Musk to cut half of Twitter jobs and end remote work for the rest, report says

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GotNoRice said:
Elon Musk said straight-up that part of the reason for the fee for verified users is to generate extra income, because advertising wasn't enough.

Halving the workforce will certainly reduce expenses. I'd bet that more cuts are coming in the future. It shouldn't take so many employees to simply operate a free-speech platform.

I'd guess that we will probably see more "premium features" offered to those who use Twitter the most, at extra cost - like maybe the ability to post longer tweets so that they don't have to post 13 small tweets in a row just to say what they want to say.

If Twitter goes under at this point, that does not bode well for the future of our country IMO. There needs to be free speech on the Internet, and this is potentially the closest we've been in a while. You can't have free speech when every platform is a censored liberal sanctuary.
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Yeah but at the same time you have to moderate content. Free speech is great but you can’t operate in a space where a racial slur is every third word you see. Twitter is an advertising forum, people develop brands and engage with other brands. The Blue Check was a status symbol, it proved you were a brand to take note of, if anybody can spend $8 to verify their account then it becomes meaningless.
In advertising you have to walk a line, you have an audience you have to play too but you can’t take a stance that alienates potential customers pushing them to a competitor.

And it’s pretty hard to take an advertiser seriously if the comment section is filled with slurs and hate speech. And if a brand feels there isn’t value in advertising there they will pull their adds, their accounts are their adds, those are resources they can move elsewhere.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I had read that there was a big bonus date coming up, and he is laying people off a few weeks before the bonus to avoid paying it, which is really shitty.

Restructuring needs happen, and from everything I've heard Twitter really needed to be reorganized.

It was a bureaucratic hellhole, where you needed a weekly recurring meeting of 20 participants saying the same thing over and over again for several months in order to accomplish even the slightest little thing, like move an icon 5px to the left, and in which any changes or improvements happened at an absolutely glacial pace.

The company clearly needed to be shaken up a little, but the timing of this compared to the upcoming bonus payment was really shitty (unless they compensated them for that in their severance packages)

That said, employment in the U.S. is generally at will and can be terminated by either party at any time, so there really should be no expectation of eternal employment. it's the people who want a position more than a job who are usually the anchors that drag any organization down.

I don't share Musks contempt for remote work. The few large sample size research studies on the subject show that productivity actually increases with remote work, but its not a biggie. The people who want remote jobs will find them elsewhere. Even with the fed doing its best to slow down the economy there are still almost 2 available jobs for every person who wants one, and that number goes way way way up when it comes to tech and STEM type jobs.
I've been trying to hire two engineers for almost a year with very little success, and my company is offering pretty competitive compensation, benefits and vacation packages. We just can't get the people.

Last time I was laid off (huge project was canceled resulting in big layoffs) I got 10 weeks of severance and had a new job within a month, essentially earning six weeks of double salary, which was pretty nice, and that was 10 years ago before the current job market crunch. A job loss can be scary if you've become comfortable in a job, but I imagine most of these people will land on their feet, and many will even wind up in better jobs with better pay.

The situation today is very different than 2007. That was rough.
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Ummm, what?

He bought an established business, ran the numbers and fired people during restructuring. Is he expected to keep paying these people until the day after the bonus drops? Ridiculous.

Put yourself in his shoes, or even the shoes of a small business. If your employees get a bonus each year JUST BECAUSE (because twitter wasn't exactly making money, and their productivity is questionable) and you find one employee is doing poorly, but it's close to bonus season, do you hold on to them and keep paying benefits and wages and THEN reward them with a bonus and then fire them the next day?

Jesus.
 
auntjemima said:
Ummm, what?

He bought an established business, ran the numbers and fired people during restructuring. Is he expected to keep paying these people until the day after the bonus drops? Ridiculous.

Put yourself in his shoes, or even the shoes of a small business. If your employees get a bonus each year JUST BECAUSE (because twitter wasn't exactly making money, and their productivity is questionable) and you find one employee is doing poorly, but it's close to bonus season, do you hold on to them and keep paying benefits and wages and THEN reward them with a bonus and then fire them the next day?

Jesus.
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That's not a real scenario.

If someone is doing poorly, they aren't getting a bonus anyway.

If the bonus is part of the expected compensation, and a part of why the people are working there in the first place, then yes, it is kind of sleazy to rob them of it when they are like 95% of the way there.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
That's not a real scenario.

If someone is doing poorly, they aren't getting a bonus anyway.

If the bonus is part of the expected compensation, and a part of why the people are working there in the first place, then yes, it is kind of sleazy to rob them of it when they are like 95% of the way there.
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It isn't sleazy to fire shitty employees, no matter the timeline. You would never have a successful business if that's the case and twitter does nothing but hemorrhage money.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
That's not a real scenario.

If someone is doing poorly, they aren't getting a bonus anyway.

