Well, if the YouTube video of a day in the life of a Twitter engineer is accurate then he only needs about 1,000 workers to run the business. I love the way he is cleaning house and will rebuilt with engineers that really want to work and do not treat work like a social event with free everything. Those of us who have been in the profession for decades do not understand this millennial mindset and find it hard to believe it leads to long term success.
In 2011, they supported 100 million users with under 1000 staff and the current number of users (300-400m) has been roughly the same since 2015:
Cutting employees when a company is losing money is pretty standard and a lot of companies increased hiring during the pandemic. Apple did it when Steve Jobs returned:
But the email Musk sent was completely the wrong thing to do. Employee morale everywhere is low due to the state of the economy and the Twitter employees already went through a mass cull. It's one thing to let low performing employees go but there's nothing to be gained in alienating the core staff that are needed to turn the company profitable.
With salaries in excess of $100k, they'll always manage to find employees to keep the services running but sending out ultimatums could only come with downsides and was totally unnecessary.
The thing is, with the call for “extreme” work, a $100k salary really isn’t. The employee expected to work 70 or 80 hour weeks is donating an FTE to the company, which is spending only $50k per FTE, with zero benefit costs on the second FTE. From the employee side, that second FTE shift is further diminished in value when you consider a legally less “skilled” worker would get overtime that would value the second 40 hours in a week at time-and-a-half, or $75k on an annualized basis.
The reality is that these practices are nothing other than an abuse of labor. The employee is working to exhaustion and sacrificing any life beyond being a cog in the machine, while the employer is paying significantly less than half the hourly labor costs for that level of work.
Also bear in mind that while Mr. Musk has been making a big show of working and sleeping at Twitter like he’s not asking employees to do anything he wouldn’t do himself, he’s now spending zero time at Tesla, SpaceX, the Boring Co. and the others he’s supposedly leading. No doubt the employees of those companies are probably thrilled to have Musk distracted elsewhere, but he’s still collecting the same income from them, despite turning in less than the level of effort there that he claims is reason to fire most of the staff at Twitter. Perhaps Tesla, SpaceX and all should give Musk an ultimatum or lay him off and save the billions they’re currently paying him while he doesn’t show up at work.
What I'd really like to see is some of these current twitter employees meet up and take concerted action to establish a union. Wouldn't that be a hoot?
You obviously know nothing about tech firms. Unions are a big no go and are irrelevant due to the nature of work.
Would a great leader be in the position that Musk is in? when I got into IT years ago, I remember learning something interesting about IBM. That is, at IBM you can make mistakes with money but if you make mistakes with people they get rid of you. I really like that kind of thinking. I work for a large company and we just had our CEO leave after 5 years because of wear and tear with juggling travel, business and family. He was well respected and people loved working for him based on feedback I hear. I supported him directly on many occasions and was the best CEO I ever knew so far. I said I would stay with my company as long as he remains CEO. That kind of leadership is what builds a great company. I don’t know if Musk understands how important it is to deal with people. People are the soul of any company. They will give their love, respect and hard work to leadership that works for them instead of against them. That’s part of how you win in business.
Would a great leader be in the position that Musk is in? when I got into IT years ago, I remember learning something interesting about IBM. That is, at IBM you can make mistakes with money but if you make mistakes with people they get rid of you. I really like that kind of thinking. I work for a large company and we just had our CEO leave after 5 years because of wear and tear with juggling travel, business and family. He was well respected and people loved working for him based on feedback I hear. I supported him directly on many occasions and was the best CEO I ever knew so far. I said I would stay with my company as long as he remains CEO. That kind of leadership is what builds a great company. I don’t know if Musk understands how important it is to deal with people. People are the soul of any company. They will give their love, respect and hard work to leadership that works for them instead of against them. That’s part of how you win in business.
Being that Elon Musk is the richest man in the world (and self made) and is the CEO of the worlds most successful electric car company and a few other extremely innovative companies I believed he has earned the right to be given the benefit of the doubt of his leadership skills.
