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Yes they do. The trick is not throwing out the baby with the bath water. Elon Musk got a lot of criticism for how he handled layoffs at Twitter. But he did prov

Yes they do. The trick is not throwing out the baby with the bath water. Elon Musk got a lot of criticism for how he handled layoffs at Twitter. But he did provide clarity and then ripped off the band aid. Notice how things have gone quiet around Twitter lately. IMHO, it wasn't nice but what remains is probably a healthier organization and a fairly stable team. A lot of people left in the process and that was always going to need to happen. But what remains seems to keep things going and they can now think about a future and work on that. He could have done it in a more respectful way. But doing it quickly was actually not a bad thing. Facebook is dragging it out and people are unhappy. Having seen this from the inside, when companies are going through a lengthy process of repeated layoffs, people get nervous and lose trust in management being on top of things (because they obviously aren't). At some point people just start leaving by themselves instead of awaiting the next round. Or worse, they mentally check out and patiently wait for the compensation that comes with their layoff. Either way, they stop being productive team members. This creates a toxic situation that is hard to recover from. IMHO Facebook should be more decisive and rip off the band aid a bit faster. They have a staffing problem. Too many people that were added that aren't delivering whatever Facebook had in mind. They are spending billions on things that aren't working very well. And throwing more money at the problem has stopped working. It's just costing them more money to do the same things they were doing.

saagarjha 4y ago
> Notice how things have gone quiet around Twitter lately. This was today: https://twitter.com/iamharaldur/status/1632843191773716481 https://twitter.com/iamharaldur/status/1632843191773716481
- arda_demirtas 4y ago
  I hate the attitude, the language and the fact that these people are running this world. "Approved, you go ahead" Just drains my energy and hope for the future.
  - throwawaylinux 4y ago
    I think Musk is a breath of fresh air from the sterile, managed, corporate-speak drones. He already proved a lot of... "experts" wrong about the imminent implosion of twitter after he got rid of a bunch of people. I'm very interested to see how things go in the next few years. Here's his side of the story on that. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1633011448459964417 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1633011448459964417 I have worked in companies with a lot of dead wood in relatively senior roles. They may have done good work in the past, but they seem to stop doing much actual productive work and instead just kind of insert themselves into important projects and meetings and set about trying to make themselves sound indispensable. Yet they produce very little tangible output and their work can't be explained without vagueness and buzzwords. Leading efforts and driving changes and steering modernization and managing the paradigms, bringing stakeholders together, architecting solutions. They're hard to get rid of for whatever reason. They've built little fifedoms, they have a reputation, they're very good at hobnobbing with middle management, or other dead wood. Some orgs absolutely could benefit from a fresh pair of eyes to come in and have people justify their positions, and have the confidence and risk appetite to make some calls. Now I don't know if Musk is telling the truth here, or anything about that ex-employee, his work or background. He might be a great worker who was well worth his salary in value created for Twitter. He could also be one of the other kinds, that failing orgs desperately need to rid themselves of. His twitter pitch is not highly confidence inspiring. Twitter allegedly shed about 80% of its staff since Musk took over. Which is frankly staggering that it is still able to operate with 4 in 5 people in the company gone. Maybe that is cutting too far down to the bone but there has been no immediate implosion or collapse. Things still have a long way to play out, but clearly he did not throw darts at a board and fire random people or all the most productive ones if it could get that far.
    - boycott-israel 4y ago
      Are you somehow unaware of the regular reliability issues (6 incidents in 2023 alone), downtime, collapse in revenue, advertisers erosion of trust, etc? Personally, I couldn't classify that as 'operational' - but maybe I just have high standards and expectations
