17 ms·

Let's say you run a company and you want to reduce staff. Let's also say you want to make an unpopular decision (or multiple unpopular decisions) that you know

by slg 4y ago

Let's say you run a company and you want to reduce staff. Let's also say you want to make an unpopular decision (or multiple unpopular decisions) that you know will drive a certain percentage of your staff to leave the company. Wouldn't it make the most sense to announce those decisions before making layoffs? Let people self select whether they want to stay and work for you and then make your layoffs after to ensure all teams are properly staffed. Instead, Musk has already laid people off to the point that they are trying to hire back people previously laid off and current employees are sleeping in the office. Now he is pushing even more people out the door with no control over what teams will be hurt the hardest.

boatsie 4y ago
I think you have it backwards. This is how you accomplish a 75% reduction while only having to lay off (and pay severance for) 50%! Musk again playing 4d chess.
- warinukraine 4y ago
  No, you have it backwards. If you wanted 75% reduction while only having to lay off 50%, you make the unpopular decision _first_, and then the lay offs.
  - etothepii 4y ago
    Indeed, that means you only have to pay 25% while achieving a 75% reduction. Though it's hard to believe there's a game plan here. However, I have a suspicion that there is a certain type of person with low self esteem and high intelligence that will respond very well to being treated this badly.
- gamblor956 4y ago
  Forcing people who were told they can work fully remote in their employment agreement to work in the office is treated as a constructive dismissal in the U.S. As this constructive dismissal is clearly part of the mass layoffs, they would also be subject to the 60 days notice under the WARN Act (or 60 days pay to waive notice).
  - DoneWithAllThat 4y ago
    “Is clearly” is doing a lot of work here, and I suspect Twitter’s lawyers don’t share your investment in it.
    - iudqnolq 4y ago
      Then why did Twitter's top lawyers just quit? You're being optimistic in expecting Twitter's legal team were even told about this plan in advance, considering HR wasn't.
    - gamblor956 4y ago
      One of Twitter's lawyers literally stated in a company-wide communication this morning that Twitter employees have the right to work from home, regardless of what Elon said in his email. Elon announced the policy with the intent to be able to fire employees who refused to come in to the office. However, because WFH is part of employee contracts, enforcing a WFO policy would constitute a constructive dismissal if actually enforced by Twitter. Meaning, not for cause, severance likely required under WARN Act, etc.
      - Laaas 4y ago
        For reference: https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/10/23451198/twitter-ftc-elon-musk-lawyer-changes-fine-warning https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/10/23451198/twitter-ftc-elo...
- Taniwha 4y ago
  4D chess? he doesn't have the self control, too busy haring off tilting at windmills to launch his damned spaceship
  - PM_me_your_math 4y ago
    In the absence of Russian rockets, how do you suppose the USA launch astronauts to the iss or fly satellites? Hope can't achieve orbital velocity.
    - Taniwha 4y ago
      I think you misunderstand me - I want him to finish his big rocket and start doing wonderful stuff with it, I think his ill conceived twitter adventure is tilting at windmills that must be taking his eyes of the real prize
- RavingGoat 4y ago
  You confusing 4d chess with Candyland.
jesuscript 4y ago
- andrew_ 4y ago
  These kinds of faux insights are shallow.
  - jesuscript 4y ago
    Everything he is doing is done in quiet corporate ways all the time. Why is his way so celebrity like? It’s almost like he wants people to know. You can’t see that? No one walks in with a fucking a sink to a company dude lol.
    - ComputerGuru 4y ago
      That’s just his personality.
      - willis936 4y ago
      - margalabargala 4y ago
        Could you elaborate on what conclusion we're meant to draw by this being Musk's personality? It doesn't inform whether what is doing is good or bad, megalomaniacal or not, etc. The list of people doing things that are "just their personality" include Gandhi, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Mother Teresa, MLK, and Hitler.
        ComputerGuru 4y ago
        > Could you elaborate on what conclusion we're meant to draw by this being Musk's personality? Nothing at all. Please don’t confuse how you do something with what you do.
      - maharajatever 4y ago
danans 4y ago
> Wouldn't it make the most sense to announce those decisions before making layoffs? Let people self select whether they want to stay and work for you and then make your layoffs after to ensure all teams are properly staffed. He's got huge debt and declining revenue - both of his own making - so he doesn't have time for employees to self-select based on minor incentives. He has to strip down the car fast while somehow also keeping it road-worthy and operational. He also wants to recreate the place per his own vision, so it makes sense to get rid of as many people carrying the previous culture as you can and then start hiring as necessary with the kind of people you want.
- SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
  Seems like he's trying to speed run employees jumping ship - I'm surprised he didn't try these tactics for a month or two before firing a bunch of people and paying severance.
  - PartiallyTyped 4y ago
    He actually did, June 16, 2022: Elon Musk plans to use remote work as a reward at Twitter—but only for ‘exceptional’ employees https://fortune.com/2022/06/16/elon-musk-twitter-remote-work-from-home-exceptional-town-hall/ https://fortune.com/2022/06/16/elon-musk-twitter-remote-work...
    - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
      That's not trying the tactic though, that's just saying an idea he has, which with Elon is the sort of thing that happens every 2 minutes and I doubt anyone takes seriously.
- pasttense01 4y ago
  And how do you find "the people carrying the previous culture" and other deadwood? You have to observe them over several weeks/months. But Elon didn't do this at all. He is about as likely to have fired the best people as the worst people.
Zigurd 4y ago
This is the part you are overthinking: "Wouldn't it make the most sense..." It would makes sense to hire a CEO. It would make sense to plan a layoff so you don't have to beg key people to return, etc. Musk frames this as making mistakes while working fast. In this case it will push more people to leave. There is probably intent, if not exactly thought and planning behind this because Really Bad Things have not happened yet. An indication that might change is that the CISO, security chief, and privacy chief resigned together, possibly with advice of counsel re the two FTC consent decrees.
- rodgerd 4y ago
