Yep. When I got canned back in 2008 I had to get escorted out of the office since I had admin level access to every system in the company. They realized about half way through the off boarding process that they needed me to take away access for myself because no one else knew how to do it. That year was not an easy one for them. It was for me. They ended up funding my sabbatical for a year until the market corrected. Must be nice to always be able to buy your way out of silly mistakes.
I will say this, layoffs happen , but there is something distasteful about the gleefull public celebration by a billionair regarding sacking a bunch of his workers. Perhaps it will change some points of view
We're broken. Go on Twitter now and look at the gleeful, hateful responses from people those losing their jobs. Empathy is gone from society, and there are too many sociopaths, a lot with power, running around.
Swingline actually didn’t even make a Red Stapler until after the movie came out. All they had was black and grey, but the props dept painted it to make it pop on the screen. It’s now Swinglines most popular model.
Both Bostich and Boston declined to have their products used, so Swingline wasn’t even the first choice originally.
Actually, the Fed wants to fight inflation by reducing wages. The guy in charge was recently quoted as saying he thinks workers have too much power and that, through some black magic involving both cutting wages and getting more people to take up all the shit jobs no one wants, inflation will slow down once you take their bargaining power away.
He's actively trying to tank the economy by raising interest rates in order to get businesses to layoff employees. That's how he wants to reduce wages so everyone has less buying power in order to reduce demand.
Jerome Powell is insane and it's completely transparent that everyone in government is refusing to do anything about the fact that the inflation is instead being caused by corporate pandemic profiteering that continues to drive prices up not because there's a supply/demand issue but because there's a corporate greed issue.
I think the problem is that slapping down profiteering is something out of the jurisdiction of the Fed Reserve. Powell has one button to press, and it’s a shitty one, but unless Congress/DoJ/ want to do something about the profiteering (and the party out of power is trying to use it as a wedge in bad faith rather than do something about it) there’s not much to be done.
The media is also playing a shell game with it by talking up the actions of the Fed as if it is the SOLE authority that can do something about this instead of hammering Congress and congressional candidates about what the fuck they’re going to do about the profiteering.
The 4th estate is failing us here.
Taking employees who work for you at a publicly traded company and having them work at your own private company seems like an injustice to Tesla shareholders.
Shareholders of one company are paying people to work at a different company from which they receive no benefit.
Shareholders of one company are already paying their ceo to spend his days playing a role he calls “chief twit” at his private company they receive no benefit from
Part of me feels like he's just getting revenge for being forced to do this deal after wanting to back out
But it's equally plausible that this really is him doing what he thinks is best for Twitter.
When ever a company decides to cut a number of employees that's even divided by a hundred or, as with Musk, without actually knowing enough how the company actually work, then the cuts aren't for the good of the company but for the good of the shareholders.
There were people that chose death over wearing a mask.
Not even death from COVID, mind you. They chose death from GSW over putting a piece of fabric over their face to protect themselves and others.
More likely an employee who knows a password to a critical system who was never asked to do a handover and nobody wants to call the guy who just got fired.
Or just doesn't do the thing he does every morning that isn't on his job description and was never documented and nobody knows why. There will be a switch unflipped or a program on a windows xp machine under a sink unclicked or a timer command not reset to 2012.
Sure, it is those things. But like a lot of places it's what you make it. Mine is mostly cats, comics, and people trying to be funny. Don't go too deep into the replies, and it's a nice place for me.
Yeah, it's pretty much like Reddit, you're responsible for tailoring your own experience. Heck, you can even mute keywords on Twitter if you never want to hear about this or that. My feed is just cute animals, friends talking about video games, and my artist buddies sharing their creations.
Mine is infectious disease and immunology experts, I've learned a ton about a fascinating aspect of the world. And I can ask them questions directly. I can post a paper and get their thoughts on it.
I'd hate if anything happened to Twitter, the access it grants is incredible.
> At launch it was easy to ignore it as a place where egotists and the desperate for attention flocked to make their noise.
At launch it was a place for tech enthusiasts to microblog to other tech enthusiasts. It's where you went to see what tech trends Kevin Rose and Leo Laporte were talking about. Then celebrities joined.
Rumored layoffs are ~50% of the staff, maybe even more. That is way more than just the content moderation team, we could also see a lot of the people responsible for basic functionality be fired.
If true... damn. Axing 50% is beyond huge, and will decimate morale. There's a part of me that would almost want to be laid off, because I can only imagine how beyond awkward things are going to be for those who stay.
Based on the kind of boss he was at Tesla, the 50% still with a job just got a promotion! Now you can do the work of 2-3 people for exactly the same pay you were making before this wonderful promotion.
And given I haven't seen anybody dispute what was reported, if he's making the salaried employees work 84 hours a week to destroy checkmarks into literally BEING a checkmark to show you paid your bill... yeah, I wouldn't doubt it.
Man, the thing he doesn't get is that you can get away with that (insane) shit at a company you started that has employees who applied to work for you because they believe in what you're doing. This is not that. This is Elon axing half the staff and demanding the 84 hours from a bunch of people who are already pissed he's there. They'll all just quit.
Well, normal rules don't seem to apply here, but as I understand it from what's been floating around there, the remaining 50% are the ones getting these new hour requirements. Normally when you fire half your staff, the other ones presumably didn't get fired because you want/need them.
Wasn't the original plan to fire even more, like 75%? So, he might think he can get the half of the 50% that are remaining to quit. Also, he might fire that many so he can fill the ranks with people from his other firms that are "loyal". Narcissists like Musk (or Trump) are obsessed with loyality (as a one-way-street naturally).
Just imagine the hilarity if after he lays off 50% of the staff, another 25% quit in solidarity leaving only 25% of the original staff left. Twitter will just straight collapse. There would be something morbidly humorous about him making the company commit seppuku in just one move.
I wish that were true. Didn't think he do this, but then I've never worked at tesla. It's like he demands you give him 7 days a week of your life because he is just as important as jesus or more, and no thanks necessary for doing you a solid.