- pram 4y ago
  The cruelty is the point.
- gymbeaux 4y ago
  Watching a grown man beg Elon musk for his job on a social media platform is not something I expected to ever see. It's been two weeks- if his paycheck didn't come through, he has his answer. Obviously a s-show led by Elon, but on LinkedIn especially I am seeing a lot of posts where these ex-FAANG employees, who usually score severance measured in months rather than days or weeks, and who were already raking in a $250k+ salary anyway (if you count bonus/RSUs), are so desperate to find another job "ASAP" as to make a post on LinkedIn to... try to get other people to find a job for them? The entitlement is rampant and I see no real difference between this Twitter conversation (if you can call it that) and the posts I frequently see on LinkedIn.
  - orvitinn 4y ago
    > Watching a grown man beg Elon musk for his job But that is not what is happening here at all.
    - gymbeaux 4y ago
      Sure it is. He was asking Elon whether he still had a job, after being locked out of his account and not being paid for 2+ weeks, then he tweeted a litany of contributions he was making to the company to sell himself to Elon, whether that was his intent or not. I'm not defending Elon, the whole thing has been a dumpster fire.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - ROTMetro 4y ago
    I'm out of date but in the past if your company was acquired and you were retained, you had to stay X years at the new company in order for the acquisition to be considered complete and you to get your complete payout. Dude probably wanted to know am I actually fired, because, then you need to, you know, pay me for my company? Elon tried to ghost dude, but old boy's got receipts is my guess. Elon just spent $$$ to save ¢¢¢. But maybe acquisitions/retained founders is different today. Elon rules though fake 'Twitter transparency' that lacks all nuance and detail but does have 200% more memes so who knows.
- Laaas 4y ago
  Seems expected that he was fired. Elon is firing anyone who doesn't write code. He doesn't seem to be writing code, just a manager.
  - vanilla_nut 4y ago
    When does Elon realize he doesn't write code himself and fire himself?
- Laaas 4y ago
  https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1633253950198624257 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1633253950198624257 And he apologises for firing him after humiliating him in public!
  - saagarjha 4y ago
    Probably realized there’s a multimillion severance contract in place.
CPLX 4y ago
By all accounts Twitter has lost something like half its revenue and yesterday had regressed technically to the point where they couldn’t serve a hyperlink. So there’s that.
shjake 4y ago
Twitter already had a much lower workforce than FB or Google, etc. After a the cuts it’s even smaller so I guess there is just way lessons people who can or are interested in talking about it.
suresk 4y ago
Huh? Twitter has had almost monthly rounds of layoffs, including one a few weeks ago that took out some fairly high profile employees. They also have arbitrary firings and people being let go without being told [1]. I'm certainly not going to argue that Meta is going about this in a good way at all, but it is hard to think of a worse example of doing it "well" than Twitter under Elon. 1. https://twitter.com/iamharaldur/status/1632843191773716481 https://twitter.com/iamharaldur/status/1632843191773716481
- neilv 4y ago
  Twitter kinda looks like a billionaire decided to pay a ridiculous amount of money for a company, just so he could destroy the livelihoods of thousands of people less fortunate.
  - pydry 4y ago
    Or an attempt to illustrate what happens when $40 billion and a narcissistic personality disorder meets Chesterton's fence.
    - meghan_rain 4y ago
      Very good take imho
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    He also helped the livelihoods of a lot of Twitter stockholders, including people’s retirement savings.
- x0x0 4y ago
  Someone counted 3 or 4 -- I forget -- separate rounds of layoffs after Musk said Twitter was done with layoffs. That's many things, but "providing [sic] clarity" it ain't. edit: > Musk has done at least three rounds of layoffs since his promise to stop doing them in November. [1] [1] https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/21/23609522/elon-musk-more-twitter-layoffs-sales-engineering-ads-google-revamp https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/21/23609522/elon-musk-more-t...