  It's funny how people will argue "never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence" to excuse an institution or individual they like, but here people are bending over backwards to justify Musk's behaviour at Twitter as the performance of an evil genius playing a game that we're too subtle to understand, rather than those of a bully fool who is burning his life down thanks, apparently, to a crippling social media addiction and an inability to get over his ex.
  - skellington 4y ago
    - lovich 4y ago
      > Or maybe he's just a guy that believes in free speech… Lol, that’s some good comedy. He’s already gone on a ban run of people mocking him. He didn’t even make a month before showing his true colors on this talking point.
    - bmitc 4y ago
      > Or maybe he's just a guy that believes in free speech and wants to change Twitter for the better How many times does this need to debunked? Elon Musk has a long and storied history, with direct evidence, of attacking and taking punitive, perceived or actual, action on anyone that has even mildly disagreed with him. He even tweeted, several times I might add, "Chomsky sucks" just because Chomsky said a few mild things that disagreed with Musk. > which includes making it not hemorrhage money Why does he even care enough about it? Oh yea, Twitter is a source of people disagreeing with him. Further, he overnight added billions of dollars of debt to Twitter.
cokeandpepsi 4y ago
Jason: Back of the envelope... Twitter revenue per employee: $5B rev / 8k employees = $625K rev per employee in 2021 Google revenue per employee: $257B rev2/ 135K employee2= $1.9M per employee in 2021 Apple revenue per employee: $365B rev / 154k employees= $2.37M per employee in fiscal 2021 Jason: Twitter revenue per employee if 3k instead of 8k: $5B rev/ 3k employees= $1.66m rev per employee in 2021 (more industry standard) Elon: ["emphasized" above] Elon: Insane potential for improvement Jason: <Attachment-image/gif-lMG_2241.GIF> Jason: Day zero Jason: Sharpen your blades boys Jason: 2 day a week Office requirement= 20% voluntary departures Jason: https://twitter.com/jason/status/1515094823337832448?s=1O&t=CWr2U7sH4wVOsohPgjKRg https://twitter.com/jason/status/1515094823337832448?s=1O&t=... Jason: I mean, the product road map is beyond obviously Jason: Premium feature abound ... and twitter blue has exactly zero [unknown emoji] Jason: What committee came up with the list of dog shit features in Blue?!? It's worth paying to turn it off Elon: Yeah, what an insane piece of shit! Jason: Maybe we don't talk twitter on twitter OM @ Elon: Was just thinking that haha
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  Twitter employees: “we’re going to vote to unionize” When you have nothing left to lose, why wouldn’t you? It brings the federal government in to provide support, on their dime no less. Worst case is everyone leaves, the NLRB finds against Musk, and he has to give folks their jobs back while Twitter is burning. “The strongest steel is forged in the fires of a dumpster.”
  - memish 4y ago
    Why do that as opposed to leaving and competing against him if they have a better idea of how to operate a social media site? His naysayers are convinced he's going to destroy it anyway.
    - toomuchtodo 4y ago
      This is not how you win in a rigged system against a billionaire who weaponizes his wealth against everyone who does not take a knee and flouts the law whenever they see fit. The path to success is voting for decency over power, so I suppose we’ll agree to disagree. To unionize costs Twitter folks only their time and effort. The tools exists, just have to use them. This is what a hacker would do, isn’t it? Use the tools available instead of being goaded into some other mechanisms out of “pride”? https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/the-law/employees/your-right-to-form-a-union https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/the-law/em... https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/what-we-do/conduct-elections https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/what-we-do/conduct-elections
fred_is_fred 4y ago
A long standing maneuver that companies have is the "your job is now in Houston" when you live in New York. This has an interesting side effect of basically removing anyone from your company who is old enough to have a family with kids in school, wife working etc. Basically it "legally" removes the older more expensive employees. RTO will remove people also like you said, but I wonder what demographic?
- gamblor956 4y ago
  Moving a person's office of employment outside of what would be considered a reasonable commute is treated as a constructive dismissal in the U.S. It is generally legal, because is treated as a normal termination by the employer (basically: the employee's "current" job is being terminated and the employer is offering them a "new" job in a new location). This means, among other things, that the employee qualifies for unemployment, the employer's unemployment insurance account will get dinged, etc.
  - microtherion 4y ago
    My understanding (I am not a lawyer, talk to one if you think you're subject to a situation like this) is that constructive dismissal is NOT legal, and that the whole reason this is a legal term is that this is one of the categories of job separation that falls under "wrongful termination" in most states, even those that are otherwise under an "at-will" employment regime. In the particular case of Twitter, they announced in 2020 that they would allow "permanent" remote work, and reiterated this policy at least as late as March of this year [1]. If I'm correctly informed, the change in this policy was announced in an e-mail that was sent out on Wednesday, and was to be effective on Thursday, the following day. It would seem to me that this is about as straightforward and well-documented a constructive dismissal fact pattern as you could conceive. [1] https://thinkremote.com/twitter-to-open-offices-this-month-but-permanent-remote-work-is-an-option/ https://thinkremote.com/twitter-to-open-offices-this-month-b...
    - geoelectric 4y ago
      Here's CA's stance, and consider that CA is probably going to be the most protective state in the US when it comes to these things. Other states with decent labor protection mostly copied our laws. https://workplacerightslaw.com/library/retaliation/constructive-discharge-california-quitting-fired/ https://workplacerightslaw.com/library/retaliation/construct... My take: The TL;DR is that it's just equivalent to getting fired. If you can prove you got shuffled out the door via constructive dismissal for reasons it's illegal to fire people for, then it's illegal. If at-will would've applied anyway, it's just a jerk move. Mostly it means you still get unemployment and can still sue for wrongful termination, even though you technically resigned. What I suspect might be more of an issue, at least in CA, is that our at-will law has a "good faith" clause that basically implies you can't fire someone for a reason that would broadly be considered unethical in the context of an employer-employee business relationship. The classic example is canning someone just before they get their commissions purely to save yourself of the cost of paying them. My guess is that's one reason why Facebook, for example, is giving all their employees the mid-November vest even if they got fired first. Constructively dismissing someone out the door probably takes away a lot of argument that you were acting in good faith. If they promised these people that they could work remote and they invested in property then get forced to move, I actually wonder if it could open up the company to promissory estoppel (i.e., I had a financial loss based on a reasonable promise you broke, and now I want to recover). The times I've heard about that cause in the past were exactly for situations where you moved for a job, then the job was rescinded. At the very least, that angle probably wouldn't look great in court during a wrongful termination suit. (IANAL either, but since I work in CA I try to stay reasonably informed of the laws that affect me.)
