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Do people see Elon's takeover of Twitter as a success? I think he leveraged Twitter as a social media platform to make himself wealthy, but as far as I can tell

Do people see Elon's takeover of Twitter as a success? I think he leveraged Twitter as a social media platform to make himself wealthy, but as far as I can tell, the actual company has been losing a ton of money.

pclmulqdq 1y ago
For every engineer who sees things not working on the site and going unfixed, there's a manager who sees how many people still use it.
giobox 1y ago
Ignoring the financial aspects, I agree to some extent with OPs opinion this trend of doing more with less engineers really took off following Elon reducing Twitters headcount. It's worth remembering Twitter was a buggy mess before Elon bought it. Sure it's still a buggy mess today, but the staffing costs are dramatically lower. Losing a ton of money was something Twitter was also pretty good at even before Elon too - only profitable 2 years out of the 8 leading up to the acquisition while it was still a public company etc.
voidspark 1y ago
We don't know if it is losing money. It's a private company. He reduced the headcount to roughly what it was in 2017. At the time of the acquisition, many of the employees were in non technical roles, contributing nothing of value, posting videos about their empty work day on TikTok. Jack Dorsey admitted that he made a mistake by over hiring - more than doubled the headcount from 2017 to 2021. https://www.statista.com/statistics/272140/employees-of-twitter/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/272140/employees-of-twit...
- procaryote 1y ago
  We know the value as perceived by investors has dropped. We know usage and revenue has dropped. There are now several competitors in the same space, some fairly successful.
  - voidspark 1y ago
    [flagged]
harmmonica 1y ago
I was trying to stay away from the debate about the success of it by making that comment about it not failing even with a fraction of the former employees. My sarcastic reply to your question, though, is it depends on which side of the aisle you sit on. More seriously, there is something extremely telling about a tech company cutting half or more of its workforce and still living. I can guarantee you every major tech company took note of that reality and so I have to believe it begged some questions about headcounts. It brings you back to that old HN saw "why do these companies need so many people to do that?" Maybe the answer actually was they didn't/don't.
- VirusNewbie 1y ago
  >there is something extremely telling about a tech company cutting half or more of its workforce and still living. this seems a gross misunderstanding of how software companies work at scale. Twitter doesn't hire engineers to run a monitoring system cause they need it to stay alive (there are alternatives to building and running their own!), they chose to do it to save money or increase revenue. Twitter doesn't need an ad network, they can use Google, or build their own and take more profit. They might know that for every 3 engineers they hire on their ad network, they increase their click rate and thus revenue. The same can be said for any infra team. You don't need to build much infra, but companies do it because sometimes it's a way to save hundreds of millions of dollars in cloud costs or licensing fees.
  - harmmonica 1y ago
    Are we disagreeing here? I'm not sure how you took my comment, but it seems like what you're arguing here doesn't really rebut what I was saying. Or at least is not directly related. FWIW I agree with everything you're saying, except for the tone, which, to be honest, I don't love.
    - VirusNewbie 1y ago
      >" Maybe the answer actually was they didn't/don't. I'm disputing the claim that the above statement was ever in question. FAANG doesn't employ people because they mistakenly thought they needed that many, they do it because adding more employees has either lowered their infra costs or increased their revenue.
modo_mario 1y ago
To be honest if it wasn't for Elon's hand in various other ways and he was somehow perceived by most to be apolitical many people would call the cuts a success and it would be losing a lot lot less or be making money.

pclmulqdq 1y ago

For every engineer who sees things not working on the site and going unfixed, there's a manager who sees how many people still use it.

giobox 1y ago

Ignoring the financial aspects, I agree to some extent with OPs opinion this trend of doing more with less engineers really took off following Elon reducing Twitters headcount. It's worth remembering Twitter was a buggy mess before Elon bought it. Sure it's still a buggy mess today, but the staffing costs are dramatically lower. Losing a ton of money was something Twitter was also pretty good at even before Elon too - only profitable 2 years out of the 8 leading up to the acquisition while it was still a public company etc.

voidspark 1y ago

We don't know if it is losing money. It's a private company. He reduced the headcount to roughly what it was in 2017. At the time of the acquisition, many of the employees were in non technical roles, contributing nothing of value, posting videos about their empty work day on TikTok. Jack Dorsey admitted that he made a mistake by over hiring - more than doubled the headcount from 2017 to 2021. https://www.statista.com/statistics/272140/employees-of-twitter/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/272140/employees-of-twit...

procaryote 1y ago
We know the value as perceived by investors has dropped. We know usage and revenue has dropped. There are now several competitors in the same space, some fairly successful.
- voidspark 1y ago
  [flagged]

harmmonica 1y ago

I was trying to stay away from the debate about the success of it by making that comment about it not failing even with a fraction of the former employees. My sarcastic reply to your question, though, is it depends on which side of the aisle you sit on. More seriously, there is something extremely telling about a tech company cutting half or more of its workforce and still living. I can guarantee you every major tech company took note of that reality and so I have to believe it begged some questions about headcounts. It brings you back to that old HN saw "why do these companies need so many people to do that?" Maybe the answer actually was they didn't/don't.

VirusNewbie 1y ago
>there is something extremely telling about a tech company cutting half or more of its workforce and still living. this seems a gross misunderstanding of how software companies work at scale. Twitter doesn't hire engineers to run a monitoring system cause they need it to stay alive (there are alternatives to building and running their own!), they chose to do it to save money or increase revenue. Twitter doesn't need an ad network, they can use Google, or build their own and take more profit. They might know that for every 3 engineers they hire on their ad network, they increase their click rate and thus revenue. The same can be said for any infra team. You don't need to build much infra, but companies do it because sometimes it's a way to save hundreds of millions of dollars in cloud costs or licensing fees.
- harmmonica 1y ago
  Are we disagreeing here? I'm not sure how you took my comment, but it seems like what you're arguing here doesn't really rebut what I was saying. Or at least is not directly related. FWIW I agree with everything you're saying, except for the tone, which, to be honest, I don't love.
  - VirusNewbie 1y ago
    >" Maybe the answer actually was they didn't/don't. I'm disputing the claim that the above statement was ever in question. FAANG doesn't employ people because they mistakenly thought they needed that many, they do it because adding more employees has either lowered their infra costs or increased their revenue.

modo_mario 1y ago

To be honest if it wasn't for Elon's hand in various other ways and he was somehow perceived by most to be apolitical many people would call the cuts a success and it would be losing a lot lot less or be making money.