saagarjha 4y ago

> Notice how things have gone quiet around Twitter lately. This was today: https://twitter.com/iamharaldur/status/1632843191773716481 https://twitter.com/iamharaldur/status/1632843191773716481

arda_demirtas 4y ago
I hate the attitude, the language and the fact that these people are running this world. "Approved, you go ahead" Just drains my energy and hope for the future.
- throwawaylinux 4y ago
  I think Musk is a breath of fresh air from the sterile, managed, corporate-speak drones. He already proved a lot of... "experts" wrong about the imminent implosion of twitter after he got rid of a bunch of people. I'm very interested to see how things go in the next few years. Here's his side of the story on that. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1633011448459964417 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1633011448459964417 I have worked in companies with a lot of dead wood in relatively senior roles. They may have done good work in the past, but they seem to stop doing much actual productive work and instead just kind of insert themselves into important projects and meetings and set about trying to make themselves sound indispensable. Yet they produce very little tangible output and their work can't be explained without vagueness and buzzwords. Leading efforts and driving changes and steering modernization and managing the paradigms, bringing stakeholders together, architecting solutions. They're hard to get rid of for whatever reason. They've built little fifedoms, they have a reputation, they're very good at hobnobbing with middle management, or other dead wood. Some orgs absolutely could benefit from a fresh pair of eyes to come in and have people justify their positions, and have the confidence and risk appetite to make some calls. Now I don't know if Musk is telling the truth here, or anything about that ex-employee, his work or background. He might be a great worker who was well worth his salary in value created for Twitter. He could also be one of the other kinds, that failing orgs desperately need to rid themselves of. His twitter pitch is not highly confidence inspiring. Twitter allegedly shed about 80% of its staff since Musk took over. Which is frankly staggering that it is still able to operate with 4 in 5 people in the company gone. Maybe that is cutting too far down to the bone but there has been no immediate implosion or collapse. Things still have a long way to play out, but clearly he did not throw darts at a board and fire random people or all the most productive ones if it could get that far.
  - boycott-israel 4y ago
    Are you somehow unaware of the regular reliability issues (6 incidents in 2023 alone), downtime, collapse in revenue, advertisers erosion of trust, etc? Personally, I couldn't classify that as 'operational' - but maybe I just have high standards and expectations
pram 4y ago
The cruelty is the point.
gymbeaux 4y ago
Watching a grown man beg Elon musk for his job on a social media platform is not something I expected to ever see. It's been two weeks- if his paycheck didn't come through, he has his answer. Obviously a s-show led by Elon, but on LinkedIn especially I am seeing a lot of posts where these ex-FAANG employees, who usually score severance measured in months rather than days or weeks, and who were already raking in a $250k+ salary anyway (if you count bonus/RSUs), are so desperate to find another job "ASAP" as to make a post on LinkedIn to... try to get other people to find a job for them? The entitlement is rampant and I see no real difference between this Twitter conversation (if you can call it that) and the posts I frequently see on LinkedIn.
- orvitinn 4y ago
  > Watching a grown man beg Elon musk for his job But that is not what is happening here at all.
  - gymbeaux 4y ago
    Sure it is. He was asking Elon whether he still had a job, after being locked out of his account and not being paid for 2+ weeks, then he tweeted a litany of contributions he was making to the company to sell himself to Elon, whether that was his intent or not. I'm not defending Elon, the whole thing has been a dumpster fire.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- ROTMetro 4y ago
  I'm out of date but in the past if your company was acquired and you were retained, you had to stay X years at the new company in order for the acquisition to be considered complete and you to get your complete payout. Dude probably wanted to know am I actually fired, because, then you need to, you know, pay me for my company? Elon tried to ghost dude, but old boy's got receipts is my guess. Elon just spent $$$ to save ¢¢¢. But maybe acquisitions/retained founders is different today. Elon rules though fake 'Twitter transparency' that lacks all nuance and detail but does have 200% more memes so who knows.
Laaas 4y ago
Seems expected that he was fired. Elon is firing anyone who doesn't write code. He doesn't seem to be writing code, just a manager.
- vanilla_nut 4y ago
  When does Elon realize he doesn't write code himself and fire himself?
Laaas 4y ago
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1633253950198624257 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1633253950198624257 And he apologises for firing him after humiliating him in public!
- saagarjha 4y ago
  Probably realized there’s a multimillion severance contract in place.

CPLX 4y ago

By all accounts Twitter has lost something like half its revenue and yesterday had regressed technically to the point where they couldn’t serve a hyperlink. So there’s that.

shjake 4y ago

Twitter already had a much lower workforce than FB or Google, etc. After a the cuts it’s even smaller so I guess there is just way lessons people who can or are interested in talking about it.

suresk 4y ago

Huh? Twitter has had almost monthly rounds of layoffs, including one a few weeks ago that took out some fairly high profile employees. They also have arbitrary firings and people being let go without being told [1]. I'm certainly not going to argue that Meta is going about this in a good way at all, but it is hard to think of a worse example of doing it "well" than Twitter under Elon. 1. https://twitter.com/iamharaldur/status/1632843191773716481 https://twitter.com/iamharaldur/status/1632843191773716481

neilv 4y ago
Twitter kinda looks like a billionaire decided to pay a ridiculous amount of money for a company, just so he could destroy the livelihoods of thousands of people less fortunate.
- pydry 4y ago
  Or an attempt to illustrate what happens when $40 billion and a narcissistic personality disorder meets Chesterton's fence.
  - meghan_rain 4y ago
    Very good take imho
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  He also helped the livelihoods of a lot of Twitter stockholders, including people’s retirement savings.
x0x0 4y ago
Someone counted 3 or 4 -- I forget -- separate rounds of layoffs after Musk said Twitter was done with layoffs. That's many things, but "providing [sic] clarity" it ain't. edit: > Musk has done at least three rounds of layoffs since his promise to stop doing them in November. [1] [1] https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/21/23609522/elon-musk-more-twitter-layoffs-sales-engineering-ads-google-revamp https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/21/23609522/elon-musk-more-t...