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I've got to ask, reading
"Documents detail plans to gut Twitter’s workforce" in The Washington Post.
Elon Musk told prospective investors in his deal to buy the company that he planned to get rid of nearly 75 percent of Twitter’s 7,500 workers, whittling the company down to a skeleton staff of just over 2,000....
Edwin Chen, a data scientist formerly in charge of Twitter’s spam and health metrics and now CEO of the content-moderation start-up Surge AI... said.... "It would be a cascading effect... where you’d have services going down and the people remaining not having the institutional knowledge to get them back up, and being completely demoralized and wanting to leave themselves.”...
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96 comments:
Actually, if you can find and keep the right people, and trim the deadwood and fanatics, the people who actually do the work of keeping the servers running might react with joy. Because they know who is actually working, and who is collecting the big bucks for having the right opinions.
So maybe Musk just fires, say, 500 employees, and in a sort of preference cascade, 10 times that number leave on their own. What a cost savings! No severance pay for you!
"You should be grateful you have a job" was never a great management style, and it's been even less effective since the pandemic.
Maybe they would be demoralized. I haven't worked at Twitter and don't know what it's like there. At places I've worked over the last many decades, workers would have been thrilled to have the deadwood cut out. We were already doing the work the slackers were supposed to do. At least we would have had to also watch them waste time and put up with them trying to waste ours.
Too bad, so sad. This happens to everyday Americans daily. But maybe it will bring BETTER workers who aren't haters. Workers who aren't woke. Anything will be better than the crybabies who think they are victims, when this happens every day.
Replace the top management and most of their direct reports over a six month period, but immediately fire anyone involved with diversity, inclusion and equity and anyone involved with ESG.
Twitter had an operating expense of $3.5B over its trailing twelve months. Anyone wanna guess the loaded cost per annum of those soon-to-be-fired 5,500 tech workers? Schwing!! That’s how you turn a profit, baby.
Twitter isn't rocket science
You might think the best workers would be scrambling now to secure better employment, but can you really get better?
"Twitter’s median compensation — the point at which half make more and half make less — is about $240,000 for all employees and $308,000 for engineers."
I don't have a good sense of what salaries are in these crazy and inflationary times, but that sounds insanely bloated in the top half.
I wonder if the 75% Musk wants to cut are evenly spread on both sides of that median.
Althouse said..."Twitter’s median compensation — the point at which half make more and half make less — is about $240,000 for all employees and $308,000 for engineers."
I don't have a good sense of what salaries are in these crazy and inflationary times, but that sounds insanely bloated in the top half.
Next, let's talk about bloated university administration salaries that drive kids into debt. I'm sure Elon Musk could rip through and find massive waste that does nothing to serve the education of students. There would be mass protest and greedy liberal panic like when the WI Teachers all freaked out because Act 10 made them chip in for their health care and retirement benefits.
Twitter employees deserve a purge. What they have done in promotion of censorship, lying "fact-checkers", anonymous "experts", banning legitimate voices that need to be heard under some bullshit "misinformation" guidelines has done tremendous damage to our society.
I did M&A for one of the world’s largest privately-held companies for a couple of decades. Our acquisition economics assumed a philosophical disconnect with almost everything we acquired. This meant drastic headcount reductions on closing. However we found time after time that our employment comp programs, heavily weighted to performance based equity, attracted performers and was repeatedly very effective. I don’t think Musk will have much of a problem restructuring Twitter and reshaping the product into a standalone profitable company inside three years. I’d love to help him do it. Twitter’s current “Jack’s free coffee” business model cannot survive without back door cash injections with questionable conditions. Time to tear it down and start over. And btw it’s no coincidence that the feds now want to scrutinize Tesla and Starlink…
If you work in the manufacturing supply chain in 2022 you are working your ass off. There is nobody to hire, and large OEM customers are making huge demands. Lead times are through the roof, and quality is teetering.
It's amazing the sectors of our economy that are bloated with employees and high salaries. Big Tech...Banking...Universities...
The OEMs are bloated too. Figure 30% of the cost of your car is wasted on some unproductive job in Building #4, cubicle #322. Dude has a red stapler. Or he/she is "working from home" sitting on Teams meetings all day that don't produce a thing.
This is how you drain a swamp, Donald.