Blind faith because he was born rich, doing something no one else has done, how remarkable that money begets money and yet sycophants still feel justified for their fawning.
He didn’t like the one sided biased and filtering of free speech. The old Twitter team likely though Sam Bankman-Fried and all of his donations to a certain D party made him a model Twitter citizen lol
He is simply cleaning out the people who made Twitter what it was, the exact reason he bought the company, to change it from what it was
Do you do that by keeping everything the same?
I've read all your posts in this thread, and each one is more embarrassing than the last. Seriously, sounds like you're fucking 12 years old, using ridiculously tired and childishly bullshit "free speech" narrative. So Musk spent 44B on twitter bc he thought Twitter was being mean to some right wing lunatics, simply by enforcing some level of moderation in order to slightly curb the massive amounts of filth and disinformation being spread?
It's not "filtering of free speech" for a company to have usage guidelines, you moron. Has nothing to do with bias, nor D/R. Has to do with vile people using the company to maliciously and recklessly spread objectively false information and weaponized lies. Nobody has a fucking human right to do that, nor have a megaphone to billions of people. Advertisers for the most part don't want anything to do with a company that peddles in so much filth. And more importantly, there's also a moral and ethical imperitace to at least attempt to curb some of this stuff. Maybe you'll understand that when you reach puberty. Most likely you won't, cause your eye ball deep in right wing drivel and psychosis.
For some insight into the personality and inspiration of Elon Musk, please read this biography of Nikola Tesla. "Tesla: Man Out Of Time." The only difference is the money.
Except for one HUGE difference: Tesla was an actual genius who could grasp advanced concepts and actually was responsible for some incredible inventions. Musk hasn’t invented a single thing. He’s bought his way into everything he takes credit for. Literally, not a single one of his “successes” is something that he himself invented or created.
Where do you jokers come from? In a long list of bad takes this one takes the cake … so far.
LOL Those posts here saying that Musk is just clearing out the dead wood, that Twitter staff was full of people that weren’t working hard, weren’t pulling their weight really crack me up. Do you really think that 75%+ of the staff weren’t needed? Do you really think the site that had trouble staying up last World Cup will do just fine with not just people, but whole departments gone? With Content Moderation crippled? With Public Relations and Communications dark? With most of the programmers and infrastructure people not there, or at best spending time looking to get out? Do you honestly think that by selectively driving away the most experienced, most talented, most capable members of the staff, the site will somehow work better?
Get real. This fiasco will be used by business schools in the future of exactly how not to take over a company. As an example of precisely how not to treat your staff. As Exhibit A of managers that did not know WTH they were doing.
That 75% number appears to be BS. It’s hater talking points.
The Twitter employees who are leaving won’t be around to undermine the new boss. It’s a good way to clear house. Obviously, many posters here think that Twitter was just fine and dandy befits big bad Elon showed up. Twitter was bonkers partisan. It was a poorly run profitless shit show. Arbitrary enforcement of their rules undermined its credibility. Musk is putting and end to it. And he’s going to to it with committed people and not those who would secretly try to undermine him.
LOL Those posts here saying that Musk is just clearing out the dead wood, that Twitter staff was full of people that weren’t working hard, weren’t pulling their weight really crack me up. Do you really think that 75%+ of the staff weren’t needed? Do you really think the site that had trouble staying up last World Cup will do just fine with not just people, but whole departments gone? With Content Moderation crippled? With Public Relations and Communications dark? With most of the programmers and infrastructure people not there, or at best spending time looking to get out? Do you honestly think that by selectively driving away the most experienced, most talented, most capable members of the staff, the site will somehow work better?
Get real. This fiasco will be used by business schools in the future of exactly how not to take over a company. As an example of precisely how not to treat your staff. As Exhibit A of managers that did not know WTH they were doing.
That 75% number appears to be BS. It’s hater talking points.
The Twitter employees who are leaving won’t be around to undermine the new boss. It’s a good way to clear house. Obviously, many posters here think that Twitter was just fine and dandy befits big bad Elon showed up. Twitter was bonkers partisan. It was a poorly run profitless shit show. Arbitrary enforcement of their rules undermined its credibility. Musk is putting and end to it. And he’s going to to it with committed people and not those who would secretly try to undermine him.
