13 ms·

Twitter loses payroll dept, other financial employees from mass resignation

101 points by MallocVoidstar 4y ago

badwolf 4y ago
Payroll and Taxes aren't "Hardcore"
- ALittleLight 4y ago
  I don't understand why the payroll and accounting teams would have got the hardcore memo. Surely their jobs will be basically the same or easier (fewer people). I don't know the subject area, but how could this amount of work really change based on engineering direction?
  - roflyear 4y ago
    They probably just don't want to work there.
  - gopher_space 4y ago
    There’s no business reason behind it. I saw this happen on a much smaller scale at Amazon, management trying to inject “start-up culture” into a profession that doesn’t need or want it. Accountants specifically work for companies like Twitter to avoid this sort of environment.
  - fxtentacle 4y ago
    If you reduce overall employees by half, it kinda makes sense to also halve the HR and payroll departments...
- comte7092 4y ago
  Accountants: a group a people famous for seeking out risky, exciting and tumultuous work environments.
barelysapient 4y ago
“The fish rots from the head back.”
gvb 4y ago
By not paying payroll and US taxes, Twitter will instantaneously become profitable! ...briefly. :-O
slaw 4y ago
> be part of a voluntary layoff and would receive three months of pay as severance That is very generous severance. No wonder so many people resigned.
- tluyben2 4y ago
  Well, the alternative is to work whatever hours He wants you to or get fired anyway. Not sure if 0 or 3 months would matter to me, but with 3 offered, yes, run!
  - vineyardmike 4y ago
    Well honestly if the severance was 0 (which would be illegal but whatever) then why would you quit? Instead you could just work the hours you want until it caught up and you got fired.
    - meepmorp 4y ago
      Companies don't need to offer severance in the US, unless there's an employment agreement that specifies it.
      - bwbuhse 4y ago
        Even in California? (Series question I’m too lazy to Google)
        Dudelander 4y ago
        Even in California.
        hothitta 4y ago
        https://edd.ca.gov/en/Jobs_and_Training/Layoff_Services_WARN https://edd.ca.gov/en/Jobs_and_Training/Layoff_Services_WARN
kidme5 4y ago
Victerius 4y ago
Won't that prevent Twitter from paying severance to their former employees?
- samketchup 4y ago
  There are contractors that can come in and do this kind of work on short notice
  - jbrins1 4y ago
    Yes, but who is left to onboard and train the contractors?
    - tanseydavid 4y ago
      >> Yes, but who is left to onboard and train the contractors? To do payroll!? You must mean something else, right?
      - prirun 4y ago
        Payroll can get complicated, especially when companies allow direct deducts for stock, perks, etc.
pxmpxm 4y ago
Don't they outsource everything to ADP like every other normal F500 company? This is starting to feel like a bunch of butthurt coming from low value add teams.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- stouset 4y ago
  Elon, is that you?
- gopher_space 4y ago
  Think of accountants like an IT department. They’re both zero value add to most people until something breaks or c-level ignores their input.
- wrycoder 4y ago
  With only 2000 workers, just call Paychex.
  - pxmpxm 4y ago
    We switched to ADP at my previous employer (of around 150 people) - wasn't difficult and they offloaded a ton of work from the two people we had running corp finance. There are obvious economies of scales in farming that out, especially for place like Twitter that's just burning cash.
- inferiorhuman 4y ago
  Payroll is a "low value add team"? I can see you've never dealt with ADP or their competitors.
arekxv 4y ago
Thank you people for leaving this toxic place. This is the only way to teach the companies and idiot CEOs that this will not be tolerated. This helps every worker down the line.
- PM_me_your_math 4y ago
  All Musk did was tell his employees that they are expected to work and work hard. That the culture of doing as little work as possible had ended because it was killing the company - a fair point considering Twitter was bleeding money and only had 2 profitable years in the last 10. The other eight saw losses of 500MM to 1.1BN. Twitter was already on the edge financially and even a layman could see the entire company needed to change. Musk telegraphed his intention to cut most of the workforce so this shouldn't be a surprise. His acquisition is playing out exactly like others. He will push and press until he finds the people worth keeping or are on-board with his vision and then fill gaps going forward. There are no shortage of people who do not share the smoothie-guzzling work-ethic of former twitter employees. Twitter has always been a toxic place. What else do you call an organization whose only output for the last 10 years were billion