What do those 7,500 workers do? Isn't Twitter a piece of software (a BIG piece) that runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week on computers using electrical power supplied by the local utility? Aside from a few workers that replace failed rack-mounted hardware and mow the lawns, what do they need 7,500 workers for?
Maybe they have a lot of lawyers that deal with regulatory issues and complaints from government entities worldwide.
Sarc Off
What do those 7,500 workers do? Isn't Twitter a piece of software (a BIG piece) that runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week on computers using electrical power supplied by the local utility? Aside from a few workers that replace failed rack-mounted hardware and mow the lawns, what do they need 7,500 workers for?
Maybe they have a lot of lawyers that deal with regulatory issues and complaints from government entities worldwide.
WaPo keeping hope alive. Musk must fail!
The 80 20 rule is now the 75 25 rule.
25% are doing 75% of the work now so might as well dump the useless 75%
Twitter’s median compensation — the point at which half make more and half make less — is about $240,000 for all employees and $308,000 for engineers.
Holy geez, no wonder Twitter is on the financial struggle bus. Time to get the Bobs in there to see what they can do!
Ann, I agree with your sentiment on the salaries. I've worked in tech for 30+ years and those sound insanely high. Google says the average salary for a software engineer in the US is less than half that median figure, even at the high end of the scale. I do wonder how they are calculating it because valuing the inclusion of stock options or other bonuses might have an impact.
I think, or at least hope, that Tim is correct about morale among the remaining employees, especially mid-level management. This is not a case where some vulture is swooping in to buy a company at a fire sale because it's ready to go under. "You get to keep working with the best of your current peers" is a very different dynamic than "You can take a significant pay cut or try to find a job elsewhere."
Additionally, I am actually right now in Chen's position with my current company, and his description is not quite accurate. If Musk makes some effort to keep the more senior and/or motivated current employees you don't lose institutional knowledge. Where you lose institutional knowledge and demoralize the remaining people is doing a wholesale firing *and replacement*. That doesn't sound like Musk's plan.
Couldn't Musk increase the salaries of the survivors and still save money compared overall (if saving money is even the point)?
Unless wages vastly increase, I am not sure why the top talent would want to stay and pick up the slack from all the people who left.
You might end up spending all your time bailing out a sinking ship and have your reputation tied to that failure.
Top talent generally always has options and connections, I see no reason to believe they're not planning their escape hatches already.
Working for a company in crisis is for suckers or for crazy pay.
No, sir... excuse me... When they go down into the new smaller offices, everyone would still be working. There would be no shocking memories, and the prevailing emotion will be one of nostalgia for those left behind, combined with a spirit of bold curiosity for the adventure ahead!
I have no knowledge of twitter. Like pot, I thought it was cool and the hip thing to do. But I tried them both, and didn't like the way either made me feel. I wanted to like them, but nope.
So, I don't know what twitter will look like, except, my bet, nothing like the leftists are predicting.
I think Tim in the first comment nails it.
The truth is, everyone likes hard work that makes a difference. That hard work as part of a competent productive group is what makes you show up for work everyday. I could see where the hive of wokesters all looking out for their own immediate interests, and narcing out their co-workers to gain an edge, had to be exhausting.
Look here, Elon, wouldn't this nucleus of survivors be so grief stricken and anguished that they'd... well, envy the fired and not want to go on working?
That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
Big companies have a lot of bureaucratic deadwood. Get rid of that, and get rid of those whose censor-related jobs are no longer needed, and you've got your 75%
"I wonder if the 75% Musk wants to cut are evenly spread on both sides of that median."
More bang for the buck with the top guys.
Twitter has never made a profit. If you’re an executive there then you know it’s unsustainable. If the deal falls through management is also planning “at least 25% reduction” in the workforce. So obviously the economics of Twitter have a date with destiny either way, to quote pre-governor era Reagan.
Cool. Second post Reagan has been relevant to so far today.
Gee that “learn to code” really was good advice. The people on the chopping block at Twitter are probably all employed as censors since they have near zero customer service and the rest is algorithm and advertising.
"It would be a cascading effect... where you’d have services going down and the people remaining not having the institutional knowledge to get them back up,
From what I've heard, even the best-case recent scenario for Twitter was going to be a 10- to 25-percent cut in their labor force. This suggests to me that the institutional knowledge is in the hands of only a percentage of the Twitter workforce and there is a good amount of dead wood. Musk seems to believe that knowledge is in the hands of 25% of them. It'll be interesting to see if he's right - or if the 25% who survive will be the people who, even if they don't have all the knowledge they need right now, are the ones who do the work anyway and will quickly acquire it.
and being completely demoralized and wanting to leave themselves.
