Twitter Employees Resigning

[razztazz]

If the Twitter employees were happy, that would be a terrible sign.

That they and others are bellyaching suggests needed change is happening.

The disaster would be a money losing, bloated, unfair speech status quo.

I would submit, it is one thing it might suggest. But you can't draw any conclusions. When you hear hoof beats, it could be a zebra, or a camel, but it's probably just a horse like it usually is. That many people, all at once, due to a single event, doesn't really suggest a bad company with a wholesale sick workforce full of subversives that only Man-on-a-white-horse can redeem. It suggests the opposite. But, I hate Twitler et al so if they die, they die. As Bob Seger said, "turn the page."

 

[cyber888]

Love it! Maybe he'll rename the company "Toxic". Pretty much sums up their "product" (whatever that is), their CEO and their new work environment.

Haha I agree .. He wants everyone to work 24/7 no sleeping

 

[NW-Bound]

A lot of people will try to toil 24/7 for a chance to get beaucoup money.

But to get an ordinary salary plus an attaboy? They walk. Heh heh heh...

Would you stay or walk?

 

[ls99]

One aw s*it wipes out ten thousand attaboys, in most corporate settings.

 

[copyright1997reloaded]

Twitter’s last financial filing (here), 2Q 2022, for the quarter ending June 30, is very informative.

Twitter’s ongoing expense run rate was about $1.5B for the quarter, and 1/3 of that was classified as R&D, so about $1B in quarterly operational expense. It had close to $6B in cash and short term marketable securities. Revenue was $1.1B, of which $1.0B was advertising.

So, Twitter can lose its entire advertising income for a year, and fund operations for that entire year, still meet all its financial obligations, cover all debt maturing within 2 years, and remain solvent. That’s plenty of time to take it apart and rebuild a successful business. I’d say the critical challenge right now is to keep it operating while that rebuilding takes place and not let the users move elsewhere. That seems achievable.

It needs to get advertising revenue back over $1B and growing to be a viable business, and it needs to generate enough cash to pay the assumed debt along with the money borrowed to finance the purchase. That also seems achievable.

The cost of all the separations is unknown, and could be an issue. There was lots of stock based compensation, and it’s not clear what the current cost of that is. Still, even with that, Twitter could reduce its workforce by half without jeopardizing it’s ability to operate at a bare bones level.

If new Twitter is a copy of old Twitter with new management, this will have been a colossal waste of money and probably generate a fair amount of ill will. If new Twitter is different in a meaningful way and also a viable business, we may conclude it was a painful approach to a difficult challenge that worked and provided a bit of entertainment value along the way.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR POST.

This thread has had tons of speculation, little fact. I for one appreciate some actual numbers.

 

[punkinhead]

A lot of people will try to toil 24/7 for a chance to get beaucoup money.

But to get an ordinary salary plus an attaboy? They walk. Heh heh heh...

My son graduates with his Masters in December and did two interviews last month with SpaceX then found out the salaries were in line with, and sometimes lower, than typical Megacorps. He declined to continue interviewing with them. It's not worth having a lousy work/life balance without being compensated for it. The only reason he considered it is because it would look good on a resume to have worked there a couple years. SpaceX is sexy at the moment but there are plenty of cool, high tech jobs for engineers in the world. I met my son a couple days ago to hike and he said with Elon's recent antics he feels like he dodged a bullet - there's no pride in working with someone like that.

 

[NW-Bound]

... Twitter could reduce its workforce by half without jeopardizing it’s ability to operate at a bare bones level...

I don't know anything about Twitter or what its former 7,500 employees all worked on. And it's a given that any corporation has a number of loafers who would not be missed if they disappeared. I have seen plenty of those where I worked.

But if the fired workers were not doing anything, then why the remaining ones have to work so much harder and longer hours?

 

[copyright1997reloaded]

Only the "hardcore" workers who put in 40 hours/week at the office, then go home to work another 40 hours will have a job.

Aren't we glad we are already retired?

I can tell you from personal experience that in the 30+ years I worked for mega-corp doing new software product development, internal applications development, business requirements, design, sales -> it was RARE for me to have anywhere near a 40-hour work week. This is simply the life working on cutting edge I/T.