dollar write downs and global censorship? To say nothing of the trolls, spam, bots, and astroturfing. Where ping-pong is valued more than production, and employees take 2 hour post-lunch "relaxation" breaks in the middle of the day, a mere hour before they go home. Taking the CEO's suggestion of leaving if you weren't onboard with his vision is not sending a message. It is taking the CEO's suggestion of working someplace else. I'm sure in today's competitive environment, CEO's are climbing over themselves to pay $150k to $250k year to someone who does only 2 to 4 hours of real work per day. I can see Musk moving the company HQ to some other place where talent pools have a different perspective on work and work ethic. My bets are Raleigh, NC or Austin, TX.
  - galdosdi 4y ago
    > CEO's are climbing over themselves to pay $150k to $250k year to someone who does only 2 to 4 hours of real work per day. Some or many of the resigned or fired Twitter engineers will be able to find work at over $250k per year, actually. That should be easy for anyone at the initial senior level. For that matter $150k is doable even for a mid level engineer at a mid-tier non-faang "boring" company these days. You sound out of touch with the US software labor market of today.
linuxhansl 4y ago
I'm sure Musk is going to be left with an extremely motivated workforce. Seriously, people should just work whatever hours they want now (or don't want), look for other jobs, until they get caught. It's always the same with the bean counters, you can measure cost, salaries, etc, but you can't really measure happiness and motivation (well perhaps with surveys). In the end you are perhaps left with lower cost, fewer people, but these people are not motivated to to anything or do anything well. I wanted to believe that Elon had a plan. I now believe he has not the faintest idea about how to run a software company. And maybe that's a US problem... I see the same with construction and service workers, nobody has pride in their work left, just doing the minimum, hoping to get away with it... because their leaders are telling them that cost is all that matters.
- pajko 4y ago
  Musk never had plans. He's just a fraudster and lunatic comedian with loads of money. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1zPeWaaCZHqfq0tnkPwc61A6bGHySdj91 https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1zPeWaaCZHqfq0tnkPwc6...
- fxtentacle 4y ago
  I work for an unrelated US company and if our boss would ask my team to go hardcore and push a new feature out of the door and he can explain why that's necessary, I'd expect more than half of my team to participate. There are people who are proud of doing good work. It's just that they probably were the minority at Twitter. I'd guess that scaring out everyone who's feeling lazy might turn out to be a great way to increase productivity.
  - pxmpxm 4y ago
    This is my read as well - judging by the amount of tantrum being thrown, the place seems to have a corporate culture of some progressive nonprofit... which is likely why they haven't been able to, ya know, make money. Didn't someone else do this approach before - essentially offering people money to quit?
    - 4y ago
rantee 4y ago
"No safety or surprise, the end" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXqPNlng6uI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXqPNlng6uI
fxtentacle 4y ago
"there are likely fewer than 2,000 employees left at the company." To me, that still seem like an unnecessarily large team. WhatsApp had only 55 employees when they got acquired.
- Dudelander 4y ago
  WhatsApp is a very simple application. I don't want to minimize what they did, because good interface design is hard to do, but it's just an instant messaging and voip client. You can message a maximum of 512 people on whatsapp. Barack Obama can message 133.3 million on twitter. These technical challenges aren't even on the same planet.
  - crote 4y ago
    At the time of acquisition WhatsApp had a group size limit of 100 people. It also did not yet have: - Document sharing - Voice / video calls - End-to-end encryption - Read receipts - WhatsApp Web Still an impressive piece of engineering, but definitely a completely different beast.
retrocryptid 4y ago
So maybe "to twitter" will become a verb in the English language meaning "to destroy something by incompetence." Example: "Hey Bob! Don't touch my scope mirror! I don't want you twittering it."
- out-of-ideas 4y ago
  add it to https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Twitter https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Twitter
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
puffoflogic 4y ago
Why would Twitter have a payroll department? I doubt the headline but good riddance if so. Everyone, but everyone, outsources payroll. The job has also become much easier with equity being converted to cash.