I'd imagine that depends on their workdays. If they're working relatively normal hours, day not to exceed 10 hours on average, I bet they get over it. If Musk is miscalculating and it's going to be 18-hour days and/or 80-hour weeks, they may indeed want to leave. But will they, in a recession with no severance?
CEO of the content-moderation start-up Surge AI... said
There you go. He wants to monetize censorship when he couldn’t even monetize Twitter. Good luck (not) Chen!
"Twitter’s median compensation — the point at which half make more and half make less — is about $240,000 for all employees and $308,000 for engineers."
what the?
so, Half of their engineers make MORE THAN $308,000? A YEAR?? for WHAT?
Is there Any Reason why twitter needs to be in California?
With highspeed telegraphy (or intertubes, or whatever they call it This week);
Seems like they could hire a staff in places like Des Moines (or Sioux Falls (or even Madison)) for half (a THIRD!) of that.
Seriously, how hard could being an engineer BE? It's not like you have to steer a train
I am kinda hoping twitter stock takes a dive at some point soon so I can invest in it properly.
“Censor Chen Has Thoughts” would have been the headline more appropriate.
Howard said...
No, sir... excuse me... When they go down into the new smaller offices, everyone would still be working. There would be no shocking memories, and the prevailing emotion will be one of nostalgia for those left behind, combined with a spirit of bold curiosity for the adventure ahead!
Like Howard says the Important thing would be intelligent choices when choosing which female staff to keep.
That screed is right from "Doctor Strangelove." Only it was people relocating to mines after a nuclear Armageddon.
Serious Question
is Musk talking about cutting 75% of the workforce? Or 75% of the payroll?
see the difference?
Thanks, Howard!
Ann Althouse said...
You might think the best workers would be scrambling now to secure better employment, but can you really get better?
"Twitter’s median compensation — the point at which half make more and half make less — is about $240,000 for all employees and $308,000 for engineers."
That is very high.
Amazon used to have a cap on salaries for the most senior engineers not much above that.
Most engineers start in the SDET 1 and promote to SDET 2 within 2-5 years and they stay there for most of their career. SD2's make 6 figures bu usually not much more. For the most part going to SDET 3 takes a lot of extra work and only a small number of engineers want to actually work that hard.
There are absolutely engineers that are worth 10x the average engineer. Those people get paid a lot if they shop themselves around. But that is less than 10% of engineers.
For 308 to be the average is insane if that is even true. 7500 X 308k is 2.31 billion.
Cutting 5500 of them out would probably save 1.5 billion of that since you will probably want to keep the more valuable end of that spectrum.
And I really doubt that the productive employees are going to be upset when those 5500 get cut. They know that will eventually result in them getting paid more.
Wow! Those salaries. I should have studied engineering instead of law.
I don't follow Twitter closely, so I'm doing back of the napkin math here....
Their quarterly revenue was ~$1.18 billion in Q2. Let's just round up to $5 billion a year.
Their quarterly costs were ~$1.5 billion in Q2, so I'll round that to $6 billion a year.
They are hemorraghing $1 billion a year and their growth has stagnated. At an average employee cost of $200k (loaded), 7500 employees represents $1.5 billion in annual cost. The rest of their costs are in operating leases, debt, and "$1.5 billion of R&D"
Twitter stock was based upon growth prospects. But I'm looking now and in 8 years they only doubled their revenue, which is terrible. I've been part of multiple services companies during that time that more than doubled their revenue with not-super-differentiated products.
So if it's not going to explode to $10 billion in revenue, then the way to increase the value of the company is to make it a stable producer of profit while seeking long-term growth objectives.
Slicing 75% of their staff seems entirely consistent with reducing it's R&D costs, which are obviously not producing growth. Let's assume there is $1 billion in staff cost reduction and $500 million in associated non-staff cost reductions. Suddenly Twitter is generating $5 billion in revenue and $500 million in net proceeds.....that's a huge turnaround. But it's not yet a growth story, and it wouldn't support it's current market price.
Therefore, the staff reductions are not about generating company value through cost reduction. They are part of a bigger plan.
