[HN Gopher] Musk's inner circle worked through weekend to cement...
___________________________________________________________________
Musk's inner circle worked through weekend to cement Twitter layoff
plans
Author : mfiguiere
Score : 283 points
Date : 2022-10-31 13:59 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| mberning wrote:
| s3p wrote:
| I would hope HN could stay free of overused nonsense buzzwords
| like "deep state", but alas here we are.
| ayewo wrote:
| The precursor was this recent WaPo article _Tesla engineers were
| on-site to evaluate the Twitter staff's code, workers said_ [1]
| which hinted at the cuts.
|
| 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33387722
| TaylorGood wrote:
| Twitters staff count has felt bloated at ~7,500 employees and I
| can't help but think of "rest and vest" clips from HBO's Silicon
| Valley, especially during Covid WFH.
| themitigating wrote:
| Silicon Valley is not a documentary but entertainment.
| spamizbad wrote:
| Interesting that David Sacks and Jason Calacanis are "Staff
| software engineers" - assuming that's accurate. To my knowledge,
| neither have worked as professional software engineers. Calacanis
| is a journalist turned entrepreneur/investor and Sacks is a
| former management consultant who became a C-suite during the
| dotcom boom who later became an entrepreneur/investor.
| shadowtree wrote:
| You can get an insight into their thinking in their weekly
| podcast called "All-In", together with Chamath Palihapitiya and
| David Friedberg.
|
| Link: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/all-in-with-
| chamath-ja... Also on Youtube:
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCESLZhusAkFfsNsApnjF_Cg
|
| Supposedly has a couple million listeners.
|
| Sacks and Calacanis were named in the lawsuit between Twitter
| and Musk.
|
| And it is very clear that none of them have any real tech
| insight, but a lot of VC / raccoon mindset.
| make3 wrote:
| clearly placeholder titles
| throwaway4736 wrote:
| It's a shame that Twitter is no longer public because I can't
| imagine something more profitable than shorting a company than
| Jason Calacanis is an executive of.
| a13n wrote:
| Why?
| [deleted]
| skinnymuch wrote:
| I am 99% sure I agree with you. However I'm a bit out of the
| loop on Calacanis overall to know why specifically you're
| saying this. I'm up for you giving me some keywords to look
| up on him too and doing my own research then.
| darawk wrote:
| This may not be the most comprehensive anti-Calacanis take,
| but it is probably the most entertaining:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nK0NfL2M5L4&t=1296s
| dmix wrote:
| Obviously that was a just formality to give them a title while
| they are in the building advising, it came from the company
| index system not their formal job description... another
| nothing burger.
| joegahona wrote:
| It's probably just to get them into the system asap. I've seen
| this at companies in the past -- someone gets input into the HR
| system with a role/title that has nothing to do with what they
| actually end up doing. One time the HR person screwed up and a
| lower-level data-entry guy was mistakenly listed above the CEO.
| I have a screenshot somewhere; some decent comedy for a few
| days until the CEO noticed.
| [deleted]
| jedberg wrote:
| An interesting clue in here. He tweeted internal data claiming it
| showed that the board lied during his court case.
|
| My guess is he plans to sue the board and the (now ex) CEO using
| the internal data to at least get back all the money they get (or
| more).
| swozey wrote:
| Evidently Musk had Tweeps work all weekend on the new Verified
| feature lest they get fired, and some were fired "for cause"
| anyway.
| https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1587029446061686784
| dave78 wrote:
| Most of the national/international media has been scrutinizing
| Twitter all weekend, specifically looking for signs of layoffs.
| It seems odd that this person would have scooped them all on
| that? Not saying it's impossible or anything, but it does make
| me a little suspicious.
| swozey wrote:
| Not that I'd say use them as the only source but they've been
| a source for other layoffs for a long time and he's usually
| correct if not always. He's the author of a few Engineering
| books (The Pragmatic Engineer, etc.) so he gets a lot of
| inside information from current and past SWEs.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Yesterday it was "lay of 25% of workforce _today_ to avoid
| paying some bonus thingie that kicks in Nov 1 ". Well,
| there's still couple of hours in which this may become true,
| but I don't expect it, and meanwhile I see the bonus angle
| has been silently dropped.
| yboris wrote:
| How is it legal to demand people work on weekends?
|
| How is it legal to (even threaten) firing if a new assigned
| task that takes a long time is not done on time?
| LightG wrote:
| Murica!!!
| tyingq wrote:
| US "at will" employment laws.
| myspy wrote:
| Musk is a narcistic asshole, he commands at will and sadly a
| large group of people stay behind him and defend every step.
| jdm2212 wrote:
| For salaried, at-will employment, the employer can demand
| whatever they want and fire you for whatever reason they
| want. There are exceptions for, like, sexual harassment and
| racial discrimination, but not for "I disagree with the boss
| about what is a realistic project timeline".
| gitfan86 wrote:
| The nice thing is that this goes both ways. If you are an
| at-will employee you can send an email that says "I resign
| effective immediately" and walk away and never speak to
| anyone at that company ever again.
| robin_reala wrote:
| Who's hurt more: the company whose employee leaves on the
| spot, or the employee whose company fires them on the
| spot? At-will is asymmetric.
| prepend wrote:
| I've worked in many positions where I had unique
| knowledge. If the company fired me without notice, I'd
| have a new job within a few days.
|
| If I quit without notice, high revenue systems could fail
| or not launch.
|
| I kind of like software because of this. An individual
| has great value. Of course, I wouldn't want to work for a
| company that fires people Willy nilly.
|
| But for software at-will can definitely be asymmetric
| benefiting the employee. Software developers aren't
| replaceable cogs.
| gitfan86 wrote:
| It is the definition of symmetrical. Both parties can cut
| ties at any time without any warning.
|
| In general employers are able to benefit from this
| symmetrical relationship more often though since they are
| only losing a small percentage of their workers while the
| employee is losing 100% of the income they were getting
| from that employeer.
| Volundr wrote:
| Symmetry can exist on one axis but not another. Sure it's
| symmetrical on the "actions an entity can take axis", but
| when people refer to the employee/employer relationship
| being asymmetrical they are discussing the risk or impact
| axis.
| SantalBlush wrote:
| >It is the definition of symmetrical.
|
| GP was clearly talking about the assymetry of
| consequences, not the action itself. You intentionally
| misinterpreted them.
| [deleted]
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Depends on the role, the company, and the timing. A
| single worker in an important position leaving on the
| spot, dropping some critical work half-way done and
| taking all the context and specific knowledge with them,
| could easily torpedo a million dollar deal. Or, a single
| employee leaving could trigger a cascade, and soon you're
| short a whole project team.
|
| _In general_ , I'd say at-will still favors employers,
| who are in a better position to structurally mitigate the
| threat of a critical employee leaving, even though they
| often don't do so.
| beowulfey wrote:
| Employees often depend on prior employers as references
| and for social connections. It is rare that anyone would
| actually walk out without notice, as doing so would
| almost always hurt their careers even if that job was
| truly shitty (the old adage to "never burn bridges" does
| apply!).
|
| Employers do not experience this same effect. Even if
| lots of people get laid off from a company without
| notice, there will almost always be people who are
| willing to take new jobs there.
| cercatrova wrote:
| > _Employees often depend on prior employers as
| references_
|
| Not really. I have not once been asked for references
| from previous companies.
| drewbeck wrote:
| Ah an individual data point, the creme de la creme of
| evidence.
| cercatrova wrote:
| I have not heard of any other developers needing to
| furnish references either. Just ask on HN or Reddit or
| Twitter, most devs will say they're not needed.
| ghaff wrote:
| I've supplied references. Don't know if they've ever been
| checked. But it's either other people I know in the
| industry or a friend at my employer.
| kcplate wrote:
| Mainly because many companies now have policies that will
| only communicate three things about former employee: time
| employed, ending salary, and eligibility for re-hire.
|
| You might make an assumption from the last item, but
| without specific details and by the time you might be
| confirming employment the ineligibility for rehire likely
| will not disqualify the candidate...especially if other
| former employers have you tagged as eligible.
| Volundr wrote:
| I'll note that a company that depends on a single
| employee like this has failed to plan and is already in
| trouble. No matter how well you treat them, your critical
| employees will leave. You might be able to pay them well
| enough to limit the risk on them taking another job
| (though few employers do) but even with that sooner or
| later they'll win the lottery, get hit by a bus, or just
| retire.
|
| A business can and must hedge against critical employees
| leaving. It's much harder as an employee to hedge against
| your employer giving you the boot.
| josho wrote:
| As an example to further illustrate your point, it is
| possible for a business to purchase key employee
| insurance. As an employee we do not have the same
| privilege.
| celestialcheese wrote:
| Employees have exactly this - it's called "Unemployment
| Insurance". YMMV depends on which state you live in, but
| many states, mandate employers pay into this so that when
| an employee is let go, they receive compensation.
|
| You can debate whether it's enough or fair or whatever,
| but insurance against unemployment does exist for
| employees.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| It's just a nitpick and it doesn't impact GP's point all
| that much, but: surely employees in the US have some sort
| of job loss insurance - if not standalone, then attached
| to a mortgage or life insurance?
| bombcar wrote:
| It's usually unemployment insurance and it's provided by
| the state (literally, it'll be the state the employee
| resides in - here's California's: https://edd.ca.gov ).
|
| There ARE "insurance" products that will "defer your
| credit/mortgage payments in case of a job loss" - they
| are almost all universally some form of scam (or at least
| a very bad "insurance").
| ghaff wrote:
| I think it's the state of the employer but I'm not sure.
| After all that's who is paying into the fund. At least
| that's what I remember when I looked into it when I was
| living in a different state than my employer and things
| were looking precarious.
| bombcar wrote:
| I'm out of state compared to my employer and they had to
| establish a "nexus" or something because I am here, which
| required them to do something like register as a business
| and withhold state tax; I assume they're paying into some
| sort of unemployment in my state for me. All of those
| things became much more important when Covid hit, but
| cross-border employment has been big in Chicago, New
| York, Minneapolis, etc for a long-time, so it's a solved
| problem (by someone).
| ghaff wrote:
| I was commuting across state lines at the time. Never
| looked deeply as I left before it became relevant and it
| was what it was in any case. MA would have been more than
| NH and I thought it would be NH but not sure why.
|
| But the bigger point is that unemployment insurance is
| very little money compared to a good professional salary.
| ghaff wrote:
| Not really. There's unemployment insurance. But in NH for
| example to pick one state I'm familiar with, the maximum
| is $427 per week for 26 weeks. Some other states are
| certainly more but for someone in a high paying job it's
| not much. So a max of about $11,000. I'm familiar with
| other insurance other than your own savings.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| As GP said, sometimes, there is a cascade effect. One
| employee quits, and the whole team follows. Sometimes
| going to a competitor.
|
| In tech, it is relatively easy for an employee to hedge
| against getting fired. It is a well paid job, in high
| demand.
|
| It is not the same if the company fires its janitors, but
| I don't think I will stay in a literally filthy company
| that fires its janitors.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| This causes minimal hard to a business and zero harm to
| Musk's ability to afford yachts. But a very large number
| of employees have jobs because they need to pay rent and
| buy food. Losing that job is a significant change to
| their lives. Software engineers are more likely to have
| large savings that make it easier for them to say "fuck
| you" to their boss and leave but in general this system
| of at will employment is not actually balanced.
| nopenopenopeno wrote:
| Correct. In the US, all working people serve and exist
| under authoritarian regimes as a matter of life or death.
| xnorswap wrote:
| > the employer can demand whatever they want and fire you
| for whatever reason they want
|
| In the US.
|
| I'm glad I work in a country where workers actually have
| rights.
| [deleted]
| bpodgursky wrote:
| You probably don't work in a country with a 3.5%
| unemployment rate.
| xnorswap wrote:
| Actually I do, precisely 3.5% in fact:
|
| https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleno
| tin...
| nebula8804 wrote:
| That unemployment rate is nonsense. If you want a job
| that does not pay you enough to even afford a studio
| apartment in many locales then yes there are multiple
| jobs ready to take you. Hell they'll even provide you
| some free (candy\pens\fast food\a pat on the back) to
| further tempt the deal. For everyone else that
| unemployment rate is a mirage.
| LightG wrote:
| Are you telling me there are no housing affordability
| problems in the US?
|
| Fascinating.
| drstewart wrote:
| Good for you.
| lucozade wrote:
| Well yes. Yes it is.
| jdm2212 wrote:
| Everything in life is tradeoffs. American software
| engineers get paid more than basically anyone else in the
| world, but we also have less job security. What's
| preferable just depends on your risk aversion vs marginal
| utility of money.
| noirscape wrote:
| To offer a bit of counter-perspective, do keep in mind
| that while American SWEs do get _paid_ more on the
| average, the costs of living in the US are also sky-high
| the areas where big software companies operate.
|
| Yes, in the EU I get paid a lot less, but the cost of
| living in Europe is also not nearly as expensive
| (although we also do pay more taxes). That's not even
| accounting for job security or workers rights, I seem to
| just have more money left over each month on average than
| any Americans I know of in the same industry because the
| cost of living is just lower and I have less heavy
| unexpected expenses (healthcare being the big one of
| course, but when I hear what US SWEs need to pay just to
| stay housed and fed, it makes absolutely no sense in
| prices compared to the EU).
|
| That's not a case of risk aversion, its a case of
| relative vs absolute pay. In relative pay, the EU pays
| their employees just straight up better. The US is only
| better in absolute pay, but that gets drained quickly due
| to the local economy scaling up to match.
| xur17 wrote:
| I would be really curious to see the numbers behind this.
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| > American software engineers get paid more than
| basically anyone else in the world, but we also have less
| job security. What's preferable just depends on your risk
| aversion vs marginal utility of money.
|
| Of course, this comment is predicated on the assumption
| that America's loose labour laws are the reason for this
| salary disparity, and I'm not personally willing to
| follow you to that conclusion.
|
| I think it's far more likely that American software
| engineers get paid more because the industry was
| effectively born there, and it was born there due to
| historical accidents like the US being where the
| transistor was invented, the advancement of technology
| due to government spending during World War II and the
| subsequent space race, etc, not to mention the US being
| the center of the VC world, which has its own deep
| history.
| habitue wrote:
| A tradeoff can exist without implying that the tradeoff
| is necessary.
|
| In other words, America has A but not B, Europe has B but
| not A, and there doesn't happen to be a place with both A
| and B, but it's not impossible in principle. Workers
| would still need to decide if they value A or B more,
| even if in a perfect world they could have both.
| [deleted]
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| Fair enough. I took the parent comment to be implying
| that that tradeoff was _necessary_ --i.e. to have high
| salaries you have to have loose labour laws--as opposed
| to a simple statement about the current world we live in.
|
| If it's the latter, absolutely you are right, and it is
| certainly the case that tech employees today are forced
| to make the choice between New York/California tech
| salaries and strong labour laws, regardless of whether or
| not there's a necessary inverse relationship between
| those two things.
| viraptor wrote:
| American software engineers * in unicorns from SV *. They
| have their own scale which is not really a national
| thing. Then you also have to adjust for the cost of
| living / not included insurances etc.
| llbeansandrice wrote:
| Just because American SWEs are able to exploit the
| current workers paradigm in the US due to eye-watering
| amounts of money from VCs and the state of ad-tech
| doesn't mean jack shit for any at-will salaried employee
| that isn't paid in truck-loads of equity.
|
| There are states in the US where teacher's unions are
| out-lawed. US workers don't have rights. I have a feeling
| you might feel differently if not part of the segment of
| the working class that happens to be seeing benefits atm.
| kcplate wrote:
| > There are states in the US where teacher's unions are
| out-lawed.
|
| That's a bold statement. Care to back it up?
| lawn wrote:
| The rules are the same for less privileged workers, so
| what's preferable also depends on how good you already
| have it.
| ryan93 wrote:
| It means if you lose out on a job to a less qualified
| person there is much less chance it ever gets rectified
| in your favor.
| monksy wrote:
| That is not true in the least. Keeping corps honest about
| that requires legal action.
|
| https://www.cnet.com/tech/gaming/electronic-arts-faces-
| overt...
|
| There are legal, labor, consequences for cultures that
| expect more than 40 hours on average.
| grumple wrote:
| This is not true. I don't know who told you this.
|
| All of these relationships are two way. If they make a
| demand to change the expectations of working hours and work
| time, you say no, I won't do that. They can fire you if
| they don't like the relationship, but even in the US you're
| likely to win _at least_ unemployment benefits.
| itg wrote:
| I had a manager like this once. They won't explicitly ask you
| to work on the weekends, but the deadline in combination with
| the workload made it obvious you would be working on the
| weekend and late nights. So glad I left that toxic place.
| nemo44x wrote:
| They are all exempt employees so they aren't covered by a lot
| of labor law, such as getting paid "overtime", etc. This is
| how professional, salaried employment works. Exempt employees
| tend to be paid very well and have great benefits though.
|
| You can fire an employee for no reason at all since
| employment is "at will". Musk probably assumes a good deal of
| the workforce is lazy and/or incompetent and he doesn't want
| to pay them. So he's figuring out who to fire.
| throwaway1851 wrote:
| If the terminations are happening for the purpose of
| depriving employees of stock-related compensation they are
| about to earn, that may be an illegal reason. For example,
| you cannot let a salesperson snag a huge deal and then fire
| him or her to avoid paying the commission - it's not an "at
| will" issue.
| nemo44x wrote:
| RSUs only vest if you are an employee the day they vest.
| If a salesperson wins a deal and you fire them before
| paying their commission that's different since they
| closed the deal first.
|
| It's very common for companies to let individuals go
| before bonuses vest.
| [deleted]
| atkailash wrote:
| m00x wrote:
| It's always been legal to ask tech workers to work unpaid OT.
| Only places like FAANG, and a few others, pay extra for on-
| call.
|
| Usually your contracts doesn't specify time worked per week,
| only that you finish your work.
| weeznerps wrote:
| Of FAANG I think only Google does that.
| sp332 wrote:
| Even if the firing is legal - and California does have
| restrictions when a company fires a large number of people at
| once - arguing that it's "for cause" to withhold severance
| packages is going to be a lot more difficult.
| User23 wrote:
| For the rank and file layoffs yes, you need to have a
| notice period and those people will probably get severance
| at least equal to that much pay. But C suite executives are
| another matter. It's very likely that Elon Musk received
| access to information after taking control that supports a
| for cause dismissal.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I the US your manager can demand the moon be sitting on his
| desk by Monday morning, or you are fired.
|
| I think this is a reality check and a power play by Musk to
| remind employees of the fact.
| bombcar wrote:
| I mean that would be begging for the "pantsless on the
| desk" method of quitting, but I get the point.