If the bonus is part of the expected compensation, and a part of why the people are working there in the first place, then yes, it is kind of sleazy to rob them of it when they are like 95% of the way there.
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Bonuses are based on a performance metric, meet them and get the bonus that was agreed upon in advance, don't meet them and you don't get the bonus. If the metrics that determine the bonuses are BS then that is the fault of the company, not the employee, they were hired to do a job and those goals were the desired outcome.
 
Lakados said:
Yeah but at the same time you have to moderate content. Free speech is great but you can’t operate in a space where a racial slur is every third word you see. Twitter is an advertising forum, people develop brands and engage with other brands. The Blue Check was a status symbol, it proved you were a brand to take note of, if anybody can spend $8 to verify their account then it becomes meaningless.
In advertising you have to walk a line, you have an audience you have to play too but you can’t take a stance that alienates potential customers pushing them to a competitor.
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It should be pretty easy, almost trivial to detect things like racial slurs using automated filters, especially when you include community contributions toward moderation where posts like that get reported, etc. Moderating is more difficult when you are trying to "moderate" ideas and political preferences.

I got the impression that there will be additional features that will help verify those representing their company, etc, beyond the simple $8/month fee. From how I've heard it described, the $8 fee is more of a bot-filter than anything else. China and Russia have armies of bots that flood these platforms in order to sway certain topics in certain directions. Maintaining that bot-army becomes a lot more expensive when every bot has to pay $8/month...
 
auntjemima said:
It isn't sleazy to fire shitty employees, no matter the timeline. You would never have a successful business if that's the case and twitter does nothing but hemorrhage money.
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If they were shitty employees, this wouldn't be a layoff. It would be a firing for cause.

I have no reason what so ever that the overwhelming majority of the people at Twitter who were just let go were holding up their end of the bargain and following the business strategy their bosses and bosses bosses laid out before them.

Layoffs result from shifts in business strategy. Something you once thought you needed, you no longer do. It is almost never due to the individual employee or their performance.
 
Lakados said:
Bonuses are based on a performance metric, meet them and get the bonus that was agreed upon in advance, don't meet them and you don't get the bonus. If the metrics that determine the bonuses are BS then that is the fault of the company, not the employee, they were hired to do a job and those goals were the desired outcome.
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Exactly. Which is why I am saying that if they were a shitty employee not meeting their goals, they werent going to get a bonus anyway, so no issue.
 
GotNoRice said:
Elon Musk said straight-up that part of the reason for the fee for verified users is to generate extra income, because advertising wasn't enough.

Halving the workforce will certainly reduce expenses. I'd bet that more cuts are coming in the future. It shouldn't take so many employees to simply operate a free-speech platform.

I'd guess that we will probably see more "premium features" offered to those who use Twitter the most, at extra cost - like maybe the ability to post longer tweets so that they don't have to post 13 small tweets in a row just to say what they want to say.

If Twitter goes under at this point, that does not bode well for the future of our country IMO. There needs to be free speech on the Internet, and this is potentially the closest we've been in a while. You can't have free speech when every platform is a censored liberal sanctuary.
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ahaha ok.

it looks like there's ballpark 300-400k verified users - even if you converted EVERY SINGLE ONE on this dumbass plan, it adds up to _absolutely nothing_. the only place the idea ever amounts to anything is in the wildest, most griftiest of fever dreams.
 
socK said:
ahaha ok.

it looks like there's ballpark 300-400k verified users - even if you converted EVERY SINGLE ONE on this dumbass plan, it adds up to _absolutely nothing_. the only place the idea ever amounts to anything is in the wildest, most griftiest of fever dreams.
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The $8, I think, is more to curb bots. The firing of half their workforce will be a huge amount.
 
GotNoRice said:
It should be pretty easy, almost trivial to detect things like racial slurs using automated filters, especially when you include community contributions toward moderation where posts like that get reported, etc. Moderating is more difficult when you are trying to "moderate" ideas and political preferences.

I got the impression that there will be additional features that will help verify those representing their company, etc, beyond the simple $8/month fee. From how I've heard it described, the $8 fee is more of a bot-filter than anything else. China and Russia have armies of bots that flood these platforms in order to sway certain topics in certain directions. Maintaining that bot-army becomes a lot more expensive when every bot has to pay $8/month...
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Yeah, but bots weren't going to be on the receiving end of a blue checkmark, unless they were generating a hell of a lot of content and gaining lots of followers at which point bot or not they are providing value to the platform so their being a bot is less important there as they are a value adding one.
So that only becomes a deterrent to bots if they are going to charge each and every user for the privilege of using the platform, and I know I certainly wouldn't pay to use Twitter.
 
Lakados said:
Yeah but at the same time you have to moderate content. Free speech is great but you can’t operate in a space where a racial slur is every third word you see. Twitter is an advertising forum, people develop brands and engage with other brands. The Blue Check was a status symbol, it proved you were a brand to take note of, if anybody can spend $8 to verify their account then it becomes meaningless.
In advertising you have to walk a line, you have an audience you have to play too but you can’t take a stance that alienates potential customers pushing them to a competitor.

