Twitter Employees Resigning

[daylatedollarshort]

More news: Twitter loses payroll department, other financial employees as part of mass resignation under Elon Musk - "A large portion of Twitter's financial organization, including its payroll department, left the company on Thursday in response to an ultimatum from Elon Musk that has seemingly backfired.

Along with the payroll department resigning, Twitter's US Tax team and its financial reporting team also resigned, two people familiar with the matter said, matching several internal messages seen by Insider." https://www.businessinsider.com/twi...ment-resigns-en-masse-under-elon-musk-2022-11

For those of you questioning the accuracy of the reports, Elon has publicly backtracked on the no work from home mandate, and the offices are shut down and all the access badges deactivated. Those are matters of record. The form he asked people to sign has also been posted online and is summarized in many news articles.

They can probably survive using contractors and offering contracts to the laid off employees to return until replacements can be trained, but that is going to be costly in the short term.

 

[easysurfer]

Personally, I just don't understand why Musk bought Twitter in the first place. But it's his company now so it's either his way or the highway... (End of sentence)


I thought he was a super smart guy, but I don't get this one... (Yet)

I'd say one word explains why: ego

That aside, saw that Twitter workers got an ultimatum. Either to pledge loyalty to work long long hours or to resign with severance. The latter sounds attractive.

 

[Lsbcal]

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.

 

[ERD50]

Personally, I just don't understand why Musk bought Twitter in the first place. But it's his company now so it's either his way or the highway... (End of sentence)


I thought he was a super smart guy, but I don't get this one... (Yet)

Going back in time, it seems he was major PO'd when Twitter banned the "Babylon Bee" in March 2022. For those who don't know, the "Babylon Bee" is a satire site, like the Onion.

I don't know, I think this is personal for Elon. As an immigrant who had to put forth some effort to become a US citizen, instead of being born into like most of us, he may take the Bill of Rights more seriously than others, and feels he is in a position to do something about it.

-ERD50

 

[Car-Guy]

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.

 

[mpeirce]

I don't know, I think this is personal for Elon. As an immigrant who had to put forth some effort to become a US citizen, instead of being born into like most of us, he may take the Bill of Rights more seriously than others, and feels he is in a position to do something about it.

That’s my take too.

He’ll get through these messy firings and get Twitter on to a better path all the faster for it.

 

[Montecfo]

That’s my take too.



He’ll get through these messy firings and get Twitter on to a better path all the faster for it.

I expect so.

 

[cathy63]

... I don't think Twitter is that complex, how many people does it take to keep this forum running? I'd guess a team of a dozen could get a lot done in a short time. Kind of like we say about an FA charging 1% of assets - it isn't 10x harder to manage 10x the funds...

<1K posts per day in English on this forum is not really comparable to >500M tweets per day from all over the world in dozens of different languages. Even if you use AI to identify tweets for moderation, you still need language coverage, timezone coverage, and people to answer the phone when a big advertiser like Eli Lilly calls. And those workers need managers. And then of course you need an entire engineering team to keep refining the AI as users learn to work around it, and another engineering team to build and maintain the moderation tools.

I agree there's not a linear increase in the number of moderators needed for 1000 vs 500M contributions, but there's no way a team of a dozen people is enough for Twitter, even if they do work 80 hrs per week and sleep in the office.

 

[ERD50]

... but there's no way a team of a dozen people is enough for Twitter, even if they do work 80 hrs per week and sleep in the office.

I didn't mean to imply that a dozen people could run it. I meant that a dozen really bright, hard working people could possibly organize the remaining staff to get things done.

Of course, a "dozen" could be low by an order of magnitude, as I have no inside knowledge of what Musk has been doing to prep for this (or not) to date.

-ERD50

 

[MuirWannabe]

Hope he succeeds. Twitter was an unbalanced cesspool imo. The more people on the sidelines seem to cheer against him, the more I find myself rooting for his success and the success of his businesses.

I wouldn’t want to work for him, but that’s cause I’m an old fart who is over that phase of life. But if I was a young motivated professional wanting to make my mark think I’d have been all over it. Just observe those young folks making Spacex launches happen. They are great and inspiring for our future.

 

[COcheesehead]

I actually like Twitter. I rarely read the comments. I think that is where most of the toxicity lives and instead follow people that report on things of interest to me. Much like YouTube, it provides content on micro interests that I would not find elsewhere: bicycling, renovation, hiking, music, etc. It’s crowd sourced media. I would like to see it continue.

 

[ls99]

Musk is playing by the Golden Rule: He who has the gold, makes the rules.
As for the all the coders quitting, bye, they can always learn new skills, like mining, truck driving, ditch digging, plumbing, construction, or flipping burgers and learning to say with a smile, want fries with that?, etc..

 

[eboats]

Twitter and other social media have played a big role in creating this toxic culture we live in so will be happy to see Musk run it into bankruptcy. I mean, Twitter produces nothing and relies on advertising and toxic notoriety to survive, not a very good business model.

As for the engineers leaving, they are highly skilled and will no doubt find good jobs elsewhere, likely in better companies, so not worried about them.