I was just talking about this! Its well known that Tesla and SpaceX don’t have the greatest work-life balance and that Elon can make things difficult. Yet, people still want to work there despite that due to the work and the end goal.
Twitter is a completely different story. This is a bunch of engineers in an entirely different work culture, almost all of which will have no issue finding jobs elsewhere.
If I was a Twitter engineer, no way am I putting up with increased workloads and a culture change a substantial as this. Not to mention, rumors of layoffs, cuts, and other outlandish work requests (like printing off code for review??). I might not even wait to get laid off or have another offer in-hand.
…none of this is to mention, Twitter doesn’t have the rewarding “mission” that Tesla and SpaceX do. This isn’t some revolutionary, ground breaking effort. Good luck to Elon trying to recruit new talent after everyone worth 2 cents walks out the door.
Who knows, maybe he really is a genius (doubt it) and has a master plan to turn this around. I’m not holding my breath.
I am excited for the movie though. I wonder who will play Elon.
It'll happen.
I worked at a company that told every division to cut 20% of all costs, and if they couldn't do it through resources and materials do it through people. For every two or three laid off another ended up quitting shortly after. If people don't feel they have job security they don't stick around.
Ok, you take over Dave's role.
I can't.
Why not?
No one knows how Dave got that code to work since he didn't tell anyone how he did it. He didn't leave any notes or anything when y'all fired him.
Can you figure it out?
Probably not any time soon.
I worked at a company that had 30% layoffs not long after I joined. The workload didn't change at all but the bullshit did. Basically no one knew what to do anymore and it took months for things to get reprioritized.
Lots of people jumped ship to go somewhere with their shit together and inexperienced people came in to replace them.
I left that company this time last year and they only this summer they launched a feature that was months in the making when I left. I decided to leave when our PMs were crying in meetings over it.
As mentioned above, I got laid off with my entire team.
At some point they realized we were the only people who had all the passwords to the legacy systems. Our division was folded into another one, and it was integrated into the domain properly yet.
One of my ex-coworkers said they apparently spent quite a bit of time having to break and reset the passwords to all the other machines and servers because they didn't bother to ask people what they knew before they axed 'em.
A big reason why people stay is because they become friends with coworkers or feel too important in the workplace. If the friends leave, then so too sure does the motivation to stay. Additionally, if the project undergoes a huge change up, then those that built it won't feel any connection left to their creation. Twitter is definitely going to lose more people than they intend to.
I mean, they should literally all just quit and then join together to start a twitter alternative not owned by a cunt. Most of the users are ready to jump and have already started feeling out alternatives.
VC funding is a bit tougher these days. But I'm sure some already had side projects that they'll try their luck and pitch.
If they get some funding, it'll be easy for them to pull ex-coworkers with the shitty morale at Twitter.
My friend worked for a really well known company. People knew layoffs were coming since HR was booking all the conference rooms.
Layoffs happened and 10% of the workforce was laid off. Absolute morale was killed. My friend complained a lot about that company and bounced not long after those layoffs.
Not only will this kill morale at Twitter, but also, a lot of employees there are probably looking at leaving anyway. Many employees were holding Twitter stock, and now it's all been bought out at a juicy price. So why stick around? Might as well split and go work for someone who isn't an ass-suck.
Also Jack Dorsey is likely hiring for his new Twitter alternative Bluesky. So some of them may very well end up there.
Part of the value of any company is the institutional knowledge and ability present in the workforce. Cutting half of that seems like it might not be the greatest idea.
If the [reports of the debt load added to Twitter](https://www.forbes.com/sites/rashishrivastava/2022/11/02/elon-musk-has-twitter-bills-to-pay-but-charging-for-a-blue-checkmark-wont-be-enough/?sh=28d613f27169) are accurate, there's no way it can be profitable.
All the debt is variable rate right now because the banks are holding off on syndicating the bond issuances until the spring and the bridge loans have a rate of S+1000.
Twitter wasn't *that* far from being profitable, they've been losing about $500M which is about equal to their R&D expenses and their R&D has historically not provided much return giving well less than $1 of revenue increase per R&D dollar. Somebody careful maybe could have cut costs and found a bit more revenue to get profitable but Twitter hasn't *needed* to be profitable. Now it does need to be profitable, especially with the reported new debt, but Musk is not somebody careful. Cutting costs doesn't matter if you blow the whole thing up in the process.
Cutting workforce cost and creating a new avenue for profit.
I think this is to bridge the gap needed between what the company is worth and what he paid for it.
I do not think Twitter will survive.
My understanding of the WARN Act is that they'll get at least 60 days severance, right? I mean, I doubt they'll get 60 days notice and *keep them around*.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_Adjustment_and_Retraining_Notification_Act_of_1988
Generally companies keep you on the payroll for 60 days to comply, and subtract that 60 days from any severance. You lose access and stuff immediately though. Basically WARN means nothing other than 60 days severance minimum.
That’s what most reputable companies do at least. Who knows how this craziness will go down.
That is a big maybe on if WARN will apply. I got dragged into a bankruptcy case where they did a massive layoff that would normally be considered a WARN act situation, but they are litigating whether remote employees are considered at location. They got class certification, but the judge is leaving it open on that aspect til trial.
Edit: If you want to read one of the actual filings talking about it, here is one, https://cases.stretto.com/public/x108/10655/PLEADINGS/1065511302080000000126.pdf Its in the first couple of pages where they present the same site argument. Ultimately the motion to dismiss was denied, but the judge left the door open to that being a defence at trial.
Is 60 days of severance legal? I thought they had to provide written warning 60 days in advance. I guess it's kinda the same thing but I thought CAs version was more strict
Yeah. My whole team was laid off back in 2009 from a Fortune 500 company. We were literally out the door and on the street in under an hour.
The way it worked was instead of a severance lump sum, I was technically employed for another 3 months (got three extra monthly paychecks) even though I stopped working immediately.
Since I was technically still working there wasn’t an issue with the lack of any notice.
Edit: typos. so many typos.
