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The tragedy of Twitter is that: - they were absolutely undoubtedly overstaffed - Musk's approach was absolutely undoubtedly insane shenanigans of a stupid ric

The tragedy of Twitter is that: - they were absolutely undoubtedly overstaffed - Musk's approach was absolutely undoubtedly insane shenanigans of a stupid rich cry-baby Both are true at the same time

wpietri 4y ago
> they were absolutely undoubtedly overstaffed Oh? What's your evidence here?
- disgruntledphd2 4y ago
  Look at FB's staff from back when they had comparable revenue and way more users. I believe that 2013-14 FB was comparable in terms of revenue and users, and they had approximately half the staff.
  - wpietri 4y ago
    So? WhatsApp had 35 developers and 350 million users. By that measure, every other company is grossly overstaffed. Personally, I could argue that every social network is grossly understaffed by the measure of how lax they are about what they are supporting. E.g., in 2017, that company you say is more appropriately staffed contributed to a genocide that left tens of thousands dead: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-facebooks-systems-promoted-violence-against-rohingya-meta-owes-reparations-new-report/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...
    - kortilla 4y ago
      WhatsApp wasn’t a social network with public posts of rich media. It’s trivial from an architectural perspective because there isn’t anything that needs to be sent to millions of users.
      - danaris 4y ago
        Oh? So you're saying a company with a similar, but not identical, product might have completely different infrastructure and staffing needs? So we might not, in fact, be able to meaningfully compare Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc by headcount alone?
        wpietri 4y ago
        Exactly. It's very hard to know from the outside where the headcounts are or should be. E.g., Twitter had a ton of ML people. One could argue that was totally unnecessary, because Facebook didn't need that at date X. Or one could argue that they needed more of them, because it's the only way to wrangle the challenges of a large social network, and that hiring an ML person ends up being a net reduction in headcount because of the customer support/moderation people they replace.
    - Nextgrid 4y ago
      > By that measure, every other company is grossly overstaffed. Recent layoffs across a big chunk of the tech industry suggest this argument may have at least some truth in it. > that company you say is more appropriately staffed contributed to a genocide that left tens of thousands dead Contributing to a genocide has nothing to do with staffing levels and all to do with unhealthy incentives - the company makes its money on "engagement", and it turns out polarizing/divisive/violent/outrageous content generates a lot more of it than friends/family/cat pictures, so effectively moderating toxic content is actually against their bottom line and is only needed in extreme cases where the toxic content's negative PR impact outweighs what it will bring in "engagement".
      - wpietri 4y ago
        This is incorrect: > Contributing to a genocide has nothing to do with staffing levels Unless we just want to outlaw online forums, any provider is going to need to track and moderate harmful content. Note that even something as small as HN has a full-time moderator. That's just part of the business model these days. You're correct that moderation can run counter to short-term revenue gains. But it's much less clear that's true in the long term; as Facebook's reputation has worsened, its growth has slowed and its revenue has declined. Or on the other end of the scale, look at how the less restricted sites are doing. E.g., the 'chans are never going to move beyond a very small niche, and despite Twitter's troubles, nobody's expecting Gab to take the lead.
- dmitriid 4y ago
  Personal anecdotes from any big company :) There's a second layer to the tragedy. Also applicable to any big company: - many teams are overstaffed for what they do/produce - many teams are understaffed for what they do/produce And this is also true at the same time.
  - wpietri 4y ago
    Yeah, this is closer to the mark for me. It's been some years since I worked at Twitter, but if I had been suddenly made CEO, I wouldn't have gone on a mass firing spree. I would have tried to figure out how to more effectively use the people that Twitter had. As with many big companies, I suspect the problem is much more bad management than bad workers.
smcl 4y ago
This is roughly my feeling, but I'm a little less sure of the absolutely/undoubtedly part. Someone below is asking for evidence but I don't think any one of us could produce evidence for or against this. It all boils down to either "Twitter had ~7500 employees and..." 1. ... that feels like a huge amount for a company that has basically a single product 2. ... that feels entirely appropriate for a company operating at their scale What we've observed is that they've kinda managed to keep going despite Elon axing an enormous number of employees, but they've also had a few high-profile outages like this one today, the 2FA issue and 16hr Aus outage. I don't know if these are enough for either side to declare that they're correct. One thing I would like to say - even though I had a feeling Twitter was probably overstaffed, I was in no way celebrating the redundancies. Similarly even though I'm not a fan of Elon Musk, I'm not delighting in all these little goofs he's doing and how it's impacting him personally - every little embarrassment he suffers and every dip in Tesla stock makes it more likely he'll just call it quits or fuck up Twitter more. For all its faults, I quite like Twitter and I don't want it to just disappear.