Now I am teaching, and I hear "Teachers have soo much work". Other than grading (which sucks), it is NO WHERE near the work effort of my previous life. Almost like being retired. (Well, I shouldn't go THAT far.)

 

[copyright1997reloaded]

My son graduates with his Masters in December and did two interviews last month with SpaceX then found out the salaries were in line with, and sometimes lower, than typical Megacorps. He declined to continue interviewing with them. It's not worth having a lousy work/life balance without being compensated for it. The only reason he considered it is because it would look good on a resume to have worked there a couple years. SpaceX is sexy at the moment but there are plenty of cool, high tech jobs for engineers in the world. I met my son a couple days ago to hike and he said with Elon's recent antics he feels like he dodged a bullet - there's no pride in working with someone like that.

Interesting perspective. Not to pick on your son, but it shows (both positively and negatively) where young grads heads are at today. If I weren't so frickin old at this point, the old me (the age of your son) would look at SpaceX as THE PLACE where I would want to be...in the MIDDLE of something that could change the world.

Looking back, that is the reason why I chose the job I did, which required me to move away from my family, and along the way to give up quite a bit in the work/life balance.

 

[razztazz]

A lot of people will try to toil 24/7 for a chance to get beaucoup money.

But to get an ordinary salary plus an attaboy? They walk. Heh heh heh...

Would you stay or walk?

We've all heard it a jillion times. Every recruiting brochure and company flack jaw flapper says it. Every company is "THEEE PLACE to work! We are just sooo selective for the right kind of employee who deserves to work here!" On the last page near the bottom if it's anywhere to be found, reads something like: "Our compensation package is commensurate with others in the industry."


As far as being young and working at THEEE place that's all the rage 80 hours a week and thinking it's great:A) You're being exploited but you don't care because you find the intangiblesintriguing. Maybe you notice this or maybe you don't. It's a feature of being Young. That's why even boot camp can be fun. Or B) You're making a collossamundo pile of money. That's great but you're really just breaking evengiven the burden. C) You have found your bliss and raison d'etre. You'd do it for a living but it just happens to pay above average.Do not confuse it with what most people call work, a job, a career, earning a living

 

[razztazz]

But if the fired workers were not doing anything, then why the remaining ones have to work so much harder and longer hours?

Hah hah, good catch! I have found most "top level producers" and anyone in a position of "leadership" all seem to be incapable of monitoring themselves. Like a 2 year old. EM is one of them. Everything they say should be followed with a "whatever."

 

[cyber888]

Elon Begs Twitter's Head of Ads Sales to Stay and Pleads her not to Resign.
1 Week after - Elon Fires her. Ha

https://www.yahoo.com/news/elon-musk-fired-twitters-head-054703822.html

 

[daylatedollarshort]

We've all heard it a jillion times. Every recruiting brochure and company flack jaw flapper says it. Every company is "THEEE PLACE to work! We are just sooo selective for the right kind of employee who deserves to work here!" On the last page near the bottom if it's anywhere to be found, reads something like: "Our compensation package is commensurate with others in the industry."


As far as being young and working at THEEE place that's all the rage 80 hours a week and thinking it's great:A) You're being exploited but you don't care because you find the intangiblesintriguing. Maybe you notice this or maybe you don't. It's a feature of being Young. That's why even boot camp can be fun. Or B) You're making a collossamundo pile of money. That's great but you're really just breaking evengiven the burden. C) You have found your bliss and raison d'etre. You'd do it for a living but it just happens to pay above average.Do not confuse it with what most people call work, a job, a career, earning a living

We've always told our kids to prioritize for work life balance. Even before the latest Twitter fiasco, I pointed out to one of our kids who was talking about how SpaceX was the place to be careerwise, that Musk had been divorced three times before he was 40 and to look for a job where the CEO was someone didn't expect employees to not have a life outside of work.

 

[punkinhead]

Interesting perspective. Not to pick on your son, but it shows (both positively and negatively) where young grads heads are at today. If I weren't so frickin old at this point, the old me (the age of your son) would look at SpaceX as THE PLACE where I would want to be...in the MIDDLE of something that could change the world.

