4 ms·

Anyone who has worked in the big tech industry knows that probably more than half of the workforce performs tasks that, in essence, are superfluous. But these

• sealeck 7mo ago
  > Musk has shown that Twitter can operate with 5% (approximately?) of the workforce he inherited Is X profitable? I don't think the argument was that Twitter couldn't _operate_ with 5% of the workforce (i.e. skeleton sysadmin crew), the issue was whether Twitter could make money and remain a viable business. It seems that Twitter is no longer a viable business (i.e. less advertising spend, decline in users - especially high-value advertiser targets who now spend more time on LinkedIn, etc). > laying off a lot of people was seen as a sign that the company was in trouble, but not now I agree that saying you are laying people off because of AI is a lovely narrative for failing companies!
  • borroka 7mo ago
    One needs to tease apart the effects of Musk and Musk's "policies" on advertising investments, number of users, the boom and slow decline of social media platforms (see Facebook, Instagram coming down from their peak, TikTok gaining ground, but people seem to be already tired of it and waiting for something new) and the technical/technological part of the enterprise. I don't like layoffs, in particular when I am the one getting laid off (not at X), but the X experience, for a casual user like me, did not get worse, if it did, because there are way fewer people working at X. One may say, I don't like the algos, but that's not coming from a lack of engineers, it is a policy.
    • mixdup 7mo ago
      a lot of the people laid off from X were working on content on things like moderation, and yes, the algorithm Is the site functional? Sure, I guess. I think the amount of traffic shrinking also has something to do with the viability with fewer engineers
      • borroka 7mo ago
        I don’t think it is true at all. The recommendation algorithm they implement is a choice they make, it is not that if they had more engineers they would deploy a “better” one. Every recommendation algorithm is, in the end, “bad” in some way. The TikTok algorithm was considered the non plus ultra among recommendation algos; now you cannot watch a video of a cat on TikTok for more than 5 seconds that the next 50 videos they serve you are of cats. The Netflix recommendation algorithm has not shown something to me that I considered hidden but interesting in years. They just show you whatever they want to push, mostly (I worked there). You buy a pan to cook steaks on Amazon and, for some reason, the algorithm recommends to buy it along with stroboscopic lights.
        • mixdup 7mo ago
          I didn't say they were all working on the algorithm, there were a lot of people working in various content-related jobs: moderation, algorithm, partnership management with content creators, ad sales, and more
          • borroka 7mo ago
            Without getting into a she-said/he-said debate, I don't believe traffic is shrinking because of the viability of fewer engineers. If that were the case, it would also be easy to hire hundreds more. With the confusing mix of X.ai, Grok, and SpaceX, I don't think anyone would notice. X seems to be much more relevant to social and political debate than any other social media platform, which, despite a declining user base, makes it an extremely valuable tool for Musk and his circle. It may seem like I'm defending or supporting Musk, but that's not my point. What I can say is that Musk made a huge bet when he substantially, even dramatically, reduced X's workforce, and I think he won that particular bet.
  • deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
  • onlyrealcuzzo 7mo ago
    > Is X profitable? The value in X is political favor for pushing propaganda.
  • bdangubic 7mo ago
    [flagged]
  • small_model 7mo ago
    X has added more useful functionality in the last year or two than twitter did in their entire existence, it is also much snappier and reliable, that's with 5% of the workforce. I don't put this down to AI though it's more like a very lean, talented and motivated teams without layers of pointless middle people. Add AI into the mix and it's naturally going to be the way forward. Companies that stay bloated and not utilising AI will die.
• mempko 7mo ago
  Excuse me for making some pretty sharp statements. Twitter is objectively a worse product now. Musk is a deeply uncreative person who doesn't seem to actually like people and attracts people to him that are the same way. This shows in his truly uninspired products. Tesla is way behind the Chinese now. xAI is a copy cat. SpaceX seems to be taking old Soviet ideas. Musk I go on?