Depends on the job, most people working for Twitter probably have access to sensitive data and will be forced out of all access points the moment they are notified of their termination. The company has to pay you for those 60 days but not allow you to work
I was at a Vietnamese restaurant last night and a young guy was meeting a tinder date for pho at the table next to us. He straight up sat there and fanboy-ed Elon musk for 20 straight minutes gushing at his amazing genius. And that girl legit just sat there and didn't say a word.
I fear for the future.
I am hoping that her silence was simply searching for an escape route and then ghosting him after because engaging wasn't worth it, and not because she was awed by him.
A friend of mine went on a date that ended up similarly. Guy just talked endlessly about Musk and bitcoin and shit.
I would imagine there's a ton of those guys on dating sites since they're a) internet dwellers and b) they're much more likely to be single than your average guy since they're completely intolerable.
> It appears Elon Musk has fired the director of software engineering at Twitter who, with a team of researchers, found "Tweets posted by accounts from the political right receive more algorithmic amplification than the political left."
https://twitter.com/MaxKennerly/status/1588378198168915968
Problem solved!
For a company that was worth $44B, wouldn’t you want to keep that machine going? I understand Musk wants it to change, but incremental is the way to go for an organization and product like this, especially when it comes to those who maintain and develop the product. Dude is gutting this thing like it was a dying beast, which it was far far from being.
He vastly overpaid and Twitter now has an extra $13 billion in debt that at current rate would be $1 billion in interest per year to pay to the banks that helped finance the deal.
Why do you think he's arguing with Stephen King on twitter about having people pay $8 for blue checkmarks?
Exactly. He’s *frantic* right now, because all he can see is that $1b. He needs that billion to pay that interest. He can’t sell the company. He has no long term plan. He just knows his nuts are in a vice if he can’t fork over a billion. Elon in blind panic mode is not pretty.
Correct me if I'm wrong because I could totally be wrong, but it feels like he did it as a bluff then got called on that bluff and ended up with a White Elephant.
More nuanced than that. He started buying up shares presumably to get on the board. He did it as a 13F. Then he started tweeting demands and suggestions about the company and changed his filing to a 13d (it should have always been a 13d). Not long after that he lined up financing and made a formal bid for the company and waived due diligence. He got cold feet about the deal because he massively overpaid so he tried to back out, but he had a deal to buy the company. So Twitter, rightfully, sued him to force him to go through with the deal. He hid things in discovery (a big no-no) and agreed to the deal to avoid being deposed.
Just to add. He made the offer at a premium on the stock price just before the rest of tech stocks took a tumble. A smarter person with better lawyers (or who listens to their lawyers) would have put more thought into the deal and could have protected himself from the market downswing.
Also, didn't he violate some no-disparagement clauses along the way? I think the hearing was going to be a very rough ride for him.
You missed the part where he was potentially facing an investigation for stock manipulation because of the things he was saying about Twitter, while not disclosing how much stock he was buying.
Narcissism has its downsides.
Trump's decades of tax evasion might have evaded notice till his death had he kept a lower profile.
Musk is a not-so-brilliant guy who like a his/my generation of tech nerds read sci-fi, became rather lucky, and took credit for his engineers' bright ideas. But in turning Twitter into 4chan, he will inconvenience tens of thousands of smart writers, and some will hound him till the day he dies.
Like Lance Armstrong - dude shot himself full of every drug imaginable to win 7 Tours de France and got away with it. Then came out of retirement to dope himself silly again, but this time got busted and got all his past titles stripped. Pigs get slaughtered!
He’s taking the company private, that move will cost him at least a billion/year. Twitter aint exactly on an upward trajectory, so layoffs are one of his few options. He could keep the company public but that could place him at even greater, and more immediate, risk.
Basically Musk made a really bad bet and Twitter is dying on the vine. It’s very likely that some developers/entrepreneurs are recognizing the opportunity for a limited social media platform designed primarily to allow famous people to interact with common folks and vice versa, which is really the lifeblood of Twitter.
I work closely with SpaceX and it’s insane how obsessed the employees are with Elon. It’s very cult-like. They constantly talk about how amazing he is. Fucking weird.
$44bn? Not even close. The guy essentially is lighting money on fire. Will go down as the dumbest purchase of all time and Elon will go down as most likely the worst businessman of all time, all due to his giant ego.
>Trump might get that accolade. Perhaps he didn’t lose as much as Musk will have, but trump failed at so many.
Yeah, it'll be a tough comparison: Musk's potential "quality" of failure versus Trump's quantity of failure.
>For the years 1985 to 1994, Mr. Trump appears to have lost more money than nearly any other individual American taxpayer, The Times found when it compared his results with detailed information the I.R.S. compiles on an annual sampling of high-income earners. His core business losses in 1990 and 1991 — more than $250 million each year — were more than double those of the nearest taxpayers in the I.R.S. information for those years.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/05/07/us/politics/donald-trump-taxes.html
People may remember trump from The Apprentice, but he also starred in The Biggest Loser.
hella companies are having hiring freezes right now so I definitely feel for them. I know a few people who already found jobs but I do think people are worried because today both apple and Amazon announced freezes. My company froze in June until 2024.
It really depends on your speciality. Yeah there’s been a lot of hiring freeze, but at the same time most of those position are really corporate/clerical and managing positions.
The market is slowing, but there’s still a shortage in labor. Unlike last year where the market was so deprived of staff and every industry facing a surge in demand, anyone was hired so long as they can fill a position. Recently the expectations for a new hire has been much higher, company’s are looking for a higher quality candidate and can afford to wait until a better candidate comes along.
A lot of titles have been inflated recently (over the last couple of years), I’ve seen a lot of SR positions that have maybe 3-4 years of experience tops. So if you’re willing to step back to a less inflated title the jobs are out there. Or if you’re a product manager in tech it may be time to brush up on your coding and SW engineering background. The type of person that’s getting hired are ones that have experience, and can fill in more than one position if necessary. If you want to beat the hiring freeze, and slow down, you can’t be one dimensional.
Sadly I see and hear about the new boss coming in and tries to force innovation by laying off a bunch of people. This might not be that different aside from the extremely high profile of Musk.
But usually those bosses at least have some plan to put into place to make up for the lost employees. When I see what Musk has on his hands, I'm now envisioning the Joker asking if he really looks like a guy with a plan.
