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Elon showed with Twitter how you don't need hordes of engineers to run a company. He laid off 90% of the staff and still the website is doing alright (at least

by frontman1988 3y ago

Elon showed with Twitter how you don't need hordes of engineers to run a company. He laid off 90% of the staff and still the website is doing alright (at least engineering wise). More engineers lead to more useless bullshit being created(like at Google). A lean mean team seems the way to go.

kypro 3y ago
You're getting downvoted for this, but factually what you're saying is correct. He did lay of 90% of the staff and although people have claimed Twitter will die any minute, it hasn't. Whether or not a lean team is the way to go perhaps remains to be seen, but what I'd say is that my anecdotal opinion on this is that the majority of engineers are a liability and assuming that 10x more engineers means 10x more work done is incorrect. Most engineers can build stuff, but they also add complexity and require hand holding. Both suck time from the most productive engineers. A team of 10 excellent engineers is easily better than a team of 100 good engineers, in my opinion.
- itsoktocry 3y ago
  >He did lay of 90% of the staff and although people have claimed Twitter will die any minute, it hasn't. It lost 3/4 of its value, partially because it's losing advertisers, partially because they fired everyone outside of engineering. I'm an avid Twitter user to this day; do you think it's thriving, just because the website is still up? It has more spam, bots and porn than ever.
  - abledon 3y ago
    increasing growth most places in world https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1743028102446408026 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1743028102446408026 heres a total feature map of what was released in 2023: https://twitter.com/enriquebrgn/status/1740950767325024387 https://twitter.com/enriquebrgn/status/1740950767325024387 I think thats definitely a signal that the B and C teams werent needed, considering they cut 90% of staff LOL. As for the bots, AI is making it easier than ever to bypass those systems. CogVLM is just sitting there menacingly on github https://github.com/THUDM/CogVLM https://github.com/THUDM/CogVLM
thinkingtoilet 3y ago
Twitter is facing mounting debt, large quarterly loses, and lost tens of billions of dollars in valuation. I wouldn't use that as a success story. From the WSJ, so no complaining about liberal bias. https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-elon-musks-twitter-faces-mountain-of-debt-falling-revenue-and-surging-costs-11669042132 https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-elon-musks-twitter-faces-mo...
- linuxftw 3y ago
  All of that is true, but it was true before Elon took over, now they just have fewer employees to pay, so if they can turn the advertising back around, they'll be in a better cashflow situation.
  - acdha 3y ago
    You’re leaving out the massive amount of debt he added to the company as part of the buyout. That means they need to do something like triple their most profitable quarter just to be where they were before the buyout.
    - Jensson 3y ago
      But that has nothing to do with the layoffs.
      - acdha 3y ago
        Nobody said it did? I was responding to a claim that they could end up in a better financial situation because they have fewer staff, which would be an easier argument if there weren’t so many extra billions in debt on the balance sheet now.
  - manuelabeledo 3y ago
    > ... now they just have fewer employees to pay, so if they can turn the advertising back around, they'll be in a better cashflow situation They cut ~$1B in operating expenses, to go from $4.73B to $3.31B in advertising revenue, and forecasts don't look much better [0] What has Twitter left to offer? They don't have the manpower to add new functionality, and they are bleeding advertising money. [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/271337/twitters-advertising-revenue-worldwide https://www.statista.com/statistics/271337/twitters-advertis...
manuelabeledo 3y ago
> He laid off 90% of the staff and still the website is doing alright (at least engineering wise). This is debatable. Twitter hasn't added any meaningful functionality in recent years, which is fine if you think your product can survive stagnation for the foreseeable future. I wouldn't think so, but who knows. Also, random Twitter functionality seems to be broken once a month, more or less. Last time I checked, new signups were having trouble following accounts and posting, which is as essential as it could be for Twitter to work.
- syspec 3y ago
  I think to most people, twitter is fine and was fine with only its core product.
  - digital_sawzall 3y ago
    The core products of social media platforms are the advertising systems! After telling the advertisers to go 'F themselves', those paying customers are leaving in droves plus the ad ecosystem is one of the worst in the industry. The only alternative is to get enough paying users. Good luck.
  - manuelabeledo 3y ago
    "Most people" are the users. Users (mostly) aren't paying for the platform, advertisers are.
lesuorac 3y ago
> still the website is doing alright (at least engineering wise) It's not though. I assume you're trying to claim Twitters only problem is the Advertisers leaving and that the platform is fine but that's not the case. Lets ignore all visible technical problems such as outages or broken features that have happened since the purchase. You have to compare Twitter to FaceBook. Both of them have had similar outrage by Advertisers for the respective companies actions. However, Advertisers keep coming back to FaceBook because of the engineering. FaceBook has much better targeting and also staff that interacts with the Advertisers. Twitter has absolutely horrendous targeting; Jews don't want their 'buy a Torah' ad next to a pro-gaza post not just because they disagree with the post but also because that somebody isn't their target audience. This is an engineering problem; if Twitter had better engineering the Advertisers wouldn't be leaving.
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  Twitter targeting wasnt any better with 10x as many employees. Its ad system has always largely sucked, Elon was just the push advertisers needed to get out.
ralphc 3y ago
The smaller staff may be ok for maintaining an existing Twitter, with feature tweaks, but could you build a Twitter up from scratch with the amount of people they have now?