I’m guess that you lack the self awareness to realize that right after you said people were making things up that you want in a diatribe where you completely made things up.
Some interesting posts here! Is a new CEO really that great if large swathes of the staff leave? I see another Trump-type person who is actually not a decent person. His companies only have a value because tech is bigged-up out of all proportion. A company is worth its assets less its liabilities and I think you’ll find, on this basis, Musk and his companies are valueless. Something is not worth something because a few market-makers say it is.
Would the loss of Twitter really matter? There are plenty of alternatives and for the most part, what is posted is unpleasant rubbish. The use of Twitter for the dissemination of serious matter is insulting to the recipient and demeaning to the sender. This is apparent from the use of Twitter by many politicians and business people. This stuff should not be taken seriously.
LOL Those posts here saying that Musk is just clearing out the dead wood, that Twitter staff was full of people that weren’t working hard, weren’t pulling their weight really crack me up. Do you really think that 75%+ of the staff weren’t needed? Do you really think the site that had trouble staying up last World Cup will do just fine with not just people, but whole departments gone? With Content Moderation crippled? With Public Relations and Communications dark? With most of the programmers and infrastructure people not there, or at best spending time looking to get out? Do you honestly think that by selectively driving away the most experienced, most talented, most capable members of the staff, the site will somehow work better?
Get real. This fiasco will be used by business schools in the future of exactly how not to take over a company. As an example of precisely how not to treat your staff. As Exhibit A of managers that did not know WTH they were doing.
That 75% number appears to be BS. It’s hater talking points.
The Twitter employees who are leaving won’t be around to undermine the new boss. It’s a good way to clear house. Obviously, many posters here think that Twitter was just fine and dandy befits big bad Elon showed up. Twitter was bonkers partisan. It was a poorly run profitless shit show. Arbitrary enforcement of their rules undermined its credibility. Musk is putting and end to it. And he’s going to to it with committed people and not those who would secretly try to undermine him.
Musk announced that there would be a panel created to carefully review banned accounts and that no reinstatements would occur until after that panel was named, convened and had done its work. Then he did a Twitter poll for a few hours, declared Trump the winner and announced he’d been reinstated.
So the only thing Musk put an end to is any claim to credibility.
"Decimated" literally means to reduce by 10%. This word is used incorrectly all the time.
No, it’s not. While it’s original meaning may have been in rooted in tithing and Roman military punishments centuries ago, it’s modern, current meaning is accurate as used. As for the legacy language used by the legal profession… do you genuinely not understand the distinction? Do you speak to anyone in legal language? For that matter, do you tell anyone that you’re turning sinister at the corner? Or do you use ovation and truimph for their original, very specific meanings? Do you speak Indo-European in it’s “original” form?
Anyone that doesn’t get that language is as organic and dynamic as the societies and people that speak it, doesn’t get to opine on what words mean.
The word "decimate" comes from the Roman Army practice of killing every tenth man from a century (or, in rare cases, an entire legion) that fled a battle or committed some other unforgivable offence.
For some insight into the personality and inspiration of Elon Musk, please read this biography of Nikola Tesla. "Tesla: Man Out Of Time." The only difference is the money.
Except for one HUGE difference: Tesla was an actual genius who could grasp advanced concepts and actually was responsible for some incredible inventions. Musk hasn’t invented a single thing. He’s bought his way into everything he takes credit for. Literally, not a single one of his “successes” is something that he himself invented or created.
Well... was Steve Jobs any different in that respect?
basically he wants the people who would be offended by boss asking them to work hard to leave. Conversely, The people who don’t mind being asked to world hard is who he wants to keep
in other words , he is actually getting people who he doesn’t want to leave on their own without having to fire them
its friggin genius
And all it costs him is three months' wages per person and an even more toxic reputation.