Everybody remember that Twitter SUED Musk to force him to actually buy the company. As we see here, the news cycle has returned to its position of "how AWFUL that Elon Musk is buying Twitter." He tried to get out of the deal, and they sued him to force him to do it. And the same reporters who attacked Musk for trying NOT to buy the company will now return to attacking him BECAUSE he is buying the company.
I've worked in many tech companies that underwent massive layoffs and even bankruptcy.
You either survive or you don't.
If you do survive and want to stay then life goes on.
A year ago the job market in Silicon Valley was the hottest I've ever seen...you could write your ticket.
But it's definitely cooling (thanks, Joe!).
The smart ones who didn't want to work for Musk got out when he made his offer.
Besides, if you have equity (almost everyone in the Valley does) Elon made you a shit-ton of money.
They should be thanking him...
Mark said...
Unless wages vastly increase, I am not sure why the top talent would want to stay and pick up the slack from all the people who left.
You're assuming that 100% of the people being let go were actually doing critical or even useful work.
'Actually, if you can find and keep the right people, and trim the deadwood and fanatics, the people who actually do the work of keeping the servers running might react with joy.'
This is one way private equity makes money.
If Musk can cut the fat and find new revenue, the company will be worth a lot more in a few years.
He can either keep the yearly profits or do another IPO and get his money back with many billions more as a bonus...
’I don't have a good sense of what salaries are in these crazy and inflationary times, but that sounds insanely bloated in the top half.’
The referenced figures are total compensation, not salaries. Top-tier tech firms have amazing and expensive perquisites. Salary in these circumstances is ~70% of total compensation.
Look here, Elon, wouldn't this nucleus of survivors be so grief stricken and anguished that they'd... well, envy the fired and not want to go on working?
I don't know. IT jobs are not as easy to find as the once were and possibly those survivors might have a different attitude once they hear how their former co-worker's job searches are going.
'You might think the best workers would be scrambling now to secure better employment, but can you really get better?'
AA, anyone in Silicon Valley can work for a salary.
What people really work for is equity...stock options.
Once you've been at a company for typically 4 years and are fully vested, there's really not much point in sticking around.
Top performers move on to another private (pre-IPO) company and start over again.
It's a clever way of spreading risk...
'I wonder if the 75% Musk wants to cut are evenly spread on both sides of that median.'
I'm sure that he has a plan for what he wants to do with the company and will make the cuts accordingly.
Ironically, a lot of these people did learn to code.
It would be a cascading effect... where you’d have services going down and the people remaining not having the institutional knowledge to get them back up, and being completely demoralized and wanting to leave themselves.
I’ve worked for tech companies that had reorganizations and attendant layoffs roughly annually, it isn’t unusual in high tech, and in my experience the survivors generally look around, are glad to see the deadwood lopped off, and get back to work.
What really struck me when I looked at Twitter is that they have major offices in six different locations, all of them in places where the cost of living is pretty high (main HQ in San Francisco, but major satellite offices in Los Angeles, Denver, Atlanta, Boston, and New Year City). High salaries for engineering talent in Silicon Valley (anchored by San Francisco on the north and San Jose at the other end) are not unusual — the competition for good engineers is fierce because of the large number of tech firms located in the area, and because the cost of living is ridiculous. Still, $308,000 is a lot of money. You could buy a 1000 square foot bungalow in Silicon Valley with a salary like that. (Go look it up.)
As a retired software project manager I was startled to see that five of the six offices supposedly have engineering staff. That could lead to a lot of communications issues between and inside projects. I imagine Musk expects to close four or five of the six offices and consolidate at a single location — Denver, at a guess. People that Musk wants to keep will be offered relocation packages that will involve lower salaries (reflecting the difference in cost of living), but generous help buying a home, selling the old home (if you had been able to buy a house on a mere $308,000 in San Francisco or New York or LA), and moving expenses paid by the corporation. Not all will accept, but most will. And as for people he wants to cut — no relo package, so they will cut themselves. Ergo, no severance.
The whole idea of any business is to buy things and sell them for more than you paid. If you are selling for less than you paid you are running a charity and you need other money coming in to keep afloat.
That includes Walmart selling toasters, twitter selling a platform.
It includes businesses hiring people. If the people on the payroll do not generate more revenue than they cost, why are they there?
If they are generating more than they cost, getting rid of them is stupid. It decreases expense, sure, but it also decreases revenues.
