11 ms·

They've already cut about 80% of their workforce since Elon took over, I'm not sure how much more attrition they can take. Sure the site still mostly works in t

They've already cut about 80% of their workforce since Elon took over, I'm not sure how much more attrition they can take. Sure the site still mostly works in the technical sense, but the way it works now has led to a significant decline in revenue and active users.

LightBug1 2y ago
[flagged]
- optymizer 2y ago
  > Who cares? > They should know better and the best have already left or been culled. We should care, even if it's just a little. Some of them may not be able to leave for various reasons: health, family, immigration status, who knows. Maybe if more of us showed a bit more empathy towards each other online, the Internet wouldn't be such a sociopathic cesspool. These are real people you're talking about, not inanimate objects.
  - LightBug1 2y ago
    Of course, I agree with you at the individual level. However, at the macro level, I'm more than happy to see jobs destroyed at insert sh1tty company for the good of both individuals, and the good of the nation/world. Short term pain, long term gain. And don't tell me the workers X/twitter can't get re-hired or land on their feet elsewhere ... so actually, I'm not that sympathetic. Sometimes you have to take a stand. And that sociopathic cesspool you're speaking of? ... yes, that's right, you could be talking about X/twitter. So, I appreciate your words of empathy, they're much needed in these times. But I'll be the asshole who dismisses them on this occassion.
    - mplewis 2y ago
      Most of the workers stuck at X are on H1B visas or similar, which require them to keep their job or immediately find new employment at a company that will sponsor them.
      - LightBug1 2y ago
        Ok, I've been too harsh, I accept that ... but there are still many, I'm sure, who choose to remain there ... I have contempt for them.
  - shiroiushi 2y ago
    How do you feel about the contractors on the Death Star?
    - LightBug1 2y ago
      Interesting question. Should have joined the Rebel Alliance, or at least actively worked to sabotage the Death Star. A little mis-solder here, a little wire pull there, and ...
nuz 2y ago
They've cut out things like viewing who liked a tweet etc (for cost savings I suspect) so the site is probably dirt cheap. Can't imagine ads don't pay for the cost of running servers at this point, and a headcount reduction might bring it to profitability.
- kryptiskt 2y ago
  The ads may pay for the servers and reduced headcount[1], but there is no way that they pay for servicing the $10B of high-interest debt that the company was saddled with. [1] Though with the NYT reporting that the American ad revenues was down 80% to $114M/quarter since the acquisition it might not be so obvious.
  - jrpelkonen 2y ago
    Yes, the debt weighs heavily around their neck. If it eventually ends up in bankruptcy, will Elon Musk lose control of his beloved x.com domain name for the second time?
    - rahkiin 2y ago
      He’ll probably sell x.com to himself just before that happens
    - zinekeller 2y ago
      I would imagine that it was set up so that it is rented from Musk (instead of owning* outright), but it's Musk so who knows. * I know it's still not owned owned but there is still a legal difference between X Corp directly renting x.com (from Verisign) versus leasing x.com by a different owner (maybe Musk, maybe a holding corp) to X Corp.
    - chuckadams 2y ago
      He’ll probably name his next kid X. His history at PayPal shows how obsessed he is with that letter.
      - 2y ago
throwaway290 2y ago
I don't know if you are serious but because of LLMs trained on our work basically every tech company is scrambling for ways to get rid of programmers. Just yesterday I commented in a thread here where someone said 80% of their work is LLMable "bullshit" (somehow that guy, like many, didn't connect it to headcount or likelihood of keeping own job...)
- ben_w 2y ago
  Even if it wasn't for LLMs, it feels like a long time since I did more than convert someone else's Figma (or Adobe XD, or Photoshop document) into code, and glue it to a pre-existing API. I'm sure real estate lawyers feel much the same about how rote their work is. People pay for that, and it's valuable, but it does feel like these tasks should've been automated away a decade ago, without LLMs.
  - throwaway290 2y ago
    Lawyers or real engineers can only push a button and still have secure jobs because they have licenses/certifications/boards and liabilities with consequences. There is no such thing in programming. (Even though our mistakes can and do also lead to real people dying) > it feels like a long time since I did more than convert someone else's Figma (or Adobe XD, or Photoshop document) into code, and glue it to a pre-existing API That looks like webdev, that's like a minuscule part of all programming in question. > automated away a decade ago, without LLMs. I think LLMs is the worst part of it because literally what programmers do is used against them. It's like taxi drivers used to train self driving cabs to automate themselves out of jobs, except imagine self driving cars actually worked and there are no unions or protective gov regulation and taxi drivers all cheer for this because each thinks the whole firing and pay reduction is only for someone else not themselves:)
