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Twitter's headcount doubled between 2018 and 2022. They added literally 2500+ people in the two pandemic years itself. 50% layoffs gets them back to their 2018
by spaceman_2020 4y ago
Twitter's headcount doubled between 2018 and 2022. They added literally 2500+ people in the two pandemic years itself.
50% layoffs gets them back to their 2018 headcount.
As far as I can remember, Twitter was functioning fine in 2018 as well. And it certainly didn't grow enough or add enough features to warrant 50% headcount increase in two pandemic years.
- mrguyorama 4y agoYes but which 50% left matters. Engineers in a big complicated system like that are NOT replaceable and NOBODY properly manages their bus-factor. If you spent the past five years basically babying the twitter infra and making sure it stays working and understanding it and building on it and convincing yourself at night that it's okay how stupid and poorly engineered it is because it gets the job done and now elon comes in and spends his time calling you incompetent and overpaid and offers you a 3 month severance, you aren't staying.
- spaceman_2020 4y agoMy take is that there's a personality type that sees Elon hyping up the "hardcore-ness" and WANTS to get in. Remember that some people willingly put themselves through extremely situations - obsctacle races, bootcamps, etc. 80hrs/week doesn't bother them. Work-life balance isn't something they care about. The David Goggins types. Elon has built his career seeking out such people. Couple all of this "hardcore" talk with some elaborate BS about "Twitter's mission" (and he IS an excellent hype man) and I can totally see certain type of engineers jumping through hoops just to get in.