The tragedy of Twitter is that: - they were absolutely undoubtedly overstaffed - Musk's approach was absolutely undoubtedly insane shenanigans of a stupid rich cry-baby Both are true at the same time

wpietri 4y ago

> they were absolutely undoubtedly overstaffed Oh? What's your evidence here?

disgruntledphd2 4y ago
Look at FB's staff from back when they had comparable revenue and way more users. I believe that 2013-14 FB was comparable in terms of revenue and users, and they had approximately half the staff.
- wpietri 4y ago
  So? WhatsApp had 35 developers and 350 million users. By that measure, every other company is grossly overstaffed. Personally, I could argue that every social network is grossly understaffed by the measure of how lax they are about what they are supporting. E.g., in 2017, that company you say is more appropriately staffed contributed to a genocide that left tens of thousands dead: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-facebooks-systems-promoted-violence-against-rohingya-meta-owes-reparations-new-report/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...
  - kortilla 4y ago
    WhatsApp wasn’t a social network with public posts of rich media. It’s trivial from an architectural perspective because there isn’t anything that needs to be sent to millions of users.
    - danaris 4y ago
      Oh? So you're saying a company with a similar, but not identical, product might have completely different infrastructure and staffing needs? So we might not, in fact, be able to meaningfully compare Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc by headcount alone?
      - wpietri 4y ago
        Exactly. It's very hard to know from the outside where the headcounts are or should be. E.g., Twitter had a ton of ML people. One could argue that was totally unnecessary, because Facebook didn't need that at date X. Or one could argue that they needed more of them, because it's the only way to wrangle the challenges of a large social network, and that hiring an ML person ends up being a net reduction in headcount because of the customer support/moderation people they replace.
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    > By that measure, every other company is grossly overstaffed. Recent layoffs across a big chunk of the tech industry suggest this argument may have at least some truth in it. > that company you say is more appropriately staffed contributed to a genocide that left tens of thousands dead Contributing to a genocide has nothing to do with staffing levels and all to do with unhealthy incentives - the company makes its money on "engagement", and it turns out polarizing/divisive/violent/outrageous content generates a lot more of it than friends/family/cat pictures, so effectively moderating toxic content is actually against their bottom line and is only needed in extreme cases where the toxic content's negative PR impact outweighs what it will bring in "engagement".
    - wpietri 4y ago
      This is incorrect: > Contributing to a genocide has nothing to do with staffing levels Unless we just want to outlaw online forums, any provider is going to need to track and moderate harmful content. Note that even something as small as HN has a full-time moderator. That's just part of the business model these days. You're correct that moderation can run counter to short-term revenue gains. But it's much less clear that's true in the long term; as Facebook's reputation has worsened, its growth has slowed and its revenue has declined. Or on the other end of the scale, look at how the less restricted sites are doing. E.g., the 'chans are never going to move beyond a very small niche, and despite Twitter's troubles, nobody's expecting Gab to take the lead.
dmitriid 4y ago
Personal anecdotes from any big company :) There's a second layer to the tragedy. Also applicable to any big company: - many teams are overstaffed for what they do/produce - many teams are understaffed for what they do/produce And this is also true at the same time.
- wpietri 4y ago
  Yeah, this is closer to the mark for me. It's been some years since I worked at Twitter, but if I had been suddenly made CEO, I wouldn't have gone on a mass firing spree. I would have tried to figure out how to more effectively use the people that Twitter had. As with many big companies, I suspect the problem is much more bad management than bad workers.

smcl 4y ago

This is roughly my feeling, but I'm a little less sure of the absolutely/undoubtedly part. Someone below is asking for evidence but I don't think any one of us could produce evidence for or against this. It all boils down to either "Twitter had ~7500 employees and..." 1. ... that feels like a huge amount for a company that has basically a single product 2. ... that feels entirely appropriate for a company operating at their scale What we've observed is that they've kinda managed to keep going despite Elon axing an enormous number of employees, but they've also had a few high-profile outages like this one today, the 2FA issue and 16hr Aus outage. I don't know if these are enough for either side to declare that they're correct. One thing I would like to say - even though I had a feeling Twitter was probably overstaffed, I was in no way celebrating the redundancies. Similarly even though I'm not a fan of Elon Musk, I'm not delighting in all these little goofs he's doing and how it's impacting him personally - every little embarrassment he suffers and every dip in Tesla stock makes it more likely he'll just call it quits or fuck up Twitter more. For all its faults, I quite like Twitter and I don't want it to just disappear.