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> 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

• 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.
  • behringer 4y ago
    The worst people will never leave on their own.
    • aantix 4y ago
      Unless they're required to work 12 hour days, 7 days a week?
      • lll-o-lll 4y ago
        Even then. If you are a low performer, in this market, that’s managed to survive to this point? It’s head down, cover your backside, sacrifice the person next to you if you must, and hope you make it through… People in survival mode will do anything to keep on surviving.
        • vidarh 4y ago
          In crumbling organisations, being willing to just stubbornly stay can even give underperforming people a shot at promotions they'd be unlikely ever get otherwise by virtue of becoming the most senior persons in teams with gaps above them.
        • lupire 4y ago
          The market is fine. There are more job seats than pre Covid.
        • saagarjha 4y ago
          Why not survive at another job that doesn’t send you on a death march?
  • ilyt 4y ago
    The only people he needs to not fire are ones running infrastructure. Rest can be replaced easily.
    • janoc 4y ago
• slg 4y ago
  >He has to strip down the car fast while somehow also keeping it road-worthy and operational. But this is my point. By doing it in this order he is risking continued operation of Twitter because he no longer can ensure Twitter can either properly staff business critical teams or retain critical institutional knowledge for how to run the company. He is jeopardizing the continued viability of a $44b investment to save maybe a few hundred million max.
  • danans 4y ago
    > He is jeopardizing the continued viability of a $44b investment to save maybe a few hundred million max. Both he and the market know that he paid too much for Twitter. It isn't worth $44B, but he needs to make it lean enough to start throwing off enough cash to pay back the loans he took to buy it at that price. Since it is very hard to increase revenue (especially when he is allowing more advertiser-repellent content), he is trying to dramatically cut costs while trying to increase non advertising revenue. He can't go back to the banks and the Saudi sovereign wealth fund and explain to them that he needs a deferment so he can invest in more efficient SRE and content moderation. He has to sleep in the bed he made, which means show his creditors the money.
    • lupire 4y ago
      Counterparty risk. Do you have think the banks and Saudis want $1B this year and $0 after when Twitter collapses, or $0 this year and $500M in future years? Do you Elon wants the banks to foreclose and seize Twitter? Or have to sell TSLA?
      • danans 4y ago
        > Do you Elon wants the banks to foreclose and seize Twitter? Or have to sell TSLA? I don't think he wants to sell TSLA to pay debts but might have to.
        • aisengard 4y ago
          Pretty sure he already has: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/10/elon-musk-tells-twitter-staff-he-sold-tesla-stock-to-save-twitter.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/10/elon-musk-tells-twitter-staf...
• lovich 4y ago
  Making a bunch of unpopular changes and waiting a month still seems more prudent. The people most likely carrying that culture are gonna be the ones most inclined to leave over changes, and if they are leaving on their own that would decrease costs associated with benefits or the increase to the unemployment tax that comes with layoffs
  • heavyset_go 4y ago
    Changes to terms of employment make employees who quit because of them eligible to collect unemployment. It's one of the few reasons workers are eligible for unemployment when they voluntarily quit.
    • lovich 4y ago
      Yea was just reading how this likely prompted facebooks giving the November vest to their laid off employees was likely driven by similar labor protection laws. After having worked for a Georgia headquartered company for 2 years I don’t think I can work for a company outside a blue state again. The worker protections, minimal as they are in the US, kicked in multiple times as the company kept trying to fuck us over
      • heavyset_go 4y ago
        Agreed, I've gotten some really great offers out in Texas but I'm not willing to live somewhere that gives employers and asset owners carte blanche to do what they want and everyone else can just go screw themselves. I'm currently hearing some horror stories from friends who did take similar offers and were enticed by the relatively lower cost of living. Turns out there are reasons it's lower.
• spamizbad 4y ago
  > 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. Twitter isn't going to have the same "pull" as organizations like Tesla or SpaceX where you can attract top-shelf talent by virtue of working on some of the most interesting problems. Twitter is... Twitter. It's Adtech + SaaS. I'm not saying this is boring or easy - it's not, it has tons of challenging problems... but how is Twitter under Musk more appealing to engineers than Twitter under any of its previous CEOs?
  • jamdamu 4y ago
    Twitter under Musk would presumably have less bloat, a lot faster decisions, I'm assuming an easy escalation path that doesn't have to go through multiple layers of management, and you can be confident none of your peers are coasting.
  • Aeolun 4y ago
    > under Musk There it is. There’s enough fanboys around that he doesn’t have to worry about butts to put in seats.