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| There's no legal framework for weekends. They were originally
| created due to massive labor advocacy and strikes. I imagine
| since such advocacy has been undermined for decades it makes
| sense the victories the advocacy fought for are also being
| clawed back.
| sneak wrote:
| In the US, there is a fair amount of respect (in business at
| least) for the idea of "consent to continue the interaction
| can be revoked with or without cause at any time".
|
| I personally can't see a good reason why it should be illegal
| outside the rare edge case where there is only a single
| employer in a geographical region, and even that unfortunate
| situation should probably be remediated with a different type
| of government intervention.
|
| Employers should be able to be unreasonable and shoot their
| business in the foot, no?
| falcolas wrote:
| > Employers should be able to be unreasonable and shoot
| their business in the foot, no?
|
| No.
|
| Not when they hold an employees ability to meet basic human
| needs and their access to Healthcare over their employee's
| heads.
|
| At-will employment is ideologically built on the equal
| splitting of the power between an employer and employee.
| The reality is as far from equal as can be.
| sneak wrote:
| How does Twitter hold any sway whatsoever over their
| employees' abilities to meet basic human needs, or their
| access to healthcare? I think for this to hold true, you
| have to assume that anyone working there must have zero
| savings, and no other job prospects.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I see a ton of signs saying help wanted in frot of
| businesses.
| falcolas wrote:
| Anecdotally, any business with a sign in their front
| window is not a business which can replace a full time
| job, let alone employment by Twitter.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| There are full time jobs, but I agree that they likely
| won't match a Twitter salary.
| bombcar wrote:
| I've seen signs for commercial truck drivers around town
| in front windows, starting $80k and "local deliveries
| only".
|
| For certain types of jobs it's still the most effective
| method out there.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| There's no law that says the number they give on the sign
| is the exact number you get on your offer letter and not
| some "work for us for X amount of time and get Y amount
| of pay increase over that time" that may (or may not)
| eventually reach 80k
| bombcar wrote:
| That's all true, but around here they're getting damn
| desperate.
|
| Not saying it's worth doing, or a good job, but they're
| out there, especially in the smaller towns.
| rakoo wrote:
| > I personally can't see a good reason why it should be
| illegal
|
| There is a big one: the employer/employee is not a balanced
| relationship, the employer clearly has more power over
| where things go. So it's absolutely normal to protect the
| employee from being asked too much, _especially_ when said
| employee doesn 't benefit from the overtime.
|
| There is a big bias towards taking companies as important
| citizens whose needs must be catered for, but it's taking
| more and more importance when the actual citizens aren't
| listened to. It is important to put companies back to what
| they are: a social construct for exploiting people and make
| profit from their work.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| > the employer/employee is not a balanced relationship
|
| Sure it is, they want my labor, I want to sell my labor.
| We agree on a price.
|
| If my price changes, or they are unwilling to buy it any
| more I find a new person to buy my labor.
|
| I was looking for a job when I found this one, and I will
| be looking again when I find my next one.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| It's typically held that the average employer being able
| to go without a worker in a given position much longer
| than the average worker can go without a job is what
| makes it uneven. Saying "no" is far riskier to one side
| than the other. There also tend to be large information
| imbalances, in practice.
| kbelder wrote:
| That these questions are being asked makes me think software
| engineers are very detached from the other 95% of humanity.
| sokoloff wrote:
| 5% seemed high by a lot. It's high, but not by as much as
| I'd have guessed. It seems about 2.5% of the US workforce
| is in software development.
| nvarsj wrote:
| Not sure I trust this source. He seems to relay rumours based
| on second hand sources. At least from Blind, it seems like all
| reports of employees being fired so far is fake. Not even sure
| the weekend work story is true.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| It's not a good idea to conflate layoffs of the rank-and-file
| with the 3 execs that were fired "for cause". At the exec
| level, it's a whole different ballgame. All of these execs are
| multi, multi millionaires. I'd honestly be pretty shocked if
| they don't sue, and at least from what I know now I'd be
| shocked if they don't win. In exec contracts with golden
| parachutes, "for cause" clauses are almost always very specific
| and normally entail breaking the law or company policy. That
| is, unless these execs were sexually harassing people or
| stealing money, "We think you did a bad job" won't cross the
| "for cause" threshold.
| rjzzleep wrote:
| I'm all for the European don't work unpaid overtime, but what I
| don't get is the sense of entitlement these people had, when
| they were threatening to leave in advance and then decided
| they'd rather just stay in their cushy jobs in the hopes that
| Musk would change his mind. "WE WILL SHOW YOU ELON" - Show what
| exactly? That billing and other completely standard
| cookiecutter SaaS features can't be implemented by other
| engineers for what is ultimately a near real-time messaging
| platform with marketing hooks.
|
| Everything in this story is a complete mess. The acquirer, his
| attitude towards workers, the entitlement and complete delusion
| of the workers and even more than that the misleading of the
| public AND the workers of the previous arguably failed
| management, along with their belief that they are the ultimate
| gatekeepers of truth in this world.
|
| I'm not sure what deeper societal lesson this whole thing
| entails, but it definitely in part shows two societies, both of
| which are completely detached from the normal hardships an
| average human on this planet has to go through.
| taurath wrote:
| You're almost there - which systemic problems in society are
| creating this elysium like class system where we jeer about
| the battles of the ascendant elite vs the shrinking bourgeois
| in a city where people beg for water on the street?
| rglover wrote:
| The pitfalls of extreme comfort. You have a place like the
| Bay Area with near perfect weather, obscene amounts of money,
| and at least until relatively recently, a social environment
| that lorded you as a "rockstar."
|
| You look at your bank account and think "yeah, I AM a
| Rockstar! I DO deserve this! Everybody wants to be ME!"
|
| Rinse and repeat that general attitude for ten years or so
| and blammo (which is even more explosive considering large
| chunks of the millennial generation were already coddled--and
| yes, I'm a millennial). You get a bunch of entitled brats who
| view anyone who isn't doing what they're doing as _less than_
| (which is ironic considering those "less-thans" keep the
| bubble they live in running--electricity, food delivery,
| sewage systems, etc).
|
| Pepper in the absolutely psychotic, cult-level diatribe these
| people sputter about "changing the world" and "making dents"
| and you have a low-level Jim Jones field jamboree brewing.
| It's absolutely zero surprise what's come out of SV over the
| last decade and change.
|
| And that doesn't even factor in the pharmaceuticals!
| [deleted]
| avrionov wrote:
| The weather is not perfect in the Bay Area. The perfect
| weather is 300 miles south in Santa Barbara.
| prepend wrote:
| It's really nice compared to most of the US. No
| blizzards. No heatwaves.
|
| Of course Santa Barbara is nicer, but the bay is nicer
| than most of the world. Maybe 75%.
| rjzzleep wrote:
| Maybe throw in a landmark forum, after you failed your
| first startup. I've actually seen people walk past hundreds
| of homeless people in the mission as if they don't exist,
| only to sit down in a flat in the middle of them to tell
| your tech buddy (me) that they're changing the world with
| the next photo sharing app. I had a little dystopia vibe,
| but then again I grew up in Europe so what do I know.
| kcplate wrote:
| >a landmark forum
|
| Oh Lordy...I had a boss send me to a "management seminar
| that he found exceptional" that turned out to be that
| train wreck around 20 years ago. I think I lasted maybe
| an hour before I got up and left in the middle of the
| session with the speaker yelling at me to sit down (and
| some rude asshole trying to block me from
| leaving...unsuccessfully).
|
| I called my boss and told him I left, that I didn't care
| if he got a refund, and to fire me if he wanted (he
| didn't).
| UncleMeat wrote:
| It isn't an entitled attitude to refuse to work over the
| weekend under threat of losing your job to ship a new
| feature that isn't actually urgent at the whims of your new
| CEO who has spent the last few months publicly shitting all
| over you.
| rglover wrote:
| You're correct. I think that behavior is just the flip
| side of what I described above (instead of entitlement in
| favor of comfort, entitlement in favor of abusive
| behavior being shrugged off as "genius at work").
|
| Both behaviors are ignorant and exist in an altered state
| of reality that's long-term destructive.
| kweingar wrote:
| > they were threatening to leave in advance and then decided
| they'd rather just stay in their cushy jobs in the hopes that
| Musk would change his mind.
|
| I imagine that at this point, many are staying until they get
| fired so they can collect severance pay.
|
| That is what I would do. I absolutely would not work for
| Elon's Twitter long term unless they paid me a king's ransom,
| but I would definitely stick around and jump through the
| hoops just long enough to get a nice payout.
| luckylion wrote:
| > The acquirer, his attitude towards workers
|
| "Workers" is strange to me when talking about people who make
| 5-10x the national average (i.e. make more than many average
| executives in other industries). They're employees, but
| "workers" implies blue collar in my opinion. I'm fine with
| including staff in retail, restaurants etc, but someone
| making $500k+ a year doesn't fit into that category.
| fknorangesite wrote:
| > They're employees, but "workers" implies blue collar in
| my opinion.
|
| You are (understandably) conflating "worker" with "working
| class", but these are different contexts. A worker is
| anyone who must, well, work for a living as opposed to
| their income coming from property/capital.
| luckylion wrote:
| Wouldn't you differentiate between workers and
| executives? Is the CEO a worker if he doesn't own the
| company?
|
| Tying it to the salary makes sense to me. If you get paid
| minimum wage, asking you to work overtime without
| additional pay is unjust. You get paid a minimum wage
| worker's life-time-earnings per year? It's perfectly fine
| to ask you to come in this weekend for an urgent project.
| root_axis wrote:
| Executives are different because of their compensation
| structure. When you're being paid via stock and option
| grants, money being used to pay "workers" is coming
| directly out of your pocket, so in this way executives
| are naturally a different class of employee.
| shawabawa3 wrote:
| Most FANG senior software engineers have the majority of
| their comp as stock, so by that metric they are more
| "executives" than "workers"
| sokoloff wrote:
| You can always _ask_.
| kreeben wrote:
| "I'm going to _ask_ you to go ahead and come in on
| Saturday and I'm also going to _ask_ you to go ahead and
| come in on Sunday and I'm going to keep this stapler."
| fknorangesite wrote:
| I am not making any argument here about whether this
| specific incident is fair or whatever. I'm just
| clarifying how the word "worker" is used in the context
| of economic and labour theory, and where your blue-collar
| misunderstanding likely came from.
|
| Yes, I am a well-paid SWE. But I must still work for my
| salary; my income does not come from owning capital.
| That's the crucial difference.
| Volundr wrote:
| > You get paid a minimum wage worker's life-time-earnings
| per year? It's perfectly fine to ask you to come in this
| weekend for an urgent project.
|
| Something on fire? Sure. Regulation means this project
| must be done Monday? Maybe, thought I'm wondering why
| management didn't start it sooner. A failure to plan on
| your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.
|
| New CEO sets an arbitrary deadline for no reason other
| than to cull the heard? Fuck that.
| chasd00 wrote:
| > they were threatening to leave in advance and then decided
| they'd rather just stay in their cushy jobs
|
| it's the epitome of Twitter, overflowing with righteous
| indignation online but won't get off their ass to do anything
| IRL.
| [deleted]
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| I appreciate how Elon's demonstrating the value of labor unions
| to technology workers.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > Another person familiar with the deal who spoke on the
| condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters last week
| said the total number of layoffs is likely to be closer to 50
| percent.
|
| Unless I'm missing something, the only sources for this article
| are a mix of speculation and anonymous sources who can't even
| agree with each other about the layoff.
| yrgulation wrote:
| This is mainly media workers exploiting current events for
| traffic, even if their content is misleading. We really need to
| sort out media corruption and incompetence.
| [deleted]
| fasthands9 wrote:
| Washington Post isn't a random blog.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/search/?query=twitter+elon&fa.
| ..
|
| Did a quick search of Elon + Twitter. Everything they
| reported seems factual and tied to things that actually
| happened? If Twitter does lay off a large amount of people
| will you admit that Washington Post probably had good sources
| or continue to be continually skeptical?
|
| I think part of wanting a good media atmosphere is rewarding
| news sources that are shown to be reliable - and I would
| argue Washington Post is close to that.
| phone8675309 wrote:
| habitue wrote:
| > This is mainly media workers exploiting current events for
| traffic
|
| This is basically what news is. The media "exploits" (reports
| on) current events, gets traffic and then pays its employees
| georgeg23 wrote:
| Do Twitter employees have a safe place to discuss this?
| ddingus wrote:
| On them. I absolutely would have no trouble finding /
| creating a space and the Twitter people are likely far more
| capable.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Phone, email, and in person are safe if you trust your
| counterparty?
| forbiddenvoid wrote:
| Personal email, obviously. Never discuss anything of this
| nature on any communication medium that is owned by your
| employer. There's a reason "Direct Message" labeling
| overtook "Private Message" in chat apps.
| ghaff wrote:
| Depending upon how sensitive I'd generally try to avoid
| written communications in general. It's easy for even
| well-meaning friends, current or ex-workers to forward
| something without thinking it through.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> Do Twitter employees have a safe place to discuss this?_
|
| How did people communicate before the invention of Twitter
| and employer provided email and slack channels?
| Emigre_ wrote:
| Bulletin board systems?
| burkaman wrote:
| Sources cited in the article are:
|
| - four people familiar with the discussions who spoke on the
| condition of anonymity
|
| - numerous employees contacted by The Post, who spoke on the
| condition of anonymity
|
| - tweets from some of the people involved
|
| - photos obtained by The Washington Post
|
| - A document filed with financial regulators Monday
|
| - interviews and documents obtained by The Post
|
| - court records
| Balgair wrote:
| I dunno.
|
| WaPo isn't the best of new reporting agencies [0], but it's
| certainly not the worst. They do have standards and they don't
| make up the large majority of their data. Meaning, they have
| actually talked to someone that is 'familiar' with the 'deal'
| at some point 'last week.' It's not _pure_ speculation on WaPo
| 's part, though it maybe pure-unrefined-grade-A speculation on
| the contact's part.
|
| If I had to bet, and many HNers out there are currently in that
| seat, then I'd bet on their reporting over other forms of pure
| speculation.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Post#Criticism_...
| slg wrote:
| Yeah, insiders not knowing the full details of Musk's plan
| because Musk doesn't have a detailed plan yet seems more
| likely than WaPo just making some stuff up.
| kylecordes wrote:
| As a casual observer, it appears that he moves very, very
| quickly. An insider might have read his mind yesterday but
| not be familiar with his current plan being executed today.
| Of course this can lead to big results in some cases and
| erratic chaos in others.
| stusmall wrote:
| Honestly, that isn't a super convincing source. Every news
| outlet has a criticism section. For an almost 150 year old
| organization, that is pretty sparse. Even better some of
| things in there are non-issues like "Trump repeatedly railed
| against The Washington Post on his Twitter account." Who
| didn't he tweet "fake news" at?
|
| News agencies are organizations made of humans that have
| flaws and we should always treat with a critical eye. But we
| shouldn't just dismiss one out of hand as not one of the best
| because of the existence of a "Criticism and controversies"
| section on Wikipedia especially when it is _FAR_ tamer than
| many mainstream competitors.
| [deleted]
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Rahul_Ligma wrote:
| more_corn wrote:
| Are you disagreeing that layoffs are happening at twitter?
| Elon told investors it would happen, and he needs to increase
| profit by $1.5B to stop losing money. Layoffs are guaranteed.
| The question is will it be 25% as reported or 75% as Elon
| promised. The answer is we can't know because nobody knows.
| It'll probably something in between.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| I am disagreeing that they have happened, or that news
| sources have any accurate or reportable info on what will
| happen
|
| They have a bunch of rumors, and panicked employees as
| "sources" none of which are likely in a position to know
| anything with any degree of certainty and it is widely
| irresponsible to report on it as if it was factual
| rchaud wrote:
| What investors? The company is being delisted in one week.
| amalcon wrote:
| The investors in the acquisition? A company doesn't need
| to be listed on an exchange to have investors.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Can verify that Twitter is laying people off. Several contacts
| at Twitter were laid off this weekend and hoping they I could
| submit their resumes to my current employer.
|
| They were told that these were performance based terminations,
| despite not receiving any negative evaluations during their
| time at Twitter. They were also told they needed to sign NDAs
| in order to receive any severance.
|
| Can't confirm the %.
| bambataa wrote:
| Are they being laid off on the Sunday so that they miss their
| 1 Nov vest date? I find a reprehensible way to treat people.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| maybe performance of Twitter, not the particular employees?
| pc86 wrote:
| That's called a layoff.
| chris11 wrote:
| Layoffs can be more expensive than terminating for cause.
| https://www.reuters.com/business/tesla-sued-by-former-
| employ...
| pc86 wrote:
| Sorry what does that have to do with the thread?
|
| Tweeps are being told these are performance-related
| terminations, _not layoffs_. It was posited that
| "performance" was referring to Twitter, not the employee.
| I simply pointed out that's exactly what a layoff was,
| and performance in this context can only mean the
| employee, not the company.
| deltree7 wrote:
| Well to be honest, Musk and his team looked at
| quantity/quality of code produced in the last 60 days, with
| hopefully a 10 minute chance to defend their lack of
| quantity/quality.
|
| Lots of coasters in big companies can get with good rating
| just be being on the good side of manager/peers and even get
| Bonus points if you are vocal about DEI and activism.
| rchaud wrote:
| You'd think he'd have sacked Tesla's self-driving unit's
| employees several times over if this was the case.