Twitter is not profitable and has never been profitable. I imagine that Elon wants to change that. I imagine that he will be successful at changing it.
Hundreds of car companies have come and gone. Tesla, for all its faults seems to have real staying power.
Space ships were always something that had to be paid for by govt. There was no way anyone could make money on them. Until SpaceX.
Don't bet against Elon.
John stop fascism, vote republican Henry
And for those who say that Tesla only succeeds because of govt subsidies, there is a lot of truth in that.
But does Tesla get any more subsidies than any other American car company gets for its battery powered cars?
It may be a crappy game but the game is the game and you have to play by the rules established.
John stop fascism vote republican Henry
Blogger Gusty Winds said...
If you work in the manufacturing supply chain in 2022 you are working your ass off. There is nobody to hire
Amen to that, Gusty. None, not one, of my manufacturing clients is fully staffed. Not at the warm bodies level, not at the skilled tech or manager level.
At a guess, they would all increase staffing by 10-15% if they could find them.
I'll be at one of the world's largest trade shows (PackExo, Chicago) all next week and I'll bet I will get asked a couple times a day if I know anyone looking for a job.
John stop fascism vote reupblican Henry
How delicious, watching the pundit class try to out-guess the world's richest man, confidently. I wonder if Elon's best move would be to fire anybody who has ever closed an account, or ordered one closed, and fire anybody that has ever interacted with the Federal Government for any reason at all. He just needs to keep the servers running. And then he needs to build online governance to suit his vision of Free Speech. Green Shoots only need apply.
Those salaries are San Francisco tiered. Maybe Elon should move Twitter to Texas - if they're paying that now, imagine how fast the up-front investment will pay out.
I wonder if the $308m media is salary or cost? I don't trust any reporter to know the difference.
Rule of thumb is that it costs nominal salary + 50% to keep an employee on the payroll. So start with $200m add SS, workers comp, unemployment, other taxes that might apply, medical, vacation, sick leave, personal days and so on.
By the time you get finished, that $200m employee is costing you $300m
Never trust reporters.
John stop fascism vote republican Henry
As long as Musk fires all the SJW "moderators" - I'm fine with anything he does.
I have no idea how many H-1B's - basically enginnering slave labor - work for twitter. But with a few exception, these guys can do anything the current engineers can do. So, you can fire most of them, and hire cheap H-1b's to fill in the gaps.
I'm sure the Adminsitration section, what we call G&A, is probably overstaffed and bloated. And can be massively cut without any loss.
The demise of Twitter would be a great loss to humanity. Musk should tread carefully. LOL!
So his father was born in 1865, he was born in 1922. So his Dad was 57 when he was born. Yeah, OK. I suppose.
Newsflash: Slavery ended 157 years ago. Civil Rights bill passed 57 years ago. Affirmative action has been in place for at least 50 years.
Nobody under the age of 62 can personally remember what a Pre-civil rights America was like.
This constant living in the past by the MSM is just absurd. They are STILL talking Emitt Till. that was 67 years ago! Do realize that almost 600,000 black people have been murdered since then? And they were all killed by other black people. But no, lets talk about 1955 and Mr. Till. Crazy!
Carl Icahn: "I Fired Five Floors of People"
Carl Ichan tells a story about his first activist investment, and how activist investment isn't necessarily short term. He tells the story about how he once fired 12 floors of people.
YouTube
... and the people doing the company's actual work didn't miss them at all. A great story well worth eight minutes and thirty-four seconds of your day. And it may give some insight into Elon's plan.
Seems like Elon has been keeping up with Pareto. I think Edwin Chen misunderstands the situation. I think Elon is counting on the cascading effect to have incompetent people chose to leave on their own, and I suspect there are a few Twitter services that are unnecessary, such as political content moderation. Twitter was a success when it was a far simpler platform. Added complexity has only marginalized the company's potential.
As for survivors; I've been through such a layoff. In my case, it was the cancellation of the Shuttle program, and we all knew the jobs were going away permanently after the last flight. The revelation I had going through the event was an appreciation for how the 80% of crap work managed to get offloaded to the 80% of less competent employees. As each round of layoffs occurred, the poorer quality employees were let go, but their workload ended up being spread to the survivors. That sucked. Eventually, the unnecessary work was jettisoned, but not all of the crap work was unnecessary. That was part of the source of envy. The other was the highest quality employees moved on before the layoffs came, because they knew well enough to make their own decisions in life rather than rely on chance. When it was over, I ended up with a better job making more money, so no regrets.