This won’t succeed. Musk clearly didn’t have a plan for any of this. He was swinging his phallus around for kicks when he threatened to buy Twitter, and then got boxed in legally and contractually, so he had to pony up $44B he hadn’t really intended to spend.
Unable psychologically to process the humiliation, he did what narcissists do and doubled down. So he moved in with his sink, fired management and quickly learned that $44B alone still doesn’t buy loyalty. So he fired half the company indiscriminately. Then he tried to hire some back, because he actually needed some of the folks he’d already canned. Now he’s done his little ultimatum, trying to change the workforce of an established company into the workforce of a startup, but through threats rather than enticements to work hard for the stock options of a new Next Big Thing.
So here we are looking at a company with infrastructure teetering on the verge of collapse and a major usage stressor heading straight for it. The few people left who could try to prepare have been sent home for the weekend. When the proverbial rivets pop, the whole thing will cascade down into a heap.
Soon, Musk will have spent $44B on a logo, some broken, used hardware, and a small workforce consisting of a few who think this is great and the rest who didn’t think three months would be enough time to find a new job. Also, by that point this company will have no income and won’t be a good risk for investment.
I suppose he could cash out the user data, but how much of that hasn’t been scraped and sold to Big Data already? Probably not $44B worth.
Musk didn't buy Twitter as a financial investment, he bought it as an investment in human communication (as per his official statement). I think he honestly believes that as long as he can keep up the payments on the debt (from other sources as required) he can do whatever he wants to the company and the service. He's willing to write off the purchase price and the running costs and the more personal sacrifices to get the outcome he's aiming for.
Can he pull it off? Nobody knows yet. He is certainly a determined individual who is more than willing to ignore criticism; that is often a useful thing in such an endeavour. But the potential damage to the enterprise, the people who work within it and the people who use Twitter is immense.
For some insight into the personality and inspiration of Elon Musk, please read this biography of Nikola Tesla. "Tesla: Man Out Of Time." The only difference is the money.
Except for one HUGE difference: Tesla was an actual genius who could grasp advanced concepts and actually was responsible for some incredible inventions. Musk hasn’t invented a single thing. He’s bought his way into everything he takes credit for. Literally, not a single one of his “successes” is something that he himself invented or created.
Well... was Steve Jobs any different in that respect?
Yes, Jobs acknowledged that he “stole” things. That whole “great artists steal” bit.
Comments
Actually we have our own parties. I remember PEDANTFEST! ‘16
He's just another wealthy from birth asshole.
It's not "filtering of free speech" for a company to have usage guidelines, you moron. Has nothing to do with bias, nor D/R. Has to do with vile people using the company to maliciously and recklessly spread objectively false information and weaponized lies. Nobody has a fucking human right to do that, nor have a megaphone to billions of people. Advertisers for the most part don't want anything to do with a company that peddles in so much filth. And more importantly, there's also a moral and ethical imperitace to at least attempt to curb some of this stuff. Maybe you'll understand that when you reach puberty. Most likely you won't, cause your eye ball deep in right wing drivel and psychosis.
The Twitter employees who are leaving won’t be around to undermine the new boss. It’s a good way to clear house. Obviously, many posters here think that Twitter was just fine and dandy befits big bad Elon showed up. Twitter was bonkers partisan. It was a poorly run profitless shit show. Arbitrary enforcement of their rules undermined its credibility. Musk is putting and end to it. And he’s going to to it with committed people and not those who would secretly try to undermine him.
Would the loss of Twitter really matter? There are plenty of alternatives and for the most part, what is posted is unpleasant rubbish. The use of Twitter for the dissemination of serious matter is insulting to the recipient and demeaning to the sender. This is apparent from the use of Twitter by many politicians and business people. This stuff should not be taken seriously.
Anyone that doesn’t get that language is as organic and dynamic as the societies and people that speak it, doesn’t get to opine on what words mean.
Well... was Steve Jobs any different in that respect?
Can he pull it off? Nobody knows yet. He is certainly a determined individual who is more than willing to ignore criticism; that is often a useful thing in such an endeavour. But the potential damage to the enterprise, the people who work within it and the people who use Twitter is immense.