    - ben_w 2y ago
      > That looks like webdev, that's like a minuscule part of all programming in question. Mobile, even smaller. > It's like taxi drivers used to train self driving cabs to automate themselves out of jobs I was talking to a taxi driver pre-pandemic (from his passenger seat) who was enthusiastic about FSD even though it would end his career. And if FSD AI don't perform some of their training by trying to predict what all the other cars will do, they're missing out on a huge opportunity. More broadly, I think this pattern applies to all labour: surveillance is easy, humanoid robots exist.
michaelt 2y ago
To me "revenue and MAUs have declined significantly" sounds like a reason they would want to reduce employee numbers, rather than a reason they wouldn't. At least in a conventional business that uses revenue to pay wages.
- brookst 2y ago
  Layoffs are expensive compared to making people miserable so they quit.
  - runako 2y ago
    Only if you pay severance/etc., which X doesn't.
    - lotsofpulp 2y ago
      Terminating employees without cause (i.e. due to employee’s poor performance) entitles the employer to unemployment benefits, causing the state to increase the business’s unemployment insurance premiums. If an employee quits or is terminated due to not coming into work, then they are not eligible for unemployment benefits, and hence the business’s unemployment insurance premiums are unaffected.
      - runako 2y ago
        Increased UI premiums on the remaining employees are not likely to approach the cost of "normal" severance for 80%+ of the original staff.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
brookst 2y ago
There’s how much the company can take, and how much Elon thinks the company can take. He subscribes to the ubermensch view, where him and maybe two other superior specimens of manhood could single handedly run the entire company.
- tiahura 2y ago
  Did you think it would collapse when he canned the 80%
  - runako 2y ago
    Revenue is down by a larger percentage than the headcount, right? I think that counts as "collapse" by any reasonable definition.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - ryandrake 2y ago
      I thought the company would collapse after firing 80% of staff, and for a long time I kept arguing that Twitter was still in the "Wile E Coyote ran off the edge of the cliff but didn't fall yet" phase where they were running on pure momentum. I must admit, as time goes by, it's harder and harder to argue that. I just can't believe that 80% of the company was really just not needed. Every company I've ever worked at was lean to the point where they almost couldn't get anything done due to lack of people. I can't imagine a company that could lose 80% of their people and keep on trucking.
      - ghshephard 2y ago
        Twitter’s US revenue has dropped -83% from $661M in Q2 of 2022 to $114M in Q2 of 2024 according to: https://twitter.com/RealNeilC/status/1817562915634819464 https://twitter.com/RealNeilC/status/1817562915634819464 That's a pretty dramatic collapse. The thing about Infra - is that if all you want is 99% uptime - that's, with reasonable architectural decisions - relatively straightforward. You can run with a skeleton crew (particularly if you make really smart Infra Decisions like Midjourney, Whatsapp, others have done an outsource 95%+ of your infra to a third party (Discord, Platform Messaging APIs). As time goes on though, and you go through incident review after incident review, and sharpen things up - and 99% becomes 99.9% you start to get diminishing returns on more Infra Employees - at some point they don't add much reliability value (but boy do they make pager rotation schedules pretty nice). My sense (from both interviewing and working with them) is that the vast majority of people fired/laid off from Twitter weren't (for the most part - definitely lots of exceptions) core engineers or core infra-people -they were people on the periphery associated with making Twitter a friendly place for advertisers, and just maintaining a healthy work-life balance for the Infra people - a job where you could work your 30-32/hours week without it becoming all encompassing. When they were fired, Twitter became a very unfriendly place, and the advertisers ran away, and the revenue crashed.
dbbk 2y ago
> Sure the site still mostly works in the technical sense They just auto-banned everyone who downloaded their new Mac app so... no
- ben_w 2y ago
