he can do what he wants he's never going to profit from it - That is a pretty bold statement, care to share how you reached this conclusion?
- 29athrowaway 4y ago
  Don't underestimate the richest human on Earth. He is being attacked now because he is making powerful people uncomfortable. He used to be rather popular before that.
  - theowawayqqe 4y ago
  - tasty_freeze 4y ago
    The shine really started coming off when his ego was bruised because he had his team spend a week building a submersible to rescue those kids trapped in a cave, but it was not suited to the task. One of those rescuers was vocal about it and so Musk repeatedly called him a pedo. Then there were the overt stock manipulation games he played. He could get away with them because he is stinking rich. Most other people who tried that would have been charged. How many years has he been promising fully autonomous driving just as soon as they finish polishing the software? Then there was the boring company. The flamethrowers. The flopped solar roofs project. The cyber truck. The 18 wheelers that were due years ago. The string of dalliances with young girls. The names he gave his children. His juvenile meme/twitter practices. There were many of people who didn't like Musk long before he mentioned buying twitter.
    - 29athrowaway 4y ago
smfe 4y ago
Allegedly Oracle did this years ago when they had layoffs-- employees were let go, then asked if they wanted to return. Apparently, if they said no, the company considered the exit a resignation instead of a layoff, and would refuse severance. If oracle was then taken to court over the lack of severance by former employees, those employees' refusal to rejoin the company could be used to avoid an unfavorable ruling for Oracle. My coworker relayed his oracle layoff story to me, which is where I got this bit of info. Would love if someone else had a verifiable source.
- encryptluks2 4y ago
  How does this work? They are supposed to not look for other jobs after their notice because the company might call them back?
  - XorNot 4y ago
    I assume it requires a cooperating local judge on the court cases.
    - 29athrowaway 4y ago
      Like the ones in private kangaroo court, aka forced arbitration.
      - dehrmann 4y ago
        If Musk really wanted to screw people over with loopholes, he'd buy JAMS and companies that use them for arbitration. Screw someone over directly, then get the arbiter so rubber stamp it.
    - paxys 4y ago
      Best of luck finding a cooperating judge in San Francisco.
  - nradov 4y ago
    The employees are not prohibited from looking for other jobs.
MBCook 4y ago
I understand some people need a job ASAP to support their family or medical care or such. But if that’s not you taking your job back just seems like a really bad idea in a circumstance like this. How could you ever have faith in the company leadership again? Wow.
- georgeburdell 4y ago
  It’s a head scratcher for sure. I remember when my employer (large old tech company) laid off one of my coworkers, he or his manager contested it and he got re-hired a month later. Why he went back puzzles me, but he’s still there 6 years later
  - MBCook 4y ago
    If the company realizes it and admits it and you had people go to bat for you it makes sense to me to consider it. But to just randomly throw away 3700 people and they beg (let’s say) 500 with “wait we didn’t mean it, come back” is on a different level.
- foogazi 4y ago
  OTOH what’s the worst that could happen? Always better to look for a job while employed > How could you ever have faith in the company leadership? Faith in Twitter leadership is off the table at this point - employed or unemployed
  - MBCook 4y ago
    I mean events of the last week alone are probably enough. But even in isolation this is just off the scale weird.
  - 1270018080 4y ago
    OTOH what’s the worst that could happen? Working more 80 hour weeks?
    - piva00 4y ago
baron816 4y ago
I don’t know how long it would take to figure out which half of a company to fire, but my guess is that it’s longer than one week.
- frupert52 4y ago
  Obviously the strategy for the first few weeks or months would have been formed months ago. Whilst DD for example is not performed for strategic reasons it remains critical to validating any strategic planning and decision making as those things are largely informed by what the information you have tells you about the business and it’s trajectory right now vs where you want it to be. So transition and short-term planning in all likelihood would have been finalised shortly after DD
KVFinn 4y ago
A lone positive sign of a course correction amidst all the recent chaos and clearly terrible decisions. Of which the worst was Elon threatening advertisers who don't advertise on Twitter. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1588676939463946241 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1588676939463946241 Even granting the 50% target was the right amount, it was very hard for me to believe in a single week you could accurately select that 50% and transition key company knowledge to the people left. Surprising for this particular comment to be my lowest rated comment on HN, hah.