By the time you get finished, that $200m employee is costing you $300m
More like $425, depending on the cost per square foot of the office space where workers — ostensibly! — work. Plus the generosity of healthcare and other benefits, also how you impute costs of corporate debt to staff. At a guess the median salary is probably closer to $175K..
Never trust reporters
Amen.
Milo Minderbinder said...
"...it’s no coincidence that the feds now want to scrutinize Tesla and Starlink…"
Twitter serves as the censorship arm of the feds, without them having to get their fingers dirty. Of course they don't want that special relationship to be upset.
rcocean: "They are STILL talking Emitt Till. that was 67 years ago!"
Recall the New Soviet Democraticals were literally blaming George W Bush for the Emitt Till murder via proxy murder of James Byrd in 1998, which the lefties said was also George W Bush's fault.
Of course, all rational people strongly fought back against such scurrilous but typical New Soviet Democratical attacks on behalf of Bush, which was repaid by Bush and his genius Rovian advisors by attacking his own base and throwing them completely overboard and has culminated in a Full Bush Family/Clinton/Obama alliance to advance New Soviet Democratical policies.
Howard: "Twitter isn't rocket science"
Finally, full agreement.
Once Musk completes the purchase, prepare for a full Mozilla/Firefox crowdsourcing of code with transparent rules of conduct, a shift in revenue focus from Ad revenue (based on current lies about #'s of eyeballs (actually bots)) to paid revenue for tiered service offerings, a ruthless assault on bots, etc.
And not to mention the several twitter business model extensions that Elon will create for brand new revenue streams, some of which we have heard something about, and others no doubt waiting in the wings.
Needless to say, a long needed and awaited complete gutting of the hack leftist internal groups responsible for working directly with the New Soviet Democratical party in censoring unapproved voices is a first order of business after the takeover.
The lefty users all claim they will leave and build their own new mousetrap.
Good. Go ahead. Make sure you do it in Canada too after the Nov elections, though we all know how empty those threats are.
But, remember, to build a new Lefty-Twitter you'll actually have to show up for work again and make actual progress on real user experience and functional performance to make it competitive and profitable. And these cats for the last 10 years have demonstrated conclusively they have no stomach at all for such things.
Howard: "Twitter isn't rocket science"
Finally, full agreement.
Once Musk completes the purchase, prepare for a full Mozilla/Firefox crowdsourcing of code with transparent rules of conduct, a shift in revenue focus from Ad revenue (based on current lies about #'s of eyeballs (actually bots)) to paid revenue for tiered service offerings, a ruthless assault on bots, etc.
And not to mention the several twitter business model extensions that Elon will create for brand new revenue streams, some of which we have heard something about, and others no doubt waiting in the wings.
Needless to say, a long needed and awaited complete gutting of the hack leftist internal groups responsible for working directly with the New Soviet Democratical party in censoring unapproved voices is a first order of business after the takeover.
The lefty users all claim they will leave and build their own new mousetrap.
Good. Go ahead. Make sure you do it in Canada too after the Nov elections, though we all know how empty those threats are.
But, remember, to build a new Lefty-Twitter you'll actually have to show up for work again and make actual progress on real user experience and functional performance to make it competitive and profitable. And these cats for the last 10 years have demonstrated conclusively they have no stomach at all for such things.
Althouse: "I don't have a good sense of what salaries are in these crazy and inflationary times, but that sounds insanely bloated in the top half."
The NEW shareholders and ownership agree with you completely.
The boy is a 2022 UW-Madison grad in computer science. He got multiple offers in the $80,000 range for a beginner software engineer. That seemed to be the going rate this summer for the college-grad yoots who can code.
The boy is a 2022 UW-Madison grad in computer science. He got multiple offers in the $80,000 range for a beginner software engineer. That seemed to be the going rate this summer for the college-grad yoots who can code.