• nitwit005 4y ago
  Hiring is expensive, and people can take months to get up to speed on a new role. If too many people quit, he'll have simply wasted money and time. I've joined two teams where everyone previously on the team quit (plenty of openings). There was indeed a benefit to fresh eyes on things, but those projects took months to get back up to speed.
  • danans 4y ago
    > Hiring is expensive, and people can take months to get up to speed on a new role. If too many people quit, he'll have simply wasted money and time. Yes, he's probably screwed either way. Sucks that others are getting screwed as a result of his choices.
    • gnaritas99 4y ago
• ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  > He has to strip down the car fast You know what we call a vehicle thats undergoing Rapid Disassembly? An Explosion.
  • danans 4y ago
    Hah. Funny! But I do think you're on to something.
• janoc 4y ago
  >then start hiring as necessary with the kind of people you want. That assumes that people will still want to work for Twitter after all of this. Given that there is no shortage of jobs for engineers even after massive layoffs at Facebook/Meta and Twitter, many people are going to think twice about signing up to work for a company and owner that have a reputation for treating people as disposable trash. Employees are the company's most valuable capital - so if you unceremoniously boot out the most experienced staff that was keeping the ship afloat and expect to replace them with cheap new hires while maintaining productivity, security and revenue (which weren't great at Twitter to begin with), you would have to be delusional. Some layoffs were likely justified but thanks to the hamfisted way they were done I am sorry for the recruiters that will have to look for new staff now. They will have a very unenviable job.
  • rchaud 4y ago
    I'm sure he can drag some Tesla software engineers in for a few months to fill the gaps. That's how this works, right? /s
    • gw98 4y ago
      Yup. I've been that guy twice on projects. Started a contract. Oh all the other guys were fired/left! I laughed inside a bit, took the 6 months pay and watched it tank both times because there was fuck all I could do about it but was contracted for butts on seats only. I was an expensive parachute into a slurry pit.
      • kergonath 4y ago
        > I was an expensive parachute into a slurry pit. Such a lovely metaphor. Now that I think about it, I’ve felt like that at times…
  • scarface_74 4y ago
    > Given that there is no shortage of jobs for engineers Where are these jobs? At startups that see they may not get another round of funding soon? At unprofitable recently IPOd unicorns that are losing money and cutting back staff? At Amazon (where I work) that just announced a hiring freeze? At Google where they admitted over hiring?
• 0cf8612b2e1e 4y ago
  > He's got huge debt and declining revenue - both of his own making While I think he has done a huge amount to scare away advertisers, I expect the ad industry as a whole is going to be seeing reduced profits for the next couple of years.
• dragonwriter 4y ago
  > 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 So, he's destroying all of the institutional knowledge, the brand image, and the existing business relationships, while pivoting to a radically different market. He wanted a fresh startup to sink $44 billion into, not an existing business with employees he doesn't want, a legacy product that doesn’t fit his vision, and feature iteration velocity constraints from FTC consent decrees that a new startup wouldn’t have.
  • kyleee 4y ago
    "the brand image" of twitter, lol, go on
    • ThunderSizzle 4y ago
      Apparently quite a few HNers think very highly of Twitter... I haven't came across any one that thought most of Twitter was good. It's a cesspool of cancel culture and hatred.
      • ericmay 4y ago
        Really depends on how you use it, who you follow, and other things. It’s actually probably less of a cesspool than most social media sites.
      • sangnoir 4y ago
        You don't have to follow "most of Twitter". There are countless awesome communities for almost any given subject. There is room for both to be true: most of Twitter (content) is a cesspool, and yet it still is great place id you take care to curate the accounts you follow.
    • ricree 4y ago
      It's still pretty much the go to place for journalists to mine quotes and sentiment from "normal people". I'm addition, it remains a significant platform for informal celebrity and corporate announcements. People in tech are pretty bearish about Twitter these days (myself included), but there are clearly a significant number of people who believe otherwise.
• aerostable_slug 4y ago
  > both of his own making Really? I was under the impression that Twitter was hemorrhaging money.
  • acdha 4y ago
    Twitter was losing money but for years they would have been profitable except they were handing out executive stock compensation like they were Facebook. That wasn’t great but there was an obvious path to profitability. Musk just added somewhat over a billion in new annual debt servicing so it went from “stop going to nightclubs every day” to “sell the furniture”.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • danans 4y ago
    To which he added $1B a year in liabilities.
• btbuildem 4y ago
  > He also wants to recreate the place per his own vision That's a bold assumption -- that there is a vision