  Oh? I missed that news. Edit: This, I guess: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/x-kills-its-mac-app-accidentally-bans-you-for-switching-to-the-ipad-version/ar-BB1r2ABX https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/x-kills-its-mac-app-ac...
  - justinhj 2y ago
    “ If you're a Twitter diehard who's not willing to swap to X, it might be finally time to ditch X for Mastadon or Threads. On your way out, don't forget to delete your X account.” journalists are so biased against X
    - justinhj 2y ago
      ofc a “journalist” just outright tells people to delete their X accounts and I get a downvote the anti musk shit on this site is counter to logic and ideological
      - amiantos 2y ago
        You're getting downvoted because you're just regurgitating the Elon Musk fanboy "journalists hate X because they're threatened by it!" and "journalists are biased and not trustworthy!" party line nonsense like a complete weirdo.
  - dbbk 2y ago
    Yep happened to me. 16 year old account. Oh well, Threads it is.
jandrese 2y ago
4Chan was run by like one guy using the change he found in the cushions of his couch. Getting the pixels on people's screens is the easy part. Keeping the Nazis and bots at bay is the expensive part. You have to do the latter if you want to keep the advertisers on your site, which is why X switched to a more for-pay model and still loses money hand over fist. Being able to pay to have your voice amplified has been a real boon for the fascist users on X, they're having a great time.
- rabuse 2y ago
  I much prefer the Twitter of today. Since I'm a grown adult, I can handle some mean words being seen by my eyes, and just ignoring what I don't like. It's nice seeing a balance of both sides of an argument now, rather than only seeing the left biased information.
  - jandrese 2y ago
    "You and everyone like you should be rounded up and executed" is a just a mean message, but it's also dangerous. People will believe that stuff, and then try to do it. This isn't a theoretical danger, it has happened time and time again throughout history. These sorts of seductive messages that target out-groups and provide a sense of community have lead to real life horrors. X has also gotten very bad about amplifying misinformation, especially on white supremacist topics. Just yesterday (maybe the day before?) that bullshit old paper that said sub-Saharan Africans had an average IQ of 55 made it to the top of the feed with no community notes. The comment section was full of great replacement theory blue check guys all agreeing with one another and making it sound like there was a consensus. People see stuff like this and actually believe it. Frankly I wouldn't be surprised if Elon himself re-Xed it at some point.
  - reverius42 2y ago
    Is "left biased information" a euphemism for anything that doesn't include Nazi propaganda or hate speech? Because those are pretty much the things that were (loosely, not fully) banned prior to Elon's takeover.
happyopossum 2y ago
> but the way it works now has led to a significant decline in revenue and active users I don' think that's completely true - MAUs are up this year, and hit 500M for the first time last Oct... [1] https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/x-formerly-twitter-shares-insights-platform-usage-engagement/710641/ https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/x-formerly-twitter-sha...
- Starlevel004 2y ago
  Given the replies to every popular tweet, I don't really believe those are actual people.
cyphertruck 2y ago
Active users on the site is setting records pretty regularly, according to Linda. Usability and performance of the site is far higher than before in my experience as well. Revenue is down only due to an illegal cartel boycott, which X has recently filed a lawsuit to resolve.
- latentcall 2y ago
  "illegal cartel boycott" I'm not sure what you're talking about, can you fill me in a little bit?
  - BobAliceInATree 2y ago
    https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/6/24214536/x-elon-musk-antitrust-lawsuit-advertisers-boycott https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/6/24214536/x-elon-musk-antit... Yes, it's as stupid as it sounds.
    - cyphertruck 2y ago
      Except he is not suing advertisers. The Verge is fake news. He is suing a literal cartel after their crime was exposed in congress.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - BobAliceInATree 2y ago
        And what is this supposed "cartel" composed of? Advertisers. Yeah, congress "exposed" it, when it's right on their website (https://wfanet.org/leadership/garm/about-garm https://wfanet.org/leadership/garm/about-garm) This is just another of Musk's "free speech for me, but not for you" lawsuits that never go anywhere and are designed to waste your money with lawyers.
  - cyphertruck 2y ago
    From the CEO: https://x.com/lindayax/status/1820838625245880634 https://x.com/lindayax/status/1820838625245880634