 

[copyright1997reloaded]

I don't give this thread a long life-expectancy, but here goes:

Musk may or may not be running Twitter into the ground (we will eventually find out), but one thing I'm pretty confident about having done highly available, high transaction rates systems for many years followed by teaching computer science for the last 10: Twitter likely had MANY people who had little to nothing to do with respect to the successful run-and-operate aspects of that environment.

Now I don't know of the people who left, how many truly were critical for keeping the machine going. As I stated above, we might eventually find out (if it fails), but I would discount *heavily* anything posted by ex-employees or the press.

I know another thing: Musk doesn't need to incent a lot of people, only a relatively small number. None of us know if he is currently doing that...but having done this myself I would imagine that he can offer some very critical skills a sh*tload of compensation ...and they will respond positively to that simply because they know they are the ones who made it happen in the past.

Unrelated to Twitter or Musk: One of my largest stock holdings (prior to them being bought out) was Linear Technology. LLTC was one of the most stingy companies around when it came to the kinds of things Twitter was giving: employee lunches, fun times, work perks. But LLTC had one of the best profit margins in the semi-conductor business, and they paid their true talent (analog engineers) a BUNCH of money (including stock options). (Note that while Twitter has no public stock, they can still incent key employees with stock options or other non-immediate $ compensation).

 

[MichealKnight]

I abhor social media. I do admit having a fake name Facebook account - I like to chat with MASH and Star Wars and 80s pop culture geeks but that's about it. Have never ever been on Twitter. Can't stand the concept. (Won't go into why, I've concluded that certain things about human life - or lack thereof are normal now....oh well).

Anyhow, I'll now have to consider joining up . highly doubt I'll use it. Will wait and see if I feel like doing it.

 

[Car-Guy]

I abhor social media. I do admit having a fake name Facebook account -

Have never ever been on Twitter. Can't stand the concept. (Won't go into why,

+1 or maybe +2

I setup a Facebook account about 6 months ago but after a few weeks they started asking for more info about me than I cared to share, so I just let it go. Never had Twitter account or anything like it. I do participate in a number of public forums but I see those differently "for some reason"

 

[COcheesehead]

I abhor social media. I do admit having a fake name Facebook account - I like to chat with MASH and Star Wars and 80s pop culture geeks but that's about it. Have never ever been on Twitter. Can't stand the concept. (Won't go into why, I've concluded that certain things about human life - or lack thereof are normal now....oh well).

Anyhow, I'll now have to consider joining up . highly doubt I'll use it. Will wait and see if I feel like doing it.

Ok, but I just have to point out that you are on social media right now. and you and I are the product.

 

[Montecfo]

Twitter had 7500 people. I am sure relatively few of those are success critical.

And a culture change was and is essential to broaden usage and make it more attractive to advertisers.

 

[JoeWras]

Twitter and other social media have played a big role in creating this toxic culture we live in so will be happy to see Musk run it into bankruptcy. I mean, Twitter produces nothing and relies on advertising and toxic notoriety to survive, not a very good business model.

As for the engineers leaving, they are highly skilled and will no doubt find good jobs elsewhere, likely in better companies, so not worried about them.

You think toxicity won't find a new home? Has it already found a home?

 

[youbet]

I can't even imagine instituting policies to drive good employees away like Musk has at Twitter.

We'll see I guess. I don't know what percentage of those leaving are "good employees" and what percentage are otherwise talented folks who have developed a sense of entitlement and have self-worth visions beyond actuality. We're just guessing.

No one is being hurt one way or another. Those leaving get higher pay, fewer hours, less stress and the choice to work remotely from their new employer. Those that stay are either buying into the new culture or think the new Twitter is their best opportunity at this time. Musk will continue to be super wealthy with other businesses to run. I won't give a damn because Twitter adds no value to my life, directly or indirectly.

It'll be fun to watch (at arm's length!)

 

[Chuckanut]

Going back in time, it seems he was major PO'd when Twitter banned the "Babylon Bee" in March 2022. For those who don't know, the "Babylon Bee" is a satire site, like the Onion.

From my admittedly incomplete knowledge of Musk, he seems to thrive on tough challenges. Both SpaceX and Tesla teetered on the brink of bankruptcy and were saved at the last minute by a great success which brought in $$'s.

IIRC, at one point with Tesla rapidly running out of funds, Musk had many employees - regardless of their regular job - working the phones calling people who had paid deposits for a place on the waiting list. The goal was to turn small deposits that held a place in line into much larger non-refundable down payments on an actual order. It worked.

SpaceX, of course, was down to being able to afford one last test of their Falcon 1 rocket. It had previously failed to reach orbit in earlier tests. It worked. IIRC, that last test was the first time a privately held company developed a rocket that could put a satellite into orbit. After the launch SpaceX was awarded a contract with NASA to continue their work.

 

[Mr. Tightwad]

I'm glad the purge is occurring.

Seems like the staff are throwing hissy fits over things like coming to work and actually doing work.

Their easy employment has come to its inevitable end, and now they can look for work elsewhere. And they may actually have to do real work at this new job.

 

[vrijheid]

 

[jimbee]

Ok, but I just have to point out that you are on social media right now.

Yep. People are funny.

 

[Fermion]

Many former millionaires have bet against Musk.