I probably would have gone that route too. I was always in high tech, high stress jobs. They were satisfying and allowed me to retire early but it meant a lot of travel and less time with family. Looking back, I could have done more relaxed but still interesting work and probably still retired early because, although I'd have made less money, I would have been accustomed to a cheaper lifestyle and probably would have saved a similar percentage of my income. My son has a strong work ethic (you don't get through a good engineering program without one) and I find it interesting that he's aware of work/life balance at his stage in life. I certainly wasn't. I think younger people in general have a different view than my generation and I think it's healthy. The rest of the developed world seems to get it.

I'm fairly confident that regardless of how interesting the work, I would not have stayed at a company where the CEO was constantly calling myself and my coworkers lazy, creating an unstable environment, promoting conspiracy theories, and just in general being a trolling jerk.

 

[ERD50]

... I think he (Musk) is consumed by something (likely his ego) that resulted in one bad decisions after another. ....

I think most of the people who accomplished much (especially those who went 'against the grain') had big egos. It pretty much comes with the territory.

As to whether those were one bad decisions after another, remains to be seen.

Is Twitter still up and running?

-ERD50

 

[jurgs01]

From now on I am going to try to pay no attention to Musk and his antics. He seems to always want attention and I'm not going to give it.



Signing off from this thread.

I'm sure this will be devistating to him.

 

[youbet]

But if the fired workers were not doing anything, then why the remaining ones have to work so much harder and longer hours?

They don't have to. If they do, it will be their own free choice. They all have offers (or could easily get them) to join other organizations at higher pay, short work-at-home hours, interesting stress-free work, superlative fringe benefits, projects commensurate with their skills and desires and a direct path to FIRE. They aren't chained down. They have choices. Even those requiring VISA sponsorship have no issues leaving if they so desire.

Rather than ask why they have to work so much harder and longer hours, I'd ask why are they still there?

 

[RobbieB]

My boss at my last company was like Musk. Work, work, work work. All he could ever do was talk about work.

When he suggested the president was not working hard enough, he retired. Or he was retired. Not of his choice.

But if you're Musk and you are the pres...off with your head!

 

[jurgs01]

Money losing companies have survived and thrived due to cheap money and perverse government incentives for years.

Now, credit and money supply is contracting. All of the dead weight gets cut and we get back to a real competitive economy.

An amazing amount of companies in the US are zombies. Time to get real.

 

[NW-Bound]

They don't have to. If they do, it will be their own free choice. They all have offers (or could easily get them) to join other organizations at higher pay, short work-at-home hours, interesting stress-free work, superlative fringe benefits, projects commensurate with their skills and desires and a direct path to FIRE. They aren't chained down. They have choices. Even those requiring VISA sponsorship have no issues leaving if they so desire.

Rather than ask why they have to work so much harder and longer hours, I'd ask why are they still there?

Yes.

When the employer hassles the workers too much, the ones that can find a job elsewhere bail out, leaving the weak workers behind.

Yes, management gets the reverse of what they intended: they lose the good workers, and keep the poorer ones.

 

[NW-Bound]

I can tell you from personal experience that in the 30+ years I worked for mega-corp doing new software product development, internal applications development, business requirements, design, sales -> it was RARE for me to have anywhere near a 40-hour work week. This is simply the life working on cutting edge I/T.

Now I am teaching, and I hear "Teachers have soo much work". Other than grading (which sucks), it is NO WHERE near the work effort of my previous life. Almost like being retired. (Well, I shouldn't go THAT far.)

I worked more than 40 hours/week too in my career. But quite often, the projects that I put so much work in went nowhere.

People worked hard expecting a reward. One has to be obtuse to work hard for nothing.

Also, "From each according to his ability. To each according to his needs". -- Karl Marx

The above slogan sounds so altruistic, but if put into practice, we will find a lot of people with no ability but with tons of needs. What else can one expect?

 

[punkinhead]

They don't have to. If they do, it will be their own free choice. They all have offers (or could easily get them) to join other organizations at higher pay, short work-at-home hours, interesting stress-free work, superlative fringe benefits, projects commensurate with their skills and desires and a direct path to FIRE.