bpodgursky 4y ago
"On Blind, nobody knows you're a dog"
MangoCoffee 4y ago
"Apple fired 4,100 when Steve Jobs returned in 1997" https://world.hey.com/dhh/apple-fired-4-100-when-steve-jobs-returned-in-1997-57ed6bc6 https://world.hey.com/dhh/apple-fired-4-100-when-steve-jobs-... This whole Twitter layoffs is so interesting. even DHH got something to say about it.
- djur 4y ago
  Apple had already laid off 2800 people the previous year, and Wall Street had already been expecting more layoffs. The article DHH cites even says the post-Jobs layoffs were less extensive than some had expected. The Twitter layoffs are far more severe. Furthermore, the Apple layoffs were directly connected with the cancellation of specific projects. It was well known at the time that Apple was seriously overextended with huge, over-budget projects. The Next acquisition made some of these redundant. Jobs and Next brought a clear strategy for Apple and the base materials on which to execute that strategy. DHH cites analysts with qualms about Apple's future and tries to compare them with coverage of Twitter today. But there's simply no comparing. If you read the contemporary coverage, nobody has any real concerns about Jobs. The critical ZDnet piece he quotes even acknowledges that the layoffs were necessary for survival. The theme of the skeptical analysis of the time was not "is he going too far", but "will it be enough". DHH is right about one thing, though: "Twitter ain't Apple, Musk ain't Jobs".
- threeseed 4y ago
  Completely different situation. Apple was on the verge of being bankrupt and had a ton of projects that were never going to go anywhere e.g. eMate, Newton, OpenDoc, Cyberdog. And they weren't contributing to revenue at all. At Twitter we've seen the entire ethics, human rights, accessibility groups etc go. Which directly contributes to revenue since advertisers want these in place to mitigate brand safety risk.
  - KurvaKing 4y ago
- dagmx 4y ago
seibelj 4y ago
People made their companies some sort of missionary situation in their minds. This is dollars and psychology. Did you like the work? Can you get paid enough to come back? Elon is making this transactional. If you are truly needed bad enough that they will come calling right after a layoff then soak them for 3x. It’s just business.
dehrmann 4y ago
Could be a loyalty test.
- pyuser583 4y ago
  Loyalty works both ways. “Servility” is a better word.
- emptyparadise 4y ago
  Employee hazing?
dehrmann 4y ago
Side question: has there been an estimate of how many people were laid off? All I saw was NYT claiming a handful of sources said "50%," but WaPo was saying layoffs were going to happen before RSUs vest, and that never happened, so I don't find these sources all that trustworthy.
- SeanAnderson 4y ago
  3700 http://layoffs.fyi/ http://layoffs.fyi/
  - dehrmann 4y ago
    This cites NYT. Regarding 3700, they say > four people with knowledge of the matter said
minimaxir 4y ago
> More from former tweep: They fired EVERYBODY on two of the teams that were working on things they want to launch. https://twitter.com/karaswisher/status/1589097173136060417 https://twitter.com/karaswisher/status/1589097173136060417
yrgulation 4y ago
How on earth is this abuse legal? What kind of power play is this? Has the world gone mad and we are all simply sitting and cheering while these people are dragged through the mud? How can we bring elon’s network of abusive entities to the ground? I am not spending any money on his products but how can we make significant impact? While i understand twitter needs to be made profitable I am now pissed off.
- ryanSrich 4y ago
  What abuse? Layoffs and firings are legal. Asking people if they want a job back is legal. I fail to see any abuse.
  - AlphaSite 4y ago
    Not all bad or abusive behaviour is illegal, it’s just immoral and looked down upon.
  - yrgulation 4y ago
    Seriously?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - PuppyTailWags 4y ago
      Labor protections are weak in the united states. It is still legal to hire child labor for agriculture. Approximately a quarter of food in the united states is picked using child labor.
      - yrgulation 4y ago
        A scary thought to be honest. What is the point in being a rich country if not for increasing standards, including those for working conditions?
ctvo 4y ago
Before we get even more convoluted reasons as to why this is all part of Elon Musk's grand strategy and how business classes in the future will pour over every detail to understand the brilliance, can I suggest a simple explanation: Elon Musk makes brash decisions and has no idea what he's doing here.
- irishloop 4y ago
  Occam's razor
JohnTHaller 4y ago
I wonder if management even realized they'd ditched their entire accessibility department.
- ta988 4y ago
  With the crowd that is now populating twitter they may not care. They make fun of people with disabilities and even get applauded when they do
cycomanic 4y ago
Maybe Musk realized that they might have broken UK criminal law [1] and is backtracking now? [1] in the UK if you lay of more than 20 or 100 people at one time you need to notify the business secretary 30 or 45 days in advance https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/nov/05/elon-musk-defends-twitter-layoffs-saying-staff-given-three-months-pay https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/nov/05/elon-musk...