mastazi 4y ago
At first this was my thinking as well, but then towards the end of the article, the author mentions an "all hands meeting" he had with employees before completing the acquisition, and apparently he said in that occasion that he was against remote work. Having said that, remote work is up there with compensation in my book, taking it away is just as likely[1] as a salary cut to make leave the company. [1] i.e. almost guaranteed
- cmh89 4y ago
  Getting rid of remote work is an excellent way to chase away your best employees while retaining people with nowhere to go.
  - Barrin92 4y ago
    the correlation in my experience is if anything the other way around. The best and most productive employees tend to be involved and in-person is still the best way to get things done and actually exchange ideas. This is the one thing Musk is 100% right about, remote work is awful for productivity and it's most popular among the "least amount of effort" crowd. It's also why almost any major tech company after covid is trying to scale remote work back again.
    - ilyt 4y ago
      That entirely depends on type of work. We do 1-2 days on site a week and it works well, we can get all of the management and coordination done then then just code away in peace without interruption. But that's programming, some jobs are less dependent on communication, some are more.
    - cmh89 4y ago
      >The best and most productive employees tend to be involved and in-person is still the best way to get things done and actually exchange ideas. I'm having a hard time believing this. The people in my company who want to end remote work were the people that needed it for a social output. Nothing as shown that productivity suffered during the pandemic due to remote work. >This is the one thing Musk is 100% right about, Elon Musk is a 100% remote worker. >t's also why almost any major tech company after covid is trying to scale remote work back again. Hard disagree, most companies want people back in the office because they are run by middle managers who have spent their careers climbing the ladder by putting in face time and building relationships. Remote work is a huge detriment to that style of career advancement. They basically want everyone back in the office so they, the middle managers, can feel productive. There is a reason they focus on abstract concepts like water cooler conversations rather than hard data. The data says there isn't a problem
batter 4y ago
- fragmede 4y ago
  To be clear, this video isn't real and Matt Shaver is "Just a dude who loves YouTube trying to make people laugh". https://www.youtube.com/c/mattshaver https://www.youtube.com/c/mattshaver
- gavrif 4y ago
  https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/nov/08/instagram-posts/no-twitter-didnt-send-a-meme-to-fire-an-employee/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/nov/08/instagram-...
- vhiremath4 4y ago
  I didn't realize the guy in this video is joking... For a second I thought this was real. Wow.
- Invictus0 4y ago
  The video was satire
  - MetaWhirledPeas 4y ago
    Satire is not believable; this was. So whatever it was it was poorly done. Unless you were already familiar with the dude you would have no idea he was joking. He even put THIS IS REAL in front of the image.
    - elijaht 4y ago
      Don’t believe everything you read online..?
    - mcv 4y ago
      Over the past couple of years, lots of things have been happening that weren't believable. Satire has been struggling to keep up with reality.
Ptchd 4y ago
Maybe in reality, he didn't layoff as many people as he wanted to? The rest will fire themselves...
- rchaud 4y ago
  why? everyone has PTO, and nobody is required to do all-nighters. If they want to, they can just go on vacation, wait it out and pick up severance when they get the chop.
  - Ptchd 4y ago
    yeah I guess the whole company should go on PTO...
seydor 4y ago
But it s not a neutral decision. It is likely you are left with the employees who are willing to tolerate a worse lifestyle for the paycheck, and you are letting go employees who are smart enough to prefer to have more control of their lives.
- chinabot 4y ago
  I guess expecting an employee to do actual work could ruin some ones lifestyle. I've been in a couple of companies now where only a few people "work" and the rest do "other stuff", I would have been happy in both those for someone like Musk to take over. Musk is his own worst enemy and can be a douche a lot of the time but he doesn't deserve this toxic personal shit for trying to sort out the mess. Also as I remember once he saw past the facade of twitter he tried to back out and it was the twitter board of management that insisted he buy.
  - lmm 4y ago
    > I guess expecting an employee to do actual work could ruin some ones lifestyle. I've been in a couple of companies now where only a few people "work" and the rest do "other stuff", I would have been happy in both those for someone like Musk to take over. I can sympathise with this, but that's if anything anticorrelated with coming into the office - the people who work the least are those who make the most effort at being seen.
    - Aeolun 4y ago
      > the people who work the least are those who make the most effort at being seen Not necessarily, but there’s certainly something to the unreasonable effectiveness of ‘just showing up’.
      - lmm 4y ago
        Not my experience at all. Presenteeism is probably the biggest drag on productivity going.
georgyo 4y ago
I worked at a place that did this in 2009. The problem with this method is that many people DID relocate to keep their jobs. And then were layed off two months later. Imagine uplifting your life for your job, and then being told you need to find a new job anyway.
- babypuncher 4y ago
  The other problem is that these unpopular decisions end up driving away the people who are the most confident about being able to find a new job, leaving you with less-skilled employees who maybe feel less comfortable job hunting.
- hsuduebc2 4y ago
  I'm afraid that you shouldn't subduct to this tyranny in first place.
  - a_techwriter_00 4y ago
    To 'subduct' is to take away or subtract from.
    - selimthegrim 4y ago
      Probably back-forming from geological sense
      - mcv 4y ago
        I think putting this tyranny deep underground would be a great idea.
- slg 4y ago