LightBug1 2y ago

[flagged]

optymizer 2y ago
> Who cares? > They should know better and the best have already left or been culled. We should care, even if it's just a little. Some of them may not be able to leave for various reasons: health, family, immigration status, who knows. Maybe if more of us showed a bit more empathy towards each other online, the Internet wouldn't be such a sociopathic cesspool. These are real people you're talking about, not inanimate objects.
- LightBug1 2y ago
  Of course, I agree with you at the individual level. However, at the macro level, I'm more than happy to see jobs destroyed at insert sh1tty company for the good of both individuals, and the good of the nation/world. Short term pain, long term gain. And don't tell me the workers X/twitter can't get re-hired or land on their feet elsewhere ... so actually, I'm not that sympathetic. Sometimes you have to take a stand. And that sociopathic cesspool you're speaking of? ... yes, that's right, you could be talking about X/twitter. So, I appreciate your words of empathy, they're much needed in these times. But I'll be the asshole who dismisses them on this occassion.
  - mplewis 2y ago
    Most of the workers stuck at X are on H1B visas or similar, which require them to keep their job or immediately find new employment at a company that will sponsor them.
    - LightBug1 2y ago
      Ok, I've been too harsh, I accept that ... but there are still many, I'm sure, who choose to remain there ... I have contempt for them.
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  How do you feel about the contractors on the Death Star?
  - LightBug1 2y ago
    Interesting question. Should have joined the Rebel Alliance, or at least actively worked to sabotage the Death Star. A little mis-solder here, a little wire pull there, and ...

nuz 2y ago

They've cut out things like viewing who liked a tweet etc (for cost savings I suspect) so the site is probably dirt cheap. Can't imagine ads don't pay for the cost of running servers at this point, and a headcount reduction might bring it to profitability.

kryptiskt 2y ago
The ads may pay for the servers and reduced headcount[1], but there is no way that they pay for servicing the $10B of high-interest debt that the company was saddled with. [1] Though with the NYT reporting that the American ad revenues was down 80% to $114M/quarter since the acquisition it might not be so obvious.
- jrpelkonen 2y ago
  Yes, the debt weighs heavily around their neck. If it eventually ends up in bankruptcy, will Elon Musk lose control of his beloved x.com domain name for the second time?
  - rahkiin 2y ago
    He’ll probably sell x.com to himself just before that happens
  - zinekeller 2y ago
    I would imagine that it was set up so that it is rented from Musk (instead of owning* outright), but it's Musk so who knows. * I know it's still not owned owned but there is still a legal difference between X Corp directly renting x.com (from Verisign) versus leasing x.com by a different owner (maybe Musk, maybe a holding corp) to X Corp.
  - chuckadams 2y ago
    He’ll probably name his next kid X. His history at PayPal shows how obsessed he is with that letter.
    - 2y ago

throwaway290 2y ago

I don't know if you are serious but because of LLMs trained on our work basically every tech company is scrambling for ways to get rid of programmers. Just yesterday I commented in a thread here where someone said 80% of their work is LLMable "bullshit" (somehow that guy, like many, didn't connect it to headcount or likelihood of keeping own job...)