badwolf 4y ago

Payroll and Taxes aren't "Hardcore"

ALittleLight 4y ago
I don't understand why the payroll and accounting teams would have got the hardcore memo. Surely their jobs will be basically the same or easier (fewer people). I don't know the subject area, but how could this amount of work really change based on engineering direction?
- roflyear 4y ago
  They probably just don't want to work there.
- gopher_space 4y ago
  There’s no business reason behind it. I saw this happen on a much smaller scale at Amazon, management trying to inject “start-up culture” into a profession that doesn’t need or want it. Accountants specifically work for companies like Twitter to avoid this sort of environment.
- fxtentacle 4y ago
  If you reduce overall employees by half, it kinda makes sense to also halve the HR and payroll departments...
comte7092 4y ago
Accountants: a group a people famous for seeking out risky, exciting and tumultuous work environments.

barelysapient 4y ago

“The fish rots from the head back.”

gvb 4y ago

By not paying payroll and US taxes, Twitter will instantaneously become profitable! ...briefly. :-O

slaw 4y ago

> be part of a voluntary layoff and would receive three months of pay as severance That is very generous severance. No wonder so many people resigned.

tluyben2 4y ago
Well, the alternative is to work whatever hours He wants you to or get fired anyway. Not sure if 0 or 3 months would matter to me, but with 3 offered, yes, run!
- vineyardmike 4y ago
  Well honestly if the severance was 0 (which would be illegal but whatever) then why would you quit? Instead you could just work the hours you want until it caught up and you got fired.
  - meepmorp 4y ago
    Companies don't need to offer severance in the US, unless there's an employment agreement that specifies it.
    - bwbuhse 4y ago
      Even in California? (Series question I’m too lazy to Google)
      - Dudelander 4y ago
        Even in California.
        hothitta 4y ago
        https://edd.ca.gov/en/Jobs_and_Training/Layoff_Services_WARN https://edd.ca.gov/en/Jobs_and_Training/Layoff_Services_WARN

kidme5 4y ago

Victerius 4y ago

Won't that prevent Twitter from paying severance to their former employees?

samketchup 4y ago
There are contractors that can come in and do this kind of work on short notice
- jbrins1 4y ago
  Yes, but who is left to onboard and train the contractors?
  - tanseydavid 4y ago
    >> Yes, but who is left to onboard and train the contractors? To do payroll!? You must mean something else, right?
    - prirun 4y ago
      Payroll can get complicated, especially when companies allow direct deducts for stock, perks, etc.

pxmpxm 4y ago

Don't they outsource everything to ADP like every other normal F500 company? This is starting to feel like a bunch of butthurt coming from low value add teams.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
stouset 4y ago
Elon, is that you?
gopher_space 4y ago
Think of accountants like an IT department. They’re both zero value add to most people until something breaks or c-level ignores their input.
wrycoder 4y ago
With only 2000 workers, just call Paychex.
- pxmpxm 4y ago
  We switched to ADP at my previous employer (of around 150 people) - wasn't difficult and they offloaded a ton of work from the two people we had running corp finance. There are obvious economies of scales in farming that out, especially for place like Twitter that's just burning cash.
inferiorhuman 4y ago
Payroll is a "low value add team"? I can see you've never dealt with ADP or their competitors.

arekxv 4y ago

Thank you people for leaving this toxic place. This is the only way to teach the companies and idiot CEOs that this will not be tolerated. This helps every worker down the line.