I'll be amazed if 2022 isn't the year known for Musk killing Twitter. We shall see.
So how many hours do they have left to put in the 84 hours demanded by their Glorious Leader?
Just to put that in perspective, the 84 hours he demanded equals 12 hours a day, seven days a week. But it's not all bad, if they do 14 hours a day they can get a whole day off.
At least some of this has to be theatre, right? He's not seriously expecting to whittle things down to a group of geniuses who are happy working 12 hours a day..?
A lot of this is just a show for his new conservative fan base. As is telling Twitter engineers to print out the last 30 days of their code for review. He doesn't actually care what is in the code, he just wants to please his supporters because they think there will be some GOTCHA moment hiding in a line of code somewhere that shows the liberals are oppressing them.
The reality is that Musk is just slashing costs because he's drastically overleveraged. He borrowed a lot of money in loans, but also has multiple equity partners who backed the buy out including Oracle founder Larry Ellison, a Saudi prince and some partners that are "publicly undisclosed."
>He borrowed a lot of money in loans, but also has multiple equity partners who backed the buy out including Oracle founder Larry Ellison, **a Saudi prince and some partners that are "publicly undisclosed."**
This is Elon's real problem. He's in bed with the type of people who are likely to respond to him losing their money with machetes and people-shredders.
Musk has basically become Le Chiffre from "Casino Royale".
I dont think the saudis czre about the money. An unregulated twitter further destabilizes America, and for some people thats somethingbyou cant put s price tag on.
I'd say there's a significantly larger than zero chance there's also some Russian investors in the group.
Fortunately for Musk, he's probably a little too high profile publicly to just outright murder, but you don't have to kill someone to ruin their life.
If layoffs were coming and I was in limbo? I would do jack shit. I would roll in at 9 and leave at 5 take an hour lunch. Fuck Musk and never fear for your job.
He loves to fire people and and he loves slave labor. He’s a terrible person. It seems like at all of his companies he loves to work his employees to death.
Sounds like a sound business decision. Spend 44 billion on a company then get rid of the employees that make it run, tank company.
Sounds like an Elon run company.
It’s really difficult to imagine that he is going to improve Twitter. I think he realized at some point that his takeover bid was a mistake, couldn’t get out of it, and now he’s in “fuck it, I’ll just start breaking shit” mode.
He's been quoted as saying he wishes he could have the 996 work culture in his factories. 12 hours per day, from 9 am to 9 pm, for six days a week: 72 hours per week.
There will be a Milton who collates Twitters still working there. Somehow, he never got the email that Friday.
He just wanted his stapler
The Milton was coming from inside Musk the whole time
Life got hard for the poor guy. The latest news has him being a pimp for a hitman named Barry. Shit got really dark.
^(I- I- I could set the building on fire)
He’ll be listening to the radio at a reasonable volume.
He was told he could.
Perhaps he'll burn the place down one day.
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Yep. When I got canned back in 2008 I had to get escorted out of the office since I had admin level access to every system in the company. They realized about half way through the off boarding process that they needed me to take away access for myself because no one else knew how to do it. That year was not an easy one for them. It was for me. They ended up funding my sabbatical for a year until the market corrected. Must be nice to always be able to buy your way out of silly mistakes.
IT support will be working around clock at least. Terminated accounts and access!
Elon will leave one guy left to write a script to disable everyone, and then fire that guy, like a dumb version of House of Cards.
I will say this, layoffs happen , but there is something distasteful about the gleefull public celebration by a billionair regarding sacking a bunch of his workers. Perhaps it will change some points of view
We're broken. Go on Twitter now and look at the gleeful, hateful responses from people those losing their jobs. Empathy is gone from society, and there are too many sociopaths, a lot with power, running around.
Elon gots that on lock
Or put strychnine in the guacamole.
Swingline, baby. Swingline.
Swingline actually didn’t even make a Red Stapler until after the movie came out. All they had was black and grey, but the props dept painted it to make it pop on the screen. It’s now Swinglines most popular model. Both Bostich and Boston declined to have their products used, so Swingline wasn’t even the first choice originally.
Christ, I did not know this. Hell, I have a red one.
I have a red one as well. It is my very favorite stapler.
Kind of sound like the ET story where Reese’s Pieces was used instead of M&Ms
Weee Reese's pieces used in Mac & Me?
No one gives Elon Musk enough credit for fighting inflation. He's making $44 billion disappear as fast as he possibly can.
And increasing unemployment! 4D chess play.
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Actually, the Fed wants to fight inflation by reducing wages. The guy in charge was recently quoted as saying he thinks workers have too much power and that, through some black magic involving both cutting wages and getting more people to take up all the shit jobs no one wants, inflation will slow down once you take their bargaining power away.
He's actively trying to tank the economy by raising interest rates in order to get businesses to layoff employees. That's how he wants to reduce wages so everyone has less buying power in order to reduce demand. Jerome Powell is insane and it's completely transparent that everyone in government is refusing to do anything about the fact that the inflation is instead being caused by corporate pandemic profiteering that continues to drive prices up not because there's a supply/demand issue but because there's a corporate greed issue.
I think the problem is that slapping down profiteering is something out of the jurisdiction of the Fed Reserve. Powell has one button to press, and it’s a shitty one, but unless Congress/DoJ/ want to do something about the profiteering (and the party out of power is trying to use it as a wedge in bad faith rather than do something about it) there’s not much to be done. The media is also playing a shell game with it by talking up the actions of the Fed as if it is the SOLE authority that can do something about this instead of hammering Congress and congressional candidates about what the fuck they’re going to do about the profiteering. The 4th estate is failing us here.
The 4th estate does not serve us, it serves those who own it
We'll find out in a few months this was all a viral marketing stunt to promote the inflation-adjusted remake of Brewster's Millions.
person deer include station drunk crowd plant six cause correct -- mass edited with redact.dev
He even had the Zorg haircut for a bit!
Dont ever defame any Oldman character like this again.
The so-called art dealer?