ben_w 2y ago
Even if it wasn't for LLMs, it feels like a long time since I did more than convert someone else's Figma (or Adobe XD, or Photoshop document) into code, and glue it to a pre-existing API. I'm sure real estate lawyers feel much the same about how rote their work is. People pay for that, and it's valuable, but it does feel like these tasks should've been automated away a decade ago, without LLMs.
- throwaway290 2y ago
  Lawyers or real engineers can only push a button and still have secure jobs because they have licenses/certifications/boards and liabilities with consequences. There is no such thing in programming. (Even though our mistakes can and do also lead to real people dying) > it feels like a long time since I did more than convert someone else's Figma (or Adobe XD, or Photoshop document) into code, and glue it to a pre-existing API That looks like webdev, that's like a minuscule part of all programming in question. > automated away a decade ago, without LLMs. I think LLMs is the worst part of it because literally what programmers do is used against them. It's like taxi drivers used to train self driving cabs to automate themselves out of jobs, except imagine self driving cars actually worked and there are no unions or protective gov regulation and taxi drivers all cheer for this because each thinks the whole firing and pay reduction is only for someone else not themselves:)
  - ben_w 2y ago
    > That looks like webdev, that's like a minuscule part of all programming in question. Mobile, even smaller. > It's like taxi drivers used to train self driving cabs to automate themselves out of jobs I was talking to a taxi driver pre-pandemic (from his passenger seat) who was enthusiastic about FSD even though it would end his career. And if FSD AI don't perform some of their training by trying to predict what all the other cars will do, they're missing out on a huge opportunity. More broadly, I think this pattern applies to all labour: surveillance is easy, humanoid robots exist.

michaelt 2y ago

To me "revenue and MAUs have declined significantly" sounds like a reason they would want to reduce employee numbers, rather than a reason they wouldn't. At least in a conventional business that uses revenue to pay wages.

brookst 2y ago
Layoffs are expensive compared to making people miserable so they quit.
- runako 2y ago
  Only if you pay severance/etc., which X doesn't.
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    Terminating employees without cause (i.e. due to employee’s poor performance) entitles the employer to unemployment benefits, causing the state to increase the business’s unemployment insurance premiums. If an employee quits or is terminated due to not coming into work, then they are not eligible for unemployment benefits, and hence the business’s unemployment insurance premiums are unaffected.
    - runako 2y ago
      Increased UI premiums on the remaining employees are not likely to approach the cost of "normal" severance for 80%+ of the original staff.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

brookst 2y ago

There’s how much the company can take, and how much Elon thinks the company can take. He subscribes to the ubermensch view, where him and maybe two other superior specimens of manhood could single handedly run the entire company.

tiahura 2y ago
Did you think it would collapse when he canned the 80%
- runako 2y ago
  Revenue is down by a larger percentage than the headcount, right? I think that counts as "collapse" by any reasonable definition.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    I thought the company would collapse after firing 80% of staff, and for a long time I kept arguing that Twitter was still in the "Wile E Coyote ran off the edge of the cliff but didn't fall yet" phase where they were running on pure momentum. I must admit, as time goes by, it's harder and harder to argue that. I just can't believe that 80% of the company was really just not needed. Every company I've ever worked at was lean to the point where they almost couldn't get anything done due to lack of people. I can't imagine a company that could lose 80% of their people and keep on trucking.
    - ghshephard 2y ago
      Twitter’s US revenue has dropped -83% from $661M in Q2 of 2022 to $114M in Q2 of 2024 according to: https://twitter.com/RealNeilC/status/1817562915634819464 https://twitter.com/RealNeilC/status/1817562915634819464 That's a pretty dramatic collapse. The thing about Infra - is that if all you want is 99% uptime - that's, with reasonable architectural decisions - relatively straightforward. You can run with a skeleton crew (particularly if you make really smart Infra Decisions like Midjourney, Whatsapp, others have done an outsource 95%+ of your infra to a third party (Discord, Platform Messaging APIs). As time goes on though, and you go through incident review after incident review, and sharpen things up - and 99% becomes 99.9% you start to get diminishing returns on more Infra Employees - at some point they don't add much reliability value (but boy do they make pager rotation schedules pretty nice). My sense (from both interviewing and working with them) is that the vast majority of people fired/laid off from Twitter weren't (for the most part - definitely lots of exceptions) core engineers or core infra-people -they were people on the periphery associated with making Twitter a friendly place for advertisers, and just maintaining a healthy work-life balance for the Infra people - a job where you could work your 30-32/hours week without it becoming all encompassing. When they were fired, Twitter became a very unfriendly place, and the advertisers ran away, and the revenue crashed.