- in3d 4y ago
  They’ll still be technically employed for 3 more months so that law would seem to be satisfied.
  - cycomanic 4y ago
    I don't know UK employment law, but I would be very surprised if the time of being layed off is not when you're told that you have been fired, but somehow the time when your backpay/severance pay ends.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
threeseed 4y ago
I think this is a large part of it: https://twitter.com/GoAngelo/status/1588696157794242560 https://twitter.com/GoAngelo/status/1588696157794242560 Apparently, Twitter instantly lost ~15% of their 2023 revenue because of their poor showing at NewFronts where a lot of upfront ad buying is done. And with Musk firing the very teams the advertisers care about e.g. ethics, brand safety, human rights the industry is turning against them. Decade of painstaking work by Twitter to attract these advertisers gone in a week. And even worse Musk fired many of the relationship managers and so the company can't smooth things over. It really isn't inconceivable with this trajectory that Musk could bankrupt the company within a year.
- polio 4y ago
  Elon is understanding why Twitter had to seem so "woke". It turns out that "woke" consumers make for the most lucrative demographic to serve ads to. I don't believe he had to reckon with advertiser psychology to this extent at Tesla or SpaceX.
  - bumblebritches5 4y ago
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - PuppyTailWags 4y ago
    I don't think woke is the most lucrative demographic to serve ads to, but advertisers who buy ads on Twitter are likely selecting for Twitter. That is to say, Musk is destroying the Twitter branding, and so the advertisers that went to Twitter for its branding are now leaving.
  - yrgulation 4y ago
    > It turns out that "woke" consumers make for the most lucrative demographic to serve ads to. Does this mean that “woke” people are people that work hard and have money to spend, while the non “woke” dont? What does this say about the “non woke” crowd? What is even woke? Am i “woke” because i don't want to buy products advertised on a platform where people are insulted on a daily basis due race, gender or sexual orientation and i want people to freely express their personality without risk of verbal or written injury? Is it maybe that brands understood that being associated with the types that loiter our social networks and scream abuse at passers does not sit well with sane people like us?
kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
Rarely does one have the opportunity to give themselves a 20% raise.
- mullingitover 4y ago
  Appropriate starting bargaining position here would be to demand a 100% raise. Most people typically get a 20% raise just by getting a new job.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
umvi 4y ago
If it were me I would only come back on the condition they double my salary
DonHopkins 4y ago
A móóse once bit my sister... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79TVMn_d_Pk&t=1m48s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79TVMn_d_Pk&t=1m48s
Kina 4y ago
Has Musk ever handled the operational aspects of the companies he claims to run? Does he really understand what it takes to make a company _work_? For instance, my understanding of SpaceX is that he really should be seen as the initial financier of it to chase a crazy idea. Gwynne Shotwell is really the one in charge of day-to-day operations. It's just that Musk shows up for the fun bits and gets all the sound bites in.
- slyall 4y ago
  Musk seems to have a good understanding of the technical rocket stuff. Have a look at his tours/interviews on the 'Everyday' Astronaut" channel.
  - saurik 4y ago
    But that also isn't day-to-day operations.
  - x86x87 4y ago
    - slyall 4y ago
      I'm not saying that. Have a look at the tours. He seems to be very up on designs for each component of the rockets. What the current status is, tradeoffs of different options. Probably this means he spends his 30 hours/week of SpaceX time sitting in on technical meetings and the other departments get neglected.
      - x86x87 4y ago
        my point is that he is knowledgeable - but the heavy work, the real work is done by the professionals. At best he learns what is going on, at worst he is hindering progress.
        siva7 4y ago
nomdep 4y ago
I would take anything this guy says with a *huge* grain of salt, because when somebody tells you the kind of scumbag they are, you should believe them: https://twitter.com/CaseyNewton/status/1360999318480584704 https://twitter.com/CaseyNewton/status/1360999318480584704
- fzeroracer 4y ago
  I believe it was Musk that said Comedy is now legal on twitter. It was bold for him to post a joke while doing a comedy on Twitter considering he could've been flogged (or worse!) but I believe we shouldn't be retroactively looking for crimes he might've committed.
  - nomdep 4y ago
    That’s the thing, I don’t think he was joking at all
KurvaKing 4y ago