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| If some random group of people who don't know me, don't
| know my labor or my legacy at an organization, don't know
| my technical abilities, etc. fired me based off the
| quantity (and subjective quality) of code I produced in the
| last 60 days, even with 10 minutes to defend myself, I
| would be spitting mad at the disrespect and dehumanization.
| Particularly if I know I was being fired _days before_ a
| stock refresh.
|
| No, this is pissing on people and claiming it's raining.
| dirheist wrote:
| He had them print off their last 30-60 days of git commits
| and called himself a "hardcore coder" in DM's with Parag I
| really doubt he's qualified to comment on the existing
| infrastructure behind Twitter.
|
| He's a really good marketer, a good businessman but I do
| not think he knows what he is doing when he requests access
| to the codebase behind a massively distributed and scalable
| system such as Twitters backend
| sosodev wrote:
| Is requiring an NDA for severance even legal? That's
| seriously sketchy
| LightG wrote:
| User23 wrote:
| Not just an NDA but a full general release is absolutely
| standard. It's not worth buying you out if you're not
| willing to sell your right to sue.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Isn't some amount of severance legally required during
| layoffs? That's not "buying someone out" that's complying
| with the law.
| zerocrates wrote:
| Not generally. There's no federal severance requirement.
| I think there might be a few states that require some
| kind of severance pay under some circumstances, but it's
| at least not common in the US.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| NDAs/non-disparagement being required to receive severance
| is very common. Common enough I assume it must be legal.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| The one time I was laid off I had to sign an NDA _and_ a
| non-compete to get severance. I signed it because it was a
| decent severance package, and the company was going
| bankrupt and I figured there would not be any entity left
| that would care or try to enforce it.
| DeltaCoast wrote:
| I strongly disagree with non-competes for file and rank
| employees but a non-compete for someone that was laid off
| is just ridiculous.
| forbiddenvoid wrote:
| Not only an NDA - many companies also require you to sign
| anti-disparagement clauses, meaning you can have severance
| clawed back if you speak negatively of the company.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Something like that would never hold up in court, in fact
| it might even make the whole firing illegal in the first
| place. Unless, of course, so NDA's would also prevent the
| employer from speaking negatively about the employee, but
| those are _extremely_ rare.
| vxNsr wrote:
| Do you have any reliable source for this? as it's fairly
| common in the industry. I know lots of things are common
| that turn out to be illegal, but this one is ripe to be
| tested time and again, and the fact that it's still being
| used implies that those challenges failed.
| acdha wrote:
| You might be right but a lot of this stuff is based on
| the calculation that most people do not have the assets
| to wage a lengthy legal battle when they're newly
| unemployed. I've heard a lot of stories about wildly
| illegal things which either went completely unchallenged
| or became moot because the company went busy with no
| assets.
| lazide wrote:
| Hardly. Severence is non-statutory (aka optional), and
| those terms are quid-pro-quo and perfectly fine.
|
| If the employee doesn't like the terms, they'll just get
| the statutory minimum.
|
| It's pretty rare anyone takes that option though!
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Not providing severance pay at all is perfectly legal.
|
| In most cases, an employer will want at least something in
| return for providing severance pay.
| lottin wrote:
| Why do they provide it then? Out of goodwill?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Sometimes, or that could be a partial reason as a signal
| to current and future employees about what management is
| like.
|
| But NDA is another reason, or even keeping unemployment
| insurance premiums low by having everyone that accepts
| severance state that they are voluntarily leaving the
| company in exchange for the severance.
|
| By voluntarily separating, they cannot collect
| unemployment benefits from the state, which means the
| state charged the employer less in unemployment insurance
| premiums.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| Usually it is advantageous to offer it so that you don't
| sue them down the road and get more money. A lot of times
| it is less rewarding to take the first second or third
| settlement offer than to counter for quadruple what they
| offer.
| mbreese wrote:
| Yes. It makes it easier for them to hire down the road.
| If you know there is a parachute waiting for you, it's
| easier to take a risk on joining the company once it
| starts growing again.
|
| But I suspect it's mainly as a carrot to sign the
| NDA/non-compete/whatever else they want you to sign to
| keep not talk about what happened.
| ddingus wrote:
| Yes, good will sometimes. Other times it may be all about
| giving someone a very strong incentive to play nice while
| they find a new gig. Sometimes people basically need it.
|
| These kinds of things are not always about the strict
| minimum cost actions. In general, it is a better world
| with some degree of human consideration being part of
| things.
|
| I am quite sure many of the cases I had involvement in
| could have been done cheaper. However, I am also quite
| sure the people involved had what they need to get
| through to their next gig with few worries too.
|
| That is worth a lot and these days one can never know who
| may be working for or with who.
| hedora wrote:
| They should probably take a look at the lawsuit around
| Tesla's illegal layoffs. Your description sounds similar to
| that.
|
| It's probably worth it to find a labor attorney.
| collegeburner wrote:
| twitter could invoke the "faltering company" exemption
| given that its now saddled with many $B LBO debt, or
| unexpected contracts loss given that some advertisers are
| pausing spend.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Can you still invoke those if you knowingly caused both
| problems? If so, seems like this could be easily abused.
| 3327 wrote:
| simonw wrote:
| This is how high quality journalism works.
|
| There's actually quite an involved skill to reading and fully
| understanding this kind of writing - and it's infuriatingly
| difficult to pick up that skill (I've been developing it by
| spending time talking to professional journalists, but I'm
| still not there yet).
|
| When you read "another person familiar with the deal who spoke
| on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters",
| you need to translate it to something more like the following:
|
| The journalist who wrote this has found a credible source, who
| has insider knowledge.
|
| That source has requested anonymity, and the journalist finds
| that request credible.
|
| The journalist then used their skills and experience in writing
| about this area over the course of their career to evaluate if
| that source was trustworthy. They also considered if the source
| had their own motivations which could affect what information
| they chose to share and why.
|
| The journalist may have then cross-checked that information
| against other sources of information to help evaluate its
| credibility. This becomes more important the more high stakes
| the claim in question becomes.
|
| An editor (and potentially even separate fact checkers)
| evaluated the statement as well, and applied judgement as to
| whether it held up firmly enough to be published.
|
| There are so many phrases like this in top-tier journalism.
| When an experienced journalist reads an article from someone
| else that says "a senior official in the administration
| said..." they can often narrow that down to just a dozen or so
| potential people, based on their knowledge of that beat.
|
| As a non-journalist reading newspapers this is pretty
| infuriating, because there's this whole language that you need
| to know about in order to fully understand what's being
| communicated here.
| marak830 wrote:
| On the flip side, I believe everyone understands what you
| wrote. But it requires faith that the author and editors are
| writing in good faith, which has been decreasing for a long
| time.
|
| Click bait headlines, stories with weak fact checking or even
| printing outright lies has decreased (at least my) trust in
| news articles and has resulted in me questioning facts and
| anonymous quotes more frequently(which may be a good thing).
| colordrops wrote:
| Also, fairly reputable sources that produce mostly good
| quality journalism will slip in misinformation or hit
| pieces at the behest of political and corporate entities.
|
| Examples are the New York Times writing a hit piece against
| Tesla, where it turned out they had driven the car in
| circles in a parking lot for hours to get the battery to
| run out, but didn't think that Tesla might be able to get
| data on what they did. Turns out the author of the article
| works for the oil industry. The NYT also regularly
| publishes as fact things told to them by the Pentagon and
| three letter agencies, rather than calling the information
| alleged.
| agentdrtran wrote:
| major news outlets like wapo have a lot of issues, like so
| many issues, but making up sources is not one of them.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| They don't have to make up a source to be taken for a
| ride. Look at CNBC eating up the story about two guys
| (Ligma and Johnson) who were supposedly fired. If the
| source is anonymous we can't check they worked at
| Twitter.
| furyofantares wrote:
| This makes it extremely easy to make low quality content that
| looks just like high quality content, with the only
| difference being that it's more likely to be found out to be
| wrong information. And it doesn't seem like we can reliably
| punish news organizations for constantly putting out bad
| news, so what's their motivation to do the high quality
| version?
| EarlKing wrote:
| [deleted]
| ALittleLight wrote:
| I don't believe this at all. I think there's different tiers
| of journalism. One tier is going to publish "anonymous person
| says X" and that tier will be fast, sensational, and less
| accurate. Another tier is going to publish experts on the
| record and that tier is going to be slower, boring, and more
| accurate.
|
| My perception of recent news tends is that sources that were
| in the accurate/quality tier are shifting to the
| fast/anonymous tier. In the short term their reputation plus
| speed and sensationalism will make them seem like the best of
| both worlds. In the long run people will just recalibrate
| their opinions of previously esteemed sources.
| phone8675309 wrote:
| Every reporter I have ever met (and this especially includes
| those that went to j-school) at this point just regurgitates
| press releases or is too scared to bite the hand (or the
| hands of the golfing buddies, or the advertisers) that signs
| their paychecks.
| yaddaor wrote:
| Weird, my experience is the opposite. All journalists I met
| in person and spoke to have been critical towards anything
| in any way reasonable. Including their bosses and
| institutions. It's a merit of journalism for introspection
| to be normal and wanted.
| vlz wrote:
| Mmh, and are these people doing so working for the
| Washington Post or a similarly renowned journal?
| telotortium wrote:
| I could believe you, but unfortunately journalists have
| trashed their credibility with their turn to "moral clarity"
| post-Trump. With the effective merger of the opinion and news
| beats in this era, "another person familiar with the deal who
| spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive
| matters" could refer to anybody at all with a grudge against
| Musk, and we as readers would have no way of knowing which of
| the cases it is if the source's motivations align with WP's
| editor's motivations (to denigrate Musk). This report is from
| a paper that still employs Taylor Lorenz as a "columnist
| covering technology and online culture"
| (https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/taylor-lorenz/), when
| her main beat is more about being the moral enforcer of the
| progressive media's opinions on tech, online culture, trans
| issues, etc.
| cbtacy wrote:
| Take this fact free nonsense to "Truth Social", thanks.
| freejazz wrote:
| Ah, yes. The secret meeting of the journalists. They use
| the same room as my secret meeting for all-powerful Jews.
| gotoeleven wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JournoList
| freejazz wrote:
| Yes, also, Jews meet at temple too!
|
| Edit: forgot to mention the deli!
| brainphreeze wrote:
| Can't tell if this is sarcasm or not
| giantrobot wrote:
| It's not.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| Sometimes people have their own motives and don't always tell
| you the truth or at least omit to tell you their plans. As a
| co-worker once told me, welcome to the mud pit along with
| everyone else you'll be a competitor with while trying to build
| a career and hopefully a decent product.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| novaRom wrote:
| > a quarter of the staff totaling more than 7,000
|
| > After engineers, some of Twitter's highest paid employees work
| in sales, where several earn more than $300,000
|
| that should reduce operating expenses significantly, several
| hundreds of millions dollars?
| mapme wrote:
| Employee salaries is only 1.5B of their 4.5B annual costs.
|
| Edit: per Wapo but you can see the cost structure from 10ks
| mostly
| conductr wrote:
| I found the first part confusing to parse. It reads to me that
| 7000 is the 25% getting layoffs and made me think they had
| 28000 employees. They actually have ~7000 before layoffs.
| lm28469 wrote:
| They can also fire everyone and switch off the servers
|
| Boom 0 cost, infinite money hack
|
| Tomorrow's news: "HN business man solved the recession"
| jdm2212 wrote:
| Unless the sales people are bringing in more than that in
| sales.
| ehnto wrote:
| Forgive my ignorance, what are they selling? Is it to bigger
| advertising clients? Or maybe Twitter has some commercial
| services I'm not aware of.
| twelve40 wrote:
| yes, large ad contracts with big brands for example, and
| generally babysitting anybody who spends enough money on
| ads.
| soared wrote:
| It's advertising, that product still needs a large sales
| org
| makestuff wrote:
| I have a friend who works in sales at a tech company and
| since all of this accounts are long term customers he really
| doesn't do much. They like the service so it is basically an
| auto-renewal. So I guess Elon thinks that advertisers will
| just auto renew because they like the ROI they get from their
| spend on twitter. However, what he fails to realize is the
| media buyers love to be wined and dined with fancy dinners.
| If you fire all of your sales staff they will just take their
| spend to the next company who can take them to five star
| meals and other cool outings.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _However, what he fails to realize is the media buyers
| love to be wined and dined with fancy dinners. If you fire
| all of your sales staff they will just take their spend to
| the next company who can take them to five star meals and
| other cool outings._
|
| Advertising spend doesn't work like pharmaceutical sales.
| They will renew _precisely because_ they like the ROI,
| whether they get pampered or not, because as advertising
| channels, social media platform are additive. If it gives
| you positive ROI, you 're strictly better off advertising
| on a network than not advertising on it, because the social
| networks themselves are mutually exclusive in terms of
| attention. That is, you can't access Twitter's eyeball-
| seconds any other way than through Twitter.
| hparadiz wrote:
| This is all true and yet certain people can extract way
| more money out of a deal just because they are able to
| communicate better.
| jupp0r wrote:
| Isn't this the definition of corruption?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Yep. The GP is saying that advertisement spending is
| decided by corruption. On in other words, all the
| middlemen in those agencies that will "optimize" your
| spending are corrupt.
|
| I see no reason to doubt it. But I would need some
| evidence before believing, and this thread has none (in
| any direction).
| jupp0r wrote:
| Not sure why this gets downvoted. IANAL but it every
| compliance training I've ever done, basing company
| business decisions on being invited to fancy dinners
| raises all sorts of red flag when it comes to compliance
| with anti corruption laws.
| bombcar wrote:
| You don't _base_ your decisions on fancy dinners, but you
| _do_ get invited to fancy dinners! It 's all part of the
| game and those who know how to play it play it well.
| gwd wrote:
| Usually salespeoples' pay is highly incentivized: I doubt the
| _base salary_ of those salespeople is $300k. Those $300k people
| are probably bringing in millions of dollars of revenue apiece.
| Firing them will reduce operating expenses some, but
| drastically reduce income as well, unless they 're replaced
| with something else.
| akira2501 wrote:
| Sales managers will just hand the accounts to new executives.
| It's not as if the business walks away because their AE isn't
| there anymore. They're spending money on twitter for the
| benefits it brings them, not to do favors for their favorite
| executive.
| ketzo wrote:
| > It's not as if the business walks away because their AE
| isn't there anymore.
|
| I mean, not _all_ of the business -- but businesses can and
| will sever contracts because they lose their favorite
| point-of-contact.
|
| > They're spending money on twitter for the benefits it
| brings them
|
| What if those benefits are already pretty slim, and they've
| been thinking of dropping Twitter entirely, but for the
| efforts of their Twitter AE?
|
| I don't understand this mindset that all salespeople are
| fungible drones.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| I feel like we're going to see a never-ending stream of
| speculation and actuality over the next year. We already have
| with the whole deal going down too.
|
| It's exhausting how much attention this gets and how everyone has
| an opinion about it.
|
| Journalism continues to fall in the "bullshit" camp that
| Frankfurt warned us about:
|
| https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691122946/on...
|
| It's up to us to fine-tune our bullshit detectors in the current
| climate.
| coffeeblack wrote:
| WaPo. Probably one of the worst sources for anything relating to
| Musk.
| duxup wrote:
| Twitter now owes about $1 billlion in debit payments per year.
|
| Cash flow last year $630 million.
|
| I think 25% staff reductions is just a starting point.
| Zigurd wrote:
| Your number might be something other than cash flow. IIRC
| Twitter has net negative cash flow and about $4B in existing
| long term debt prior to the new debt financing of the
| acquisition.
|
| The debt financing burden is a further burden on Musk: twitter
| generates no free cash flow. Musk has to pay the creditors, and
| his co-investors are not likely to put in more cash. Musk and
| every other investor bought-in to a deal that now would be
| valued at about half what they paid. Depending on how the debt
| is secured, this also means twice the percentage of the
| company's value is now encumbered by that debt. That means that
| if Twitter were sold today the equity investors could lose
| nearly their entire investment.
|
| Even a lousy LBO would be of a company you can asset-strip to
| reduce the debt. What could Twitter sell? The financing really
| does not make sense.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I'm constantly shocked that "leveraged buyouts" are a thing. It
| seems like taking a business and loading it up with debt is a
| recipe for failure that would introduce a lot of risk for the
| lender, but banks and other capital holders continue issuing
| the debt.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _constantly shocked that "leveraged buyouts" are a thing_
|
| LBOs were a cure to the poison of the post-war conglomerate
| [1]. Those were run as personal fiefdoms by aloof executives
| and their cronies.
|
| The traditional check was M&A. Conglomerates having no clean
| competitors, this-in practice-meant a buyer putting up cash
| and borrowing the rest, buying the company, taking out a loan
| in the company's name, using that to pay themselves and then
| paying back the personal loan. The only purpose the buyer's
| credit served was to gatekeep. LBOs compress that process,
| letting anyone challenge management if they can convince
| investors/lenders to back their vision.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conglomerate_(company)
| bcbrown wrote:
| I'm guessing you hear a lot more about the failures/impending
| failures in LBO financing than you do the successes/non-
| defaults. You could calculate the implied probability of
| default from the POV of the lender by comparing the financing
| terms to "assumed risk free" treasuries, and then compare
| that with the historical data to see how accurate they are at
| pricing that risk. If you'd rather not do that work, I'm sure
| there's plenty of papers in the academic literature examining
| that exact question.
| akira2501 wrote:
| They have a place and can be used effectively to solve actual
| problems. Old line businesses with too many units and
| complicated business arrangements can actually benefit from
| being torn apart and rebuilt effectively.
|
| The problem is, when the Fed gives out exceptionally cheap
| interest, it makes it incredibly easy to apply this strategy
| even when the underlying business would not benefit from it.
|
| We simply left the tap on _way_ too long.
| mcguire wrote:
| It's not intended for the business to continue operating
| after a leveraged buyout. Leveraged buyouts are typically
| used where the company has assets that aren't "productive" or
| is made up of more-or-less independent units that are worth
| more separate than together.
|
| In these cases, cutting expenses by firing people is usually
| the first step, since the business' revenue stream can
| usually continue on autopilot for a while.
|
| I expect Twitter to report record-breaking profits next
| quarter and Twitter's share price to go up accordingly. Maybe
| even enough to fill in some of Musk's hole.
| nrmitchi wrote:
| Why do you expect no-longer-a-public-company Twitter to
| report anything next quarter, or to have a "share price"
| that you have access to?
| rahkiin wrote:
| There is no share price: all of twitter is private. Maybe
| if the company is taxated?
| mcguire wrote:
| You are absolutely correct. Well, there goes that part.
| Eesh.
| dh2022 wrote:
| There will be no more quarterly reports and no more share
| price. Twitter will delist from NASDAQ on Nov 8 or
| whereabouts
| rglover wrote:
| Because they expect that debt to be inflated away as the
| currency its denominated in goes to zero (and they know
| they'll get replenished with cash when they need it via the
| Fed [1][2]).
|
| [1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-
| notes/unde...