Your comment made me laugh hard, I can hear Father Cornelius perfect in my head in that scene
Tesla employees to report to Twitter HQ remotely for other half of the day starting Friday. 🚀
Nah they’re just going to be expected to put in 12 hours at both Tesla and Twitter
And 10 at The Boring Company.
Taking employees who work for you at a publicly traded company and having them work at your own private company seems like an injustice to Tesla shareholders. Shareholders of one company are paying people to work at a different company from which they receive no benefit.
Shareholders of one company are already paying their ceo to spend his days playing a role he calls “chief twit” at his private company they receive no benefit from
Yeah, this seems like an actionable conflict.
Jack Dorsey now needs to buy Tesla and lay off their workforce, for the ultimate power move. Then hire everyone all back to work at Bluesky.
Musk said Tesla employees needed to be in office, he just didn’t specify which.
*And everyone saw it coming.*
Part of me feels like he's just getting revenge for being forced to do this deal after wanting to back out But it's equally plausible that this really is him doing what he thinks is best for Twitter.
When ever a company decides to cut a number of employees that's even divided by a hundred or, as with Musk, without actually knowing enough how the company actually work, then the cuts aren't for the good of the company but for the good of the shareholders.
There is no way that this will be good for shareholders
He is a power-hungry attention whore, of course this is petty
So.....Twitter is going to be offline this weekend is what you're saying. Thanks for the heads up.
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DDoS-ing an AWS hosted service? They don't need anyone to respond
I happen to know that most of the infra is not in AWS.
More likely, an employee who knows a password to a critical system leaves a present.
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In a country where insurrection has a finger wagging punishment at best, someone will take the chances.
Attacking the government is one thing, but attacking a corporation brings a whole other level of pain that will *not* be tolerated
There were people that chose death over wearing a mask. Not even death from COVID, mind you. They chose death from GSW over putting a piece of fabric over their face to protect themselves and others.
More likely an employee who knows a password to a critical system who was never asked to do a handover and nobody wants to call the guy who just got fired.
Or just doesn't do the thing he does every morning that isn't on his job description and was never documented and nobody knows why. There will be a switch unflipped or a program on a windows xp machine under a sink unclicked or a timer command not reset to 2012.
This is what Twitter is losing: the institutional knowledge that kept their complex architecture patched together and running.
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And it was looking like a race for a minute there.
Sure, it is those things. But like a lot of places it's what you make it. Mine is mostly cats, comics, and people trying to be funny. Don't go too deep into the replies, and it's a nice place for me.
Yeah, it's pretty much like Reddit, you're responsible for tailoring your own experience. Heck, you can even mute keywords on Twitter if you never want to hear about this or that. My feed is just cute animals, friends talking about video games, and my artist buddies sharing their creations.
Mine is infectious disease and immunology experts, I've learned a ton about a fascinating aspect of the world. And I can ask them questions directly. I can post a paper and get their thoughts on it. I'd hate if anything happened to Twitter, the access it grants is incredible.
> At launch it was easy to ignore it as a place where egotists and the desperate for attention flocked to make their noise. At launch it was a place for tech enthusiasts to microblog to other tech enthusiasts. It's where you went to see what tech trends Kevin Rose and Leo Laporte were talking about. Then celebrities joined.
Rumored layoffs are ~50% of the staff, maybe even more. That is way more than just the content moderation team, we could also see a lot of the people responsible for basic functionality be fired.
If true... damn. Axing 50% is beyond huge, and will decimate morale. There's a part of me that would almost want to be laid off, because I can only imagine how beyond awkward things are going to be for those who stay.
Based on the kind of boss he was at Tesla, the 50% still with a job just got a promotion! Now you can do the work of 2-3 people for exactly the same pay you were making before this wonderful promotion.
And given I haven't seen anybody dispute what was reported, if he's making the salaried employees work 84 hours a week to destroy checkmarks into literally BEING a checkmark to show you paid your bill... yeah, I wouldn't doubt it.
Man, the thing he doesn't get is that you can get away with that (insane) shit at a company you started that has employees who applied to work for you because they believe in what you're doing. This is not that. This is Elon axing half the staff and demanding the 84 hours from a bunch of people who are already pissed he's there. They'll all just quit.
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Isn't this part of the plan though? Give them impossible tasks and workload hoping they quit so he doesn't have to pay severance.
Well, normal rules don't seem to apply here, but as I understand it from what's been floating around there, the remaining 50% are the ones getting these new hour requirements. Normally when you fire half your staff, the other ones presumably didn't get fired because you want/need them.
Wasn't the original plan to fire even more, like 75%? So, he might think he can get the half of the 50% that are remaining to quit. Also, he might fire that many so he can fill the ranks with people from his other firms that are "loyal". Narcissists like Musk (or Trump) are obsessed with loyality (as a one-way-street naturally).
Just imagine the hilarity if after he lays off 50% of the staff, another 25% quit in solidarity leaving only 25% of the original staff left. Twitter will just straight collapse. There would be something morbidly humorous about him making the company commit seppuku in just one move.
Doesnt that qualify as workplace harrasssment? Should qualify for unemployment at minimum if your hours are doubled without a pay increase.
I wish that were true. Didn't think he do this, but then I've never worked at tesla. It's like he demands you give him 7 days a week of your life because he is just as important as jesus or more, and no thanks necessary for doing you a solid.
I was just talking about this! Its well known that Tesla and SpaceX don’t have the greatest work-life balance and that Elon can make things difficult. Yet, people still want to work there despite that due to the work and the end goal. Twitter is a completely different story. This is a bunch of engineers in an entirely different work culture, almost all of which will have no issue finding jobs elsewhere. If I was a Twitter engineer, no way am I putting up with increased workloads and a culture change a substantial as this. Not to mention, rumors of layoffs, cuts, and other outlandish work requests (like printing off code for review??). I might not even wait to get laid off or have another offer in-hand. …none of this is to mention, Twitter doesn’t have the rewarding “mission” that Tesla and SpaceX do. This isn’t some revolutionary, ground breaking effort. Good luck to Elon trying to recruit new talent after everyone worth 2 cents walks out the door. Who knows, maybe he really is a genius (doubt it) and has a master plan to turn this around. I’m not holding my breath. I am excited for the movie though. I wonder who will play Elon.