188 points by minimaxir 4y ago

This is actually another brilliant move by Elon Musk. While some users on here still continue to doubt him, this is showing excellent leadership skills and business acumen that many here fail to grasp.

umeshunni 4y ago

Is the source Rahul Ligma?

minimaxir 4y ago

(title paraphrased since the 80 character HN submission title limit is hard to work with)

version_five 4y ago

If you're going to lay off half the company, presumably you do it mostly by team, cutting parts of the org that are not a priority anymore. You're not reviewing everyone as an individual. So it's not surprising that there are people on laid off team X that are still desirable to the company, that they might try to get back. Another option would have been to take more time and do more of a re-org, moving the people they want to keep around. That has downsides too.

minimaxir 4y ago
It was rumored (not 100% confirmed IIRC) that the Twitter layoffs were done by stack ranking number of lines of code written, which disproportionately affected orgs that did not need to commit a lot of code.
- HWR_14 4y ago
  Wow, that's both believable and sad. So the new CTO of Twitter will be the programmer who went through and changed all the tabs to spaces, and then back again when yelled at, as an intern. Or backwards if Twitter favors spaces.
  - heavyset_go 4y ago
    That might beat the CTO who is the founder's buddy from college and hasn't written a line of code in their life.
    - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
      Those guys are usually in charge of security.
      - Firmwarrior 4y ago
        Yeah, they should bring in a REAL security expert, like Rudy Giuliani
  - djmips 4y ago
    Maybe an integration monkey. They have the most commits sometimes.
  - papito 4y ago
    No, the problem is that it is UN-believable. Some tech reporters did a double-take when they heard it from others, and were unwilling to report on this until they got multiple corroborations of this madness. In addition, Tesla engineers were probing Twitter for "top talent", and also involved in reviewing the printed out on paper code. If I were at Twitter, I would be deeply humiliated by this treatment. A bunch of Tesla "stars" rolling in hard to rate the "Twitter clowns". Fuck. That.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - rsynnott 4y ago
      I don't think it's _literally_ unbelievable; notably, IBM used to use lines of code written for compensation purposes back in the 80s. It would indicate that whoever was making the decisions was pretty incompetent, though; even IBM eventually figured out that it was a terrible idea.
- klyrs 4y ago
  Thinking about today, you're going to keep a small fraction of your 10x employees, the ones who implement a feature a week and don't need to look back on code that just works; also you're going to keep juniors who have no idea what they're doing and write pages of inefficient code where a senior would make a library call. You're going to lose the 10x refactor wizards who delete more than they write, the firefighters who don't really change linecounts, and your 1x developers who think before they type. Might as well just give everybody a typing test. Thinking about tomorrow: this establishes a hilarious incentive. A nonzero fraction of people who know that this was the criteria will change their behavior to suit. More lines of code, you say? Coming right up! I've met some people who work / worked in shops where the number of commits per day was the ruling metric. The smart ones wrote scripts to carve their commits into plausible but small chunks.
- sillysaurusx 4y ago
  Isn’t it a good idea to avoid spreading this until it’s 100% confirmed? It’s one of those ideas that we’d love to believe is true, but it’s pretty unbelievable anyone would actually do something so monumentally stupid. I agree that it’s possible, but this rumor has somehow become a little too close to “accepted truth.”
  - lovich 4y ago
    Eh, I’m not gonna partake in it, but I’m also not going to judge someone who treats stories about musk with the same reverence for the truth that musk holds
  - minimaxir 4y ago
    > it’s pretty unbelievable anyone would actually do something so monumentally stupid. tbh it's more monumentally stupid to try and rehire employees one day after laying them off.
  - KVFinn 4y ago
    Agreed. There are plenty of monumentally stupid decisions being made (https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1588676939463946241 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1588676939463946241) that we don't need to pile on unproven ones. Threatening your potential advertisers is even more stupid and I wouldn't have believed it if if it wasn't an Elon Tweet made in public. Including the very thread IMO, firing and then saying WHOOPS.
  - x0x0 4y ago
    It's more than a rumor https://twitter.com/gergelyorosz/status/1588907407002185729 https://twitter.com/gergelyorosz/status/1588907407002185729 Gergely is respected and not in the business of repeating rumors.
- memish 4y ago
  What % confirmed is it?
JamesianP 4y ago
They probably did completely cut some teams entirely but also kept some entire teams deemed critical (or maybe that's the ones they want to return). Besides that it generally comes down to instructing every group to pick out X percent (in this case 50) to cut and get it done. I've been at places where they did the required layoffs even in critical groups that never stopped hiring people and had to even step up hiring afterwards.
jancsika 4y ago
If you're going to kick yourself in the balls, presumably you kick them both at the same time with your favored leg, making use of the increased precision of that leg's motor skills and balancing as needed on the other. You're not going to jump in the air and try to kick each individual testicle with both legs at the same time. So it's not surprising that there is outsized damage to the lowest hanging testicle due to undue force in an attempt to get both in a single kick. Another option would have been to kick one's balls "Tai chi style," moving the foot ever so slowly toward the groin. But if you're not used to doing that you're just as likely to strain a muscle or trip.
- Tainnor 4y ago
  I read that in Erlich Bachmann's voice.
- angelbar 4y ago
  This...

