6 ms·

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/02/07/tech/twitter-earnings-q4/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2019/02/07/tech/twitter-earnings-q4/... Thing is, Twitter was pr

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/02/07/tech/twitter-earnings-q4/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2019/02/07/tech/twitter-earnings-q4/... Thing is, Twitter was profitable in 2019. Then the venture capitalists decided "Now is the time to increase your workforce by a factor of two. You need to start losing money again or you aren't trying hard enough!"

chimeracoder 3y ago
You're getting downvoted, but you're correct. Twitter was profitable in 2018 and 2019. It then took a bath in 2020 (like almost all advertising-based businesses), and then was projected to recover to profitability in 2022 before Musk announced the takeover, which threw everything into a tailspin.
- throwaway2990 3y ago
  It wasn’t projected to recover. It was struggling. They had wayyy too many people working there.
HWR_14 3y ago
At the beginning of COVID there was a sense that WFH might be a permanent change and that companies might need to start competing on a lot of social distancing features. Look at Clubhouse exploding then, etc. Doubling the size of your workforce (and knowing you can shrink it if you are wrong) is a pretty reasonable bet. It has a known cost (measured in the hundreds of millions to few billions) if you try it and it is unnecessary (which it turned out to be), but a possible "death of the company" result if all the talent is gone just as you need XYZ to be competitive in a new landscape.
- re-thc 3y ago
  > and knowing you can shrink it if you are wrong You can’t just shrink it. That’s the problem. They still think of it as a factory where everyone is just a robot. Most places lack enough documentation and processes that shrinking the teams reduce knowledge. There is never an even distribution of skill sets etc. You kill off team dynamics. It’s not the same. You can’t just slot people in and out without impact in software.
  - moneywoes 3y ago
    To play devils advocate does Twitter not seem fine now?
    - re-thc 3y ago
      > To play devils advocate does Twitter not seem fine now? Fine in what sense? There's less features, less capacity and more outages. They couldn't even hold someone's presidential announcement fine without it breaking. Is that fine? As a business they've gained debt and lost a lot of income. Is that fine? With less income, less ads and less of everything it's a different scale. Something that's fine with 1 million users is not the same as 10 million. I would say it's different - different ownership, different direction etc. Time will tell what the outcome is. Projects have been axed and new 1s will appear. The changing of staff has definitely hurt Twitter. Whether they can recover is a different question.
      - froggit 3y ago
        So... fine as long as you don't compare it to its past self?
    - HWR_14 3y ago
      It does not. They have more frequent and longer outages now. Heck, when Musk tried to do a town hall for DeSantis to announce his run, the livestream was buggy specifically because no one had returned one of their vendors phone calls. That's a stupid reason for a major fuckup.
      - thulle 3y ago
        Do you have any source for the part about the vendor? Searching for a bit just gave me a ton of articles about the failed announcement in general.
        brokenmachine 3y ago
        I read somewhere that it was because they didn't pay a bill to Redis. Maybe throw that in as a search term.
rattray 3y ago
Nit, by then it would have been public market investors, not VCs, for the most part.
scarface_74 3y ago
Twitter was a public company in 2019. VCs has nothing to do with it.

chimeracoder 3y ago

You're getting downvoted, but you're correct. Twitter was profitable in 2018 and 2019. It then took a bath in 2020 (like almost all advertising-based businesses), and then was projected to recover to profitability in 2022 before Musk announced the takeover, which threw everything into a tailspin.

throwaway2990 3y ago
It wasn’t projected to recover. It was struggling. They had wayyy too many people working there.

HWR_14 3y ago

At the beginning of COVID there was a sense that WFH might be a permanent change and that companies might need to start competing on a lot of social distancing features. Look at Clubhouse exploding then, etc. Doubling the size of your workforce (and knowing you can shrink it if you are wrong) is a pretty reasonable bet. It has a known cost (measured in the hundreds of millions to few billions) if you try it and it is unnecessary (which it turned out to be), but a possible "death of the company" result if all the talent is gone just as you need XYZ to be competitive in a new landscape.

re-thc 3y ago
> and knowing you can shrink it if you are wrong You can’t just shrink it. That’s the problem. They still think of it as a factory where everyone is just a robot. Most places lack enough documentation and processes that shrinking the teams reduce knowledge. There is never an even distribution of skill sets etc. You kill off team dynamics. It’s not the same. You can’t just slot people in and out without impact in software.
- moneywoes 3y ago
  To play devils advocate does Twitter not seem fine now?
  - re-thc 3y ago
    > To play devils advocate does Twitter not seem fine now? Fine in what sense? There's less features, less capacity and more outages. They couldn't even hold someone's presidential announcement fine without it breaking. Is that fine? As a business they've gained debt and lost a lot of income. Is that fine? With less income, less ads and less of everything it's a different scale. Something that's fine with 1 million users is not the same as 10 million. I would say it's different - different ownership, different direction etc. Time will tell what the outcome is. Projects have been axed and new 1s will appear. The changing of staff has definitely hurt Twitter. Whether they can recover is a different question.
    - froggit 3y ago
      So... fine as long as you don't compare it to its past self?
  - HWR_14 3y ago
    It does not. They have more frequent and longer outages now. Heck, when Musk tried to do a town hall for DeSantis to announce his run, the livestream was buggy specifically because no one had returned one of their vendors phone calls. That's a stupid reason for a major fuckup.
    - thulle 3y ago
      Do you have any source for the part about the vendor? Searching for a bit just gave me a ton of articles about the failed announcement in general.
      - brokenmachine 3y ago
        I read somewhere that it was because they didn't pay a bill to Redis. Maybe throw that in as a search term.

rattray 3y ago

Nit, by then it would have been public market investors, not VCs, for the most part.

scarface_74 3y ago

Twitter was a public company in 2019. VCs has nothing to do with it.