Twitter was also very bloated. Musk has an agenda, some of it is personal. I think from a business standpoint this was well overdue especially from some ex-twitter employees I've talked to.
It's also not the first time I have seen this type of layoff. I was a part of a few companies that got taken over by vulture capitalists and it's much the same. Everyone gets sorted into an arbitrary bucket based on metrics. Usually, these include commits, vacation taken, etc. Then the MBAs sort the list and fire the worst. Hostile takeovers are always, always bad for the employee. Twitter, however had other problems than a usual company. A dramatic lack of profitability, too many salaries to pay, etc. I'm not saying his methods are just but for Twitter to even have a chance at profit there needs to be some very, very dramatic changes.
If you were to believe the media Musk is literally destroying free speech (on a private platform?) and firing people for no reason. I doubt he would do this. He's a jerk, but he's not an idiot. It doesnt help twitter employees happen to be the most vocal, often whiniest, group of people so this is getting megaphoned to death in a way that wouldn't happen almost anywhere else.
> It doesnt help twitter employees happen to be the most vocal, often whiniest, group of people so this is getting megaphoned to death in a way that wouldn't happen almost anywhere else.
Yeah, and it's not just employees. Everyone seems to think Twitter is bigger and more important than it actually is. It's got significantly fewer DAU than say snapchat.
It's also:
- primarily public one-to-many so the social graph is less important than other mutually social platforms.
- mostly ephemeral, so the value of historical posts is.. Low. Much lower than say YouTube.
- no local communities with independent moderation (like reddit)
- primarily immutable text and links, which is cheap and easy to host
Out of all big platforms today, Twitter is by far the easiest to replace gradually, imo, with the least amount of upfront resources and least impacted by network effects.
Vulture capitalism refers to a very specific practice. It's also known as LBO (leveraged buy out) or asset stripping. In particular, vulture capitalists prey on distressed firms in need of cash, engage in a takeover, and proceed to gut the company.
This is not the same as referring to all capitalists as vultures. Vulture capitalists are a very specific subset of people engaged in a very specific, usually highly dishonest, business. Whether or not capitalists are vultures in general is just like, your opinion, man.
It's also not the first time I have seen this type of layoff. I was a part of a few companies that got taken over by vulture capitalists and it's much the same. Everyone gets sorted into an arbitrary bucket based on metrics. Usually, these include commits, vacation taken, etc. Then the MBAs sort the list and fire the worst. Hostile takeovers are always, always bad for the employee. Twitter, however had other problems than a usual company. A dramatic lack of profitability, too many salaries to pay, etc. I'm not saying his methods are just but for Twitter to even have a chance at profit there needs to be some very, very dramatic changes.
If you were to believe the media Musk is literally destroying free speech (on a private platform?) and firing people for no reason. I doubt he would do this. He's a jerk, but he's not an idiot. It doesnt help twitter employees happen to be the most vocal, often whiniest, group of people so this is getting megaphoned to death in a way that wouldn't happen almost anywhere else.