Milo Minderbinder: "I did M&A for one of the world’s largest privately-held companies for a couple of decades. Our acquisition economics assumed a philosophical disconnect with almost everything we acquired. This meant drastic headcount reductions on closing. However we found time after time that our employment comp programs, heavily weighted to performance based equity, attracted performers and was repeatedly very effective. I don’t think Musk will have much of a problem restructuring Twitter and reshaping the product into a standalone profitable company inside three years. I’d love to help him do it. Twitter’s current “Jack’s free coffee” business model cannot survive without back door cash injections with questionable conditions. Time to tear it down and start over. And btw it’s no coincidence that the feds now want to scrutinize Tesla and Starlink…"
I have significant M&A experience as well as an Integration leader (though it was not my primary area of expertise) and I completely agree with this, particularly this: "However we found time after time that our employment comp programs, heavily weighted to performance based equity, attracted performers and was repeatedly very effective."
The best performers are never concerned with layoffs/etc. They know they are in demand internally and with direct and adjacent industry competitors. What they are most concerned about is not being lumped in with the non-performers and forced to take an undeserved pay/benefits cuts, hence the performance-based plans that Milo referenced.
Dumb Lefty Mark: "Unless wages vastly increase, I am not sure why the top talent would want to stay and pick up the slack from all the people who left."
LOL
Human nature truly eludes every single buffoon on the left, which explains pretty much everything in terms of New Soviet Democratical policies.
I just went through Twitter's financials again- Musk has to cut at least half the payroll to make this company even close to profitable. If he doesn't, the company will fail whether he buys it or not.
Anyone who has ever worked in corporate America knows who is doing the real work and who isn't inside their own firm, including the paper pushers whose value added is negative. Those 25% retained, if the numbers from WaPoo are correctly attributed to Musk's plans, know they are carrying the other 75% of the work force. I can guess that Twitter is overloaded with upper management and other employees who do nothing on maintaining the company's service infrastructure, and do nothing on the sales side. Musk's plans are likely sensible.
Big Mike: "As a retired software project manager I was startled to see that five of the six offices supposedly have engineering staff. That could lead to a lot of communications issues between and inside projects. I imagine Musk expects to close four or five of the six offices and consolidate at a single location — Denver, at a guess."
Denver/Boulder.
Howard: "No, sir... excuse me... When they go down into the new smaller offices, everyone would still be working. There would be no shocking memories, and the prevailing emotion will be one of nostalgia for those left behind, combined with a spirit of bold curiosity for the adventure ahead!"
Agreement again. Twice in one day. Take note.
Here's one "however" however, though I don't believe it will dispositive in any way.
We'll actually find out how powerful the current cancel culture happens to be when these employees who decide to remain are accused by all their lefty amigos of being sellouts to MAGA and white supremacy and pure evilness and are dropped as Friends by all their Never Were Really Friend Types and called out in all sorts of other ways.
Perhaps some binge-viewing of Dave Chappell and Ricky Gervais and Russell Brand could come in handy for them right about now as potential therapy....though I suspect the new "adventure ahead" will be the primary mover, as Howard properly suggests.
And just wait until the synergistic overlaps become more obvious and entire new business opportunities, with significant risks no doubt, are visualized.
Will actual semi-sentient Tesla Robots, powered by Tesla AI and improved Tesla batteries, be tweeting their tweets from the surface of Mars while taking a break from boring tunnels with Boring Company Technology and building the infrastructure to support a million humans on Mars by 2050?
He just looked at a list of employees and sorted on the radical democrat social justice warrior column. This is what he came up with.
He just looked at a list of employees and sorted on the radical democrat social justice warrior column. This is what he came up with.
It could just as easily turn out that the core "survivors" would consider the others good riddance if the "core" were not zealots of censorship but rather wanted to bring free speech back. Are the valuable core technical people the ones pushing the activism or are they nerds who wanted to do something great only to have it taken over by Leftist activists wanting to suppress opposing views.
Strip the deadweight, then move it to Austin.
You could go through any large organization and mark every other desk and office with an X and allow the CEO to designate whether the X means stay or go. No noticeable change in operations or profitability would occur. In due course management would restart to 10% more than the previous cut.
“What do those 7,500 workers do? Isn't Twitter a piece of software (a BIG piece) that runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week on computers using electrical power supplied by the local utility? Aside from a few workers that replace failed rack-mounted hardware and mow the lawns, what do they need 7,500 workers for?”
I think that a lot of it is Woke content moderation. Suppression of “misinformation” and the like. In short, censoring. Actual software engineers mostly contribute to the bottom line. The censors don’t.