  Well yes, the actual best approach for the wellbeing of employee is to combine these two moves. Give employees the choice between taking a voluntary severance package or coming back to the office. Make it known that a round of layoffs is possible depending on the number of people who take the severance. That way no one is misled into moving and the company doesn't have to be as concerned with the distribution of people who refuse to work in the office. And let's be honest, Musk isn't doing it in this order for the wellbeing of Twitter's employees.
whacim 4y ago
I wonder if there is some sort of tax strategy Musk can implement if Twitter goes under? Might be more valuable dead than alive to him.
- dboreham 4y ago
  The Trump doctrine?
nonrandomstring 4y ago
I made a half-joke here on HN a few months ago that Musk was buying Twitter just to destroy it for the lols. Maybe everyone's wasting their time with rational economic analysis, trying to figure out a pretty simple guy with an obscene pile of fuck-you money and an axe to grind.
- notacop31337 4y ago
  I made this comment to a friend recently that I don't think enough people are considering that he might actually be mad enough to have spent $44B to destroy a toxic business.
  - PartiallyTyped 4y ago
    > destroy a toxic business Twitter is more toxic under musk..
    - bilvar 4y ago
      It's been barely a week he's at the helm and you came to that conclusion? I'm indifferent about Musk, but that's absurd.
      - PartiallyTyped 4y ago
        It doesn't come from me, it comes from people who care about brand image.
        bilvar 4y ago
        Who are these people?
        ekleraki 4y ago
        People like this guy https://twitter.com/LouPas/status/1588599808587345921 https://twitter.com/LouPas/status/1588599808587345921
kazinator 4y ago
Hard to say! Because, look. Suppose you begin not with layoffs but with the announcement "everyone back in the office for 40h/wk", knowing that people will leave. At that point, you don't get to choose who will leave, and it won't necessarily be the less productive fraction of the employees.
heavyset_go 4y ago
Changes in terms of employment, like going from WFH to mandatory in-office, makes employees eligible to collect unemployment should they choose to quit. It's one of the few reasons you can collect unemployment after voluntarily quitting. Such a move can backfire, and more people can quit than you planned on laying off, and that can make your UI liabilities larger than they would have been with just a layoff.
jmyeet 4y ago
If you view every employee as interchangeable this makes sense. Clearly that isn't the case. What ends up happening when you do things like this (ie to accelerate natural attrition) is the best people leave first. So you haven't really solved the problem. You may have made it worse.
- exclusiv 4y ago
  Yes but he may be optimizing for the younger, unmarried with no kids employees he can manage like he wants. Remove remote work and this filters out the types that are less likely to put up with his demands and managerial style, expectations, etc.
  - lupire 4y ago
    Younger, unmarried, untalented fans with no alternative.
blindseer 4y ago
You are giving Musk too much credit. He’s a classic control freak and micromanager, and right now he’s trying to run twitter like 6 person start-up that running low on funds.
guywithahat 4y ago
To my understanding, he's only laid off teams that he doesn't think are important so far. I know everyone is talking about 50% layoffs, but from what I can see that hasn't actually happened yet, it's only confirmed in the sense that it will happen. I'm happy to be proven wrong but I just don't see anything saying that, only teams that have been reduced by ~15% and other teams which have hardly been reduced at all
strangescript 4y ago
Truth is he probably wanted to eliminate even more staff than he did. It seems like he wants to get the smallest possible team that can keep the core product of twitter running, platform for posting small content blocks. He fired teams that he didn't believe were core to to that strategy and removed WFH. What he is left with, theoretically, is a hardcore group of people dedicated to the cause and willing to put with anything he might do.
- ra0x3 4y ago
  This this this. Musk isn't trying to win a popularity contest. He's trying to narrow staff down to that 10% that can do 80% and build back from there. A very cutthroat capitalist approach, but was anyone expecting anything else from the guy who ordered TSLA employees back into factories during covid?
  - rchaud 4y ago
    seems like that effort could be directed elsewhere considering where Tesla's stock price is currently.
borissk 4y ago
No, you're obviously wrong. Firing people first lets one get rid of the underperformes, while announcing the unpopular decisions first gets rid of the overperformers.
mdcds 4y ago
> Wouldn't it make the most sense to announce those decisions before making layoffs? no. layoff from the bottom first. then push out more people as needed. bottom performers have fewer options and, on average, will be willing to put up with more than top performers
version_five 4y ago
From a Machiavellian (? I think) perspective, better to do the layoffs first and flood the job market with people before making other unpopular decisions that may drive people away. No idea if that was the plan but it makes sense. (Even if the number cut doesn't amount to anything market moving, they probably share a lot of the same network, and it will definitely looks like a flood of job seekers in most twitter employees bubbles, and those of their immediate networks)
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
andrei_says_ 4y ago
I know I’m stating the very obvious but this and the layoffs feel quite adversarial. The vibe I get from Musk is that he doesn’t care about much more than the numbers and believes that a hard dictatorship is warranted in this situation. The sudden one sided decisions backed by ultimatums give me the impression of lack of respect for his employees and downright abuse. I don’t see how such a relationship can nurture a positive company culture or retain top talent.
Apofis 4y ago
The layoffs and departures on their own are by my count possibly getting close to saving the company a billion $USD a year. That's the projected cost of the debt obligations he took on buying the company. EZPZ.
piva00 4y ago
That seemed to be the plan since April per chats between Musk and Jason Calacanis [1]: > Day zero > Sharpen your blades boys > 2 day a week Office requirement = 20 % voluntary departures [1] https://muskmessages.com/d/34.html https://muskmessages.com/d/34.html
shermozle 4y ago
Great plan. Now you got rid of all the people with options and you've kept all the deadweight. Many companies do exactly this with voluntary redundancies!
Mouthfeel 4y ago
bursted 4y ago
test
arendtio 4y ago
Given that the best people might find new jobs faster than the worst, you might drive away the better half of your human resources. With the 'fire-first' approach, you have more control over who should leave (e.g. hiring managers). I don't like it either, but I think that is part of the rational behind it.