tdub311 4y ago

If someone who was laid off refused to go back, would that affect their compensation with the report that they are still technically employed until Feb 2nd? "Today is your last working day at the company, however, you will remain employed by Twitter and will receive compensation and benefits through your separation date of February 2, 2023."[0] [0]https://www.businessinsider.com/read-blunt-email-telling-twitter-staff-jobs-axed-layoffs-2022-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/read-blunt-email-telling-twi...

foogazi 4y ago
> “Today is your last working day” Seems pretty clear to me
- dehrmann 4y ago
  This might affect unemployment eligibility since it would be a refusal of work.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > might affect unemployment eligibility since it would be a refusal of work If I offered every unemployed American a job in a cesspool, that wouldn’t magically invalidate their eligibility.
    - itronitron 4y ago
      True, they would also have to be a good culture fit.
Spooky23 4y ago
Yes. This sort of thing is used all of the time to get rid of executives… you park the guy in gardening leave, gagged for 6-24 months. When the person gets replaced permanently, nobody remembers the old guy. The only option is to quit, but that has consequences. Laws around this aren’t written for professional/management employees. The rules are designed to protect tradespeople who get laid off every winter, etc. Most of these employees don’t have contracts, so if you refuse to return or don’t like the terms, you’re resigning. And what’s happening inside of the company is that the political networks will be smashed and rebuilt. People will be sucking up to the new overlords to be made junior overlords. There’s no rules around rehire and the market is soft, so you’ll probably see the new power players bring back people loyal to them. This is why I always eyeroll at “10x” HN posters who think they can negotiate with big companies. When the chips are down, you’re a peon, and however smart you are, there’s another guy.

georgeg23 4y ago

This might also be a way to get them to sign new employment contract terms, arbitration, salary etc..

fzeroracer 4y ago
If a company is asking you to come back, then you have massive leverage and only a fool would accept a worse contract.
- pyuser583 4y ago
  Yeah, I’ve had this happen, and I demanded twice my salary. It was a contract position, so you can’t be “let go.”
- HWR_14 4y ago
  If they fire you as an individual and then bring you back, certainly. If it's part of a layoff done this rapidly, its much more likely that it was just a categorizing error. So you probably don't have massive leverage. That said, you definitely shouldn't accept a worse deal.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- saagarjha 4y ago
  A fool, or someone without many options.
tryagainacct 4y ago
Or a way to only retain employees that are willing to work under Musk.
- MBCook 4y ago
  Wouldn’t people unwilling to work for him self-select out anyway? And by quitting you wouldn’t have to pay severance.

Apocryphon 4y ago

I was actually toying with this idea earlier today- since mass layoffs usually juice up the stock prices (not that it matters for Twitter now that they’re private again), what if a company did that only to quietly hire many employees back later? This effectively happened at many companies unintentionally in 2020 between the initial lockdown onset mass layoffs and the later boom for tech companies.

rhinoceraptor 4y ago

Ah, this must be the git bisect strategy for finding which employees they can get rid of without completely destroying the company. Elon will on average, only need to do O(log n) layoffs!

stupendousyappi 4y ago
Only if the employees are already accurately sorted by value.
- rhinoceraptor 4y ago
  Again, he has a genius method: git log --author="$EMPLOYEE" -p | wc -l
  - 29athrowaway 4y ago
    https://github.com/tj/git-extras/blob/master/Commands.md https://github.com/tj/git-extras/blob/master/Commands.md "git summary" from git-extras works too
  - hedgehog 4y ago
    git log --pretty=%ae | sort | uniq -c | sort -r
    - slyall 4y ago
      sort -nr
      - hedgehog 4y ago
        That's more correct, also I realize I just counted number of commits rather than lines added. Close enough though, not like anyone would make any decisions with this list right?
  - v3ss0n 4y ago
    Easy pip install git-fame cd twitter git-fame

refurb 4y ago

Is this like the other rumors that turned out to not be true? Or maybe not? This is such a bizarre spectacle. I'm not sure why there is a such a media frenzy? It's one tech company.

MBCook 4y ago
First, Twitter is has huge and oversized importance. It’s vey big in both the tech and journalism worlds. There’s a reason celebrities are on it and tweets show up on the news and in articles. Second, it’s Musk. He’s famous, a celebrity (of sorts), and VERY VERY rich. Not only does he have haters, people seem to love watching the successful fail. “I knew it. He’s not so great. I could have done better.” And finally, it’s just 100% nuts. This is not how the business world works. He over bid on a company as a joke (?) after getting high (?) with the price being a weed joke. Then he tried to back out and got sued. Then at almost literally the last moment he went through with it and has almost DESTROYED the company in a week. It’s a perfect storm of WTF-hate-drama about a world famous company and a publicity hound.
- NegativeK 4y ago
  > I could have done better. I pretty much never assume this, from grocery bagger to CEO, but in this case I'm absolutely confident that I could've done better. Because not buying the damn thing is obviously better.
NegativeK 4y ago
I'm being as kind as I can here: It's one very large, very visible social network that had a very dramatic, drawn out, and absurd takeover executed by someone who is very eccentric.
- refurb 4y ago
  Right, it gets clicks. But if I think of the impact of Twitter for most Americans and I’m not sure they’d notice if it disappeared one day.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

ck2 4y ago

How long do you think until he announces the headquarters are moving to Texas? Twitter was pure ego, he's never going to profit from it, financially or popularity.

