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Elon and his team seem to have succeeded at figuring this out at Twitter. Or do you think Twitter was a unique case?

by aianus 2y ago

bonzini 2y ago
Elon didn't remove bad performers, he pivoted from social network to political platform. They removed moderators not because they were unnecessary or performed badly, but rather because they were actively harmful to the new mission.
- curtisblaine 2y ago
  He removed a large swath of tech people too, so many that several posts here on HN doubted that the platform would stay up in the long run. In reality the platform did pretty well, even during "intense" events like the US election.
  - lovich 2y ago
    It crashed multiple times after his cuts and that was while dealing with a largely reduced flow of traffic. Twitter has survived death, but it’s only a fraction of what it used to be in terms of traffic, revenue, and profit compared to before Musk
    - starspangled 2y ago
      > It crashed multiple times after his cuts and that was while dealing with a largely reduced flow of traffic. It crashed multiple times before he bought it too though. > Twitter has survived death, but it’s only a fraction of what it used to be in terms of traffic, revenue, and profit compared to before Musk That fraction of traffic being somewhere around 3/4 to 4/5 the hits, according to a quick search, does that sound about right? That the dire predictions on HN, reddit, etc., about twitter's destruction after those aggressive layoffs turned out to be wrong. We were assured that it would imminently implode and/or explode. Not that revenue or traffic would be reduced due to content/policy/marketing/etc, but specifically that the site would essentially cease to operate due to lack of technical expertise. I think it's fair to say those predictions were wrong, and not wrong because traffic was so significantly reduced that the problem went from imminent implosion to more-or-less operating as usual, but because they were really just baseless speculation driven by wishful thinking.
      - curtisblaine 2y ago
        Layoffs were around 80% of the total workforce. It's impressive that they managed to stay up & running with 4/5 of the hits. The real Pareto law: you can run at 80% capacity by cutting your developers to 20%. All jokes aside, either Musk's people were incredibly good at reducing waste or the majority of developers and PMs at Twitter were doing nothing useful. I can't see any other explanation.
        lovich 2y ago
        Diverting assets from the publicly trader company you run, to the privately traded company you also run, does wonders for the balance books as well https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/elon-musk-ordered-nvidia-ship-thousands-ai-chips-reserved-tesla-x-xai-rcna155371 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/elon-musk-ordered-nvi...
        curtisblaine 2y ago
        That's irrelevant from the tech point of view though. They still cut 80% workforce and managed to stay up serving 80% of the traffic, which is a notable achievement (and an open question about how well companies channel their talent into deliverables)
NitpickLawyer 2y ago
AMZ is also known for periodically culling 10% of the worst performers. Out of all my contacts at faang type orgs, I get the feeling that AMZ is pretty tough to "game" by underperforming / "silent quitting" people (exceptions and all, ofc)
SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
Twitter, like many tech companies, was composed of a small core worth a small fraction of its valuation plus a large number of speculative bets. It's easy for an owner who doesn't care about the valuation to simply stop doing the speculative bets; it doesn't require any kind of clever employee performance analysis.
- fmajid 2y ago
  It’s not that simple, even in a company that was as notoriously mismanaged as Twitter. When he came in with his trusted lieutenants from SpaceX and Tesla, they had some sort of game plan to data mine HR databases, corporate email and so on. If I were to guess, Palantir must be involved somehow. Probably the same playbook they are applying at DOGE right now. In comparison, the “RTO to make people quit so we don’t have to pay severance” model of JPM, Amazon and others is a blunt instrument that is as likely to cause top performers to flee.

Elon and his team seem to have succeeded at figuring this out at Twitter. Or do you think Twitter was a unique case?

by aianus 2y ago

Elon and his team seem to have succeeded at figuring this out at Twitter. Or do you think Twitter was a unique case?

Elon didn't remove bad performers, he pivoted from social network to political platform. They removed moderators not because they were unnecessary or performed badly, but rather because they were actively harmful to the new mission.

curtisblaine 2y ago
He removed a large swath of tech people too, so many that several posts here on HN doubted that the platform would stay up in the long run. In reality the platform did pretty well, even during "intense" events like the US election.
- lovich 2y ago
  It crashed multiple times after his cuts and that was while dealing with a largely reduced flow of traffic. Twitter has survived death, but it’s only a fraction of what it used to be in terms of traffic, revenue, and profit compared to before Musk
  - starspangled 2y ago
    > It crashed multiple times after his cuts and that was while dealing with a largely reduced flow of traffic. It crashed multiple times before he bought it too though. > Twitter has survived death, but it’s only a fraction of what it used to be in terms of traffic, revenue, and profit compared to before Musk That fraction of traffic being somewhere around 3/4 to 4/5 the hits, according to a quick search, does that sound about right? That the dire predictions on HN, reddit, etc., about twitter's destruction after those aggressive layoffs turned out to be wrong. We were assured that it would imminently implode and/or explode. Not that revenue or traffic would be reduced due to content/policy/marketing/etc, but specifically that the site would essentially cease to operate due to lack of technical expertise. I think it's fair to say those predictions were wrong, and not wrong because traffic was so significantly reduced that the problem went from imminent implosion to more-or-less operating as usual, but because they were really just baseless speculation driven by wishful thinking.
    - curtisblaine 2y ago
      Layoffs were around 80% of the total workforce. It's impressive that they managed to stay up & running with 4/5 of the hits. The real Pareto law: you can run at 80% capacity by cutting your developers to 20%. All jokes aside, either Musk's people were incredibly good at reducing waste or the majority of developers and PMs at Twitter were doing nothing useful. I can't see any other explanation.
      - lovich 2y ago
        Diverting assets from the publicly trader company you run, to the privately traded company you also run, does wonders for the balance books as well https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/elon-musk-ordered-nvidia-ship-thousands-ai-chips-reserved-tesla-x-xai-rcna155371 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/elon-musk-ordered-nvi...
        curtisblaine 2y ago
        That's irrelevant from the tech point of view though. They still cut 80% workforce and managed to stay up serving 80% of the traffic, which is a notable achievement (and an open question about how well companies channel their talent into deliverables)

NitpickLawyer 2y ago

AMZ is also known for periodically culling 10% of the worst performers. Out of all my contacts at faang type orgs, I get the feeling that AMZ is pretty tough to "game" by underperforming / "silent quitting" people (exceptions and all, ofc)

SpicyLemonZest 2y ago

Twitter, like many tech companies, was composed of a small core worth a small fraction of its valuation plus a large number of speculative bets. It's easy for an owner who doesn't care about the valuation to simply stop doing the speculative bets; it doesn't require any kind of clever employee performance analysis.

fmajid 2y ago
It’s not that simple, even in a company that was as notoriously mismanaged as Twitter. When he came in with his trusted lieutenants from SpaceX and Tesla, they had some sort of game plan to data mine HR databases, corporate email and so on. If I were to guess, Palantir must be involved somehow. Probably the same playbook they are applying at DOGE right now. In comparison, the “RTO to make people quit so we don’t have to pay severance” model of JPM, Amazon and others is a blunt instrument that is as likely to cause top performers to flee.