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This certainly appears to have been the case at Twitter. Many employees, if appearances are to be believed, seemed to socialize and eat (free) for a living whil

This certainly appears to have been the case at Twitter. Many employees, if appearances are to be believed, seemed to socialize and eat (free) for a living while proudly declaring themselves and their organization to be 'not really capitalist, more like socialist,' or whatever that one hidden camera quote was. The well-meaning technocracy cannot sustain indefinitely, it seems, which is a relief.

candiodari 2y ago
How much revenue has twitter lost since the layoffs? At least a 22% decrease. Which is enough to mean shareholders would have gotten more money if all the useless employees had continued executing their "useless" function. And this is assuming 2024 is going well for twitter. I doubt it.
- recursive 2y ago
  Those employees weren't free. You have to subtract those costs to employ from the 22% to get a more realistic shareholder impact.
  - adamrezich 2y ago
    Without doing the math, 80% staff reduction (~6500 employees) for 22% revenue decrease sounds pretty darn good to me.
    - bilekas 2y ago
      Am I wrong in saying if it was an generous estimate of 1 million per employee there is 6.5 billion, and that's insane generous. 20% being around 9billion... Back of napkin math would disagree..
      - somenameforme 2y ago
        Your dramatically overestimating Twitter's revenue. In 2021 it was about $5 billion in total. [1] Probably more like $100k per employee so around $650 million in labor cost reductions, and then around $1 billion loss in revenue. They are expected to become profitable sometime this year, so these numbers are probably roughly in the right ballpark. [1] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/274568/quarterly-revenue-of-twitter/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/274568/quarterly-revenue...
        candiodari 2y ago
        That would still have every employee bring in ~double their pay.
        bilekas 2y ago
        Ahh I was working off twitter's Value as opposed to earnings. But to turn profitable sounds optimistic..
  - bilekas 2y ago
    They're not free but there's not a chance it is a dent in the assumed losses here in advertising alone.
- MisterDizzy 2y ago
  Yes, financial activism can have quite the wide ripple if you piss off the wrong big city liberals by taking away their ability to remove entire stories from the internet in direct cooperation with un-elected portions of the government. Edit: We tech types are so predictable it's almost trite. Sorry I don't agree with your well-meaning technocracy and disingenuous moralistic posturing.
- throwawayq3423 2y ago
  Not to mention the value. Went from 55 to what 15 billion? Maybe 10? I don't think the cost cutting of a few hundred people making 6 figures makes that worth it.
bigyabai 2y ago
I doubt X's employees are that much more productive anyways. Before Musk the feature rollout was slower than molasses, and post-Musk all we get are reactionary changes that make the website suck more for non-users. It would not surprise me to hear that now 1/3rd or 1/4th of Musk's retainers are coasting by on their 9-5.
- jerlam 2y ago
  I don't know if it's that great. They're tasked with adding features that no one actually wants and when rolled out, no one will use: like phone calls, and eventually payments. And then there will be features that aren't particularly well-thought out, like Grok, which mostly seem to garner bad news headlines. There's the constant threat of being laid off for no reason.
throwawayq3423 2y ago
[flagged]
ilamont 2y ago
I heard or read a tasteless old joke (maybe on Gawker as I can't find it now) about a VC complaining you could lob a grenade into Twitter's SF offices after 5 pm on a weekday and no one would be hurt or even notice.
- rsynnott 2y ago
  What, people working 9-5?! How dare they! Clearly they should be working 80 hours a week for the greater glory of, er, improving the retweet functionality or whatever. (There is, in any case, little evidence that people who work extremely long hours in white-collar jobs are, on average, particularly productive. It just doesn't work that well for most people.)
rdtsc 2y ago
> This certainly appears to have been the case at Twitter. Many employees, if appearances are to be believed, seemed to socialize and eat (free) for a living while proudly declaring themselves and their organization to be 'not really capitalist, more like socialist,' or whatever that one hidden camera quote was. That was an interesting case. Given that Musk took over and it laid off all those engineers, I'd really want to disagree with you, but I remember all the claims of "just watch it implode", "yeah it will run for a month and then everything will melt down and they'll learn their lesson". But it's been a while and the service still seems to be up and I see people still posting links to it and so on. So I guess, I'd have to agree with you about Twitter.