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1xgQeCiu6k
| duxup wrote:
| Yeah the idea that Twitter is now worth more with
| substantially more debt doesn't make sense to me.
| mcguire wrote:
| Before or after bankruptcy?
| smcl wrote:
| I cannot fathom it either. First I heard that it was a thing
| was when the Glazers borrowed money to buy Manchester United
| then saddled them with half of the debt. They had no debt
| prior to being purchased. I don't know how common it is, but
| it feels like you're telegraphing that you're going to use
| the organization you bought as a piggy bank or a plaything.
| Like, see this shit (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glaze
| r_ownership_of_Manchester...) From 2016,
| the Glazers paid themselves annual dividends from the club,
| at over PS20 million every year from 2016 to 2020. In
| that same period, the club's debt repayments "all but
| ceased", described The Daily Telegraph, while interest
| payments continued. While paying dividends was common in
| business, Manchester United were the sole Premier
| League club to "pay regular dividends of any kind",
| reported The Daily Telegraph in May 2021
|
| I don't even like Man Utd, but that's shady as hell
| giarc wrote:
| $1 billion across 5000 employees is just $200,000 each. I
| suspect if you add total comp plus expenses for each employee
| you get to $200,000 pretty quickly.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| That's only if Twitter can continue to function at the same
| revenue without those 5000 employees. That remains to be
| seen.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Saw a note today they're going to layoff a number of
| "highly compensated" sales people highlighting that they
| made even more than very senior engineers... which is an
| interesting plan for a company trying to salvage revenue.
| buscoquadnary wrote:
| Twitter has salespeople? Like what do they sale? I'm not
| trying to be facetious I am just ignorant.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Anyone that has revenue has salespeople. Twitter's (and
| every tech company's) sales staff convince large
| companies to spend money paying for Twitter ads. A good
| salesperson will be mostly paid on commission for
| bringing huge clients who spend millions of dollars per
| year on advertising. Their comp is high specifically
| because they can sell many multiples of that comp.
|
| A salesperson that has the ability to call the head of an
| advertising agency and get them to answer the phone is
| maybe the most valuable possible employee in any ad-
| supported business.
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| I'm being pedantic just for clarification but not
| everyone that has revenue has salespeople. Correct me if
| I'm wrong, but you're implying a lot of companies you
| might think wouldn't have salespeople do in fact have
| them.
| jdlshore wrote:
| They sell ads, so the high-end salespeople were probably
| in relationships with big enterprise ad purchasing
| departments.
| dmix wrote:
| It might be arbitrary and pure speculation but with ~7500
| employees (3000 of which are engineers) I think they'll be able
| to do just fine with 5000. -25% of staff would just mean going
| back to 2019 staff levels...
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/272140/employees-of-twit...
|
| I remember it was a common meme on HN to ask what Twitter's
| thousands of employees did all day, even back in 2015. So maybe
| I'm falling into that trap. But I do still wonder.
| duxup wrote:
| Keep in mind that's cash flow, not profit and they need to at
| least maintain it while cutting staff... and maybe make a
| profit one day?
|
| They only have made a profit 2 out of the last 10 years.
| cragfar wrote:
| for 2021, 1.2 billion was spent on R&D, 1.7 billion on cost
| of revenue (guessing a decent amount of this was salaries),
| and 765 million was due to a class action lawsuit they
| lost. With all of these, they showed a loss of 200 million.
| There definitely appears to be some fat that can be
| trimmed.
|
| This year is on track for a gain, but they sold some ad
| service for a billion which distorts things.
| duxup wrote:
| Be interesting if they gut it completely just to try to
| make debt payments and how that would work.
| cragfar wrote:
| Is the billion in debt payments actually confirmed? That
| would most likely require some increase in revenue which
| is probably why Musk is looking into the verified twitter
| payment thing.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Yeah the terms of the debt arrangements were mostly
| public - $13 billion of junk debt which yields ~8%.
| outside1234 wrote:
| Honestly, the whole of Twitter should just walk out and wildcat
| strike until Wednesday morning. The worst he can do is fire you.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Twitter doesn't have a union. A wildcat strike is a strike
| undertaken by unionised workers without union leadership
| approval.
| COGlory wrote:
| Why? What has Musk actually done?
|
| To date there's:
|
| - Reports that he had Tesla engineers with him when they
| interviewed some Twitter engineeers. Currently the biggest
| arguments against that are: Tesla engineers belong to Tesla (we
| have no idea in what capacity they were they) and "that's an
| ineffective strategy to review a codebase" (we have no idea if
| that's what they were actually doing.
|
| - Reports that he gave a team until Nov 7th to roll out a paid
| subscription
|
| - Reports that he may lay people off (unverified)
|
| - Carried in a sink.
|
| None of these things are particularly unreasonable - Twitter
| owes something like 1 billion in debt payments this year and
| brings in close to $500 million, so layoffs were probably
| coming regardless.
|
| I don't really see what the big deal with Musk buying Twitter
| is, except as cover for being mad about him unbanning people.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > Reports that he gave a team until Nov 7th to roll out a
| paid subscription
|
| > None of these things are particularly unreasonable
|
| Six business days to come up with a system to process $6m per
| month of income.
|
| Nothing unreasonable indeed...
| caeril wrote:
| Yes, by historical Twitter standards it may seem
| unreasonable to write a Stripe API integration with simple
| UI and account history in six days. In the real world,
| however, a single developer can do it in less time than
| that.
|
| Twitter (and really, BigCo in general) engineers are
| accustomed to their foosball tables, catered meals, wine
| bars, beer taps, rooftop gaming session, and endless
| meetings and code reviews.
|
| It's possible that Musk is trying to set the reasonable
| expectation that a total comp package worth $400k should be
| exchanged for actual productivity, rather than playtime and
| busywork.
| pianoben wrote:
| > Twitter (and really, BigCo in general) engineers are
| accustomed to their foosball tables, catered meals, wine
| bars, beer taps, rooftop gaming session, and endless
| meetings and code reviews.
|
| Tell me you've never been hired at Twitter without
| telling me you've never been hired at Twitter, lol.
| _Every_ company has some dead weight, sure, but what you
| describe isn 't remotely applicable to most people.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > In the real world, however, a single developer can do
| it in less time than that.
|
| Which single developer can rollout payments globally in 6
| days? How much time do they set aside to ensuring
| regulatory compliance with dozens of jurisdictions that
| have occasionally conflicting rules?
| fernandotakai wrote:
| twitter already has payment within their systems (super
| follows + twitter blue).
| [deleted]
| lm28469 wrote:
| Ah yes, go ahead and create a stripe account that will
| allow $6m flow in less than a week, hit me up when you're
| done, that alone would probably require more than 6 days
| of back and forth with Stripe
|
| I too thought I could rewrite twitter and instagram in 10
| days with a few JS and PHP framework when I was fresh out
| of uni
| dev_daftly wrote:
| They already have the payment system in place. This is just
| adding verification as a feature to the already existing
| subscription service.
| benj111 wrote:
| What? How would you feel if someone announced they were
| buying your company after breaking M&A laws and messing
| around with a significant portion of your net worth, tried to
| back out, further messing around with your net worth, started
| talking shit about your company, takes it over because they
| are forced to, then within days, is threating 25% layoffs.
|
| Would you want to be in that kind of situation?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _How would you feel if someone announced they were buying
| your company after breaking M &A laws and messing around
| with a significant portion of your net worth, tried to back
| out, further messing around with your net worth, started
| talking shit about your company, takes it over because they
| are forced to_
|
| As a salaried SE, why would you care? Or is that about SV's
| love for paying in stock instead of cash?
|
| > _then within days, is threating 25% layoffs._
|
| That's an unconfirmed rumor at best, a lie most likely.
| dave78 wrote:
| I'm not sure if my perspective is warped or yours is, but
| from my standpoint this is all pretty common in corporate
| America. Companies are acquired or merge and most
| everything changes - polices, training, perks, and almost
| always significant layoffs. Similar things usually happen
| to divisions and groups within a company as leadership
| changes. Has this really not been a thing at places like
| Twitter?
|
| The difference is that usually it's not covered minute-by-
| minute on all the major news outlets.
|
| No one would want to be in this situation yet it happens
| every day. Where I'm at, new VPs take over our division
| every couple years and every time they reorganize
| everything, rename everything, promote some people, lay off
| a bunch of people, bring in their "people", change polices
| and procedures, etc. It sucks but it's part of business as
| far as I can tell. If I walked out every time this happened
| I think I'd be hard pressed to keep a steady job.
| jupp0r wrote:
| Most of these people don't have to work for Twitter. They
| ended up working there because it used to be a nice company
| to work for.
|
| New ownership seems to have changed that, not only in the
| things that were rumored they would do, but also in the
| abysmal communication during the whole thing.
|
| This kind of thing happens all the time and it's always a
| risk, but that doesn't mean that people have to like it.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| > Reports that he gave a team until Nov 7th to roll out a
| paid subscription
|
| > None of these things are particularly unreasonable
|
| I see you're not an engineer according to your bio. Can you
| explain how you came to the conclusion that having one work
| week to roll out a brand new feature is reasonable so I can
| tell you how completely wrong you are?
| COGlory wrote:
| The feature was in development for far longer. The real
| question is, will it exist on Nov. 7th?
| mapme wrote:
| This is false.
| swozey wrote:
| > The feature was in development for far longer.
|
| You know this?
| postalrat wrote:
| Elon is probably hoping that happens.
| skhr0680 wrote:
| Twitter is already improved IMHO: The "sign in or sign up" nag
| screen is gone for me!
| drstewart wrote:
| https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/30/23430008/elon-musk-twitt...
|
| >He requested that logged out users visiting Twitter.com be
| redirected to the Explore page that shows trending tweets and
| news stories, according to employees familiar with the matter
| who requested anonymity to speak without the company's
| permission. Before, visiting Twitter's homepage while logged
| out showed only a sign-up form,
| simonw wrote:
| Interesting commentary on this from someone who used to work
| at Twitter:
|
| - https://twitter.com/joshelman/status/1586812933043933184
|
| > Changing the logged out home page of Twitter to show more
| content is likely one of those "easy fixes" that has symbolic
| effect but very little to no metrics effect. I ran A/B tests
| on this in 2010. Usually the best way to grow Twitter active
| users is make people sign up first
| cercatrova wrote:
| Technical people, especially engineers and those on HN,
| hate sign up forms but having grown a product to X thousand
| users, the more you push the sign up form, the more people
| sign up. You can even plot a linear relationship between
| the two, which I've done before.
| joegahona wrote:
| I noticed the same thing in the world of publishing (both
| print and online). It's the reasons pop-ups have never
| gone away -- they work. It's the reason those annoying
| inserts in print magazines that fall in your lap have
| never gone away -- they work.
| conradfr wrote:
| But that's also reduce ads for unlogged visitors.
|
| Are ads for logged-in users so more profitable that it's
| worth it?
| furyofantares wrote:
| I think when you're really good at using a computer, you
| expect things to be easy. When you get a sign up form
| instead, it's extremely frustrating. We're used to it
| being easy to use a computer and can see that someone is
| making it hard for their own benefit. And then we think,
| if it's hard for us, it's even harder for someone without
| a lot of skills.
|
| And I think that's probably true! But the person without
| much computer skills comes in with an expectation that
| stuff is gonna be hard. The egregious signup page isn't a
| surprise in that sense, it's just one of the many things
| they have to struggle with to use a computer.
|
| An A/B then doesn't show any benefit for removing the
| signup page, only downside, because an A/B test only
| tests what happens if one feature changes. Our intuition
| can still be right; if we could do all the work to make
| it so a website is actually easy to use for someone
| without a lot of skills, like how Apple radically
| simplified the state of affairs with the iPod, that will
| positively defy peoples' expectations and make the app
| more accessible -- even if just simplifying any
| individual component doesn't do that.
| Reimersholme wrote:
| AlexandrB wrote:
| This seems shortsighted. It's optimizing for what's easy
| to measure (sign ups) over what's hard to measure (brand,
| customer satisfaction, word of mouth).
| marrone12 wrote:
| Generally when running these kinds of tests you measure
| for further down the funnel metrics than sign ups. It's
| obvious sign ups would increase. In all the tests I've
| done around this, you look either at revenue or
| engagement over a longer term.
| cercatrova wrote:
| Sign ups were directly correlated to revenue, at least in
| my case, and likely most others, such as in @joegahona's
| comment about publishing. That is to say, the customer
| satisfaction decrease in popups did not decrease revenue,
| and that is assuming there even was a satisfaction
| decrease at all; again, most technical users vastly
| overestimate how many people actually care about popups,
| most non-tech people simply click the X to make it go
| away, and a percentage of all visitors will sign up.
| Nathanba wrote:
| This may be true in the short term but eventually more of
| these decisions begin to accumulate and cause more
| dissatisfaction. Each one on its own has barely any
| impact on the bottom line, it's just one more cut among a
| hundred cuts. In the end you end up with a product that
| is overall annoying to use. And the whole time you could
| be going along, measuring each decision and thinking that
| you're doing okay and no mistakes are being made. But
| measuring today with yesterday is not the same as
| measuring today with 3 weeks ago + 13 decisions reversed,
| 5 decisions reversed, 1 decision reversed.
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| > most non-tech people simply click the X to make it go
| away, and a percentage of all visitors will sign up.
|
| This is likely true, but only if there's an X. Facebook's
| growing sign-in box as you scroll down is not easily
| clicked away from.
| tommica wrote:
| I do like the change, i can't even sign up with my email
| to twitter - most likely because it is a custom domain.
| majou wrote:
| I've had no issues making accounts with my custom
| domains, fwiw.
|
| Did get a phone-number nag that I was able to ticket
| myself out of.
| tootie wrote:
| Yeah this is unlikely to be positive on revenue and very
| well might be negative. It's extremely unlikely that
| Twitter put that registration wall in place without
| extensive testing and micro-optimization. Musk is just
| throwing his weight around and declaring himself smarter
| than everyone else.
| warinukraine wrote:
| Oh he ran A/B 12 years ago. I guess it's settled then.
| shwoopdiwoop wrote:
| If it has no effect on metrics but removes as major
| annoyance for users, why would you not have done that in
| the first place?
| whiplash451 wrote:
| That change is welcome. The previous setup was really
| obnoxious.
| cdchn wrote:
| It just appeared for me clicking a link in this post.
| nullandvoid wrote:
| This is a nice change, I refused to click on any twitter links
| before. Feels weird scrolling twitter without the terrible log
| in CTA every action.
| SanjayMehta wrote:
| I switched to the nitter client long ago, but that's down today
| due to a cert error.
|
| https://nitter.net
|
| Other instances here:
|
| https://xnaas.github.io/nitter-instances/
| [deleted]
| greenie_beans wrote:
| it's gotten worse for me. i can't access it. in a browser
| that's always logged in, i try to visit any page on the site
| and get a page that says "Something went wrong, but don't fret
| -- let's give it another shot."
|
| the site works whenever i login via a fresh, private browser
| session. for a minute i thought i was blocked after muting the
| words "elon" and "musk"
| zimpenfish wrote:
| I had that yesterday in Safari - clearing all the caches and
| closing every Twitter tab (I somehow had 5 open) meant that
| it worked when I opened a new one. Maybe something Service
| Worker-y? Have had that issue with the Twitter before.
| duxup wrote:
| I'm still getting it...
| georgeg23 wrote:
| Maybe OP signed up for Twitter :)
| matkoniecz wrote:
| I am still getting it
| Fervicus wrote:
| I still see the annoying sign up/login pop up if I scroll down
| while viewing someone's twitter feed on the web.
| jwlake wrote:
| Wow, best change in years.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| It seems inconsistent now. Sometimes I can scroll for minutes
| with nothing and other times I get the sign-up pop up right
| away. Or was it always this way?
| infotogivenm wrote:
| Its been that way at least 6 months. If you click Login then
| a close button finally appears in the top left. Garbage piece
| of shit UX.
| drexlspivey wrote:
| Thank god, I stopped clicking twitter links due to this crap
| dmix wrote:
| Reddit and Instagram is even worse. Besides cookie boxes
| (which all have different UIs and rarely a good no button)
| it's probably the most annoying thing on an ad-blocked
| internet.
|
| How do the designers who work at these tech companies not
| understand that repeatedly annoying non-user visitors doesn't
| make them want to sign up? Nor incentivize others to link to
| it?
| ok_dad wrote:
| Even fucking Google keeps putting a half-page pop-up on my
| iPhone saying "WANT TO SIGN IN, OR JUST KEEP SEARCHING
| 'ANONYMOUSLY' LIKE A CHUMP?" or something just as fucking
| annoying.
| noizejoy wrote:
| The Guardian does something similar.
| delecti wrote:
| Non-technical non-users are not dissuaded, they sign up.
| Technical non-users using adblock aren't profitable
| conversions anyway, so "who cares?" is an entirely
| reasonable decision for the PO/PM who made it.
| quintu5 wrote:
| This is why I never touch new reddit or visit the site on
| mobile. It's old reddit + ublock origin on desktop and a
| third-party app on mobile every time.
| tmh88j wrote:
| Try using i.reddit.com on mobile, it's a bit more
| tolerable.
| criddell wrote:
| When a _sign-in-to-see-the-thing-you-just-searched-for_
| shows up, I take it as a sign that the company isn 't doing
| very well. If you've ran out of good ideas for driving
| growth, you start considering the bad ideas.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I think these things come about because of A/B testing. The
| metric being optimized is probably "app installs" or
| "account creations" and the negative side effects of
| driving a bunch of users off are not considered/measured.
| dmix wrote:
| Indeed, short term metrics vs long term hatred.
|
| I know how it happens, I've designed many a KPI.
| Something so fundamental and important as the default
| non-user first-exerpience (not just a 'signup flow')
| should be evaluated more holistically than just looking
| at numbers.
|
| But I guess when you have layers of middle managers it's
| safer to point to a spreadsheet than make hard choices.
| mdaEyebot wrote:
| Considering where their revenue comes from, have you
| considered that they may not want people who run ad-
| blockers to sign up?