by slg 4y ago

boatsie 4y ago

I think you have it backwards. This is how you accomplish a 75% reduction while only having to lay off (and pay severance for) 50%! Musk again playing 4d chess.

warinukraine 4y ago
No, you have it backwards. If you wanted 75% reduction while only having to lay off 50%, you make the unpopular decision _first_, and then the lay offs.
- etothepii 4y ago
  Indeed, that means you only have to pay 25% while achieving a 75% reduction. Though it's hard to believe there's a game plan here. However, I have a suspicion that there is a certain type of person with low self esteem and high intelligence that will respond very well to being treated this badly.
gamblor956 4y ago
Forcing people who were told they can work fully remote in their employment agreement to work in the office is treated as a constructive dismissal in the U.S. As this constructive dismissal is clearly part of the mass layoffs, they would also be subject to the 60 days notice under the WARN Act (or 60 days pay to waive notice).
- DoneWithAllThat 4y ago
  “Is clearly” is doing a lot of work here, and I suspect Twitter’s lawyers don’t share your investment in it.
  - iudqnolq 4y ago
    Then why did Twitter's top lawyers just quit? You're being optimistic in expecting Twitter's legal team were even told about this plan in advance, considering HR wasn't.
  - gamblor956 4y ago
    One of Twitter's lawyers literally stated in a company-wide communication this morning that Twitter employees have the right to work from home, regardless of what Elon said in his email. Elon announced the policy with the intent to be able to fire employees who refused to come in to the office. However, because WFH is part of employee contracts, enforcing a WFO policy would constitute a constructive dismissal if actually enforced by Twitter. Meaning, not for cause, severance likely required under WARN Act, etc.
    - Laaas 4y ago
      For reference: https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/10/23451198/twitter-ftc-elon-musk-lawyer-changes-fine-warning https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/10/23451198/twitter-ftc-elo...
Taniwha 4y ago
4D chess? he doesn't have the self control, too busy haring off tilting at windmills to launch his damned spaceship
- PM_me_your_math 4y ago
  In the absence of Russian rockets, how do you suppose the USA launch astronauts to the iss or fly satellites? Hope can't achieve orbital velocity.
  - Taniwha 4y ago
    I think you misunderstand me - I want him to finish his big rocket and start doing wonderful stuff with it, I think his ill conceived twitter adventure is tilting at windmills that must be taking his eyes of the real prize
RavingGoat 4y ago
You confusing 4d chess with Candyland.

jesuscript 4y ago

andrew_ 4y ago
These kinds of faux insights are shallow.
- jesuscript 4y ago
  Everything he is doing is done in quiet corporate ways all the time. Why is his way so celebrity like? It’s almost like he wants people to know. You can’t see that? No one walks in with a fucking a sink to a company dude lol.
  - ComputerGuru 4y ago
    That’s just his personality.
    - willis936 4y ago
    - margalabargala 4y ago
      Could you elaborate on what conclusion we're meant to draw by this being Musk's personality? It doesn't inform whether what is doing is good or bad, megalomaniacal or not, etc. The list of people doing things that are "just their personality" include Gandhi, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Mother Teresa, MLK, and Hitler.
      - ComputerGuru 4y ago
        > Could you elaborate on what conclusion we're meant to draw by this being Musk's personality? Nothing at all. Please don’t confuse how you do something with what you do.
    - maharajatever 4y ago

danans 4y ago

> Wouldn't it make the most sense to announce those decisions before making layoffs? Let people self select whether they want to stay and work for you and then make your layoffs after to ensure all teams are properly staffed. He's got huge debt and declining revenue - both of his own making - so he doesn't have time for employees to self-select based on minor incentives. He has to strip down the car fast while somehow also keeping it road-worthy and operational. He also wants to recreate the place per his own vision, so it makes sense to get rid of as many people carrying the previous culture as you can and then start hiring as necessary with the kind of people you want.

SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
Seems like he's trying to speed run employees jumping ship - I'm surprised he didn't try these tactics for a month or two before firing a bunch of people and paying severance.
- PartiallyTyped 4y ago
  He actually did, June 16, 2022: Elon Musk plans to use remote work as a reward at Twitter—but only for ‘exceptional’ employees https://fortune.com/2022/06/16/elon-musk-twitter-remote-work-from-home-exceptional-town-hall/ https://fortune.com/2022/06/16/elon-musk-twitter-remote-work...
  - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
    That's not trying the tactic though, that's just saying an idea he has, which with Elon is the sort of thing that happens every 2 minutes and I doubt anyone takes seriously.
pasttense01 4y ago
And how do you find "the people carrying the previous culture" and other deadwood? You have to observe them over several weeks/months. But Elon didn't do this at all. He is about as likely to have fired the best people as the worst people.