I worked several years at a large company with "Technology" right there in its name, and we survived and remained competitive and made a profit every quarter because we worked our asses off to stay relevant to the electronics manufacturing industries. Twitter is and has always been a boutique product (I was on there before 500,000 had even signed up) used for shaping public opinion and serving as a tax offset for rich titans who need losses to offset gains elsewhere and who believe in Twitters mission enough to "invest" in it. It has never made a profit nor was it meant to which is why they had to cling like grim death to the only suitor who ever appeared, otherwise the whole edifice crumbles.
I enjoyed Althouse's picture of weeping employees, mourning the lost. It doesn't track with my observations during a long working life in which any cutbacks led to a fierce scramble for changed positions and perks but I suspect that was the point. As for what Elon Musk will do with Twitter after he gets rid of SJWs, DIEs, and hugely over-paid execs, I expect to be amazed.
People seem to have forgotten last week, when Musk made it clear that he is looking at Twitter as a broken company that he can restructure into his "X" project. Most of what Twitter does is stuff he doesn't want done. I'm guessing he won't be keeping that million-dollar hate lawyer Vijaya Gadde. But there are probably some people who can do what he does want done.
Most of Twitters scolds and censors would probably work for free from their parent's basements if they would still get to censor and fact check all the wrong think out there.
Frankly, if Twitter was actually a free speech platform, it probably doesn't need that many people. EEs and IEs to keep the data flowing. Some BOT police to smoke out bots.
For gilbar
Jack Dorsey: Elon, you mentioned the ratio of ten women to each man. Now, wouldn't that necessitate the abandonment of the so-called monogamous work-wife relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned?
Musk:
Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious... service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature.
Dorsey:
I must confess, you have an astonishingly good idea there, Elon.
If Musk rehabilitates Twitter without the censorship, great.
If Twitter dies, also great.
Win/win.
'He just looked at a list of employees and sorted on the radical democrat social justice warrior column.'
I argued years ago that Trump should have fired everyone who had a Obama or Hillary bumper sticker on their car.
Send people into the lots and take down license plate numbers.
Then add to that list any car with 'World Peace, Coexist, etc.' stickers.
Musk should do the same thing.
Maybe I missed it but the "documents" referenced refer to Twitter's previous plan to cut 25% of the workforce.
The 75% number attributed to Musk is based on something he reportedly told potential investors, AKA rumors.
It would be an interesting experiment to just fire everyone and see how long the platform functioned with nobody tending to it.
IF he wants to reform Twitter, it won't take 7,500 firings.
First, fire all of HR and put in his own people.
Second, write his own HR policy and anyone who fights it gets let go.
Third, a quick scan of their company tweets will reveal who the worse scolds, censors or narcs are for Woke crap. They get fired.
When the current workers understand that they can do think what they want and are rewarded for how well they do their job instead of just how well they bow to the Sacred Cows, and the entire corporate culture changes.
Peter Gibbons : The thing is, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care.
Bob Porter : Don't... don't care?
Peter Gibbons : It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime, so where's the motivation? And here's something else, Bob: I have eight different bosses right now.
Bob Slydell : I beg your pardon?
Peter Gibbons : Eight bosses.
Bob Slydell : Eight?
Peter Gibbons : Eight, Bob. So that means that when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That's my only real motivation is not to be hassled, that and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.
Musk would probably do well to have his own HR people call in staffers one by one for a brief "get acquainted" interview, and then once complete, fire everyone with weird hair colors and face piercings. The correlation to woketardism will be very high.
Should also quietly do social media screens and network analysis to smoke out anyone who's been an Antifa activist or associates overwhelmingly with people who are. Also knock out anyone with ties to socialist orgs and Democratic Socialists of America groups.
And anyone who donated like a libtard to Proposition 8 advocacy need to be given the boot.
If those fuckers can destroy the Mozilla/Firefox CEO because he donated to that cause, it's time for a nuclear response against the Silicon Valley Left and this is the best opportunity we'll see for a while.
"Frankly, if Twitter was actually a free speech platform, it probably doesn't need that many people. "
Parler functions with about 30 employees.
"Look here, Elon, wouldn't this nucleus of survivors be so grief stricken and anguished that they'd... well, envy the fired and not want to go on working?"
no, the nucleus of survivors will be ecstatically happy that the left wing scum and losers are gone, and that they can get back to being a free speech company, not a woketard hell
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