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CEOs are doing layoffs because Elon dumped 80% of Twitter staff and it didn't collapse. Those layoffs were a make or break moment for tech.
by Workaccount2 1y ago
CEOs are doing layoffs because Elon dumped 80% of Twitter staff and it didn't collapse.
Those layoffs were a make or break moment for tech.
- dreamcompiler 1y agoIt didn't collapse in the sense of ceasing to exist. It did collapse as a place where decent human beings cared to gather, and it lost over 75% of its market value.
- ern_ave 1y ago[flagged]
- brookst 1y agoPrivate companies have valuations. Your can pedant on whether it’s appropriate to use the word “market”, but the fact is pretty well known. Musk paid $44B and it is generally considered to be worth less than $10B today[1], though his open participation in political corruption has resulted in valuations all over the map, including $44B[2]. It’s kind of Schroedinger’s valuation; if he and Trump are having a spat it’s worth less because there’s a risk Trump orders it shut down or seized or whatever, if he and Trump make up the company is a a part of the ruling party’s government apparatus. But as far as actual product value, outside of a clubhouse for red hats, it’s pretty close to zero. They have to literally sue companies to force them to advertise[3], which would be laughable if creeping fascism wasn’t so bad that it’s actually a successful strategy. Any attempt to claim free speech high ground while suing companies for declining to advertise is incredibly disingenuous. 1. https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/30/24258129/musks-44-billion-twitter-now-valued-at-just-9-4b-as-x https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/30/24258129/musks-44-billion... 2. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/mar/19/value-elon-musk-x-rebounds-purchase-price https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/mar/19/value-elo... 3. https://www.npr.org/2025/02/01/nx-s1-5283271/elon-musk-lawsuit-advertisers-boycott-new https://www.npr.org/2025/02/01/nx-s1-5283271/elon-musk-lawsu...
- ekianjo 1y ago> Private companies have valuations and they are usually massively off.
- epistasis 1y agoYou are the one bringing politics into this, not the comment that you are falsely accusing of being politically motivated, with some sort of "free speech" nonsense and an image that has been filled with so many tweets that it's not even legible. Even collecting that image is odd and strange and shows highly politically motivated behavior on your part! Twitter's valuation with investors was based on the idea of heavy growth. It wasn't even profitable when purchased, and when it did make a profit, it was on the order of $1B/year, nothing that would validate it's market cap. Musk squashed all potential for growth. Twitter advertisers, users, and the hope of a brighter future are all gone now. A well-established brand has been abandoned for an amorphous X, on which it's pretty much impossible to establish a new brand. Musk has destroyed so value much from Twitter with bone-headed moves that if he had to answer to investors, he'd be out in a second.
- blockmarker 1y ago[flagged]
- epistasis 1y ago> You can zoom on the image and see the tweets. No, I literally can not. The interface of imgur does not allow zooming in to see what is in the Tweets! Collecting that many tweets into such a massive image is the behavior of a crazy person, likely motivated by crazy politics. I do not know what's in the Tweets that's supposed to be objectionable, but the obsessive collection of stuff like that, and spending the time to create such an unreadable way. > "If you care about what I say you are weird, and you care because you are an evil person" Who are you quoting? Who brought evil into this? Very weird thing to start your comment with, what is your point?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- blockmarker 1y ago[flagged]
- DonHopkins 1y ago[flagged]
- ern_ave 1y ago[flagged]
- DonHopkins 1y ago[flagged]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- computerthings 1y ago[dead]
- lenkite 1y ago> it lost over 75% of its market value. No longer true. In March 2025, X Corp. was acquired by xAI, Musk's artificial intelligence company. The deal, an all-stock transaction, valued X at $33 billion, with a full valuation of $45 billion when factoring in $12 billion in debt. Investor sentiment through secondary share trades still prices the company at $44 billion.
- disgruntledphd2 1y agoWell sure, but that was an inter-party transaction so basically valuations are irrelevant (unless they get sued, which probably won't happen unless the AI stuff collapses). To be fair, the banks did offload the debt at par (two years later) so some people think X/Twitter is worth some money.
- exe34 1y agoTwitter produced mechahitler and didn't collapse. I don't like this timeline.
- gatinsama 1y agoExactly this. Everyone else is doing what everyone else does. There's no direct relationship between AI adoption and layoffs, except for inflated board/CEO expectations.
- graemep 1y ago> Elon dumped 80% of Twitter staff and it didn't collapse. That was because Twitter was massively overstaffed. Are all these other businesses also overstaffed? The result of cheap money? Are they all atu
- bentt 1y agoThey are all overstaffed because they were financially incentivized to overstaff, both for valuation and defensive talent hoarding reasons. This was a positive feedback loop which unwound in tech and will unwind in AI too.
- c16 1y agoDefinitely feels like since AI there's been a shift and it's gone from total head count as a measure of success to revenue per employee as a measure of success. The fewer employees the better.