l33tc0de 4y ago
Is there anything wrong with moving the company headquarters to Texas? It's his company, he can do what he wants he's never going to profit from it - That is a pretty bold statement, care to share how you reached this conclusion?
29athrowaway 4y ago
Don't underestimate the richest human on Earth. He is being attacked now because he is making powerful people uncomfortable. He used to be rather popular before that.
- theowawayqqe 4y ago
- tasty_freeze 4y ago
  The shine really started coming off when his ego was bruised because he had his team spend a week building a submersible to rescue those kids trapped in a cave, but it was not suited to the task. One of those rescuers was vocal about it and so Musk repeatedly called him a pedo. Then there were the overt stock manipulation games he played. He could get away with them because he is stinking rich. Most other people who tried that would have been charged. How many years has he been promising fully autonomous driving just as soon as they finish polishing the software? Then there was the boring company. The flamethrowers. The flopped solar roofs project. The cyber truck. The 18 wheelers that were due years ago. The string of dalliances with young girls. The names he gave his children. His juvenile meme/twitter practices. There were many of people who didn't like Musk long before he mentioned buying twitter.
  - 29athrowaway 4y ago

smfe 4y ago

Allegedly Oracle did this years ago when they had layoffs-- employees were let go, then asked if they wanted to return. Apparently, if they said no, the company considered the exit a resignation instead of a layoff, and would refuse severance. If oracle was then taken to court over the lack of severance by former employees, those employees' refusal to rejoin the company could be used to avoid an unfavorable ruling for Oracle. My coworker relayed his oracle layoff story to me, which is where I got this bit of info. Would love if someone else had a verifiable source.

encryptluks2 4y ago
How does this work? They are supposed to not look for other jobs after their notice because the company might call them back?
- XorNot 4y ago
  I assume it requires a cooperating local judge on the court cases.
  - 29athrowaway 4y ago
    Like the ones in private kangaroo court, aka forced arbitration.
    - dehrmann 4y ago
      If Musk really wanted to screw people over with loopholes, he'd buy JAMS and companies that use them for arbitration. Screw someone over directly, then get the arbiter so rubber stamp it.
  - paxys 4y ago
    Best of luck finding a cooperating judge in San Francisco.
- nradov 4y ago
  The employees are not prohibited from looking for other jobs.

MBCook 4y ago

I understand some people need a job ASAP to support their family or medical care or such. But if that’s not you taking your job back just seems like a really bad idea in a circumstance like this. How could you ever have faith in the company leadership again? Wow.

georgeburdell 4y ago
It’s a head scratcher for sure. I remember when my employer (large old tech company) laid off one of my coworkers, he or his manager contested it and he got re-hired a month later. Why he went back puzzles me, but he’s still there 6 years later
- MBCook 4y ago
  If the company realizes it and admits it and you had people go to bat for you it makes sense to me to consider it. But to just randomly throw away 3700 people and they beg (let’s say) 500 with “wait we didn’t mean it, come back” is on a different level.
foogazi 4y ago
OTOH what’s the worst that could happen? Always better to look for a job while employed > How could you ever have faith in the company leadership? Faith in Twitter leadership is off the table at this point - employed or unemployed
- MBCook 4y ago
  I mean events of the last week alone are probably enough. But even in isolation this is just off the scale weird.
- 1270018080 4y ago
  OTOH what’s the worst that could happen? Working more 80 hour weeks?
  - piva00 4y ago

baron816 4y ago

I don’t know how long it would take to figure out which half of a company to fire, but my guess is that it’s longer than one week.

frupert52 4y ago
Obviously the strategy for the first few weeks or months would have been formed months ago. Whilst DD for example is not performed for strategic reasons it remains critical to validating any strategic planning and decision making as those things are largely informed by what the information you have tells you about the business and it’s trajectory right now vs where you want it to be. So transition and short-term planning in all likelihood would have been finalised shortly after DD