Zigurd 4y ago

This is the part you are overthinking: "Wouldn't it make the most sense..." It would makes sense to hire a CEO. It would make sense to plan a layoff so you don't have to beg key people to return, etc. Musk frames this as making mistakes while working fast. In this case it will push more people to leave. There is probably intent, if not exactly thought and planning behind this because Really Bad Things have not happened yet. An indication that might change is that the CISO, security chief, and privacy chief resigned together, possibly with advice of counsel re the two FTC consent decrees.

rodgerd 4y ago
It's funny how people will argue "never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence" to excuse an institution or individual they like, but here people are bending over backwards to justify Musk's behaviour at Twitter as the performance of an evil genius playing a game that we're too subtle to understand, rather than those of a bully fool who is burning his life down thanks, apparently, to a crippling social media addiction and an inability to get over his ex.
- skellington 4y ago
  - lovich 4y ago
    > Or maybe he's just a guy that believes in free speech… Lol, that’s some good comedy. He’s already gone on a ban run of people mocking him. He didn’t even make a month before showing his true colors on this talking point.
  - bmitc 4y ago
    > Or maybe he's just a guy that believes in free speech and wants to change Twitter for the better How many times does this need to debunked? Elon Musk has a long and storied history, with direct evidence, of attacking and taking punitive, perceived or actual, action on anyone that has even mildly disagreed with him. He even tweeted, several times I might add, "Chomsky sucks" just because Chomsky said a few mild things that disagreed with Musk. > which includes making it not hemorrhage money Why does he even care enough about it? Oh yea, Twitter is a source of people disagreeing with him. Further, he overnight added billions of dollars of debt to Twitter.

cokeandpepsi 4y ago

Jason: Back of the envelope... Twitter revenue per employee: $5B rev / 8k employees = $625K rev per employee in 2021 Google revenue per employee: $257B rev2/ 135K employee2= $1.9M per employee in 2021 Apple revenue per employee: $365B rev / 154k employees= $2.37M per employee in fiscal 2021 Jason: Twitter revenue per employee if 3k instead of 8k: $5B rev/ 3k employees= $1.66m rev per employee in 2021 (more industry standard) Elon: ["emphasized" above] Elon: Insane potential for improvement Jason: <Attachment-image/gif-lMG_2241.GIF> Jason: Day zero Jason: Sharpen your blades boys Jason: 2 day a week Office requirement= 20% voluntary departures Jason: https://twitter.com/jason/status/1515094823337832448?s=1O&t=CWr2U7sH4wVOsohPgjKRg https://twitter.com/jason/status/1515094823337832448?s=1O&t=... Jason: I mean, the product road map is beyond obviously Jason: Premium feature abound ... and twitter blue has exactly zero [unknown emoji] Jason: What committee came up with the list of dog shit features in Blue?!? It's worth paying to turn it off Elon: Yeah, what an insane piece of shit! Jason: Maybe we don't talk twitter on twitter OM @ Elon: Was just thinking that haha

toomuchtodo 4y ago
Twitter employees: “we’re going to vote to unionize” When you have nothing left to lose, why wouldn’t you? It brings the federal government in to provide support, on their dime no less. Worst case is everyone leaves, the NLRB finds against Musk, and he has to give folks their jobs back while Twitter is burning. “The strongest steel is forged in the fires of a dumpster.”
- memish 4y ago
  Why do that as opposed to leaving and competing against him if they have a better idea of how to operate a social media site? His naysayers are convinced he's going to destroy it anyway.
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    This is not how you win in a rigged system against a billionaire who weaponizes his wealth against everyone who does not take a knee and flouts the law whenever they see fit. The path to success is voting for decency over power, so I suppose we’ll agree to disagree. To unionize costs Twitter folks only their time and effort. The tools exists, just have to use them. This is what a hacker would do, isn’t it? Use the tools available instead of being goaded into some other mechanisms out of “pride”? https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/the-law/employees/your-right-to-form-a-union https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/the-law/em... https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/what-we-do/conduct-elections https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/what-we-do/conduct-elections

fred_is_fred 4y ago

A long standing maneuver that companies have is the "your job is now in Houston" when you live in New York. This has an interesting side effect of basically removing anyone from your company who is old enough to have a family with kids in school, wife working etc. Basically it "legally" removes the older more expensive employees. RTO will remove people also like you said, but I wonder what demographic?

gamblor956 4y ago
Moving a person's office of employment outside of what would be considered a reasonable commute is treated as a constructive dismissal in the U.S. It is generally legal, because is treated as a normal termination by the employer (basically: the employee's "current" job is being terminated and the employer is offering them a "new" job in a new location). This means, among other things, that the employee qualifies for unemployment, the employer's unemployment insurance account will get dinged, etc.
- microtherion 4y ago
  My understanding (I am not a lawyer, talk to one if you think you're subject to a situation like this) is that constructive dismissal is NOT legal, and that the whole reason this is a legal term is that this is one of the categories of job separation that falls under "wrongful termination" in most states, even those that are otherwise under an "at-will" employment regime. In the particular case of Twitter, they announced in 2020 that they would allow "permanent" remote work, and reiterated this policy at least as late as March of this year [1]. If I'm correctly informed, the change in this policy was announced in an e-mail that was sent out on Wednesday, and was to be effective on Thursday, the following day. It would seem to me that this is about as straightforward and well-documented a constructive dismissal fact pattern as you could conceive. [1] https://thinkremote.com/twitter-to-open-offices-this-month-but-permanent-remote-work-is-an-option/ https://thinkremote.com/twitter-to-open-offices-this-month-b...
  - geoelectric 4y ago
    Here's CA's stance, and consider that CA is probably going to be the most protective state in the US when it comes to these things. Other states with decent labor protection mostly copied our laws. https://workplacerightslaw.com/library/retaliation/constructive-discharge-california-quitting-fired/ https://workplacerightslaw.com/library/retaliation/construct... My take: The TL;DR is that it's just equivalent to getting fired. If you can prove you got shuffled out the door via constructive dismissal for reasons it's illegal to fire people for, then it's illegal. If at-will would've applied anyway, it's just a jerk move. Mostly it means you still get unemployment and can still sue for wrongful termination, even though you technically resigned. What I suspect might be more of an issue, at least in CA, is that our at-will law has a "good faith" clause that basically implies you can't fire someone for a reason that would broadly be considered unethical in the context of an employer-employee business relationship. The classic example is canning someone just before they get their commissions purely to save yourself of the cost of paying them. My guess is that's one reason why Facebook, for example, is giving all their employees the mid-November vest even if they got fired first. Constructively dismissing someone out the door probably takes away a lot of argument that you were acting in good faith. If they promised these people that they could work remote and they invested in property then get forced to move, I actually wonder if it could open up the company to promissory estoppel (i.e., I had a financial loss based on a reasonable promise you broke, and now I want to recover). The times I've heard about that cause in the past were exactly for situations where you moved for a job, then the job was rescinded. At the very least, that angle probably wouldn't look great in court during a wrongful termination suit. (IANAL either, but since I work in CA I try to stay reasonably informed of the laws that affect me.)