- bentt 1y agoProbably because they need to burn all their investment money on compute.
- surgical_fire 1y ago> The fewer employees the better. This has always been true for any mature companies. The conundrum is that tech companies in particular are really averse to be perceived as mature companies, because their valuations have to be more grounded in reality.
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago>That was because Twitter was massively overstaffed. What's the proof it was the only tech company being overstaffed? For example Meta doubled its headcount during the pandemic without any increase in market share or new products. How do you explain that not being overstaffed?
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- mock-possum 1y agoAre you still using twitter?
- apercu 1y agoI don’t think most (non social companies) were as overstaffed as twitter because most companies have valuations based on revenue/profit rather than “it’s internet/social so 1000x”. Many “traditional” companies have been running leaner since the 90s and can’t function at all with even a 25% headcount reduction.
- Traubenfuchs 1y agoWhat were all those people doing all day long?
- FirmwareBurner 1y agoSearch on youtube "A day in the life of a Twitter/$FAANG employee".
- junga 1y agoDid so. According to Josh and Katie most of the day was spent eating.
- kalleboo 1y agoTwitter was a whole media company. They had staff in every country writing news summaries for trending hash tags, etc.
- carlosjobim 1y agoPlanning their holidays, their kid's birth day parties and who's going to pick up the ice cream for the barbecue with the aunts and uncles, planning the kitchen renovation or house renovation, negotiating with the realtor for their investment property they are buying to rent out on AirBnB, buying cool stuff on Amazon and buying some cute clothes on Temu, planning a fishing trip or skiing trip, raging on social media against fascist who are oppressing them, arguing with lawyers over inheritance, complaining about their boss, thinking about what they're going to have for lunch. Only complete idiots actually work for a living in this day and age. A job is first and foremost a tool to get approved for a nice/nicer mortgage so that you can focus on your real career which is getting rich from real estate appreciation. Secondly a job is a tool for getting exposed to the right people so you can get an even better job and thus an even nicer mortgage. You can't waste your time at the office by actually working.
- nyarlathotep_ 1y agoThis is a juvenile take that seems brash but ironically I can't disagree with at this point in my life. Well played.
- moomin 1y agoHe definitely started a trend, but the takeaway was a mess. The company makes less money, the technology/UX is objectively getting worse. Yes, some parts of the audience have proven sticky, but I don’t think that was ever a huge revelation. It’s always been possible to take some seeds off the bun.
- nancyminusone 1y agoI think you'll find Twitter to be completely dead to many more people than it was in 2021.
- ponector 1y agoYou can say the same about Facebook, but they had small layoff.
- sealeck 1y ago> Elon dumped 80% of Twitter staff and it didn't collapse. Have you looked at a graph of Twitter revenue and profit recently (hint: it is very low). Nobody has ever claimed that you cannot fire all the employees and keep Twitter online with a skeleton crew; the claim has always been that you can't do that _and remain a viable business_.
- Workaccount2 1y agoTwitter is now a private company and doesn't share financial numbers. The only insight we have is that the banks that were stuck with the debt from the purchase (the banks who loaned Elon money) were recently able to find buyers for that debt. That is not a sign of bad financial health or diminishing value.
- sealeck 1y agoHave you considered why investors were bidding something like 60 cents on the dollar right until Trump's election? (Hint: because Elon has been using the US government to press companies into buying his ad product, despite the fact that it is materially worse than Google or Facebook's). > The only insight we have This is untrue. There's fairly credible reporting (e.g. in the FT) that Twitter's reveue numbers have bottomed and they are not making money. Of course, a lot of these problems are being disguised by the fact that Elon Musk has merged in xAI (and investors are very happy to pile money into AI without even the slightest due diligence).
- furyofantares 1y ago
- AIPedant 1y agoIt didn't "collapse" but it lost a ton of users and stopped being a public service where anyone could freely read most tweets. The load on Twitter's servers and the scope of its services have gone down dramatically, and it's childish to conclude "Twitter was overstaffed." Musk made Twitter into a much smaller service.
- surgical_fire 1y ago> CEOs are doing layoffs because Elon dumped 80% of Twitter staff and it didn't collapse. Anyone that ever worked in a sufficiently large tech company knows that it can keep the lights on with a skeleton crew. It doesn't mean the results will be good or desirable, but it can be done. Over time cracks will start to show. New featurs are seldom delivered and half-assed. Bugs will take a long time to fix or just become part of the landscape. That sort of thing. Twitter is a special case that Musk did not buy it to make it into a profitable company, or to make it more valuable, or to improve it in any way. He just bought it because he wanted to rid it of the "woke mind virus" (and factually tried to get out of the deal and was sued into actually buying it). CEOs are doing layoffs for a variety of reasons, but mostly to improve profits by reducing costs. These cycles happen, and what it actually points to is that those companies are not seeing a viable path for growth at the moment that justifies their valuation. Layoffs with some vague gestures towards AI is a good smokescreen for the time being.