KVFinn 4y ago

A lone positive sign of a course correction amidst all the recent chaos and clearly terrible decisions. Of which the worst was Elon threatening advertisers who don't advertise on Twitter. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1588676939463946241 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1588676939463946241 Even granting the 50% target was the right amount, it was very hard for me to believe in a single week you could accurately select that 50% and transition key company knowledge to the people left. Surprising for this particular comment to be my lowest rated comment on HN, hah.

bpodgursky 4y ago

"On Blind, nobody knows you're a dog"

MangoCoffee 4y ago

"Apple fired 4,100 when Steve Jobs returned in 1997" https://world.hey.com/dhh/apple-fired-4-100-when-steve-jobs-returned-in-1997-57ed6bc6 https://world.hey.com/dhh/apple-fired-4-100-when-steve-jobs-... This whole Twitter layoffs is so interesting. even DHH got something to say about it.

djur 4y ago
Apple had already laid off 2800 people the previous year, and Wall Street had already been expecting more layoffs. The article DHH cites even says the post-Jobs layoffs were less extensive than some had expected. The Twitter layoffs are far more severe. Furthermore, the Apple layoffs were directly connected with the cancellation of specific projects. It was well known at the time that Apple was seriously overextended with huge, over-budget projects. The Next acquisition made some of these redundant. Jobs and Next brought a clear strategy for Apple and the base materials on which to execute that strategy. DHH cites analysts with qualms about Apple's future and tries to compare them with coverage of Twitter today. But there's simply no comparing. If you read the contemporary coverage, nobody has any real concerns about Jobs. The critical ZDnet piece he quotes even acknowledges that the layoffs were necessary for survival. The theme of the skeptical analysis of the time was not "is he going too far", but "will it be enough". DHH is right about one thing, though: "Twitter ain't Apple, Musk ain't Jobs".
threeseed 4y ago
Completely different situation. Apple was on the verge of being bankrupt and had a ton of projects that were never going to go anywhere e.g. eMate, Newton, OpenDoc, Cyberdog. And they weren't contributing to revenue at all. At Twitter we've seen the entire ethics, human rights, accessibility groups etc go. Which directly contributes to revenue since advertisers want these in place to mitigate brand safety risk.
- KurvaKing 4y ago
dagmx 4y ago

seibelj 4y ago

People made their companies some sort of missionary situation in their minds. This is dollars and psychology. Did you like the work? Can you get paid enough to come back? Elon is making this transactional. If you are truly needed bad enough that they will come calling right after a layoff then soak them for 3x. It’s just business.

dehrmann 4y ago

Could be a loyalty test.

pyuser583 4y ago
Loyalty works both ways. “Servility” is a better word.
emptyparadise 4y ago
Employee hazing?

dehrmann 4y ago

Side question: has there been an estimate of how many people were laid off? All I saw was NYT claiming a handful of sources said "50%," but WaPo was saying layoffs were going to happen before RSUs vest, and that never happened, so I don't find these sources all that trustworthy.

SeanAnderson 4y ago
3700 http://layoffs.fyi/ http://layoffs.fyi/
- dehrmann 4y ago
  This cites NYT. Regarding 3700, they say > four people with knowledge of the matter said

minimaxir 4y ago

> More from former tweep: They fired EVERYBODY on two of the teams that were working on things they want to launch. https://twitter.com/karaswisher/status/1589097173136060417 https://twitter.com/karaswisher/status/1589097173136060417

yrgulation 4y ago

How on earth is this abuse legal? What kind of power play is this? Has the world gone mad and we are all simply sitting and cheering while these people are dragged through the mud? How can we bring elon’s network of abusive entities to the ground? I am not spending any money on his products but how can we make significant impact? While i understand twitter needs to be made profitable I am now pissed off.

ryanSrich 4y ago
What abuse? Layoffs and firings are legal. Asking people if they want a job back is legal. I fail to see any abuse.
- AlphaSite 4y ago
  Not all bad or abusive behaviour is illegal, it’s just immoral and looked down upon.
- yrgulation 4y ago
  Seriously?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - PuppyTailWags 4y ago
    Labor protections are weak in the united states. It is still legal to hire child labor for agriculture. Approximately a quarter of food in the united states is picked using child labor.
    - yrgulation 4y ago
      A scary thought to be honest. What is the point in being a rich country if not for increasing standards, including those for working conditions?

ctvo 4y ago

Before we get even more convoluted reasons as to why this is all part of Elon Musk's grand strategy and how business classes in the future will pour over every detail to understand the brilliance, can I suggest a simple explanation: Elon Musk makes brash decisions and has no idea what he's doing here.

irishloop 4y ago
Occam's razor

JohnTHaller 4y ago

I wonder if management even realized they'd ditched their entire accessibility department.