mastazi 4y ago

At first this was my thinking as well, but then towards the end of the article, the author mentions an "all hands meeting" he had with employees before completing the acquisition, and apparently he said in that occasion that he was against remote work. Having said that, remote work is up there with compensation in my book, taking it away is just as likely[1] as a salary cut to make leave the company. [1] i.e. almost guaranteed

cmh89 4y ago
Getting rid of remote work is an excellent way to chase away your best employees while retaining people with nowhere to go.
- Barrin92 4y ago
  the correlation in my experience is if anything the other way around. The best and most productive employees tend to be involved and in-person is still the best way to get things done and actually exchange ideas. This is the one thing Musk is 100% right about, remote work is awful for productivity and it's most popular among the "least amount of effort" crowd. It's also why almost any major tech company after covid is trying to scale remote work back again.
  - ilyt 4y ago
    That entirely depends on type of work. We do 1-2 days on site a week and it works well, we can get all of the management and coordination done then then just code away in peace without interruption. But that's programming, some jobs are less dependent on communication, some are more.
  - cmh89 4y ago
    >The best and most productive employees tend to be involved and in-person is still the best way to get things done and actually exchange ideas. I'm having a hard time believing this. The people in my company who want to end remote work were the people that needed it for a social output. Nothing as shown that productivity suffered during the pandemic due to remote work. >This is the one thing Musk is 100% right about, Elon Musk is a 100% remote worker. >t's also why almost any major tech company after covid is trying to scale remote work back again. Hard disagree, most companies want people back in the office because they are run by middle managers who have spent their careers climbing the ladder by putting in face time and building relationships. Remote work is a huge detriment to that style of career advancement. They basically want everyone back in the office so they, the middle managers, can feel productive. There is a reason they focus on abstract concepts like water cooler conversations rather than hard data. The data says there isn't a problem

batter 4y ago

fragmede 4y ago
To be clear, this video isn't real and Matt Shaver is "Just a dude who loves YouTube trying to make people laugh". https://www.youtube.com/c/mattshaver https://www.youtube.com/c/mattshaver
gavrif 4y ago
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/nov/08/instagram-posts/no-twitter-didnt-send-a-meme-to-fire-an-employee/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/nov/08/instagram-...
vhiremath4 4y ago
I didn't realize the guy in this video is joking... For a second I thought this was real. Wow.
Invictus0 4y ago
The video was satire
- MetaWhirledPeas 4y ago
  Satire is not believable; this was. So whatever it was it was poorly done. Unless you were already familiar with the dude you would have no idea he was joking. He even put THIS IS REAL in front of the image.
  - elijaht 4y ago
    Don’t believe everything you read online..?
  - mcv 4y ago
    Over the past couple of years, lots of things have been happening that weren't believable. Satire has been struggling to keep up with reality.

Ptchd 4y ago

Maybe in reality, he didn't layoff as many people as he wanted to? The rest will fire themselves...

rchaud 4y ago
why? everyone has PTO, and nobody is required to do all-nighters. If they want to, they can just go on vacation, wait it out and pick up severance when they get the chop.
- Ptchd 4y ago
  yeah I guess the whole company should go on PTO...

seydor 4y ago

But it s not a neutral decision. It is likely you are left with the employees who are willing to tolerate a worse lifestyle for the paycheck, and you are letting go employees who are smart enough to prefer to have more control of their lives.

chinabot 4y ago
I guess expecting an employee to do actual work could ruin some ones lifestyle. I've been in a couple of companies now where only a few people "work" and the rest do "other stuff", I would have been happy in both those for someone like Musk to take over. Musk is his own worst enemy and can be a douche a lot of the time but he doesn't deserve this toxic personal shit for trying to sort out the mess. Also as I remember once he saw past the facade of twitter he tried to back out and it was the twitter board of management that insisted he buy.
- lmm 4y ago
  > I guess expecting an employee to do actual work could ruin some ones lifestyle. I've been in a couple of companies now where only a few people "work" and the rest do "other stuff", I would have been happy in both those for someone like Musk to take over. I can sympathise with this, but that's if anything anticorrelated with coming into the office - the people who work the least are those who make the most effort at being seen.
  - Aeolun 4y ago
    > the people who work the least are those who make the most effort at being seen Not necessarily, but there’s certainly something to the unreasonable effectiveness of ‘just showing up’.
    - lmm 4y ago
      Not my experience at all. Presenteeism is probably the biggest drag on productivity going.

georgyo 4y ago

I worked at a place that did this in 2009. The problem with this method is that many people DID relocate to keep their jobs. And then were layed off two months later. Imagine uplifting your life for your job, and then being told you need to find a new job anyway.

babypuncher 4y ago
The other problem is that these unpopular decisions end up driving away the people who are the most confident about being able to find a new job, leaving you with less-skilled employees who maybe feel less comfortable job hunting.
hsuduebc2 4y ago
I'm afraid that you shouldn't subduct to this tyranny in first place.
- a_techwriter_00 4y ago
  To 'subduct' is to take away or subtract from.
  - selimthegrim 4y ago
    Probably back-forming from geological sense
    - mcv 4y ago
      I think putting this tyranny deep underground would be a great idea.
slg 4y ago
Well yes, the actual best approach for the wellbeing of employee is to combine these two moves. Give employees the choice between taking a voluntary severance package or coming back to the office. Make it known that a round of layoffs is possible depending on the number of people who take the severance. That way no one is misled into moving and the company doesn't have to be as concerned with the distribution of people who refuse to work in the office. And let's be honest, Musk isn't doing it in this order for the wellbeing of Twitter's employees.