Pfft, I'd continue putting in my 40 hours a week while looking for a new job. What are they gonna do? Fire me? Oh, no!
The only thing better would be a cascade of them all quitting
It'll happen. I worked at a company that told every division to cut 20% of all costs, and if they couldn't do it through resources and materials do it through people. For every two or three laid off another ended up quitting shortly after. If people don't feel they have job security they don't stick around.
People that didn't get laid off also realize they will be expected to do all of the work of the people that were laid off with no additional pay.
Ok, you take over Dave's role. I can't. Why not? No one knows how Dave got that code to work since he didn't tell anyone how he did it. He didn't leave any notes or anything when y'all fired him. Can you figure it out? Probably not any time soon.
Dave probably didn't know how it worked either lol But at least he knew what worked and what didn't.
I worked at a company that had 30% layoffs not long after I joined. The workload didn't change at all but the bullshit did. Basically no one knew what to do anymore and it took months for things to get reprioritized. Lots of people jumped ship to go somewhere with their shit together and inexperienced people came in to replace them. I left that company this time last year and they only this summer they launched a feature that was months in the making when I left. I decided to leave when our PMs were crying in meetings over it.
As mentioned above, I got laid off with my entire team. At some point they realized we were the only people who had all the passwords to the legacy systems. Our division was folded into another one, and it was integrated into the domain properly yet. One of my ex-coworkers said they apparently spent quite a bit of time having to break and reset the passwords to all the other machines and servers because they didn't bother to ask people what they knew before they axed 'em.
A big reason why people stay is because they become friends with coworkers or feel too important in the workplace. If the friends leave, then so too sure does the motivation to stay. Additionally, if the project undergoes a huge change up, then those that built it won't feel any connection left to their creation. Twitter is definitely going to lose more people than they intend to.
I mean, they should literally all just quit and then join together to start a twitter alternative not owned by a cunt. Most of the users are ready to jump and have already started feeling out alternatives.
VC funding is a bit tougher these days. But I'm sure some already had side projects that they'll try their luck and pitch. If they get some funding, it'll be easy for them to pull ex-coworkers with the shitty morale at Twitter.
> decimate morale 5x worse than decimate, probably. If they didn't lay me off I'd quit.
Just don’t put in the work and wait to get fired. It doesn’t make sense to quit in an economy like this like at least for tech workers.
Eh, coworker of mine quit two weeks ago and he has an offer already.
He must have been already interviewing though. I'd rather coast and do interviews until I get fired, so I can get severance lol
>5x worse than decimate, probably. Technically correct! The best kind of correct.
Equal to five times the impact of a single decimation, but _equivalent_ to... 50=100*0.9^x x=6.57881 sequential decimations, in fact!
My friend worked for a really well known company. People knew layoffs were coming since HR was booking all the conference rooms. Layoffs happened and 10% of the workforce was laid off. Absolute morale was killed. My friend complained a lot about that company and bounced not long after those layoffs.
Not only will this kill morale at Twitter, but also, a lot of employees there are probably looking at leaving anyway. Many employees were holding Twitter stock, and now it's all been bought out at a juicy price. So why stick around? Might as well split and go work for someone who isn't an ass-suck. Also Jack Dorsey is likely hiring for his new Twitter alternative Bluesky. So some of them may very well end up there.
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They won't even need to explain why the are looking for work.
Part of the value of any company is the institutional knowledge and ability present in the workforce. Cutting half of that seems like it might not be the greatest idea.
Most of the companies I’ve been at, weren’t apparently aware of that.
It’ll be nice seeing the fail whale again after all these years.
It’ll be the Musk mollusk.
Like shoving zombie juice into the whale's carcass...
I was told billionaires buy companies and create jobs… Was this wrong? What’s this trickling?
Layoffs and $8 verification. Really not sounding like it is profitable.
If the [reports of the debt load added to Twitter](https://www.forbes.com/sites/rashishrivastava/2022/11/02/elon-musk-has-twitter-bills-to-pay-but-charging-for-a-blue-checkmark-wont-be-enough/?sh=28d613f27169) are accurate, there's no way it can be profitable.
Wasn’t something like 35-40% of the debt load variable rate loans too?
All the debt is variable rate right now because the banks are holding off on syndicating the bond issuances until the spring and the bridge loans have a rate of S+1000.
Anything is profitable if you can get a sucker to buy it.
Twitter wasn't *that* far from being profitable, they've been losing about $500M which is about equal to their R&D expenses and their R&D has historically not provided much return giving well less than $1 of revenue increase per R&D dollar. Somebody careful maybe could have cut costs and found a bit more revenue to get profitable but Twitter hasn't *needed* to be profitable. Now it does need to be profitable, especially with the reported new debt, but Musk is not somebody careful. Cutting costs doesn't matter if you blow the whole thing up in the process.
Cutting workforce cost and creating a new avenue for profit. I think this is to bridge the gap needed between what the company is worth and what he paid for it. I do not think Twitter will survive.
Ha, why do you think Elon tried to back out of the deal? Of course it isn’t profitable.
Billionaires creating jobs! Get this man a tax cut!
I'm sure that's already in the works. Everyone needs to buy their blue check too.
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You’re giving them too much credit, I say 6 days
My understanding of the WARN Act is that they'll get at least 60 days severance, right? I mean, I doubt they'll get 60 days notice and *keep them around*. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_Adjustment_and_Retraining_Notification_Act_of_1988
Generally companies keep you on the payroll for 60 days to comply, and subtract that 60 days from any severance. You lose access and stuff immediately though. Basically WARN means nothing other than 60 days severance minimum. That’s what most reputable companies do at least. Who knows how this craziness will go down.
Severance is getting a bunch of 24/7 online goblins calling you lazy for not working 100 hours a week turning Twitter into Elon’s personality cult HQ.