|
| They'll tolerate you if you produce content to help keep
| the paying users engaged, but plenty of businesses choose
| not to pursue customers who are unlikely to generate
| profit.
| dmix wrote:
| What do ad blockers have to do with invasive sign up
| modals? They show up regardless. I think you missed the
| point.
| DeltaCoast wrote:
| Agreed. I've noticed instagram and reddit over the last
| year have really tried to squeeze the last bit of growth it
| can by blocking non registered visitors from using the site
| past a couple of clicks. I get that it's their server
| resources I'm using up but for some reason the way they do
| it just aggravates me.
| drewbeck wrote:
| Do you have numbers for the claim that this behavior
| doesn't incentivize sign up? I'd guess that for most folks
| it indeed does -- at some point you get annoyed enough to
| go through with the sign up process. These sites never log
| you out so it's a one time thing. I personally am not
| inspired to sign up in these situations but I'd guess the
| numbers show that I'm in the minority.
| tester756 wrote:
| I wish.
|
| Doesnt work for me
| jasondigitized wrote:
| That 'feature' never made sense to me. "You always miss the
| advertising shots you don't take" when you force people to sign
| up first.
| dave78 wrote:
| I looked at Musk's feed and it did not appear, but just now
| clicked on one of the other Twitter links in this thread and
| got hit with it almost immediately. Maybe the change is still
| being rolled out? Maybe it was just a fluke? Maybe it doesn't
| appear on certain people's feeds for one reason or another?
| dirheist wrote:
| Prolly not pushed to your local edge location, my version of
| twitter updated and it no longer shows the pop up screen yet
| it still shows the blue bar at the bottom of the page (which
| is fine imo)
| [deleted]
| rideontime wrote:
| Love seeing the confirmation bias from people who expect Musk
| to improve Twitter on day one.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| What? Confirmation bias comes when interpreting some random
| thing as evidence. This is intention change by him.
| nobleach wrote:
| It is for me until I scroll down.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| Same... doesn't really help if you can't scroll down and read
| tweets without being prompted to sign in.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| The Washington Post really has lost a lot of credibility since
| the Bezos purchase in 2013. It reflects a trend of consolidation
| of corporate media in the hands of America's ruling oligarchs
| (who exert far more influence over federal policies and
| expenditures than any Congressperson, and perhaps the President
| as well).
|
| For example, I can't imagine the WaPo taking this same tone with
| regard to a Bezos acquisition or contract, or publishing
| confidential leaked details of inside business discussion, as it
| would almost certainly upset their owner and lead to 'a change in
| leadership' at the Post. The same is true of their coverage of
| the unionization effort at Amazon warehouses and distribution
| centers. Similarly, the CIA and NSA deals that AWS has engaged in
| aren't getting this level of scrutiny from the Post either, and
| there's little chance of the Post ever printing anything [like
| the 2010] "Top Secret America" series on how defense contracts
| are doled out to intelligence contractors.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Secret_America
| jupp0r wrote:
| That's why we have multiple newspapers. The other ones can
| cover for deficiencies of a single one. The Post is doing great
| investigative journalism still, including this piece.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| I understand the argument, but I find this a bit disturbing,
| as there are some topics that _all_ of the oligarch-owned
| newspapers will not be willing to cover in depth. There is
| kind of a 'fringe' that will publish some details, i.e.
|
| "(2020) Amazon: We Totally Don't Want To Spy On You. Also
| Amazon: We Just Hired The Architect Of The NSA's Mass
| Domestic Surveillance Program"
|
| https://dailycaller.com/2020/09/10/amazon-surveillance-
| nsa-d...
|
| However, most people view that outlet as a highly partisan
| right-wing opinion-centric source (with rather limited
| sources), not at all the 'traditional unbiased news media' -
| which instead avoid the story, and instead just churn out a
| stream of pro-government, pro-corporate propaganda 24/7. This
| is pretty unhealthy IMO, since, ahem, 'democracy dies in
| darkness', and is the kind of behavior you see from Chinese
| and Russian state media, not from independent journalism.
| jupp0r wrote:
| Sounds like you need to start a newspaper and give unbiased
| news to the people and become super successful doing so! In
| the end there will always be a market for actual journalism
| and a market for sensational clickbait and a market for
| something in between. In my opinion outfits like the NYT,
| WP, Economist, WSJ etc are all super flawed but in
| combination are doing a pretty good job keeping government
| accountable.
| Rahul_Ligma wrote:
| I think it would behoove you, given how easily they bent over
| for Bezos and have silenced opposition against him, to reflect
| back on the last two decades and compare various outlets
| (including the ones you don't like because they don't align
| with your political stance) and see just for how long they've
| been corrupted.
|
| They didn't wake up in 2013 and suddenly decide they won't have
| any integrity.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| It's not that they don't align with my political stance, it's
| that they don't do their job of providing broad-spectrum
| information on the actions of governments and corporations.
| To emphasize, Top Secret America was an outstanding expose of
| the military-intelligence contracting system, but that was
| before Bezos got his ~600 million CIA web services contract,
| and soon after that he spent what, ~$250 million to buy the
| Post, after which that kind of investigative journalism was
| eliminated.
|
| However, your point is pretty valid - back in 2002, the WaPo
| regurgitated US government talking points on (non-existent)
| Iraq WMDs without bothering to do any investigative pushback.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2002/10/11/c.
| ..
| gamblor956 wrote:
| They literally have a section of the website dedicated to
| investigative journalism, including a number of _recent_
| investigations into government contractors, military
| officials, government corruption (all of these in October
| 2022!). Going back more over the past 6 months, you have
| investigations into police brutality, election integrity
| units, more coverage of government contractors and
| corruption, police corruption, and lawmaker self-dealing.
|
| What more are you expecting from them?
| legitster wrote:
| > I can't imagine the WaPo taking this same tone with regard to
| a Bezos acquisition or contract
|
| Uhhh... you must not ever read WaPo. They run critical coverage
| of Bezos and Amazon _all of the time_.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| I see them reporting on stories that others have generated,
| but what I certainly don't see is anything like investigative
| journalism targeting any of Bezo's business interests, i.e.
| generating original stories, publishing embarrassing leaks (
| _that others have not already published_ ) etc. Again, see
| the Top Secret America investigative journalism effort from
| 2010. There's nothing similar that the Post has done since
| Bezos bought it, is there?
| legitster wrote:
| Maybe for the simple fact that they are still predominantly
| a local newspaper for Washington DC. Their beat coverage is
| still largely going to be Federal US politics.
| mola wrote:
| And bezos doesn't have dealings on a federal level? Oh
| my. You are naive.
|
| Bezos bought a new paper, so he can have a mouth piece
| when he needs it.
|
| Musk just bought a bigger mouth piece, without any of
| those pesky editors.
|
| Musk and his investors just bought a massive amount of
| power. Which We basically lost.
|
| Welcome to the oligarchy.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| It seems that Elon thinks that there are too many managers (per
| coder) there
|
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1586686935518498816
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| At least in a dev situation I think 10-1 devs-to-managers is
| actually a pretty sizable ratio - I think ideally it's more of
| a 6-to-8ish to one.
|
| Now, this of course assumes that engineering managers are not
| solely doing employee management but also are serving some
| "tech lead" type roles. I.e. even if an engineering manager
| isn't coding I think it's essential that (a) a considerable
| portion of their time is spent doing code reviews, (b) they
| should be working closely with product managers to define
| stories and requirements before the dev team starts
| implementing, etc.
|
| That is, having line engineering managers solely do "people
| management" is universally a bad idea in my opinion. They
| should be getting their "hands dirty" in the tech aspects as
| well in order to be effective.
| watwut wrote:
| Person who is not coding should not do code reviews.
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| Isn't this another version of Chesterton's fence - lots of
| people may seem like they serve no apparent role, until they
| are gone. This is not to say there aren't some that in fact
| do serve no role, but careful consideration is required to
| determine who is who imho.
| jiveturkey wrote:
| You read it backwards. He claimed 10-1 managers-to-devs.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Yikes, I did read it wrong! OK, that would be insane, but
| I'm still curious if (a) that's not a pretty gross
| exaggeration or (b) if there some sort of job titling
| that's making the ratios look weird, e.g. "product manager"
| doesn't actually manage any people, or the way everyone who
| works in a bank is a "VP".
| jiveturkey wrote:
| obvious hyperbole, for the sake of his audience
| chasd00 wrote:
| "manager" can be subjective. You could claim a non-junior
| dev with a couple junior dev reporting to them and being
| mentored is a "manager".
| dbish wrote:
| That's not subjective. That is a manager. If someone
| reports to you and you are responsible for them, you're
| their manager, regardless of job title. Subjective is if
| he's counting program/product managers, account managers,
| etc.
| ibrarmalik wrote:
| Its a good narrative to have as you prepare for layoffs.
| mcguire wrote:
| Are you taking something Elon Musk said seriously?
| themitigating wrote:
| Remember when he said he would buy Twitter? What a lark!
| klpassv wrote:
| 10 managers per coder seems a bit extreme. However, 3 managers,
| 7 "coders" engaging in social justice and one workhorse coder
| is entirely realistic.
|
| I doubt though that Musk can figure out the actual workhorse in
| a short time. The posers are very good at self promotion.
|
| Weeding out those who change pronouns in documentation and
| agitate on Slack would be a reliable start. From there, close
| reading of PRs, their usefulness and code quality is required.
| LOC is not an indicator.
|
| As for managers, most of them are useless.
| Alex3917 wrote:
| > Longtime Musk associates David Sacks and Jason Calacanis
| appeared in a company directory over the weekend, according to
| photos obtained by The Washington Post. Both had official company
| emails and their titles were "staff software engineer."
|
| Do either of these guys even know how to program? Calacanis has
| been making tech content for decades, and I've never once heard
| him talk about writing code.
| joegahona wrote:
| Sacks knows his stuff. Calacanis is more of a henchman and
| acknowledged begrudgingly on the All-In Podcast that he's
| incapable of coding.
| boeingUH60 wrote:
| Sacks runs a VC firm with over $1 billion under management
| [1]...Staff Software Engineer is a big demotion for him, lol
|
| 1 - https://medium.com/craft-ventures/announcing-craft-
| iii-1-1-b...
| hotpotamus wrote:
| Twitter probably didn't have a pre-existing title for "Member
| of the Musk Entourage" so they just found what they considered
| the next closest thing.
| georgeg23 wrote:
| Musk thinks everything is software engineering, including the
| universe.
| dmix wrote:
| It's an obvious meaningless formality, not sure why it's
| news.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Because it's kind of odd for someone who makes such a big
| deal about high performing engineering orgs to hire his
| non-technical buddies into top tier engineering roles?
|
| Why not hire them into "Chief of Staff" or "Chief of Fuck
| You Parag" roles?
| dmix wrote:
| Do you seriously think that these two advisors he brought
| in for a weekend are now their top engineers?
|
| They both have plenty of experience running tech
| companies and are advising on structuring the team... I
| know everyone's trying to jump on the hate bandwagon but
| this is a stretch.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Well, no, because if I thought that was the case then it
| _wouldn 't_ be silly that they have a top engineering
| title. I'm saying that it _is_ silly. I agree this is a
| bottom-of-the-list issue, but it does strike me as weird
| even for Elon.
| superfrank wrote:
| I don't work at Twitter, so I don't really care what they
| call themselves. That being said, at every company I've
| ever worked at the people who have responsibilities like
| "running tech companies and [...] advising on strutting
| the team" usually have manager, director, or VP titles.
| It is a little odd to give a staff software engineer
| title to someone who isn't able to write code.
|
| Like I said though, I have no horse in this race, so
| whatever -\\_(tsu)_/-
| MentallyRetired wrote:
| Mahalo was such a success, I can see why getting put on as a
| staff engineer makes sense. Calacanis was already a twit long
| before twitter was around.
| rr808 wrote:
| Seems to be a lot of work at twitter I doubt there will be many
| devs removed.
|
| However he tweeted that there are 10 people managing for every
| one dev. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1586686935518498816
|
| Also Layoffs before vesting denied.
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1586831721386766337
|
| Bring back Vine?
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1586918804780630016
| benj111 wrote:
| >However he tweeted that there are 10 people managing for every
| one dev
|
| What would the figure usually be.
|
| You have marketing managers, people managing account
| maintenance, people managing bot reports, etc etc.
|
| It seems to me, that's almost like complaining that an office
| or shop has 10 times more managers than maintenance guys. Both
| are locations where business are carried out rather than the
| actual business itself.
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| I don't know how much anyone can trust anything coming out of
| Elon's twitter feed, tbh. He tried to squirm out of this deal
| with some pretty spurious claims. Now he's using the same
| spurious claim tactic to continue to try and squirm out of his
| failure to manage his bad acquisition.
| mikkergp wrote:
| With all these layoffs, Hopefully he brings back the fail
| whale.
| tjpnz wrote:
| If death marches are now the new norm they'll absolutely need
| it.
| duxup wrote:
| He tweets lots of things...
|
| Not sure I would trust in tweets much. Twitter took on a lot of
| debt.
| datalopers wrote:
| Getting laid off and having your RSUs vest at 2021 prices is the
| best deal this year.
| outside1234 wrote:
| But I think Elon's goal is to screw the employees out of their
| next grant
| datalopers wrote:
| Valuations would be down 70% (eg $META, $SNAP) if it weren't
| for this buyout so I think the majority of employees end up
| better than they would have been. Annual grants are usually
| 10-25%.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| 1. Elon already tweeted that this is false.
|
| 2. As another commenter mentioned, I don't even think this
| would be possible given California WARN Act requirements, but
| I'm less sure on the legal requirements here.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > As another commenter mentioned, I don't even think this
| would be possible given California WARN Act requirement
|
| Large-scale labor law violations are not impossible, or
| even unprecedented for Musk-owned firms.
| DesiLurker wrote:
| >Elon already tweeted that this is false.
|
| Did you expect him to say it is true?
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Of course not, I would expect him to say nothing in that
| case.
|
| Honestly, it's pretty ridiculous how people conflate
| "Elon is a bad guy who stretches the truth all the time"
| with him sending out a completely unambiguous statement
| that, if it were a lie, would easily be proven wrong in
| one day. Point being, people who _do_ stretch the truth
| /over-promise know how to do it in a way that isn't
| falsifiable in 24 hours.
| watwut wrote:
| Hd did said and tweeted outright lies in the past. Lying
| is not out character for him.
| [deleted]
| phantomathkg wrote:
| https://archive.ph/7Q7en
| saurik wrote:
| 6 months ago it was all painted (maybe seemingly, though, by
| prior executives who weren't speaking for Musk) as if this
| wouldn't be a big deal for employees, which to me makes this idea
| that people are being rapidly fired "for cause" after a suddenly-
| imposed weekend work shift deadline extra shitty :/. (Even if I
| do sometimes claim that Twitter is incompetent as an organization
| or bloated with idle staff, these are humans that deserve some
| basic respect with how they handle a transition plan.)
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/25/technology/twitter-employ...
|
| > At the meeting with employees on Monday [April 25], executives
| tried to assure employees that they wouldn't be shortchanged by
| Mr. Musk's acquisition. Mr. Agrawal told employees that their
| stock options would convert to cash when the deal with Mr. Musk
| closes, which he estimated would take between three and six
| months. Employees would receive their same benefits packages for
| a year after the deal was finalized and there were no immediate
| plans for layoffs, he added.
| dirheist wrote:
| Those being laid off for cause are the 3 senior level
| executives (the old CEO, the lead counsel, and the content
| policy head). Those 3 had a 100+ million cumulative severance
| package which they are now no longer eligible to receive,
| although none of them are strapped for cash.
| make3 wrote:
| "which they are now no longer eligible to receive" I would
| 100% assume that they will sue
| sulam wrote:
| Taylor Leese is a respected Twitter engineering manager who
| tweeted on Sunday that he was no longer working at Twitter.
| While it's remotely conceivable that he quit, it's much more
| likely he was fired.
|
| I had reports from friends who worked there that they were
| asked to stay available over the weekend, presumably for
| situations like this, or requests from the "war room" group
| that has been setup.
| vxNsr wrote:
| What is an engineering manager as it relates to actually
| writing code?
|
| One of the things Elon said was that there appears to be 3
| managers for every engineer. I understand the need for a
| few PMs but if there really was a 3:1 ratio that's just
| absurd.
| itronitron wrote:
| My understanding of Twitter is that it has, or used to
| have, many internal teams that do 'social media
| consultancy projects' for prospective clients presumably
| to facilitate ad campaigns. In that case I would expect
| everyone on those teams to have manager as a job title,
| much like 'director' in design firms.
| ryanwaggoner wrote:
| Actually, he said there are 10 managers for every
| engineer who codes, but I don't know why anyone would
| take anything he says seriously at this point.
| datalopers wrote:
| > they are now no longer eligible to receive
|
| Musk doesn't meet the cause outlined in their employment
| contracts. They'll get their executive early termination
| severance but it'll require some legal action first.
| prepend wrote:
| What cause is outlined in their employment contracts?
|
| Do they even have employment contracts?
| fishtoaster wrote:
| The average engineer has an employment contract. It would
| be incredibly surprising if the CEO, lead counsel, and
| content policy head did _not_.
| gaadd33 wrote:
| Yep they are filed with the SEC, you can see one of them
| here: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1418091/000
| 119312521...
| saurik wrote:
| Elsewhere in this thread, people are discussing a
| potentially-credible (but maybe you disagree) report on this
| from Gergely Orosz that does not paint this as "only the 3
| senior executives".
|
| https://twitter.com/gergelyorosz/status/1587042365084209153?.
| ..
|
| > I talked with an engineering manager who was at Twitter for
| 5+ years, and got laid off on Sunday "for cause". They were
| too exhausted from working over the weekend to talk longer:
| they first need to sleep.
| nharada wrote:
| I don't understand why so many people celebrate when Elon
| treats his underlings like trash. Is it because people hate
| Twitter and think if you work there you deserve this? Is it
| because they want to have Elon's level of power and fame
| where the rules don't apply to them? Something else?
| prions wrote:
| Because the aggrieved aren't satisfied only by Elon
| taking over twitter and taking it in a different
| direction, they also believe that those currently at
| twitter deserve harsh punishment for whatever role they
| had in twitter.
| PixyMisa wrote:
| Correct.