No they don't. Everyone at Twitter is not some top-tier programmer. HR, ad salesmen, finance, legal, desktop support, etc. Twitter, like every company, is full of positions that are not high tech and can't get an instant offers and command a high salary. Everyone at Twitter is not a high performance genius, just like every other company.

 

[JoeWras]

No they don't. Everyone at Twitter is not some top-tier programmer. HR, ad salesmen, finance, legal, desktop support, etc. Twitter, like every company, is full of positions that are not high tech and can't get an instant offers and command a high salary. Everyone at Twitter is not a high performance genius, just like every other company.

Yep.

Tech workers were all full of themselves in 1999 too. And then they weren't.

I don't know if the current change up in tech hiring is a blip or a long process like the 2000 crash. It will be interesting to watch now that I'm not embroiled in it. I had 7 years of real (not inflation adjusted) wages dropping after the tech crash. Then a raise or two, then the great recession. It was painful. I made more in 1999 than I did when I retired in 2018, which was coincidentally when tech wages started another ride straight up, much like 1995 to 2000.

 

[Vincenzo Corleone]

They don't have to. If they do, it will be their own free choice. They all have offers (or could easily get them) to join other organizations at higher pay, short work-at-home hours, interesting stress-free work, superlative fringe benefits, projects commensurate with their skills and desires and a direct path to FIRE. They aren't chained down. They have choices. Even those requiring VISA sponsorship have no issues leaving if they so desire.

Rather than ask why they have to work so much harder and longer hours, I'd ask why are they still there?

Not true if those employment-based visa workers are being sponsored by their employer for a green card. Getting a green card is a multi-years-long process and if any aspect of the worker's job changes in the interim, the green card approval process needs to start from square one again, risking denial. If being sponsored for a green card, more likely the foreign national will put up with any crap from the employer, stay put and not risk his green card.

 

[copyright1997reloaded]

We've all heard it a jillion times. Every recruiting brochure and company flack jaw flapper says it. Every company is "THEEE PLACE to work! We are just sooo selective for the right kind of employee who deserves to work here!" On the last page near the bottom if it's anywhere to be found, reads something like: "Our compensation package is commensurate with others in the industry."


As far as being young and working at THEEE place that's all the rage 80 hours a week and thinking it's great:A) You're being exploited but you don't care because you find the intangiblesintriguing. Maybe you notice this or maybe you don't. It's a feature of being Young. That's why even boot camp can be fun. Or B) You're making a collossamundo pile of money. That's great but you're really just breaking evengiven the burden. C) You have found your bliss and raison d'etre. You'd do it for a living but it just happens to pay above average.Do not confuse it with what most people call work, a job, a career, earning a living

There is certainly an aspect of truth in this. Could I have made just as good of money and taken it easier? Most likely.

On the other hand, I have multiple patents, SW that is running 24x7x365 on systems around the world, helped to set world record benchmark results, and in general worked on things that were both immensely challenging and satisfying after being completed. While no one may know my name or even care about the above, I do and that is all that matters.

I look at it in a similar vein to running a marathon. Why? What's the point. All that effort, training, and pain just to finish. And I didn't even win. Yet I did it not once, but six times plus a bunch of other long distance trail races. Perhaps I did them because I didn't do Bootcamp!

I know my thoughts here above, on the FIRE forum, are perhaps polar opposite to the idea of getting out of the race as early as possible, with the least effort as possible. But I (and others with superior drive and talent to me) are not wired that way...and I would humbly suggest quite a few of the things we take for granted are because of that mentality.

ETA: I retired from Mega-Corp in 2009. After a year, I started teaching computer science as an adjunct...just to have fun and teach a programming class. Then it became two, then three. Then full time temp. Then full time and eventually tenured. And I teach overload (extra classes). Did I do it for the money? Not really, although I do *take* the money. My economic situation would be pretty much the same had I not worked. So why? Because I like the mental stimulation, learning new things (I teach a variety of things I never used at work, e.g. Game Design using Unity.) I am intending on retiring after the spring term (and am only teaching the minimum load for the Spring. So much for the RE aspect for me.)