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The CEO was cheering on when Musk laid off half the company. Not surprised.

mikeyouse 4y ago
Not aware of that but he always seemed like the kind of CEO who would benefit from a lot less time on social media trying to be a thought leader and a lot more time working on the company.
- austenallred 4y ago
  Hmm, perhaps. I actually don't spend as much time on social as it would seem. It takes very little time to dash off a tweet. It's almost like a background process that runs in my mind, and it helps me think through things and shave the edges off of my thinking. There's also probably a dopamine hit that I get from it that I'm not as aware of being a driving indicator, but I don't believe it negatively impacts my ability to run the company.
  - astura 4y ago
    Dude, bragging about how little thought you put into your social media posts is really not a good look.
wittycardio 4y ago
Absolute dirtbag
austenallred 4y ago
I wouldn't say I was cheering; I was simply acknowledging that, though difficult, Twitter certainly has too many employees for the amount of revenue they're bringing in, and I am skeptical of claims that Twitter will cease to function as they go from 8,000 employees to whatever the new number is (2,500 seems to be the latest)? There's certainly internal knowledge that is lost in a transition of that kind, but the amount of money Twitter was burning makes no sense, and while reducing numbers of engineers is risky (and complex systems require more engineers than most people assume), I completely believe that Twitter will be able to sustain the technical operations and move quickly in shipping product with a mere 2,000 engineers.
- runako 4y ago
  [I am explicitly not weighing in on whether this gambit will work or not. Could go either way, there is a lot of luck involved in business.] > Twitter certainly has too many employees for the amount of revenue they're bringing in This doesn't make any sense given that Twitter's revenue per employee (RPE) was roughly double that of well-run companies like Oracle or SAP and in the ballpark of EA and Adobe. This metric is a red herring currently being used to trim workforces. Which, that's the game and this is where we are in the cycle. But the ratio of revenue:employee doesn't tell the story here. Granted cost structures and business models are different across these firms, and Twitter likely could have cut some staff (they all likely will in coming months now that it is timely to do so). But that's exactly the point here: the Twitter ratio between employees and revenue works fine at other companies, and has done so for a long time. Expedia has built a sustainable business with a lower RPE than Twitter, and it is similarly a pure-play Internet company. From a strictly financial perspective, it's equally likely that there were other levers that could have equally been tuned to fix Twitter's persistent problems. IMHO the bigger problem was they are tooled as a high-growth company, but they were not growing fast. Even a modest bit of consistent growth, say 15% y/o/y, sustained for years, would likely have ameliorated their problems. Perhaps they have a large fixed cost to running Twitter, and they simply have not scaled the business enough to make it worthwhile yet -- could they double their business from the pre-acquisition base while only increasing staff 25%? That would be a good business! But I would guess the fundamental issue was that they are tooled for hypergrowth that is likely not on the radar. Big staff cuts, modest (but smaller) revenue drops, then aiming to grow at a slower, sustainable pace is pretty stock PE stuff (although they typically try to pay at or below market instead of much higher than market). Can only assume people who see this as genius have never observed PE work.
  - austenallred 4y ago
    Twitter was continually on the cusp of breakeven and would have lost money the quarter ahead of Musk's takeover had they not sold MoPub. Even before Musk took over they had planned on a 25% headcount reduction. Their revenue per employee pales in comparison to other companies of its ilk, and I think we would disagree whether SAP and Oracle are well-run companies :)
dzader 4y ago
calling Austen a CEO is like calling Bernie Madoff an investor. sure maybe it's 'technically' true, but they're both just clueless scammers looking to make a buck.

Not aware of that but he always seemed like the kind of CEO who would benefit from a lot less time on social media trying to be a thought leader and a lot more time working on the company.

austenallred 4y ago
Hmm, perhaps. I actually don't spend as much time on social as it would seem. It takes very little time to dash off a tweet. It's almost like a background process that runs in my mind, and it helps me think through things and shave the edges off of my thinking. There's also probably a dopamine hit that I get from it that I'm not as aware of being a driving indicator, but I don't believe it negatively impacts my ability to run the company.
- astura 4y ago
  Dude, bragging about how little thought you put into your social media posts is really not a good look.

wittycardio 4y ago

Absolute dirtbag

austenallred 4y ago

I wouldn't say I was cheering; I was simply acknowledging that, though difficult, Twitter certainly has too many employees for the amount of revenue they're bringing in, and I am skeptical of claims that Twitter will cease to function as they go from 8,000 employees to whatever the new number is (2,500 seems to be the latest)? There's certainly internal knowledge that is lost in a transition of that kind, but the amount of money Twitter was burning makes no sense, and while reducing numbers of engineers is risky (and complex systems require more engineers than most people assume), I completely believe that Twitter will be able to sustain the technical operations and move quickly in shipping product with a mere 2,000 engineers.

runako 4y ago
[I am explicitly not weighing in on whether this gambit will work or not. Could go either way, there is a lot of luck involved in business.] > Twitter certainly has too many employees for the amount of revenue they're bringing in This doesn't make any sense given that Twitter's revenue per employee (RPE) was roughly double that of well-run companies like Oracle or SAP and in the ballpark of EA and Adobe. This metric is a red herring currently being used to trim workforces. Which, that's the game and this is where we are in the cycle. But the ratio of revenue:employee doesn't tell the story here. Granted cost structures and business models are different across these firms, and Twitter likely could have cut some staff (they all likely will in coming months now that it is timely to do so). But that's exactly the point here: the Twitter ratio between employees and revenue works fine at other companies, and has done so for a long time. Expedia has built a sustainable business with a lower RPE than Twitter, and it is similarly a pure-play Internet company. From a strictly financial perspective, it's equally likely that there were other levers that could have equally been tuned to fix Twitter's persistent problems. IMHO the bigger problem was they are tooled as a high-growth company, but they were not growing fast. Even a modest bit of consistent growth, say 15% y/o/y, sustained for years, would likely have ameliorated their problems. Perhaps they have a large fixed cost to running Twitter, and they simply have not scaled the business enough to make it worthwhile yet -- could they double their business from the pre-acquisition base while only increasing staff 25%? That would be a good business! But I would guess the fundamental issue was that they are tooled for hypergrowth that is likely not on the radar. Big staff cuts, modest (but smaller) revenue drops, then aiming to grow at a slower, sustainable pace is pretty stock PE stuff (although they typically try to pay at or below market instead of much higher than market). Can only assume people who see this as genius have never observed PE work.
- austenallred 4y ago
  Twitter was continually on the cusp of breakeven and would have lost money the quarter ahead of Musk's takeover had they not sold MoPub. Even before Musk took over they had planned on a 25% headcount reduction. Their revenue per employee pales in comparison to other companies of its ilk, and I think we would disagree whether SAP and Oracle are well-run companies :)

dzader 4y ago

calling Austen a CEO is like calling Bernie Madoff an investor. sure maybe it's 'technically' true, but they're both just clueless scammers looking to make a buck.