| potatolicious wrote:
| The cruelty is the point with authoritarians.
|
| Also one perennial observation with authoritarian-
| friendly people is that in their dog-eat-dog fantasy they
| are the badass warlord sitting atop a pile of bones
| rather than the nameless goon that lies at the bottom of
| the bonepile.
| xeromal wrote:
| Probably the same reason people watch drama TV and soaps.
| It's entertainment
| donedealomg wrote:
| boruto wrote:
| Imagine if this was Ellison, HN would be going bonkers.
| Now that it is musk, lot of comments saying it is fine
| and dandy.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| All of the above, plus a fair bit of delusion. The amount
| of people I've seen pretending to be engineers in order
| to normalize the most ridiculous things he says or does
| has been growing and when pressed they often just vanish
| or stop responding.
|
| That said, should Twitter eventually fall apart it will
| never be the fault of Musk. It will be because insiders
| preventing his vision, or the government blocked him, or
| any number of excuses.
| fourstar wrote:
| digdugdirk wrote:
| There are plenty of people who have the skills to provide
| value to an organization, and just want a safe/reliable
| payment to provide for their families in return.
|
| Its still a sad occasion to see them fired for no/little
| reason.
| fourstar wrote:
| bogota wrote:
| Good we will all check in with you in the future to make
| sure you deem that our jobs are valuable. Im sure you are
| working on curing cancer.
| fourstar wrote:
| peterashford wrote:
| That's pretty callous, tbh
| extr wrote:
| Lol post where you work or STFU
| fourstar wrote:
| [deleted]
| skinnymuch wrote:
| The majority of work done by white collar people is not
| wildly valuable either from a cynical point of view (or
| realistic/truthful if you feel that way pov)
| hyperpape wrote:
| Matt Levine has a good explanation (https://www.bloomberg.com
| /opinion/articles/2022-10-31/elon-m...), which is that they
| receive a golden parachute for a simple reason. Their self-
| interest was to say "la-la-la, we can't hear you" when Musk
| comes trying to buy Twitter. That would've given them a
| chance to maintain high paid positions for years. Instead,
| they sold to him, knowing they'd probably be given the boot.
|
| Now, at some level, it still stinks that the CEO is getting
| paid so many tens of millions of dollars for less than a
| year's worth of work. To solve that, you'd have to cut CEO
| pay in the first place, because just removing the parachute
| would incentivize clinging to their existing paychecks.
| smcl wrote:
| That Matt Levine article in archive.ph:
| https://archive.ph/JrNdE
| freejazz wrote:
| The board decided to sell, not the C-level suite because
| they do not have that power.
| iav wrote:
| The C suite has an incredible amount of influence to
| block a deal with a non-strategic acquirer like Elon. The
| threat of all executives resigning en masse can knee cap
| a business.
| freejazz wrote:
| That's true, but it wasn't the question.
| smcl wrote:
| What was the question? I don't see any
| rst wrote:
| Parag Agrawal, as CEO, was also a member of the board.
| (This is pretty common practice, among both private and
| public companies.)
| bradleybuda wrote:
| > although none of them are strapped for cash
|
| Does this mean that they have or deserve different rights
| under contract law than others do? What if their counterparty
| is even less "strapped for cash"?
| [deleted]
| prepend wrote:
| It's not an excuse to treat people poorly, but I certainly
| have less empathy for someone who has $5M in vested stock
| who gets fired vs someone who makes $15/hour and lives
| paycheck to paycheck.
|
| Both are injustices. The former isn't much of a risk to
| life. The latter could literally result in life or death
| situations.
| themitigating wrote:
| Selective empathy is on the path to becoming a sociopath
| theGnuMe wrote:
| It would be funny if the cause was "selling Twitter to Musk".
| :)
| ummonk wrote:
| Genghis Khan vibes
| linuxhansl wrote:
| Firing 25% of the workforce "for cause" looks like a very hard
| sell to me, and would open up Twitter for a barrage of lawsuits
| - and rightly so.
|
| Even laying off 25% of the workers would be hard to justify at
| this point. I'm certainly curious where this all is going.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Stories like this make like the employee protection I enjoy
| even more.
| btilly wrote:
| TANSTAAFL. (There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.)
|
| The downside of employee protections is that it makes
| companies more reluctant to hire. And also once hired, the
| salary to be offered is reduced to cover the estimated
| current value of the future employee protections. These are
| real downsides, particularly for young people who are
| trying to get a foot into the corporate ladder.
|
| I have even personally witnessed a situation where a
| company evaluated a legal change to increase employee
| protections, and decided to layoff almost everyone in a
| particular country before the new law took effect. (The
| company was Pictage, the country was Argentina, and this
| was a bit over a dozen years ago.)
|
| So I'll take the up front downsides of at will over the
| hidden downsides of employee protections.
| lmm wrote:
| > TANSTAAFL. (There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.)
|
| Maybe not, but the world isn't zero-sum. Some things
| really do raise or lower the overall average.
|
| > I have even personally witnessed a situation where a
| company evaluated a legal change to increase employee
| protections, and decided to layoff almost everyone in a
| particular country before the new law took effect. (The
| company was Pictage, the country was Argentina, and this
| was a bit over a dozen years ago.)
|
| What was the law change? And how long would it have been
| before those employees were laid off otherwise? That's an
| interesting datapoint to hear about, but "employee
| protections" can mean many different things.
|
| > So I'll take the up front downsides of at will over the
| hidden downsides of employee protections.
|
| Unfortunately you don't get to skip out on the hidden
| downsides of at will either.
| deanCommie wrote:
| Sure, it's a spectrum.
|
| People use the same argument to justify removing minimum
| working age laws, weekend laws, OSHA laws, EPA
| protections, retirement, healthcare etc.
|
| In a pure unregulated market, employers would be able to
| offer employees much higher salaries!
|
| The reality is somewhere in the middle. Though what
| America thinks is reasonable is very different than what
| the rest of the developed world thinks is.
| kenjackson wrote:
| If increased employee protection causes you to layoff
| almost everyone in a country -- you probably had little
| good business reason to be in that country.
|
| Employee protection exists because there's a huge power
| imbalance. A company who can constantly just say, "we'll
| fire you if this doesn't get done" and colludes with
| other companies on such matters makes it very difficult
| for workers. This is why employee protection, unions,
| etc... exist.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Whether it does or does not protect them, employees will
| pay for these protections in the form of lowered salary
| and fewer jobs available.
|
| Nothing comes for free.
| prottog wrote:
| Indeed! Harder to hire, harder to fire. Like most such
| schemes, it advantages those already inside at the cost
| to those looking in from the outside; see also rent
| control.
| kingsloi wrote:
| /cries in an at-will state/
| Y-bar wrote:
| Unions. Not just for fancy Europeans and factory workers.
|
| If your colleagues gets fired for some bs reason you and
| your other colleagues can stand for each other by
| striking.
| Archelaos wrote:
| ... and codetermination. See:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codetermination_in_Germany
| kazen44 wrote:
| exists in most northern and western european companies
| aswell.. Unions in europe also seem far less militant
| than those in the US.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > Unions in europe also seem far less militant
|
| That's because unions are an integral part of the way
| many of the countries socio-political systems work. In
| Norway, for instance, the trades unions and the employers
| get together once a year to hammer out what is called
| tarriflonn, essentially the going rate for each broad
| type of job. The state provides a referee for the
| meetings whose job is to keep them on track and to
| encourage both sides to compromise. Unions and companies
| work together rather than fight each other, most of the
| time.
|
| But this can only work if there is a broad consensus that
| we are all in the same boat and that we will all be
| better off if we work together.
|
| The attitude, that appears to be common, in the US that
| employers are always exploitative, employees are always
| lazy and thieving, that the government is just a
| parasite, and that the aphorism "Good enough for
| government work" is a synonym for delivering shoddy work
| means that no one trusts anyone so you end up fighting
| all the time.
| AdamJacobMuller wrote:
| I read this as "code termination" instead of "co
| determination" and was about halfway through the
| wikipedia article and quite confused before I figured it
| out.
| adolph wrote:
| Yeah, its what happens when you get fired but everyone
| wraps their arms around you in a big group hug so
| security can't get to you: de-termination.
| masklinn wrote:
| Fwiw all states are at-will, though there are varying
| exceptions from state to state.
| teraflop wrote:
| Montana is the biggest exception. It's only at-will for a
| 6-month probationary period, and after that, you can
| generally only be fired for "good cause".
| WalterBright wrote:
| Good cause could be Twitter is losing money and has
| massive debt.
| kingsloi wrote:
| Yeah I know broadly they all are, but some states offer
| slightly more protection.
|
| On a side note, what happens to health insurance for
| employees who're let go? Does it end the time of your
| last day or midnight? I was too afraid to Google it as I
| likely knew it's be pretty cut throat, but have always
| stressed about it regardless.
| ghaff wrote:
| It might be immediate, it might be end of month, might be
| some other period. In any case COBRA kicks in and can be
| paid for retrospectively if you need it.
| ufmace wrote:
| Generally the end of the month that you were terminated
| in, unless you pay the same company to keep the same plan
| via COBRA. It's the same plan, you're just paying what
| you paid for it before plus whatever the company was
| paying for your share, which is generally much higher.
| realgeniushere wrote:
| Even California still has at-will employment. He doesn't need
| cause, or anyone else to agree on what that cause is.
| whateveracct wrote:
| there's legislation around layoffs you can't handwave with
| "at will"
| whateveracct wrote:
| For the downvoters - google the WARN act
| ac29 wrote:
| The WARN act only means you need to give 60 days notice
| in certain types of mass layoffs. Given that Twitter
| hasnt done any mass layoffs yet, speculating on whether
| or not they gave enough notice under the act is a bit
| premature.
| whateveracct wrote:
| Twitter hasn't, but it seems that there is some internal
| tension around it. Making working conditions worse to
| force people to quit, setting impossible deadlines to
| fire en masse "with cause," and just generally shedding
| employees but not calling it a layoff all seem to be in
| play.
|
| Elon is interacting and trying to dodge this act. He
| seems to want to cut Twitter's workforce at a scale that
| the WARN act covers.
| realgeniushere wrote:
| WARN Act just means you have to give people notice. You
| can revoke their credentials and tell them to stay home
| while the 60-day clock runs. You just have to keep paying
| them for that time.
| georgeg23 wrote:
| And presumably their stock also vests?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| He might if he wants their options not to vest. [Edit: Or
| to have to pay their golden parachute.]
| bigiain wrote:
| I wonder if even Musk would be so publicly ruthless as
| that?
|
| I wonder how many his employees in Tesla/SpaceX/where
| ever are currently incentivised by stock options, who'd
| watch their boss doing that to Twitter people and wonder
| why they bother working evenings and weekends, if the
| options can be yanked as cruelly as that?
| ska wrote:
| Every jurisdiction is different in details, of course, but
| "at-will" just means you can fire someone, not that you get
| to decide what happens after unilaterally (e.g. you may owe
| severance)
| gnicholas wrote:
| Is that the case in CA or NY? I don't know where else
| Twitter has large offices, but presumably these would be
| two of the largest. I'm pretty sure in CA the employer
| doesn't automatically owe severance. It's usually offered
| in return for a promise not to sue (and sometimes also a
| promise not to speak ill of).
|
| There's the WARN Act, but I don't think that impacts what
| happens after a duly-warned layoff, unless I'm mistaken?
| memish wrote:
| > Even laying off 25% of the workers would be hard to justify
| at this point.
|
| It wouldn't because we're in a downturn and Twitter was
| already planning layoffs.
| gaadd33 wrote:
| Did Twitter already file a WARN act notice about the
| layoffs? If not, how can it be justified under that?
| Aleksdev wrote:
| Correct me if I'm wrong but it all really depends on the
| contract. I understand there are labor laws in place but
| if the person agreed to something then I don't think
| California law can do much.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| From what I've seen posted elsewhere California requires
| companies laying off more than 50 individuals to file.
| Failure to do so real estate can step in and force the
| employer to pay a couple months of severance. Most
| California labor laws cannot be waived by contract
| devmor wrote:
| >Twitter was already planning layoffs.
|
| Their CEO told them no layoffs were planned in the
| immediate future just a few months ago.
| lmm wrote:
| He was probably lying.
| gnicholas wrote:
| If articles on HN are any guide, CEOs say this up until
| the moment that layoffs occur. It goes something like
| "while we had hoped and worked to avoid impacting
| personnel, changes in the macroeconomic conditions have
| made it impossible for us to..."
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| How many devs at twitter have no code to show for the past
| month, because they swept up by the impending doom of Musk's
| takeover and stopped working? I would guess more than a few.
| Firing those "for cause" will probably be easy; they stopped
| working for a month and anybody can get fired for that.
|
| Those that remained productive will probably have better
| prospects for keeping their jobs, and for suing if they're
| fired.
| watwut wrote:
| The number of such people will be miniscule.
| ska wrote:
| > because they swept up by the impending doom of Musk's
| takeover and stopped working?
|
| To a first approximation I would guess 0.
|
| When a company is teetering on calamity, people don't just
| stop doing things, they just stop doing things in
| organized, co-ordinated ways.
|
| More than that, firing people for cause usually requires
| records and a demonstration of dialog the the person (not
| all jurisdictions) and is hard to demonstrate.
| 98codes wrote:
| We've known that lines of code were no indication of code
| quality or developer productivity for well over two decades
| now -- why would it start to matter now, particularly for
| those at more senior levels?
| khazhoux wrote:
| While you are correct that LOC is not a full measure of
| productivity, and there are many factors to consider, it
| would be nonsense to say that merging code has no bearing
| on productivity. All things equal (and disregarding
| engineers whose job isn't coding per se), submitted code
| is the essential deliverable of a software engineer.
| roughly wrote:
| No, "solved problems" is the essential deliverable of a
| software engineer, and the more senior one gets the less
| often "submitting code" is the correct path to solving a
| problem. Someone might submit code based on your work,
| but there's no direct correlation between "submitted
| code" and "did your job" at higher levels.
| khazhoux wrote:
| But you're describing exactly what I mentioned above:
| engineers whose job is not code, _per se_. Yes, the
| super-senior engineer who cracks down on bad code by
| others and sets the right path, etc, is very valuable
| even if they're not directly coding themselves. I'm
| talking about the engineers who are directly responsible
| for implementing features and fixing bugs. I.e., most
| software engineers.
|
| Sometimes a great engineer spends a month tracking down a
| 3-line fix, and that's just what happens with complex
| software. But by and large, if an engineer averages only
| a few LOC a month (and I've unfortunately seen this way
| too many times) then we probably have a problem on our
| hands.
| roughly wrote:
| The question is who's writing the code. A core part of a
| senior engineer's job is helping to train and mentor
| junior engineers; it's not unusual for an entire project
| to be designed and led by a senior engineer and
| implemented by more junior engineers. Design reviews
| don't result in commits, deep dives on technical
| implementations don't result in commits, negotiating an
| architecture change between groups don't result in
| commits. A large amount of the actual heavy-lifting
| value-add of an actually senior engineer is not in the
| code they're writing.
| moosedev wrote:
| This. Spending a productive, rewarding half a day pair
| programming with a receptive junior engineer who isn't
| sure how to approach a complex task nets them 1+ commits
| and you 0 commits. Spending half a day chasing after a
| "loose cannon" engineer who hastily committed bad code
| nets them 3 commits (the original bad commit, a rollback
| commit, and the fixed commit) and you 0 commits.
|
| How do the individual stats look at the end of the
| month/quarter/Musk Layoff Review Period when these kinds
| of days are relatively common?
| jerkstate wrote:
| sometimes the most senior engineers don't _ship_ a ton of
| code to prod, but they should certainly be _writing_ code
| to figure out where the organization should go, justify
| the ROI of their ideas, demonstrate a large-scale problem
| that needs resources mustered, interrogate business logic
| databases to tie disparate ideas together, understanding
| the scale and frequency of large scale problems, and so
| on. If you 're a senior engineer and can't point to any
| code you've written in the past 3 months, maybe you're
| not really an engineer, because you're not using
| engineering to solve problems.
|
| I think a lot of software engineers get too comfortable
| with the idea that meetings are deliverables - they
| aren't; meetings are coordination and planning. if nobody
| completes the work that was coordinated and planned, the
| meeting was nothing but a waste of time. Depending on
| your seniority as an engineer, you may have written code
| to decide that the work should be done, or you may be
| tasked with writing code to carry out the plan. If you're
| an engineer and you're not writing code on either side of
| meetings, you should dig deep and figure out why.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _We 've known that lines of code were no indication of
| code quality or developer productivity for well over two
| decades now_
|
| You're severely overstating it. The difference between
| 500 loc and 5000 loc isn't a clear signal of anything.
| But _zero_ lines of code certainly is. Firing people
| because the VCS shows they stopped working is common.
| thinkindie wrote:
| is code the only output of an engineer?
|
| not everything is committed in a VCS: you have
| documentation, architecture, RFC etc etc depending on the
| size of the company and seniority of the employee.
| prepend wrote:
| That stuff is typically in a VCS.
|
| I don't think it's an absolute rule that no commits means
| someone isn't developing. But it's probably a reason to
| have a conversation.
| covidiot5 wrote:
| watwut wrote:
| Zero code situation is wishful thinking - poster just
| made it up.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > wishful thinking
|
| I have no stake in the matter. My supposition that some
| employees simply stopped working comes from my experience
| seeing similar things happen at other companies during
| periods of uncertainty, and from my knowledge that quite
| a few twitter employees were very uncertain about their
| future with twitter.
| polynomial wrote:
| Perhaps an awful lot of people were just working on a
| stealth no code project.
| pfisherman wrote:
| The true big brain 10x programmer is pushing -100 lines
| of code per sprint.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Negative_2000
| _Li...