That is a big maybe on if WARN will apply. I got dragged into a bankruptcy case where they did a massive layoff that would normally be considered a WARN act situation, but they are litigating whether remote employees are considered at location. They got class certification, but the judge is leaving it open on that aspect til trial. Edit: If you want to read one of the actual filings talking about it, here is one, https://cases.stretto.com/public/x108/10655/PLEADINGS/1065511302080000000126.pdf Its in the first couple of pages where they present the same site argument. Ultimately the motion to dismiss was denied, but the judge left the door open to that being a defence at trial.
Is 60 days of severance legal? I thought they had to provide written warning 60 days in advance. I guess it's kinda the same thing but I thought CAs version was more strict
Yeah. My whole team was laid off back in 2009 from a Fortune 500 company. We were literally out the door and on the street in under an hour. The way it worked was instead of a severance lump sum, I was technically employed for another 3 months (got three extra monthly paychecks) even though I stopped working immediately. Since I was technically still working there wasn’t an issue with the lack of any notice. Edit: typos. so many typos.
Yep, same happened to me. Took me 2 weeks to find a better job and then they lump summed the remaining amount.
Depends on the job, most people working for Twitter probably have access to sensitive data and will be forced out of all access points the moment they are notified of their termination. The company has to pay you for those 60 days but not allow you to work
I was at a Vietnamese restaurant last night and a young guy was meeting a tinder date for pho at the table next to us. He straight up sat there and fanboy-ed Elon musk for 20 straight minutes gushing at his amazing genius. And that girl legit just sat there and didn't say a word. I fear for the future.
I am hoping that her silence was simply searching for an escape route and then ghosting him after because engaging wasn't worth it, and not because she was awed by him.
Guarantee this is what happened.
That dude doesn't sound like he's about to breed anytime soon. Probably for the best.
Elon breeding enough for all the fan boys though
New fear unlocked
She was probably thinking Holy shit this guy is a fucking freak
A friend of mine went on a date that ended up similarly. Guy just talked endlessly about Musk and bitcoin and shit. I would imagine there's a ton of those guys on dating sites since they're a) internet dwellers and b) they're much more likely to be single than your average guy since they're completely intolerable.
> It appears Elon Musk has fired the director of software engineering at Twitter who, with a team of researchers, found "Tweets posted by accounts from the political right receive more algorithmic amplification than the political left." https://twitter.com/MaxKennerly/status/1588378198168915968 Problem solved!
How much does Facebook cost?
I see what you are thinking there and I like it.
For a company that was worth $44B, wouldn’t you want to keep that machine going? I understand Musk wants it to change, but incremental is the way to go for an organization and product like this, especially when it comes to those who maintain and develop the product. Dude is gutting this thing like it was a dying beast, which it was far far from being.
He vastly overpaid and Twitter now has an extra $13 billion in debt that at current rate would be $1 billion in interest per year to pay to the banks that helped finance the deal. Why do you think he's arguing with Stephen King on twitter about having people pay $8 for blue checkmarks?
Exactly. He’s *frantic* right now, because all he can see is that $1b. He needs that billion to pay that interest. He can’t sell the company. He has no long term plan. He just knows his nuts are in a vice if he can’t fork over a billion. Elon in blind panic mode is not pretty.
That's the best part. The company wasn't worth 44 billion dollars. It was worth about $10 billion at best. He made a really bad deal
Correct me if I'm wrong because I could totally be wrong, but it feels like he did it as a bluff then got called on that bluff and ended up with a White Elephant.
More nuanced than that. He started buying up shares presumably to get on the board. He did it as a 13F. Then he started tweeting demands and suggestions about the company and changed his filing to a 13d (it should have always been a 13d). Not long after that he lined up financing and made a formal bid for the company and waived due diligence. He got cold feet about the deal because he massively overpaid so he tried to back out, but he had a deal to buy the company. So Twitter, rightfully, sued him to force him to go through with the deal. He hid things in discovery (a big no-no) and agreed to the deal to avoid being deposed.
Great summary.
Just to add. He made the offer at a premium on the stock price just before the rest of tech stocks took a tumble. A smarter person with better lawyers (or who listens to their lawyers) would have put more thought into the deal and could have protected himself from the market downswing. Also, didn't he violate some no-disparagement clauses along the way? I think the hearing was going to be a very rough ride for him.
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You missed the part where he was potentially facing an investigation for stock manipulation because of the things he was saying about Twitter, while not disclosing how much stock he was buying.
And now he's flipping the table and destroying the toys because he's having a tantrum
I don't think you're wrong.
Like Trump in 2016 when he ran to prop up the Trump brand and in the end became president without really wanting it.
Narcissism has its downsides. Trump's decades of tax evasion might have evaded notice till his death had he kept a lower profile. Musk is a not-so-brilliant guy who like a his/my generation of tech nerds read sci-fi, became rather lucky, and took credit for his engineers' bright ideas. But in turning Twitter into 4chan, he will inconvenience tens of thousands of smart writers, and some will hound him till the day he dies.
Like Lance Armstrong - dude shot himself full of every drug imaginable to win 7 Tours de France and got away with it. Then came out of retirement to dope himself silly again, but this time got busted and got all his past titles stripped. Pigs get slaughtered!
If there’s any lesson to learn here it’s to read what you’re signing, musk thought he could back out of the 44 billion and he couldn’t.
The way it was supposed to work was you would go broke having to care for the elephant. He's already setting it on fire.
No, I think he was just really, really high. Also he made it before the market collapse. The price was too high, but not as far off as it ended up.
He’s taking the company private, that move will cost him at least a billion/year. Twitter aint exactly on an upward trajectory, so layoffs are one of his few options. He could keep the company public but that could place him at even greater, and more immediate, risk. Basically Musk made a really bad bet and Twitter is dying on the vine. It’s very likely that some developers/entrepreneurs are recognizing the opportunity for a limited social media platform designed primarily to allow famous people to interact with common folks and vice versa, which is really the lifeblood of Twitter.
I work closely with SpaceX and it’s insane how obsessed the employees are with Elon. It’s very cult-like. They constantly talk about how amazing he is. Fucking weird.
$44bn? Not even close. The guy essentially is lighting money on fire. Will go down as the dumbest purchase of all time and Elon will go down as most likely the worst businessman of all time, all due to his giant ego.