whacim 4y ago

I wonder if there is some sort of tax strategy Musk can implement if Twitter goes under? Might be more valuable dead than alive to him.

dboreham 4y ago
The Trump doctrine?

nonrandomstring 4y ago

I made a half-joke here on HN a few months ago that Musk was buying Twitter just to destroy it for the lols. Maybe everyone's wasting their time with rational economic analysis, trying to figure out a pretty simple guy with an obscene pile of fuck-you money and an axe to grind.

notacop31337 4y ago
I made this comment to a friend recently that I don't think enough people are considering that he might actually be mad enough to have spent $44B to destroy a toxic business.
- PartiallyTyped 4y ago
  > destroy a toxic business Twitter is more toxic under musk..
  - bilvar 4y ago
    It's been barely a week he's at the helm and you came to that conclusion? I'm indifferent about Musk, but that's absurd.
    - PartiallyTyped 4y ago
      It doesn't come from me, it comes from people who care about brand image.
      - bilvar 4y ago
        Who are these people?
        ekleraki 4y ago
        People like this guy https://twitter.com/LouPas/status/1588599808587345921 https://twitter.com/LouPas/status/1588599808587345921

kazinator 4y ago

Hard to say! Because, look. Suppose you begin not with layoffs but with the announcement "everyone back in the office for 40h/wk", knowing that people will leave. At that point, you don't get to choose who will leave, and it won't necessarily be the less productive fraction of the employees.

heavyset_go 4y ago

Changes in terms of employment, like going from WFH to mandatory in-office, makes employees eligible to collect unemployment should they choose to quit. It's one of the few reasons you can collect unemployment after voluntarily quitting. Such a move can backfire, and more people can quit than you planned on laying off, and that can make your UI liabilities larger than they would have been with just a layoff.

jmyeet 4y ago

If you view every employee as interchangeable this makes sense. Clearly that isn't the case. What ends up happening when you do things like this (ie to accelerate natural attrition) is the best people leave first. So you haven't really solved the problem. You may have made it worse.

exclusiv 4y ago
Yes but he may be optimizing for the younger, unmarried with no kids employees he can manage like he wants. Remove remote work and this filters out the types that are less likely to put up with his demands and managerial style, expectations, etc.
- lupire 4y ago
  Younger, unmarried, untalented fans with no alternative.

blindseer 4y ago

You are giving Musk too much credit. He’s a classic control freak and micromanager, and right now he’s trying to run twitter like 6 person start-up that running low on funds.

guywithahat 4y ago

To my understanding, he's only laid off teams that he doesn't think are important so far. I know everyone is talking about 50% layoffs, but from what I can see that hasn't actually happened yet, it's only confirmed in the sense that it will happen. I'm happy to be proven wrong but I just don't see anything saying that, only teams that have been reduced by ~15% and other teams which have hardly been reduced at all

strangescript 4y ago

Truth is he probably wanted to eliminate even more staff than he did. It seems like he wants to get the smallest possible team that can keep the core product of twitter running, platform for posting small content blocks. He fired teams that he didn't believe were core to to that strategy and removed WFH. What he is left with, theoretically, is a hardcore group of people dedicated to the cause and willing to put with anything he might do.

ra0x3 4y ago
This this this. Musk isn't trying to win a popularity contest. He's trying to narrow staff down to that 10% that can do 80% and build back from there. A very cutthroat capitalist approach, but was anyone expecting anything else from the guy who ordered TSLA employees back into factories during covid?
- rchaud 4y ago
  seems like that effort could be directed elsewhere considering where Tesla's stock price is currently.

borissk 4y ago

No, you're obviously wrong. Firing people first lets one get rid of the underperformes, while announcing the unpopular decisions first gets rid of the overperformers.

mdcds 4y ago

> Wouldn't it make the most sense to announce those decisions before making layoffs? no. layoff from the bottom first. then push out more people as needed. bottom performers have fewer options and, on average, will be willing to put up with more than top performers

version_five 4y ago

From a Machiavellian (? I think) perspective, better to do the layoffs first and flood the job market with people before making other unpopular decisions that may drive people away. No idea if that was the plan but it makes sense. (Even if the number cut doesn't amount to anything market moving, they probably share a lot of the same network, and it will definitely looks like a flood of job seekers in most twitter employees bubbles, and those of their immediate networks)

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

andrei_says_ 4y ago

I know I’m stating the very obvious but this and the layoffs feel quite adversarial. The vibe I get from Musk is that he doesn’t care about much more than the numbers and believes that a hard dictatorship is warranted in this situation. The sudden one sided decisions backed by ultimatums give me the impression of lack of respect for his employees and downright abuse. I don’t see how such a relationship can nurture a positive company culture or retain top talent.

Apofis 4y ago

The layoffs and departures on their own are by my count possibly getting close to saving the company a billion $USD a year. That's the projected cost of the debt obligations he took on buying the company. EZPZ.

piva00 4y ago

That seemed to be the plan since April per chats between Musk and Jason Calacanis [1]: > Day zero > Sharpen your blades boys > 2 day a week Office requirement = 20 % voluntary departures [1] https://muskmessages.com/d/34.html https://muskmessages.com/d/34.html

shermozle 4y ago

Great plan. Now you got rid of all the people with options and you've kept all the deadweight. Many companies do exactly this with voluntary redundancies!

Mouthfeel 4y ago

bursted 4y ago

test

arendtio 4y ago

Given that the best people might find new jobs faster than the worst, you might drive away the better half of your human resources. With the 'fire-first' approach, you have more control over who should leave (e.g. hiring managers). I don't like it either, but I think that is part of the rational behind it.