ta988 4y ago
With the crowd that is now populating twitter they may not care. They make fun of people with disabilities and even get applauded when they do

cycomanic 4y ago

Maybe Musk realized that they might have broken UK criminal law [1] and is backtracking now? [1] in the UK if you lay of more than 20 or 100 people at one time you need to notify the business secretary 30 or 45 days in advance https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/nov/05/elon-musk-defends-twitter-layoffs-saying-staff-given-three-months-pay https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/nov/05/elon-musk...

in3d 4y ago
They’ll still be technically employed for 3 more months so that law would seem to be satisfied.
- cycomanic 4y ago
  I don't know UK employment law, but I would be very surprised if the time of being layed off is not when you're told that you have been fired, but somehow the time when your backpay/severance pay ends.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

threeseed 4y ago

I think this is a large part of it: https://twitter.com/GoAngelo/status/1588696157794242560 https://twitter.com/GoAngelo/status/1588696157794242560 Apparently, Twitter instantly lost ~15% of their 2023 revenue because of their poor showing at NewFronts where a lot of upfront ad buying is done. And with Musk firing the very teams the advertisers care about e.g. ethics, brand safety, human rights the industry is turning against them. Decade of painstaking work by Twitter to attract these advertisers gone in a week. And even worse Musk fired many of the relationship managers and so the company can't smooth things over. It really isn't inconceivable with this trajectory that Musk could bankrupt the company within a year.

polio 4y ago
Elon is understanding why Twitter had to seem so "woke". It turns out that "woke" consumers make for the most lucrative demographic to serve ads to. I don't believe he had to reckon with advertiser psychology to this extent at Tesla or SpaceX.
- bumblebritches5 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- PuppyTailWags 4y ago
  I don't think woke is the most lucrative demographic to serve ads to, but advertisers who buy ads on Twitter are likely selecting for Twitter. That is to say, Musk is destroying the Twitter branding, and so the advertisers that went to Twitter for its branding are now leaving.
- yrgulation 4y ago
  > It turns out that "woke" consumers make for the most lucrative demographic to serve ads to. Does this mean that “woke” people are people that work hard and have money to spend, while the non “woke” dont? What does this say about the “non woke” crowd? What is even woke? Am i “woke” because i don't want to buy products advertised on a platform where people are insulted on a daily basis due race, gender or sexual orientation and i want people to freely express their personality without risk of verbal or written injury? Is it maybe that brands understood that being associated with the types that loiter our social networks and scream abuse at passers does not sit well with sane people like us?

kevin_thibedeau 4y ago

Rarely does one have the opportunity to give themselves a 20% raise.

mullingitover 4y ago
Appropriate starting bargaining position here would be to demand a 100% raise. Most people typically get a 20% raise just by getting a new job.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

umvi 4y ago

If it were me I would only come back on the condition they double my salary

DonHopkins 4y ago

A móóse once bit my sister... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79TVMn_d_Pk&t=1m48s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79TVMn_d_Pk&t=1m48s

Kina 4y ago

Has Musk ever handled the operational aspects of the companies he claims to run? Does he really understand what it takes to make a company _work_? For instance, my understanding of SpaceX is that he really should be seen as the initial financier of it to chase a crazy idea. Gwynne Shotwell is really the one in charge of day-to-day operations. It's just that Musk shows up for the fun bits and gets all the sound bites in.

slyall 4y ago
Musk seems to have a good understanding of the technical rocket stuff. Have a look at his tours/interviews on the 'Everyday' Astronaut" channel.
- saurik 4y ago
  But that also isn't day-to-day operations.
- x86x87 4y ago
  - slyall 4y ago
    I'm not saying that. Have a look at the tours. He seems to be very up on designs for each component of the rockets. What the current status is, tradeoffs of different options. Probably this means he spends his 30 hours/week of SpaceX time sitting in on technical meetings and the other departments get neglected.
    - x86x87 4y ago
      my point is that he is knowledgeable - but the heavy work, the real work is done by the professionals. At best he learns what is going on, at worst he is hindering progress.
      - siva7 4y ago

nomdep 4y ago

I would take anything this guy says with a *huge* grain of salt, because when somebody tells you the kind of scumbag they are, you should believe them: https://twitter.com/CaseyNewton/status/1360999318480584704 https://twitter.com/CaseyNewton/status/1360999318480584704

fzeroracer 4y ago
I believe it was Musk that said Comedy is now legal on twitter. It was bold for him to post a joke while doing a comedy on Twitter considering he could've been flogged (or worse!) but I believe we shouldn't be retroactively looking for crimes he might've committed.
- nomdep 4y ago
  That’s the thing, I don’t think he was joking at all

KurvaKing 4y ago