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Google and Apple both need a culling similar to what Elon did with Twitter after taking over.

quentindanjou 4mo ago
I disagree. It's not about the culling, it has never been, and actually, it makes things worse. You spend countless hours and tons of money recruiting talented people not to lay them off because you don't want a bureaucratic org. If the issue is inefficiency, tons of meetings, too much team alignment etc, then that's the issue that you need to tackle, and these issues can already appear in a 50-100 employee company. Sure, that's an easy problem to solve with a smaller size but unless you hired people for no reason, these people have a very specific set of problems to tackle and are often, in these companies, the best in class to tackle them, culling half of the company isn't going to make things better. (And X rehired part of the laid-off engineers)
- zipy124 4mo ago
  That depends who you are firing. There are many job roles who's primary output is meetings and documents. What percentage of Google employees are engineers...
whatever1 4mo ago
Google bloat gave us transformers. Apple bloat gave us a usable touchscreen only, pocket computer (famously an entire org within Apple had developed an iPod-based approach that was competing with what was released) The leaps forward need bloat. A startup can execute on specific vector direction way better. Now back to your point, what did X deliver with its lean ops? It seems that it needed 2 bailouts (one from xAI, and one from space X)
- georgeven 4mo ago
  innovation requires monopoly is a Theil one liner -- probably true too
  - lordfoom 4mo ago
    Probably not true
objclxt 4mo ago
> Google and Apple both need a culling similar to what Elon did with Twitter after taking over. You could cut Google's size by 40% and they'd still have more corporate employees than Apple. (Google has ~190k employees, Apple has ~160k but 50k of those are retail staff, so ~110k corporate)
- VirusNewbie 4mo ago
  Google is competing with nvidia (TPU), AWS (GCP), Netflix (youtube), Tesla (waymo self driving), OpenAI (Gemini), Microsoft (Workspace), Apple (Android)....
  - esprehn 4mo ago
    Apple was doing effectively everything on that list, though the self driving car was cancelled and the AI is now gemini.
    - VirusNewbie 4mo ago
      Err, maybe some of those, but there's a reason Apple is using GCP and TPUs for training their custom gemini model.
Herring 4mo ago
Is that you Musk? Twitter lost half its revenue, more than 80% of its valuation.
- HDThoreaun 4mo ago
  That was mostly because Elon told advertisers to fuck themselves at an advertising convention no?
  - nixon_why69 4mo ago
    It's impossible to disambiguate but advertiser tools, brand safety, targeting, reporting etc all need a lot of ongoing effort. If it gets harder to advertise effectively on Twitter, those dollars can very easily go elsewhere.
afavour 4mo ago
Eh, what has X/Twitter delivered since the cull? It’s basically in maintenance mode. Which is fine if that’s what you want to do, but Google and Apple definitely don’t (and I’m glad for that)
- geori 4mo ago
  He merged it with SpaceX, quickly created a few colossal datacenters for training runs and somehow turned that into a 3T company.
  - afavour 4mo ago
    That has nothing to do with culling staff at Twitter though.
- tgma 4mo ago
  > It’s basically in maintenance mode Has been in more of a maintenance mode with a multiple of those people. If anything, the pace of the product has improved. Regardless of what you think about Musk, the company he bought was a bloated mess.
  - afavour 4mo ago
    Features aside, it was making considerably more money before Musk’s cull.
- TiredOfLife 4mo ago
  Working recommended feed
UltraSane 4mo ago
"what Elon did with Twitter after taking over." You mean fire the very smart people who designed the core systems AND insult them so that anyone with options would never want to work there?

I disagree. It's not about the culling, it has never been, and actually, it makes things worse. You spend countless hours and tons of money recruiting talented people not to lay them off because you don't want a bureaucratic org. If the issue is inefficiency, tons of meetings, too much team alignment etc, then that's the issue that you need to tackle, and these issues can already appear in a 50-100 employee company. Sure, that's an easy problem to solve with a smaller size but unless you hired people for no reason, these people have a very specific set of problems to tackle and are often, in these companies, the best in class to tackle them, culling half of the company isn't going to make things better. (And X rehired part of the laid-off engineers)

zipy124 4mo ago
That depends who you are firing. There are many job roles who's primary output is meetings and documents. What percentage of Google employees are engineers...

whatever1 4mo ago

Google bloat gave us transformers. Apple bloat gave us a usable touchscreen only, pocket computer (famously an entire org within Apple had developed an iPod-based approach that was competing with what was released) The leaps forward need bloat. A startup can execute on specific vector direction way better. Now back to your point, what did X deliver with its lean ops? It seems that it needed 2 bailouts (one from xAI, and one from space X)

georgeven 4mo ago
innovation requires monopoly is a Theil one liner -- probably true too
- lordfoom 4mo ago
  Probably not true

objclxt 4mo ago

> Google and Apple both need a culling similar to what Elon did with Twitter after taking over. You could cut Google's size by 40% and they'd still have more corporate employees than Apple. (Google has ~190k employees, Apple has ~160k but 50k of those are retail staff, so ~110k corporate)

VirusNewbie 4mo ago
Google is competing with nvidia (TPU), AWS (GCP), Netflix (youtube), Tesla (waymo self driving), OpenAI (Gemini), Microsoft (Workspace), Apple (Android)....
- esprehn 4mo ago
  Apple was doing effectively everything on that list, though the self driving car was cancelled and the AI is now gemini.
  - VirusNewbie 4mo ago
    Err, maybe some of those, but there's a reason Apple is using GCP and TPUs for training their custom gemini model.

Herring 4mo ago

Is that you Musk? Twitter lost half its revenue, more than 80% of its valuation.

HDThoreaun 4mo ago
That was mostly because Elon told advertisers to fuck themselves at an advertising convention no?
- nixon_why69 4mo ago
  It's impossible to disambiguate but advertiser tools, brand safety, targeting, reporting etc all need a lot of ongoing effort. If it gets harder to advertise effectively on Twitter, those dollars can very easily go elsewhere.

afavour 4mo ago

Eh, what has X/Twitter delivered since the cull? It’s basically in maintenance mode. Which is fine if that’s what you want to do, but Google and Apple definitely don’t (and I’m glad for that)

geori 4mo ago
He merged it with SpaceX, quickly created a few colossal datacenters for training runs and somehow turned that into a 3T company.
- afavour 4mo ago
  That has nothing to do with culling staff at Twitter though.
tgma 4mo ago
> It’s basically in maintenance mode Has been in more of a maintenance mode with a multiple of those people. If anything, the pace of the product has improved. Regardless of what you think about Musk, the company he bought was a bloated mess.
- afavour 4mo ago
  Features aside, it was making considerably more money before Musk’s cull.
TiredOfLife 4mo ago
Working recommended feed

UltraSane 4mo ago

"what Elon did with Twitter after taking over." You mean fire the very smart people who designed the core systems AND insult them so that anyone with options would never want to work there?