[HN Gopher] Documents detail plans to gut Twitter's workforce
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       Documents detail plans to gut Twitter's workforce
        
       Author : minimaxir
       Score  : 33 points
       Date   : 2022-10-20 21:21 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
        
       | barbariangrunge wrote:
       | I can't imagine many engineering teams that would hold up very
       | well if 75% of the team vanished --- you would lose so much
       | knowledge of your own codebase for starters, and morale would be
       | a disaster. 90% of those who remained would start thinking of
       | switching jobs out of pure pessimism.
       | 
       | Then again, I bet it won't happen. The actual cuts will be far
       | smaller once it's actually time to do it... Unless his finances
       | are too strained I guess
        
       | conro1108 wrote:
       | https://archive.ph/HvaqT
        
       | samketchup wrote:
       | I can't wait!
        
       | phillipcarter wrote:
       | A plan to reduce staff by 75% and double revenue in three years
       | doesn't make a lot of sense to me. There's almost certainly a
       | good deal of wasted money at Twitter, like at every large tech
       | company. Dumb bets like NFT profile pics come to mind. But not to
       | the tune of 75%. I cannot see how they can meaningfully operate,
       | let alone meaningfully evolve to generate _more_ revenue, one of
       | the largest social networks on earth with 1/4 staff.
        
       | programmarchy wrote:
       | Sounds like this plan was in place before Musk's offer, but one
       | way to do this would be to "authenticate all humans" as Musk said
       | he wanted to do in order to remove bots. That would drastically
       | reduce the content moderation workload.
        
       | minimaxir wrote:
       | How does a _75% workforce cut_ even work logistically for a
       | company not on its deathbed?
        
         | bob1029 wrote:
         | 25% of twitter's current employee base is still ~1,900
         | people...
         | 
         | I don't see why this would be infeasible.
        
           | thefreeman wrote:
           | You think the top performing 25% are going to want to stick
           | around when you fire 3/4 of their coworkers?
        
             | mentos wrote:
             | What if you double their salaries?
        
               | phphphphp wrote:
               | At which point you're taking on a huge risk for less
               | savings, savings that'll shrink over time and introduce
               | new challenges: after-all, doubling the remaining
               | employee's salaries gives those employees all the power
               | when it comes to negotiating -- suddenly, each and
               | everyone knows just how valuable and important they
               | are... and the company has much less room to negotiate to
               | retain them.
               | 
               | And that assumes they can even cut the right 75%: what if
               | the measure they use to determine the "valuable"
               | employees turns out to be wrong? How do you even begin to
               | undo / address that when everyone is being paid 2x?
        
         | sn0w_crash wrote:
         | How does a company like this need 7,500 people?
        
           | phillipcarter wrote:
           | Because it's a set of massive engineering systems,
           | applications, advertising market, social institution, etc.?
           | Big, complex sociotechnical systems require a lot of human
           | beings to keep moving along.
        
             | sn0w_crash wrote:
             | This is not a company with multiple products.
             | 
             | The ad platform is just barely usable, with an only
             | slightly better UI than LinkedIn.
             | 
             | Its core product has not changed meaningfully in 10 years.
             | 
             | The company down much of its developer-facing offering
             | years ago.
             | 
             | There are e-commerce websites with a more complex stack
             | than Twitter.
             | 
             | This is a product that can run on 1,000 people and nothing
             | about the user experience will be different.
             | 
             | There is probably so much administrative, HR, and
             | operational bloat that the company probably rivals most
             | universities.
        
         | StanislavPetrov wrote:
         | Sometimes a 75% workforce cut is exactly what a company on its
         | deathbed needs. In the case of Twitter they wouldn't even need
         | to fire anyone. Just make employees sign a statement
         | reaffirming their commitment to free speech and the 1st
         | Amendment (ala forced DEI statements at other companies) and
         | 75% of Twitter employees would likely depart on their own.
        
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       (page generated 2022-10-20 23:01 UTC)