dbbk 2y ago

> Sure the site still mostly works in the technical sense They just auto-banned everyone who downloaded their new Mac app so... no

ben_w 2y ago
Oh? I missed that news. Edit: This, I guess: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/x-kills-its-mac-app-accidentally-bans-you-for-switching-to-the-ipad-version/ar-BB1r2ABX https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/x-kills-its-mac-app-ac...
- justinhj 2y ago
  “ If you're a Twitter diehard who's not willing to swap to X, it might be finally time to ditch X for Mastadon or Threads. On your way out, don't forget to delete your X account.” journalists are so biased against X
  - justinhj 2y ago
    ofc a “journalist” just outright tells people to delete their X accounts and I get a downvote the anti musk shit on this site is counter to logic and ideological
    - amiantos 2y ago
      You're getting downvoted because you're just regurgitating the Elon Musk fanboy "journalists hate X because they're threatened by it!" and "journalists are biased and not trustworthy!" party line nonsense like a complete weirdo.
- dbbk 2y ago
  Yep happened to me. 16 year old account. Oh well, Threads it is.

jandrese 2y ago

4Chan was run by like one guy using the change he found in the cushions of his couch. Getting the pixels on people's screens is the easy part. Keeping the Nazis and bots at bay is the expensive part. You have to do the latter if you want to keep the advertisers on your site, which is why X switched to a more for-pay model and still loses money hand over fist. Being able to pay to have your voice amplified has been a real boon for the fascist users on X, they're having a great time.

rabuse 2y ago
I much prefer the Twitter of today. Since I'm a grown adult, I can handle some mean words being seen by my eyes, and just ignoring what I don't like. It's nice seeing a balance of both sides of an argument now, rather than only seeing the left biased information.
- jandrese 2y ago
  "You and everyone like you should be rounded up and executed" is a just a mean message, but it's also dangerous. People will believe that stuff, and then try to do it. This isn't a theoretical danger, it has happened time and time again throughout history. These sorts of seductive messages that target out-groups and provide a sense of community have lead to real life horrors. X has also gotten very bad about amplifying misinformation, especially on white supremacist topics. Just yesterday (maybe the day before?) that bullshit old paper that said sub-Saharan Africans had an average IQ of 55 made it to the top of the feed with no community notes. The comment section was full of great replacement theory blue check guys all agreeing with one another and making it sound like there was a consensus. People see stuff like this and actually believe it. Frankly I wouldn't be surprised if Elon himself re-Xed it at some point.
- reverius42 2y ago
  Is "left biased information" a euphemism for anything that doesn't include Nazi propaganda or hate speech? Because those are pretty much the things that were (loosely, not fully) banned prior to Elon's takeover.

happyopossum 2y ago

> but the way it works now has led to a significant decline in revenue and active users I don' think that's completely true - MAUs are up this year, and hit 500M for the first time last Oct... [1] https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/x-formerly-twitter-shares-insights-platform-usage-engagement/710641/ https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/x-formerly-twitter-sha...

Starlevel004 2y ago
Given the replies to every popular tweet, I don't really believe those are actual people.

cyphertruck 2y ago

Active users on the site is setting records pretty regularly, according to Linda. Usability and performance of the site is far higher than before in my experience as well. Revenue is down only due to an illegal cartel boycott, which X has recently filed a lawsuit to resolve.

latentcall 2y ago
"illegal cartel boycott" I'm not sure what you're talking about, can you fill me in a little bit?
- BobAliceInATree 2y ago
  https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/6/24214536/x-elon-musk-antitrust-lawsuit-advertisers-boycott https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/6/24214536/x-elon-musk-antit... Yes, it's as stupid as it sounds.
  - cyphertruck 2y ago
    Except he is not suing advertisers. The Verge is fake news. He is suing a literal cartel after their crime was exposed in congress.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - BobAliceInATree 2y ago
      And what is this supposed "cartel" composed of? Advertisers. Yeah, congress "exposed" it, when it's right on their website (https://wfanet.org/leadership/garm/about-garm https://wfanet.org/leadership/garm/about-garm) This is just another of Musk's "free speech for me, but not for you" lawsuits that never go anywhere and are designed to waste your money with lawyers.
- cyphertruck 2y ago
  From the CEO: https://x.com/lindayax/status/1820838625245880634 https://x.com/lindayax/status/1820838625245880634