PM_me_your_math 4y ago
All Musk did was tell his employees that they are expected to work and work hard. That the culture of doing as little work as possible had ended because it was killing the company - a fair point considering Twitter was bleeding money and only had 2 profitable years in the last 10. The other eight saw losses of 500MM to 1.1BN. Twitter was already on the edge financially and even a layman could see the entire company needed to change. Musk telegraphed his intention to cut most of the workforce so this shouldn't be a surprise. His acquisition is playing out exactly like others. He will push and press until he finds the people worth keeping or are on-board with his vision and then fill gaps going forward. There are no shortage of people who do not share the smoothie-guzzling work-ethic of former twitter employees. Twitter has always been a toxic place. What else do you call an organization whose only output for the last 10 years were billion dollar write downs and global censorship? To say nothing of the trolls, spam, bots, and astroturfing. Where ping-pong is valued more than production, and employees take 2 hour post-lunch "relaxation" breaks in the middle of the day, a mere hour before they go home. Taking the CEO's suggestion of leaving if you weren't onboard with his vision is not sending a message. It is taking the CEO's suggestion of working someplace else. I'm sure in today's competitive environment, CEO's are climbing over themselves to pay $150k to $250k year to someone who does only 2 to 4 hours of real work per day. I can see Musk moving the company HQ to some other place where talent pools have a different perspective on work and work ethic. My bets are Raleigh, NC or Austin, TX.
- galdosdi 4y ago
  > CEO's are climbing over themselves to pay $150k to $250k year to someone who does only 2 to 4 hours of real work per day. Some or many of the resigned or fired Twitter engineers will be able to find work at over $250k per year, actually. That should be easy for anyone at the initial senior level. For that matter $150k is doable even for a mid level engineer at a mid-tier non-faang "boring" company these days. You sound out of touch with the US software labor market of today.

linuxhansl 4y ago

I'm sure Musk is going to be left with an extremely motivated workforce. Seriously, people should just work whatever hours they want now (or don't want), look for other jobs, until they get caught. It's always the same with the bean counters, you can measure cost, salaries, etc, but you can't really measure happiness and motivation (well perhaps with surveys). In the end you are perhaps left with lower cost, fewer people, but these people are not motivated to to anything or do anything well. I wanted to believe that Elon had a plan. I now believe he has not the faintest idea about how to run a software company. And maybe that's a US problem... I see the same with construction and service workers, nobody has pride in their work left, just doing the minimum, hoping to get away with it... because their leaders are telling them that cost is all that matters.

pajko 4y ago
Musk never had plans. He's just a fraudster and lunatic comedian with loads of money. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1zPeWaaCZHqfq0tnkPwc61A6bGHySdj91 https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1zPeWaaCZHqfq0tnkPwc6...
fxtentacle 4y ago
I work for an unrelated US company and if our boss would ask my team to go hardcore and push a new feature out of the door and he can explain why that's necessary, I'd expect more than half of my team to participate. There are people who are proud of doing good work. It's just that they probably were the minority at Twitter. I'd guess that scaring out everyone who's feeling lazy might turn out to be a great way to increase productivity.
- pxmpxm 4y ago
  This is my read as well - judging by the amount of tantrum being thrown, the place seems to have a corporate culture of some progressive nonprofit... which is likely why they haven't been able to, ya know, make money. Didn't someone else do this approach before - essentially offering people money to quit?
  - 4y ago

rantee 4y ago

"No safety or surprise, the end" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXqPNlng6uI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXqPNlng6uI

fxtentacle 4y ago

"there are likely fewer than 2,000 employees left at the company." To me, that still seem like an unnecessarily large team. WhatsApp had only 55 employees when they got acquired.

Dudelander 4y ago
WhatsApp is a very simple application. I don't want to minimize what they did, because good interface design is hard to do, but it's just an instant messaging and voip client. You can message a maximum of 512 people on whatsapp. Barack Obama can message 133.3 million on twitter. These technical challenges aren't even on the same planet.
- crote 4y ago
  At the time of acquisition WhatsApp had a group size limit of 100 people. It also did not yet have: - Document sharing - Voice / video calls - End-to-end encryption - Read receipts - WhatsApp Web Still an impressive piece of engineering, but definitely a completely different beast.

retrocryptid 4y ago

So maybe "to twitter" will become a verb in the English language meaning "to destroy something by incompetence." Example: "Hey Bob! Don't touch my scope mirror! I don't want you twittering it."

out-of-ideas 4y ago
add it to https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Twitter https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Twitter

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

puffoflogic 4y ago

Why would Twitter have a payroll department? I doubt the headline but good riddance if so. Everyone, but everyone, outsources payroll. The job has also become much easier with equity being converted to cash.