kypro 3y ago

You're getting downvoted for this, but factually what you're saying is correct. He did lay of 90% of the staff and although people have claimed Twitter will die any minute, it hasn't. Whether or not a lean team is the way to go perhaps remains to be seen, but what I'd say is that my anecdotal opinion on this is that the majority of engineers are a liability and assuming that 10x more engineers means 10x more work done is incorrect. Most engineers can build stuff, but they also add complexity and require hand holding. Both suck time from the most productive engineers. A team of 10 excellent engineers is easily better than a team of 100 good engineers, in my opinion.

itsoktocry 3y ago
>He did lay of 90% of the staff and although people have claimed Twitter will die any minute, it hasn't. It lost 3/4 of its value, partially because it's losing advertisers, partially because they fired everyone outside of engineering. I'm an avid Twitter user to this day; do you think it's thriving, just because the website is still up? It has more spam, bots and porn than ever.
- abledon 3y ago
  increasing growth most places in world https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1743028102446408026 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1743028102446408026 heres a total feature map of what was released in 2023: https://twitter.com/enriquebrgn/status/1740950767325024387 https://twitter.com/enriquebrgn/status/1740950767325024387 I think thats definitely a signal that the B and C teams werent needed, considering they cut 90% of staff LOL. As for the bots, AI is making it easier than ever to bypass those systems. CogVLM is just sitting there menacingly on github https://github.com/THUDM/CogVLM https://github.com/THUDM/CogVLM

thinkingtoilet 3y ago

Twitter is facing mounting debt, large quarterly loses, and lost tens of billions of dollars in valuation. I wouldn't use that as a success story. From the WSJ, so no complaining about liberal bias. https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-elon-musks-twitter-faces-mountain-of-debt-falling-revenue-and-surging-costs-11669042132 https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-elon-musks-twitter-faces-mo...

linuxftw 3y ago
All of that is true, but it was true before Elon took over, now they just have fewer employees to pay, so if they can turn the advertising back around, they'll be in a better cashflow situation.
- acdha 3y ago
  You’re leaving out the massive amount of debt he added to the company as part of the buyout. That means they need to do something like triple their most profitable quarter just to be where they were before the buyout.
  - Jensson 3y ago
    But that has nothing to do with the layoffs.
    - acdha 3y ago
      Nobody said it did? I was responding to a claim that they could end up in a better financial situation because they have fewer staff, which would be an easier argument if there weren’t so many extra billions in debt on the balance sheet now.
- manuelabeledo 3y ago
  > ... now they just have fewer employees to pay, so if they can turn the advertising back around, they'll be in a better cashflow situation They cut ~$1B in operating expenses, to go from $4.73B to $3.31B in advertising revenue, and forecasts don't look much better [0] What has Twitter left to offer? They don't have the manpower to add new functionality, and they are bleeding advertising money. [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/271337/twitters-advertising-revenue-worldwide https://www.statista.com/statistics/271337/twitters-advertis...

manuelabeledo 3y ago

> He laid off 90% of the staff and still the website is doing alright (at least engineering wise). This is debatable. Twitter hasn't added any meaningful functionality in recent years, which is fine if you think your product can survive stagnation for the foreseeable future. I wouldn't think so, but who knows. Also, random Twitter functionality seems to be broken once a month, more or less. Last time I checked, new signups were having trouble following accounts and posting, which is as essential as it could be for Twitter to work.

syspec 3y ago
I think to most people, twitter is fine and was fine with only its core product.
- digital_sawzall 3y ago
  The core products of social media platforms are the advertising systems! After telling the advertisers to go 'F themselves', those paying customers are leaving in droves plus the ad ecosystem is one of the worst in the industry. The only alternative is to get enough paying users. Good luck.
- manuelabeledo 3y ago
  "Most people" are the users. Users (mostly) aren't paying for the platform, advertisers are.

lesuorac 3y ago

> still the website is doing alright (at least engineering wise) It's not though. I assume you're trying to claim Twitters only problem is the Advertisers leaving and that the platform is fine but that's not the case. Lets ignore all visible technical problems such as outages or broken features that have happened since the purchase. You have to compare Twitter to FaceBook. Both of them have had similar outrage by Advertisers for the respective companies actions. However, Advertisers keep coming back to FaceBook because of the engineering. FaceBook has much better targeting and also staff that interacts with the Advertisers. Twitter has absolutely horrendous targeting; Jews don't want their 'buy a Torah' ad next to a pro-gaza post not just because they disagree with the post but also because that somebody isn't their target audience. This is an engineering problem; if Twitter had better engineering the Advertisers wouldn't be leaving.

HDThoreaun 3y ago
Twitter targeting wasnt any better with 10x as many employees. Its ad system has always largely sucked, Elon was just the push advertisers needed to get out.

ralphc 3y ago

The smaller staff may be ok for maintaining an existing Twitter, with feature tweaks, but could you build a Twitter up from scratch with the amount of people they have now?