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| The true big brained programmer sat in a meeting and
| prevented a team of 25 people from wasting 6 months.
| bigiain wrote:
| Sure. That's super valuable.
|
| But I hope they have something productive to show for the
| other 20 odd days that month they collected their
| paycheque for...
| bigiain wrote:
| Sure. But a code review of their checkins will reveal
| their productivity pretty quick. Any one claiming 10x (or
| even 0.75x) productivity would want some very good
| supporting evidence if they have zero activity in the
| source control for a month. You want some great
| specification documents or API documentation or platform
| architecture diagrams or something...
| kps wrote:
| At a previous job I had a few months where I managed
| approximately minus-1 _instruction_ per week -- and it
| was the best money the company ever spent. Hard
| constraints are hard.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| In case this wasn't clear, when I say "no code" I mean no
| commits, nothing they can point to as evidence of doing
| any work. Afaic, commits removing code count for at least
| as much as those adding code. And if they've spent the
| past month adding documentation to the intranet wiki or
| something like that, there should be logs they can show
| to prove it.
| prepend wrote:
| I sort of think of the absolute value of lines changed as
| a pulse.
|
| You can do -100. You can do 100. You can net zero from
| 100 adds and 100 subtracts (abs=200). But it's something.
| If you have long stretches of zero that's not good.
| itronitron wrote:
| I'd be surprised if more than 20% of employees at Twitter
| are developers.
| eqbridges wrote:
| Can you cite where it's been said he's firing 25% (or any
| significant percentage) "for cause"?
|
| The only parties being cited as fired for cause are the
| outgoing executives, and WaPo article at the top of this post
| provides reasons for that.
| [deleted]
| ummonk wrote:
| There are Twitter employees tweeting out that they have
| been fired already. Whether it's going to be 25% or not,
| it's certainly not just outgoing executives.
|
| And the WaPo article states: " The first round of layoffs,
| led by his lawyer Alex Spiro, will target 25 percent of the
| workforce"
| jdminhbg wrote:
| You're missing the distinction PP is pointing out,
| between "layoffs" and "for-cause firings."
| ummonk wrote:
| Ah I see now. Right we will have to see whether they're
| claimed to be for-cause or not. Though the rush to fire
| people with a looming vesting deadline is certainly cause
| for suspicion.
| sp332 wrote:
| From WP: "Layoffs are expected to begin ahead of Nov. 1,
| when Twitter employees are slated to receive additional
| compensation related to stock grants."
|
| I think this might be the confusing part, because he's
| trying to claw back as much compensation as possible, maybe
| he's trying to avoid paying severance as well
| eqbridges wrote:
| What you're saying does not make any sense relative to
| the question asked.
| [deleted]
| assetlabel wrote:
| Elon Musk says "This is false":
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1586831721386766337
| saurik wrote:
| (I am not responding to the "25%" part as I did not use a
| percent myself, but am responding to the second, stricter,
| statement.)
|
| Elsewhere in this thread, people are discussing a
| potentially-credible (but maybe you disagree) report on
| this from Gergely Orosz that does not paint this as "only
| the 3 senior executives".
|
| https://twitter.com/gergelyorosz/status/1587042365084209153
|
| > I talked with an engineering manager who was at Twitter
| for 5+ years, and got laid off on Sunday "for cause". They
| were too exhausted from working over the weekend to talk
| longer: they first need to sleep.
| shaburn wrote:
| Lawsuits are often free financing to fractional future
| payouts. Especially when the terms are too cush from being
| clubby. That's like half of Elon's call on this bet.
| agsnu wrote:
| Tesla is currently engaged in litigation over allegedly
| firing employees without providing necessary 60 day notice
| period under California law, denying them pay as a result, so
| it would appear that Musk has precedent.
| mhewett wrote:
| I've been through changes like this several times and the SURE
| indicator that big changes are coming is when the higher-ups
| say "Nothing will change". Seriously.
|
| I actually think that, below the CEO level, the managers are
| engaged in wishful thinking, rather than deceit.
| jjfoooo4 wrote:
| Musk stands as good a chance of withholding the golden
| parachute pay as he did getting out of the acquisition.
| Zigurd wrote:
| The senior management who were fired "for cause" are all
| examples of how golden parachutes are properly used, and they
| all performed to the highest possible standard: They delivered
| a full-price payout to shareholders.
|
| The "for cause" bit is a transparently vindictive breach of
| contract. They will get their money and then some. In fact they
| may know some lawyers who know how to take Elon's money.
| [deleted]
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| _Mr. Agrawal told employees that their stock options would
| convert to cash when the deal with Mr. Musk closes, which he
| estimated would take between three and six months. Employees
| would receive their same benefits packages for a year after the
| deal was finalized and there were no immediate plans for
| layoffs, he added._
|
| So, really those two long sentences should be rewritten:
|
| Mr Agrawal, as an officer of the company, engaged in rampant
| speculation, perhaps to reassure employees (or himself) that
| their jobs were safe for three months to a year, even though
| Mr. Musk had repeatedly indicated otherwise.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| I think he would have known he was out the door since part of
| the reason Musk was saying he was buying Twitter in text
| messages was that he thought Agrawal wasn't up to the job.
| With a 52 million payout, I also think he wasn't overly
| worried about how he would do after Twitter.
| [deleted]
| drowning-secs wrote:
| You also need to give two months notice, or compensate for two
| months time, if you're going to have a big layoff. Laying off
| 50% of employees is also going to add up. 3,500 employees *
| $20,000 = $70,000,000.
| vxNsr wrote:
| If they keep them on they'll need to pay that anyway, this
| way they start saving money in 2 months instead of never.
| drowning-secs wrote:
| H8crilA wrote:
| Alternatively you can keep them around for 2 years and pay
| $840M in compensation.
|
| Closing the sarcasm, yes, layoffs have costs (various costs,
| including to the morale), but there are reasons why
| organisations do them anyways.
| grumple wrote:
| Wow, a whole weekend?
|
| Terminating huge amounts of the workforce when they have next to
| no knowledge of the inner workings of the company... well, it's
| going to be a disaster, and I think all the tech people here know
| it. I'm sure there are some areas to cut, but they almost
| certainly don't know which yet. Cutting 25%, you're going to mess
| up. Then you have to face the reality that the other 75% will be
| seeking the exit - few want their workload to increase by 33%,
| plus work for someone as mercurial and abusive as Musk and his
| team, plus be a party to the dying company which will inevitably
| become a more effective tool of the alt-right and extremists.
| iammjm wrote:
| I used to be a big Musk fan. But the longer it gets, the more i
| start to dislike him. He starts turning into a Mad King
| canadiantim wrote:
| I'm the opposite. Never was a Musk fan but now that I see him
| trying to reform twitter I'm very impressed he's willing to
| take so much flak for such a direly needed goal.
| matai_kolila wrote:
| He doesn't seem to be "reforming" Twitter, he seems to be
| trying desperately to recoup his lost investment.
|
| This wasn't needed and will be looked upon with embarrassment
| by him and all of tech in a decade.
| code_runner wrote:
| Anything having to do with twitter is not "direly needed"
| nwienert wrote:
| When all of tech is following direct censorship orders from
| the government and suppressing legitimate news to help a
| single party, it's fairly dire.
| matai_kolila wrote:
| That's not at all what happened.
|
| In fact, my bet is Musk will find out shortly, if not
| already, that Twitter's bans made a ton of sense and were
| extremely pragmatic, and had nothing at all to do with
| politics.
| nwienert wrote:
| It is what happened:
|
| https://theintercept.com/2022/10/31/social-media-
| disinformat...
|
| And they had everything to do with politics.
|
| It's interesting to see people cheer when things go their
| sides way and then do contortions to rationalize when
| they don't.
| matai_kolila wrote:
| That article has nothing to do with what I said. Twitter
| is not banning people for posting conservative
| viewpoints.
| coffeeblack wrote:
| It is exactly what happened.
| MarcelOlsz wrote:
| He didn't lose you at PayPal?
| dboreham wrote:
| At X.com
| jimt1234 wrote:
| I still have a lot of respect for Musk as bold business exec.
| But my respect for him as a person dropped to near-zero when he
| promoted the baseless conspiracy theory about Paul Pelosi.
| memish wrote:
| Context is important. He was responding to a dubious claim
| with an equally dubious claim. He was matching the rhetoric
| except to apply odds with "tiny chance".
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| His libelous pedo accusations should have sealed the deal
| years ago.
| yumraj wrote:
| Does anyone know how much of his own money he actually put in, as
| opposed to conning others?
| H8crilA wrote:
| So, it was a simple corporate raid after all. Welcome back to the
| 70s: energy markets problems, inflation, and now finally some
| good old corporate raiding with LBOs.
|
| PS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_raid
| twawaaay wrote:
| Twitter has been taken private so this is not corporate raid.
|
| Corporate raid is aimed at making changes to the company
| specifically to increase share price. The idea is that the
| resulting share price increase covers at least significant part
| of the cost of getting majority stake. This makes the buyout
| relatively cheap or even free.
|
| Which of course makes little sense if you are also taking the
| company private.
|
| I would also like to point out that the whole point of buying a
| controlling stake in the company usually is to exert some
| control. And to buy it out completely and take it private is to
| exert complete control without having to explain yourself (too
| much).
|
| There is, of course, possibility of the investor buying shares
| because they are content with current management and do not
| plan to interfere even after they have acquired majority stake.
| But this, in my experience, is quite rare.
| NationalPark wrote:
| Taking a company private via LBO, firing a quarter of the
| staff so you can afford the debt payments, and then
| streamlining and flipping the profitable parts of the
| business is the classic corporate raid playbook. So far he's
| done the LBO part, and is apparently doing the layoff part.
| Of course, he's the richest person in the world and his
| finance partners are well connected Saudis, so there are
| obviously many plausible reasons to operate it at a loss and
| never do the actual looting part of the corporate raid.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > streamlining and flipping the profitable parts of the
| business
|
| Good luck finding some at Twitter.
| PixyMisa wrote:
| Sure. But Musk is betting that Twitter is not profitable
| because of the people running it. And Twitter was
| profitable for a while before the marked management
| change in late 2018.
| [deleted]
| tommica wrote:
| Sell data?
| twawaaay wrote:
| > Of course, he's the richest person in the world and his
| finance partners are well connected Saudis,
|
| Care to point to your sources or are you just spreading
| misinformation?
|
| Saudis are second largest shareholder in Twitter but their
| share is relatively slim. Also, just because Saudis bought
| the same thing I bought does not immediately mean they are
| my finance partners even if it somehow helped my goal.
| NationalPark wrote:
| https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/saudis-kingdom-
| holding...
|
| Here, official Saudi statement that they are maintaining
| their $2bn stake in the company because it is in the long
| term interests of the Kingdom. So, maybe just business
| partners, not finance partners, although that's $2bn of
| cash that Musk won't have to pay out. Anyway, the
| substance of the point remains intact - there are many
| plausible reasons the current owners of twitter could
| want to continue operating it that are not in the classic
| corporate raiding plan.
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| 2 / 44 still equals 1/22, even with B's after the
| numbers.
| camel_Snake wrote:
| CTL+F "Saudi" https://www.tesla.com/blog/update-taking-
| tesla-private
|
| Saudi finance partners were the reason he tweeted
| 'Funding Secured' in relation to Tesla. That's Tesla, not
| Twitter, but does show he has partnerships with the 'well
| connected Saudis'
| [deleted]
| zaptrem wrote:
| Twitter had massive layoffs planned anyway that they put on
| hold when Musk started the buyout.
| themitigating wrote:
| Source ?
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Focus on what you can control
|
| Elon wanted to back out and the executives finessed him
| masterfully. Everyone with vested shares is a recipient of a
| $44,000,000,000 cash infusion into the bay area economy, while
| media stupidly focuses on cliffs and parachutes that wont be
| paid.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| quick question here. I'm completely in the dark about US labour
| law and such but is it possible to lay people off if the sole
| purpose is to prevent them from receiving stock compensation?
| Sounds kind of wild given that it seems expected compensation
| when you signed a contract to work there in the first place.
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| > Sounds kind of wild given that it seems expected compensation
| when you signed a contract to work there in the first place.
|
| Contract says you get the stock if you work for a certain
| period of time at the company. Consequently, if you're fired or
| quit before that period elapses, you don't get it.
| kweingar wrote:
| There are laws that restrict firing someone to avoid a
| payout, at least in some states.
|
| Not sure if it applies to stock vesting. From what I
| understand, the main goal is to prevent an employer from
| firing someone at e.g. 19 years 11 months tenure purely to
| avoid paying them a pension.
| ajkjk wrote:
| I don't know about the law, but it makes a lot of sense of to
| me. Compensation that's "in your pocket" is compensation you
| have. RSUs were _always_ a way to keep you around for a payout
| later (and potentially rescind the payout if they don't want
| you around). Viewing them as money in your pocket is a mistake.
| OnuRC wrote:
| I see what team Bezos is trying to do with these unoffical
| leaks/details :)
|
| Somehow I think they will be specially focusing on twitter more
| LeicaLatte wrote:
| Ancalagon wrote:
| What's with the contempt for twitter employees in this thread? I
| really hope Musk doesn't come for your job next
| swozey wrote:
| The contempt for them on twitter is even worse. A ton of
| anonymous twitter accounts laughing at people losing their
| jobs.
| pyronik19 wrote:
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| Meh, being laughed at by people who couldn't have gotten
| hired to work at twitter short of buying the company is
| really easy to dismiss.
| JasserInicide wrote:
| Can't blame them honestly. There was that Project Veritas
| video where they talked to some employees and they don't even
| hide how big of assholes they are.
| chasd00 wrote:
| it's not apples to apples but the other energy firms did the
| same to Enron employees when they were walking out with their
| boxes of stuff. iirc HR departments in competing firms put
| out gleeful notices that former Enron employees would not be
| considered for open positions. Everyone loves to point and
| laugh when someone a tick up on the perceived totem pole
| falls down a few notches.
| notacoward wrote:
| > I really hope Musk doesn't come for your job next
|
| Part of me hopes he _does_ , because that's the only way the
| Tall Poppy Syndrome folks have any chance of learning. But most
| of me has more empathy than they do.
| Ancalagon wrote:
| Feels like your painting a picture of these folks when you
| more than likely have no idea who they are or how they act.
|
| More than likely they're fairly normal employees. Granted
| they make more than most but that doesn't mean they have
| "Tall Poppy Syndrome".
|
| The ONLY bad guys in this scenario are Musk and his yes-men
| notacoward wrote:
| You seem to be misunderstanding who I'm talking about, or
| even what TPS is.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome
|
| The Tall Poppy Syndrome folks are _not_ those at Twitter. I
| know a few, and respect them, and have no problem with them
| making more than most (as I did myself when I worked at
| FB). No, the TPS folks are those right here _bashing_
| Twitter employees, as you yourself complained about. I don
| 't know who they are, but I do know how they act because
| they're acting out right here in front of us.
|
| > The ONLY bad guys in this scenario are Musk and his yes-
| men
|
| So you no longer have a problem with the haters? What
| changed in the last two hours?
| Ancalagon wrote:
| Apologies I misunderstood. And when I was remarking on
| Musk I meant those actually involved in the lay-offs.
| secondcoming wrote:
| This phenomenon didn't begin with Twitter. Remember the whole
| 'Learn to Code' thing?
| phpisthebest wrote:
| I can tell you the viral "day in the Life" video that was going
| around in the last week or so did not help the situation much.
| Ancalagon wrote:
| Wasn't that a Meta employee?
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| Loathe to give outrage reposters views but here it is:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkQbHyLE6Tc
|
| The video was posted by a remote financial analyst who was
| visiting the SF office for the first time. She describes what
| amounts to maybe an hour of break time, including lunch --
| the rest of her day is meetings and working time. The perks
| are nice, maybe too nice you could argue, but the notion that
| the video proves she (and other Twitter workers) don't do any
| "real work" is idiotic. It's a short video, a tiny sample of
| her work day -- why would she dedicate any portion of it to
| showing her crunching numbers in Excel or whatever?
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| Worth noting also that the poster has scrubbed her online
| presence, I would guess due to incessant harassment. Really
| stupid all around.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| This is not the first time a twitter employee has implied a
| light work schedule. There were posts when the first Elon
| buyout rumor came around about twitter employee reporting
| remote work amounting to around 30 hours a week..
|
| This just adds fuel to the fire that for the most part
| Twitter has a bunch of part time employee getting very high
| full time wages.
|
| Now there is a large segment of the population that believe
| 32 hour work weeks should be standard, if your one of those
| then I suppose their posts will not spark much respond, but
| for most people that will spark strong negative emotions.
|
| > She describes what amounts to maybe an hour of break
| time, including lunch -- the rest of her day is meetings
| and working time.
|
| then it should not be labeled as "a day in the life"
|
| Watching the video the person comes away with an impression
| this is more than just 1 hour of the day. I also suspect
| you are giving this person far too much credit for the
| amount of work they did that day. I am guessing it was more
| like 1 hour of real work, couple hours of meetings, and the
| rest socializing / using the "amenities"
| ketzo wrote:
| > 1 hour of real work, couple hours of meetings
|
| showing your biases a little too much there, aren't you?