  • borroka 7mo ago
    I have no professional, personal, or parasocial ties to Musk, so you can safely continue without this having any effect on me beyond a normal conversation, even if contentious. I would limit the conversation to X, as it is the company that started the famous “you can do the same with 5% (or something like that) of the workforce” movement. I don't think X is objectively a worse product now, in terms of its technical and technological aspects. This is different from saying that users were better/worse before, and the same goes for the algorithm or the type of information that is “pushed” on the platform. Let's be honest: people and advertisers left X not because their product was unusable, had a bad UX/UI, etc., but for other non-technical reasons.
  • groundzeros2015 7mo ago
    > Musk is a deeply uncreative person Do you have a portfolio or something you can share? Someone can have negative character traits and we don’t have to pretend they are no longer skilled.
    • bluecheese452 7mo ago
      Do you have a source for your post?
      • groundzeros2015 7mo ago
        A source for what? Are we pretending Elon is not one of the most successful promoters of new ventures?
  • make_it_sure 7mo ago
• pants2 7mo ago
  1) This is by any source I can find, incorrect. Twitter had ~8,000 employees when Musk bought it. After layoffs that was trimmed to a low of around 1,500 employees (19%), and today it has around 2,800 employees. Also worth mentioning that a lot of Twitter's products are built on X.ai which has 1,200 core employees on Grok with 3,000+ on the Datacenter build-out side.
  • coffeebeqn 7mo ago
    Also if you put a product in maintenance mode you can easily get away with a fraction of your devs. Most people are at all times working on some definition of something new
    • noname120 7mo ago
      X is the exact opposite of in “maintenance mode” by any counts
      • pavlov 7mo ago
        Really? Has it meaningfully changed since 2022? Everything they promised like payments and a "super app" seems to have fallen by the wayside.
        • dkrich 7mo ago
          Also have to consider that it’s now private which removes the pressure of having to show any semblance of a profit or, critically, share usage or advertising statistics which could (and probably are) down dramatically since the acquisition. Being private allows the fictitious storyline to persist that “we’re doing great and everyone is using our products.”
  • sakagami0 7mo ago
    This is not true. Its about 200ish devs now on x side. Rest are other functions, and its not close to 2800
• dimgl 7mo ago
  What do you do now?
  • borroka 7mo ago
    Being rejected every day, thus subjecting myself to the humiliating ritual of modern times, by companies that I believe could make the most of my talent (my last title was Director of AI, before I was a Staff ML Scientist at a FAANG and an award-winning scientist). They all seem rather disappointed, at least in the automated rejection emails (mailboxes not monitored, of course) they send me, that they have found other candidates more suited to the position. It seems we are both disappointed, after all. Not all is lost, though. I am in the enviable position of having perfect health and decent savings.
    • adithyassekhar 7mo ago
      Could it be that these other candidates work for cheaper? They might be scared of your credentials. It's disheartening that this field has come to a race to the bottom, accelerated by AI. It's not the juniors that are at risk, it's the seniors.
      • ewgdfv 7mo ago
        Principle-agent problem. People talk crap about shareholders on here but in reality, shareholders would hate to know management are rejecting highly qualified candidates for people they can 'manage' better.
      • borroka 7mo ago
        This could be a problem, but only if I had interviews or even just a phone call from a recruiter. But I'm not even getting to that stage. I just get rejection after rejection via email for every type of company and position I apply for. Dozens of rejections, and you get to a point where it becomes a waste of time to even apply. Also, many of the job postings are clearly fake; companies like Capital One, JP Morgan, or NBC, just to name the first three companies that come to my mind, have been advertising the same positions for months, if not years. What happens is that you fall out of the loop and become invisible, if not an outcast that no one wants to touch. You reach out to your network and you receive cold indifference; all the "friends" you thought you had are not interested in providing any factual support (e.g., strong referrals). Basically, it comes to a point where you are begging for attention and some support. What's discouraging is that there are so many people in leadership positions who have terrible leadership skills or competence. Not that it's something others should think I possess, I'm clearly biased in this case, but they certainly don't have it. The world is what it is, and plenty of people get laid off and are able to get interviews and find jobs. I am certainly in part responsible for the situation I am in (not in the sense that I did anything shameful or despicable, in the sense that maybe I should have spent time developing a network different from the one I have), but it is not a fun situation to be in.