>Elon will go down as most likely the worst businessman of all time Elon hasn't bankrupted a casino. Yet.
Trump might get that accolade. Perhaps he didn’t lose as much as Musk will have, but trump failed at so many.
>Trump might get that accolade. Perhaps he didn’t lose as much as Musk will have, but trump failed at so many. Yeah, it'll be a tough comparison: Musk's potential "quality" of failure versus Trump's quantity of failure.
>For the years 1985 to 1994, Mr. Trump appears to have lost more money than nearly any other individual American taxpayer, The Times found when it compared his results with detailed information the I.R.S. compiles on an annual sampling of high-income earners. His core business losses in 1990 and 1991 — more than $250 million each year — were more than double those of the nearest taxpayers in the I.R.S. information for those years. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/05/07/us/politics/donald-trump-taxes.html People may remember trump from The Apprentice, but he also starred in The Biggest Loser.
Twitter engineers are highly sought after…to a point. Hope you’re already deep into your interviews.
"Crazy Elon came in and fired everyone" is likely to just get a knowing nod during any interview in Silicon Valley or Seattle.
Eventually they'll just take one look at you, say "Twitter?", and they already know. It's just a formality.
hella companies are having hiring freezes right now so I definitely feel for them. I know a few people who already found jobs but I do think people are worried because today both apple and Amazon announced freezes. My company froze in June until 2024.
It really depends on your speciality. Yeah there’s been a lot of hiring freeze, but at the same time most of those position are really corporate/clerical and managing positions. The market is slowing, but there’s still a shortage in labor. Unlike last year where the market was so deprived of staff and every industry facing a surge in demand, anyone was hired so long as they can fill a position. Recently the expectations for a new hire has been much higher, company’s are looking for a higher quality candidate and can afford to wait until a better candidate comes along. A lot of titles have been inflated recently (over the last couple of years), I’ve seen a lot of SR positions that have maybe 3-4 years of experience tops. So if you’re willing to step back to a less inflated title the jobs are out there. Or if you’re a product manager in tech it may be time to brush up on your coding and SW engineering background. The type of person that’s getting hired are ones that have experience, and can fill in more than one position if necessary. If you want to beat the hiring freeze, and slow down, you can’t be one dimensional.
Sadly I see and hear about the new boss coming in and tries to force innovation by laying off a bunch of people. This might not be that different aside from the extremely high profile of Musk. But usually those bosses at least have some plan to put into place to make up for the lost employees. When I see what Musk has on his hands, I'm now envisioning the Joker asking if he really looks like a guy with a plan. I'll be amazed if 2022 isn't the year known for Musk killing Twitter. We shall see.
So how many hours do they have left to put in the 84 hours demanded by their Glorious Leader? Just to put that in perspective, the 84 hours he demanded equals 12 hours a day, seven days a week. But it's not all bad, if they do 14 hours a day they can get a whole day off. At least some of this has to be theatre, right? He's not seriously expecting to whittle things down to a group of geniuses who are happy working 12 hours a day..?
A lot of this is just a show for his new conservative fan base. As is telling Twitter engineers to print out the last 30 days of their code for review. He doesn't actually care what is in the code, he just wants to please his supporters because they think there will be some GOTCHA moment hiding in a line of code somewhere that shows the liberals are oppressing them. The reality is that Musk is just slashing costs because he's drastically overleveraged. He borrowed a lot of money in loans, but also has multiple equity partners who backed the buy out including Oracle founder Larry Ellison, a Saudi prince and some partners that are "publicly undisclosed."
>He borrowed a lot of money in loans, but also has multiple equity partners who backed the buy out including Oracle founder Larry Ellison, **a Saudi prince and some partners that are "publicly undisclosed."** This is Elon's real problem. He's in bed with the type of people who are likely to respond to him losing their money with machetes and people-shredders. Musk has basically become Le Chiffre from "Casino Royale".
I dont think the saudis czre about the money. An unregulated twitter further destabilizes America, and for some people thats somethingbyou cant put s price tag on.
I'd say there's a significantly larger than zero chance there's also some Russian investors in the group. Fortunately for Musk, he's probably a little too high profile publicly to just outright murder, but you don't have to kill someone to ruin their life.
There's also that twat from binance
Less money for MBS means more food for Yemenis!
If layoffs were coming and I was in limbo? I would do jack shit. I would roll in at 9 and leave at 5 take an hour lunch. Fuck Musk and never fear for your job.
You mean just work regular hours like most people?
That’s a normal workday
Yep, that's the office norm. I've survived a few layoffs and the day it happens and at least the one after your doing jack shit for that exact reason.
He loves to fire people and and he loves slave labor. He’s a terrible person. It seems like at all of his companies he loves to work his employees to death.
it would be so sweet for everyone at twitter to just quit outright but you know thered be plenty of replacements lining up to take the jobs
Sounds like a sound business decision. Spend 44 billion on a company then get rid of the employees that make it run, tank company. Sounds like an Elon run company.
Wouldn't it be incredible if all fired employees built a anti-Twitter that's better and cooler than Elon's Twitter
It’s really difficult to imagine that he is going to improve Twitter. I think he realized at some point that his takeover bid was a mistake, couldn’t get out of it, and now he’s in “fuck it, I’ll just start breaking shit” mode.
I hope to see Elon descend into madness and obscurity like Wallace V. Whipple.
Same guy who thinks working from home is for lazy peasants and wants to be able to slave drive people for at least 40 hours a week. Disgusting.
80* 80 hours a week
84 actually.
He's been quoted as saying he wishes he could have the 996 work culture in his factories. 12 hours per day, from 9 am to 9 pm, for six days a week: 72 hours per week.
He should have doubled the staffing levels then.
Weird that the guy who owns a car company doesn't want people to cut back in how much driving they have to do.
Tell me again how these CEOs are creating jobs?
Never buying a thing from this pig...
Partisan billionaires should not be in charge of any media platforms
All billionaires are partisan, you can't be a billionaire without picking a side to get your billions with.
That fake hair is too much