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Nope. My biases are clear and well known, I dislike
| everything about Silicon valley and the culture of
| Silicon Valley.
|
| If I could make one plea to Elon, it would be to move
| Twitter out of Silicon Valley as fast as possible
| themitigating wrote:
| Admitting you are bias doesn't remove the issue that you
| are bias.
| watwut wrote:
| Meh, this is just looking for outrage. And quite
| literally.
|
| Also, if you are going to the office after being remote,
| meetings and discussions tend are always the point.
| Otherwise you could have stayed at home.
| caeril wrote:
| Because
|
| 1. Twitter, the core application, is literally a weekend junior
| dev project. The only engineers on the payroll who provide
| actual value, out of _THOUSANDS_ , are those who scale the
| application and infrastructure. The vast majority of these
| people have been paid huge comp packages for doing effectively
| nothing. Sure, there are auxilliary applications like the ad
| platform, business intelligence, etc, but there is no world in
| which you need the enormous engineering staff they have to
| build or run these. Most of these people are useless.
|
| 2. Twitter employees have been complicit in curbing free
| speech, in a highly partisan manner, for years now.
|
| > I really hope Musk doesn't come for your job next
|
| I suspect that if you provide actual, tangible value and you're
| not actively silencing people for using the wrong pronouns,
| you'll be safe.
| Ancalagon wrote:
| How is broadly laying off 25% of the org ever going to have
| the precision of pointed firings for excessive pronoun use?
| Even real-value is hard to measure at that scale.
| yupper32 wrote:
| Calling their ad platform "auxiliary" when it's their core
| business is hilarious. You are completely out of your element
| here.
| mcguire wrote:
| Pardon me, but isn't this the standard operating procedure for
| leveraged buyouts of "inefficient" businesses?
|
| Cut expenses to the bone, resulting in a higher profit margin on
| the same revenue, coast on that revenue while dismembering the
| business for anything valuable, and then load any transferable
| debt to the carcass and declare bankruptcy?
| boppo1 wrote:
| Well yeah, except he's talking about bringing back Vine, which
| is incongruous with the typical LBO strat.
|
| Before reels or tiktok or stories or shorts, there was vine and
| people loved it. But it didn't make any money.
| mcguire wrote:
| Interesting idea. But, wouldn't that be competing with
| TikTok? And, Vine hasn't been a thing in what, 6 years?
| That's not so much "bringing back" as developing something
| new.
| kupopuffs wrote:
| How do you know that is related at all?
| zamalek wrote:
| > sent Tesla engineers to evaluate Twitter's software code
|
| Isn't the Tesla software allegedly a horrific mess? I suspect
| they may have been taking notes, instead.
| Ptchd wrote:
| All tech companies should probably lay off 50% of their employees
| and double everyone's salary...
| fullshark wrote:
| Simply no other options really if you borrow billions of dollars
| to buy Twitter than to do this.
| rongopo wrote:
| They are all slaves, including Musk himself.
| superfrank wrote:
| Care to elaborate?
| mola wrote:
| Moloch?
| outside1234 wrote:
| Did Twitter file a California WARN notice? If not, they need to
| do so and give 60 day notice to workers in California.
|
| So, don't accept anything that doesn't preserve your rights to
| your Tuesday equity grant.
|
| Details here:
| https://edd.ca.gov/en/Jobs_and_Training/Layoff_Services_WARN
|
| Key Provision: "Layoff of 50 or more employees within a 30-day
| period regardless of % of workforce. ...."
|
| Penalties for Violation: "A possible civil penalty of $500 a day
| for each day of violation. Employees may receive back pay to be
| paid at employee's final rate or 3 year average rate of
| compensation, whichever is higher."
| nemo44x wrote:
| I think a couple months severance will cover it. That's usually
| how these types of things work.
| nytesky wrote:
| The reason they want to lay off today is to avoid the stock
| grants, so it comes down which $$ was bigger. And honestly
| they were likely planning for severance anyways...
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Given that none of this is official, and there are at minimum 3
| different reports about the quantity and timeline of layoffs I
| dont think anyone is concerned about a WARN notification
|
| I beat even Elon, at this moment, does not have a full
| accounting of what the layoffs will be. This is all just pure
| media hype and nonsense with very little basis in truth or
| reality
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| The layoffs, if any, haven't even been announced yet and the
| only sources in the article are anonymous sources who can't
| agree with each other about the supposed impending layoff.
|
| I don't see any reason to suspect they're going to somehow
| violate the law and cost themselves additional fines if or when
| they do it. This is just about speculation about what Musk will
| eventually do.
| basementcat wrote:
| My understanding is that the WARN notice does not apply when
| employees are terminated for cause. This has the extra
| "benefit" of not having to pay out unemployment claims.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| For legal purposes, a separation letter for a for-cause
| termination must state the specific "cause" for which the
| employee is terminated.
|
| Termination on the basis of poor performance (legally,
| "incompetence") requires supporting documentation, such as
| written reviews of the employees' performance _prior_ to the
| termination. And legally incompetence only tests the employee
| 's performance at tasks actually within their job
| description; an employee can't be fired for incompetence at
| other tasks. Very importantly, a new boss coming in and
| deciding that employees weren't performing up to his
| arbitrary (and new) standards doesn't pass muster.
|
| A mass layoff for "performance" reasons has never been
| sustained by a labor department. The penalty is $500 for each
| day of violation (meaning each day short of the 60 required
| by the Warn ACT), plus all salary and bonuses that would have
| been paid during the 60 day period, plus legal fees incurred
| by the employees to protect their rights.
|
| Additionally, a "for cause" termination on performance (or
| any other grounds) opens the employer up to per se libel
| lawsuits. Literally, all the employee has to do is submit a
| copy of the termination letter into evidence and they win
| unless Twitterlon can demonstrate that the employee was
| actually incompetent.
| LastTrain wrote:
| If Twitter fires 25% of the workforce "for cause" they will
| be facing massive lawsuits and they will lose those.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Terminating for cause is a lot more work. You need to prepare
| documentation etc in case the employee sues you. Layoffs are
| very safe in comparison.
| rr808 wrote:
| I was laid off from another company under a warn notice in NY
| and I went home the first day and kept getting paid with full
| benefits for 3 months. I then got a redundancy payment. It was
| under the condition I couldn't work for another company.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Considering breaking the law is one of Musk's seemingly
| favorite hobbies, I wouldn't be so sure on a WARN notice. The
| punishments for non-compliance isn't very much.
| swader999 wrote:
| He's following the law if he pays the penalty.
| oneplusone wrote:
| So I I kill someone and go to jail for it I was following
| the law?
| adventured wrote:
| There are rarely laws that say you may not kill another
| person. There are typically laws that lay out the
| consequences if you are found guilty of murdering
| someone, through a designation (eg if it's a felony
| offense, and what type of felony).
|
| Whether you're guilty of murder or not is of course
| established after the fact. And you can do nothing wrong
| in the act of killing someone and still get screwed by a
| jury. Just ask the political left what they think of Kyle
| Rittenhouse being innocent.
|
| You can certainly follow the law and go to jail
| regardless.
| eCa wrote:
| If you pay a fine for breaking the law means you still
| broke the law. If you don't pay the fine, then you broke
| the law again.
| [deleted]
| lefstathiou wrote:
| Doesn't seem like an insurmountable obstacle. From some
| Googling:
|
| "Employers who fail to provide notification must provide their
| laid-off employees with back pay and benefits for the period of
| the violation (which means the amount of time by which their
| advance notice fell short of 60 days)."
|
| The value of ripping off the Band-Aid could easily be worth two
| months of severance in his mind.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| swader999 wrote:
| Especially with stock awards due.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Is it possible those awards could be construed as benefits?
| brtkdotse wrote:
| It's not the severance that's the issue, it that a bunch of
| RSUs vest tomorrow.
| lefstathiou wrote:
| I need to read into this more...
|
| My understanding is that this was a take private so all
| stock was acquired already (ie vested options get paid and
| unvested get terminated at Close).
|
| This is exactly what would happen if you acquired our
| company. It's not like a purchaser would have the honor
| long term vesting schedules. They bought everything already
| that was available to be sold. Those who didn't vest were
| dragged along into the deal.
| avrionov wrote:
| Usually, the RSUs are converted to cash and the RSUs
| schedule is kept the same. The workers which remain int
| he company receive cash on the same schedule.Hence
| Letting some people go before the RSU date saves money.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > This is exactly what would happen if you acquired our
| company.
|
| That is a terrible deal. I've worked at a company where
| all outstanding RSUs would vest immediately at the time
| of purchase; was that an unusual arrangement?
| jupp0r wrote:
| Not sure what Musk's intentions are with this. Normally this will
| lead to the best people updating their resumes and switching over
| to less toxic places ASAP. You are left with people who are
| attached to their ancient code or who can't find good jobs
| elsewhere.
|
| edit: typoz
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| He gets rid of the people who don't bend for him. A high
| performer is a negative if they work against your plans.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > Normally this will lead to the best people updating their
| resumes and switching over to less toxic places ASAP
|
| Potentially, but not necessarily. Some high performers may
| reasonably think "finally someone who is going to cut through
| all the bullshit in this bloated company and demand some
| accountability". Look through some of the stories when Steve
| Jobs rejoined Apple; it wasn't that dissimilar.
|
| Now, that said, folks like this usually want and demand an
| inspiring leader. Some may think Musk fits the bill for that (I
| think I probably would have years ago), but these days I
| usually just want him to STFU with so much of the bullshit
| nonsense he sends out. I mean, the day after he closed the
| Twitter deal he tweeted a blatantly ridiculous and libelous
| story about Paul Pelosi - it's just more of the same stupid
| shit from him.
| themitigating wrote:
| Unstable leader who makes off the cuff decisions.
|
| As for employees being happy that "lazy" people are being
| fired, if that's true why are companies so cautious about
| hiring and firing?
| superfrank wrote:
| If you're Musk and you truly believes that the company is
| bloated with underperforming employees, what is the
| alternative?
| rurp wrote:
| The alternative is to take a measured approach to learning
| about the business and org, in order to make informed
| decisions about how to restructure efficiently. But of course
| that takes time and effort. For somebody impetuous and self-
| indulgent, it's much more satisfying to go in swinging a
| machete on day one.
| superfrank wrote:
| So is you issue not that he's laying off all these people,
| but just the speed that he's doing this? Or to put it
| another way, let's say that he took a year and really
| studied Twitter and then came to the same conclusion and
| did the same layoffs, would you have an issue with it then?
| rurp wrote:
| If Elon or anyone else actually has strong reason to
| believe that certain employees are dead weight I'm fine
| with them being laid off. Given the speed and general
| dysfunction of this particular case there's basically no
| chance that's what is going on here.
| jupp0r wrote:
| Exactly. If there was a way to determine the least
| performing 50% of employees in a matter of two days, they
| wouldn't be there in the first place anymore. Even if you
| fire them, that's a surefire way of making sure that the
| best 5% of people leave the company anyways do to the
| depressing atmosphere this creates.
| mft_ wrote:
| > If there was a way to determine the least performing
| 50% of employees in a matter of two days, they wouldn't
| be there in the first place anymore.
|
| This would assume that the previous management had an
| incentive to cut costs and remove 50% of their
| workforce... which is probably not the case at all.
| jupp0r wrote:
| What makes you think that previous management needlessly
| employed unproductive workers when they could have easily
| not done so? Do you think that Elon Musk has some special
| magic insight that makes him get the same amount of work
| done with half the resources? I know some people at
| Twitter and some people at Musk's companies and I don't
| think they are fundamentally run differently.
| [deleted]
| kazinator wrote:
| "Twitter to lay off 25% of workforce in first round of job cuts,
| shedding 140 characters per day, over two weeks."
| MentallyRetired wrote:
| This is exactly why we need a developer/designer union.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Why, exactly?
|
| 1. It's not like this should come as a surprise to _anyone_ at
| Twitter. If you work at Twitter and haven 't been updating your
| resume and reaching out to other contacts, don't know what to
| say.
|
| 2. Remains to be seen what severance package laid off employees
| get, but with the California WARN requirements I think it's
| likely to be at least a couple months, which is fair. Looks
| like Musk tried to screw over some of the top execs by firing
| "for cause" (and note, in an exec's contract "for cause" can't
| just be "we don't like the job you did", it pretty much always
| has specific stipulations about breaking laws or company
| policy, e.g. sexual harassment), but they have more than enough
| resources to sue if necessary.
|
| 3. Is there anyone who reasonably thinks that Twitter has a lot
| of unproductive employees that _should_ be let go? I think
| unions can do a lot of good, but not if it 's the standard
| "once you're in the union it's nearly impossible to let you go"
| situation. Highly productive employees _hate_ working with
| people who just "phone it in".
| jupp0r wrote:
| Nope, this is why there are labor protection laws (some at
| least in CA).
| fknorangesite wrote:
| How do you think those labor protection laws got made in the
| first place?
| jupp0r wrote:
| Passed by the California legislature and signed into law by
| the governor like all laws?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Labor_Code#History
| herodoturtle wrote:
| From the linked article:
|
| > The company has yet to release a formal announcement of the
| acquisition. The communications department has gone silent.
| Rumors have swirled about layoffs, with some notices going out
| quietly.
|
| Is it just me or is this headline totally misleading?
|
| No formal announcement yet folks.
| anamexis wrote:
| Why is the headline misleading? You don't need a formal
| announcement for something to be news. Particularly since the
| formal announcement being referred to there is just the
| announcement that Twitter was acquired by Musk.
| herodoturtle wrote:
| Sorry if I wasn't clear, I was referring to the HN title of
| this post:
|
| "Twitter to lay off 25% of workforce in first round of job
| cuts"
|
| I opened the article thinking this was a formal announcement.
| But it's nothing of the sort. It's just speculation at this
| stage.
|
| Hope that clears things up.
| anamexis wrote:
| But it's not speculation:
|
| > ...according to four people familiar with the discussions
| who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe them,
| as well as tweets from some of the people involved.
| wisnoskij wrote:
| This comes from the news stations who said days ago that
| people were already laid off, and their sources turned
| out to be random people they found on the street with
| meme fake names. https://news.slashdot.org/story/22/10/28
| /2339204/pranksters-...
| anamexis wrote:
| No, it doesn't, this comes from the Washington Post,
| speaking to people familiar with the layoff planning.
| dmix wrote:
| Given everything over the last decade, people should not
| trust anything when it involves a) highly
| controversial/partisan/breathless news and b) dealing in
| anonymous sources and rumors.
| brookst wrote:
| I think we can rely on peoples' own smarts to build in
| that skepticism. There's not a lot of benefit to
| qualifying every piece of information to say that it
| might be wrong.
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| It comes down to, do you trust that WaPo properly vetted
| the sources, and do you believe that the sources, whether
| they were in a position to be credible or not, were
| acting on solid information?
|
| E.g. according to Business Insider Facebook should have
| fired half the company, according to "sources", but that
| hasn't happened to my knowledge yet
| phpisthebest wrote:
| I am sorry but i am over the "people familiar" .. "
| condition of anonymity" crap in news
|
| Either put a name to it, or dont report on it
| dev_daftly wrote:
| It's amazing how people still trust these "according to
| people familiar with x" articles after the past 5+ years.
| Like 99% of them have been wrong and just used to push a
| political agenda.
| snotrockets wrote:
| Asking sources to publish their name is a very sure way
| to not have sources at all.
|
| Quote Orwell, Journalism is printing what someone else
| does not want printed. You need to get people to tell you
| about all those things, and as that someone who dislike
| them being printed has power (it ain't news otherwise,)
| you need to find a way to make people talk to you. "Help
| me to rekt your career and life" just don't cut it.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| I understand that, and maybe the activists pretending to
| be journalists should have thought about that before
| burning the public's trust by just taking any
| sensationalized "source" with no vetting and reporting on
| it as fact.
|
| The "media" did this to themselves, now at this point no
| one would trust any news story that is only validated
| with "anonymous sources" as the media has proven they are
| either incapable of vetting these sources for truthful
| info, or do not actually have any sources at all and are
| just making shit up for the clicks
|
| Either way they have given the public no reason to trust
| them at this point
| dev_daftly wrote:
| That would make sense if journalists had a better track
| record when it came to their anonymous sources, but they
| don't.
| pseudo0 wrote:
| Are two of them named Ligma and Johnson?
| dang wrote:
| We've changed the title to what the article says now. I
| don't know whether WaPo changed their own title or the
| submitted title was editorializing (the latter is against
| the HN guidelines -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).
| mattficke wrote:
| "Twitter plans to lay off..." would probably be a more
| precise headline, yes. It's more than speculation, though,
| but you do have to trust the reporters on that.
| dustedcodes wrote:
| "It's believed that Twitter plans to lay off..."
| tootie wrote:
| I saw this Tweet by a director-level person at Twitter:
| https://twitter.com/iamharaldur/status/1585813324285239296
|
| Seems Elon is keeping his machinations to himself.
| georgeg23 wrote:
| It seems he barged in, went through internal chats to look
| for evidence to scuttle the deal or change the terms. https:/
| /mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/15868858873416458...
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Would _anything_ let him change the deal at this point?
| Even if Twitter was hiding their bot problem Elon 's
| initial offer waived his ability to do due diligence on
| this, no?
| mola wrote:
| He's a vindictive little man, even if he is stuck with
| Twitter at the price he paid, he probably wants revenge.
| Any evidence about information he didn't see will be fair
| game to claim witholding information from the court. And
| maybe a sec fraud indictment against those that were at
| the helm of Twitter.
| georgeg23 wrote:
| The courts can make anything happen .
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| You'd think so, but so far it seems like they can't get
| him out of this deal no matter how hard he tries.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| It helps if you don't make them hate you - because "can"
| doesn't mean "must".
| treis wrote:
| I wonder how that would work, practically. You'd have to
| track down every individual shareholder and... what undo
| the transaction? Seems impractical.
| georgeg23 wrote:
| The money hasn't been released to shareholders yet.
|
| Currently the target is Nov 8, but a lot could happen
| before then.
| dev_daftly wrote:
| He wouldn't be able to change the deal, but a lawsuit
| against the previous board/executives is possible.
|
| The entire waiving of due diligence thing is also such a
| weird talking point. There was no contingency on due
| diligence, but part of the deal did include access to the
| information he would need to do it and any incorrect
| information in public filings should have been enough to
| get out of the deal.
| BryantD wrote:
| If I were Elon there is zero chance I'd be able to resist
| name-searching myself in the company Slack, just in public
| channels and channels I was added to. I can't blame him for
| that.
|
| Tweeting it out, well. I could resist that urge just fine.
| mattficke wrote:
| It's reporting on information the authors received from sources
| who would not speak on the record. It's entirely possible that
| the four anonymous sources are the four people in the meeting
| (Musk et al) and they're speaking on background because they
| haven't made a formal announcement yet.
| cyborgx7 wrote:
| >No formal announcement yet folks.
|
| This is how you get a press that only uncritically regurgitates
| press releases.
| xtian wrote:
| Yeah it would be horrible if one day we had a press like
| that. In this case I expect they simply didn't have enough
| moveable type to include "Rumor:" at the start of the
| headline
| AlexandrB wrote:
| It's a rumour if you hear it from a friend of a friend. It
| sounds like they have several credible sources. Whether you
| trust their vetting of what constitutes a "credible source"
| is another matter.
| honeybadger1 wrote:
| I'm holding off my judgements on the Twitterverse until he has a
| chance to make real change. I don't particularly care for his
| attention span being focused on Twitter, I would much rather he
| focus on SpaceX and Tesla considering how successful his watch
| has been here.
| themitigating wrote:
| This is unrelated but Tesla has no SUV, new sedans, hatchbacks,
| or anything that's even a concept. I thought it would grow into
| a larger car company with a more diverse offering.
| begueradj wrote:
| stop posting about this hyper narcissist & psychopath
| _-david-_ wrote:
| Last week it was 75%, now it is 25%. What percentage will it be
| when it happens?
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