candiodari 2y ago

How much revenue has twitter lost since the layoffs? At least a 22% decrease. Which is enough to mean shareholders would have gotten more money if all the useless employees had continued executing their "useless" function. And this is assuming 2024 is going well for twitter. I doubt it.

recursive 2y ago
Those employees weren't free. You have to subtract those costs to employ from the 22% to get a more realistic shareholder impact.
- adamrezich 2y ago
  Without doing the math, 80% staff reduction (~6500 employees) for 22% revenue decrease sounds pretty darn good to me.
  - bilekas 2y ago
    Am I wrong in saying if it was an generous estimate of 1 million per employee there is 6.5 billion, and that's insane generous. 20% being around 9billion... Back of napkin math would disagree..
    - somenameforme 2y ago
      Your dramatically overestimating Twitter's revenue. In 2021 it was about $5 billion in total. [1] Probably more like $100k per employee so around $650 million in labor cost reductions, and then around $1 billion loss in revenue. They are expected to become profitable sometime this year, so these numbers are probably roughly in the right ballpark. [1] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/274568/quarterly-revenue-of-twitter/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/274568/quarterly-revenue...
      - candiodari 2y ago
        That would still have every employee bring in ~double their pay.
      - bilekas 2y ago
        Ahh I was working off twitter's Value as opposed to earnings. But to turn profitable sounds optimistic..
- bilekas 2y ago
  They're not free but there's not a chance it is a dent in the assumed losses here in advertising alone.
MisterDizzy 2y ago
Yes, financial activism can have quite the wide ripple if you piss off the wrong big city liberals by taking away their ability to remove entire stories from the internet in direct cooperation with un-elected portions of the government. Edit: We tech types are so predictable it's almost trite. Sorry I don't agree with your well-meaning technocracy and disingenuous moralistic posturing.
throwawayq3423 2y ago
Not to mention the value. Went from 55 to what 15 billion? Maybe 10? I don't think the cost cutting of a few hundred people making 6 figures makes that worth it.

bigyabai 2y ago

I doubt X's employees are that much more productive anyways. Before Musk the feature rollout was slower than molasses, and post-Musk all we get are reactionary changes that make the website suck more for non-users. It would not surprise me to hear that now 1/3rd or 1/4th of Musk's retainers are coasting by on their 9-5.

jerlam 2y ago
I don't know if it's that great. They're tasked with adding features that no one actually wants and when rolled out, no one will use: like phone calls, and eventually payments. And then there will be features that aren't particularly well-thought out, like Grok, which mostly seem to garner bad news headlines. There's the constant threat of being laid off for no reason.

throwawayq3423 2y ago

[flagged]

ilamont 2y ago

I heard or read a tasteless old joke (maybe on Gawker as I can't find it now) about a VC complaining you could lob a grenade into Twitter's SF offices after 5 pm on a weekday and no one would be hurt or even notice.

rsynnott 2y ago
What, people working 9-5?! How dare they! Clearly they should be working 80 hours a week for the greater glory of, er, improving the retweet functionality or whatever. (There is, in any case, little evidence that people who work extremely long hours in white-collar jobs are, on average, particularly productive. It just doesn't work that well for most people.)

rdtsc 2y ago

> This certainly appears to have been the case at Twitter. Many employees, if appearances are to be believed, seemed to socialize and eat (free) for a living while proudly declaring themselves and their organization to be 'not really capitalist, more like socialist,' or whatever that one hidden camera quote was. That was an interesting case. Given that Musk took over and it laid off all those engineers, I'd really want to disagree with you, but I remember all the claims of "just watch it implode", "yeah it will run for a month and then everything will melt down and they'll learn their lesson". But it's been a while and the service still seems to be up and I see people still posting links to it and so on. So I guess, I'd have to agree with you about Twitter.