And it’s pretty hard to take an advertiser seriously if the comment section is filled with slurs and hate speech. And if a brand feels there isn’t value in advertising there they will pull their adds, their accounts are their adds, those are resources they can move elsewhere.
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Exactly.

The type of no holds barred, anyone speak absolutely anything on your mind, from crazy conspiracy theories to neo-nazi crap just can't work in an ad-revenue based platform.

It's too high risk for the advertisers. The Gap doesn't want their logo next to some tool shouting about how "jews won't replace them".

A platform like that will see mass abandonment of advertisers, lose most of its revenue, and ultimately go under.

For it to be a viable business, it needs some form of content moderation. Maybe not as strict as it was before, but the content has to be somewhat clean, or advertisers won't touch it.

It's either some form of content moderation, or another business model that doesn't involve ad revenue.
 
1_rick said:
That's the expression. I got laid off once, when my entire department got downsized, and I don't know how you can describe being walked out to your car by security as anything *but* a walk of shame, even though I hadn't done anything wrong.
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Similar here 20 years ago. Friday , two cops and a box. You had 20 minutes to clear your personals from you desk and then escorted to the door. Once you were out you were an ex employee and considered to be trespassing even in the open lobby of the building. Absolutely dehumanizing experience which to this day impacts my relationship with any company. I’m a mercenary. I trade my time and skills for compensation and that’s it. No loyalty whatsoever here. Now I’ve been with the same company for 15 years and lost my desk in a merger here too. This time, however, we were given the opportunity to bid into other jobs or leave. I landed back into a job I promoted out of. Good times. So certainly a better way to handle it. BUT since the merger the company has canned entire depts regularly through restructuring and moving roles to other states and so on. Lots of people end up jobless unfortunately.
 
Sounds like a good chunk of the trash he took out have been Ministry-of-Truth types whose job was determining what "misinformation" is. Seems he's off to a good start.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Exactly.
For it to be a viable business, it needs some form of content moderation. Maybe not as strict as it was before, but the content has to be somewhat clean, or advertisers won't touch
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Bingo. It’s almost like exercising that freedom of speech doesn’t excuse one from consequences. So the free market then decides it’s not good business to run ads on the hate train. If they go no limit on content no one will do business there and they will fail.
 
auntjemima said:
I don't know and neither do you. So, we as observers, know jack shit and it's all conjecture. ;)
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Well Twitter does have requirements to get the blue mark currently.

To encourage and maintain trust between users on the platform, you will need to confirm your identity with Twitter in order to be Verified. Depending on the category, you will be asked to choose one of the following three methods of verifying your identity:
  • Official website: Provide the link to an official website that references you (or your organization) and your Twitter account. For individuals, the organization that owns the website must be Verified on Twitter.
  • ID verification: Provide a photo of a valid official government-issued identification document, such as your Driver’s License or Passport. This requirement applies to individuals, not companies, brands, or organizations.
  • Official email address: Provide an official email address with a domain relevant to the notability category you choose. For individuals, the organization the domain is associated with must be Verified on Twitter.

And that is what is required after you’ve met other requirements. It would be exceedingly difficult to create a bot that could obtain a blue checkmark.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Exactly.

The type of no holds barred, anyone speak absolutely anything on your mind, from crazy conspiracy theories to neo-nazi crap just can't work in an ad-revenue based platform.

It's too high risk for the advertisers. The Gap doesn't want their logo next to some tool shouting about how "jews won't replace them".
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Precisely. You can whine about activists, wokeism, PC, etc, etc all you want but none of that actually matters to advertisers. They don't care what a company's culture is, they don't care who the CEO is, they don't care how workers are treated, etc. What they care about is how it makes their brand look, full stop. If they feel that advertising on your platform will hurt their brand, they won't do it. Their concerns have nothing to do with ethics, and everything to do with business.

This is why you see Youtube channels censoring "fuck" now. Advertisers didn't like it, enough of them felt that it was an issue for their brand that they weren't willing to advertise in videos that had it, so Youtube started demonetizing them.

Different brands have different tolerances for what they are ok with and aren't, depends on the brand and their image. Something that is extremely "family friendly" and targeted at young kids might be exceedingly strict with where they will advertise, whereas something targeted at college kids might be far more permissive. However, one thing that seems to be a pretty hard line with just about all brands is overt racism, antisemitism, and that kind of thing. If you start allowing that, you will find that very, very few companies will be willing to advertise on your platform. They feel that will irreparably damage their brand, and so they just won't do it.

Maybe you disagree with them about that, it doesn't matter, it is their money, they'll spend it elsewhere. Brands do NOT believe that all exposure is good exposure.
 
It was also said that a search of abusive language showed that only a small number of accounts, 30K-40K, were responsible and many of those accounts might not be authentic but I can't find the article now.
 
Meh, who cares about this Karen dumping 40 billion in the toilet. If twitter fails something will replace it. This dude's ego is too big for planet earth and he's clearly going through a major midlife crises. I agree with most of the sentiment on here in that advertisers are going to jump ship and let this boat sink.
 
rinaldo00 said:
Here is Musk's comment about free speech on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1585619322239561728?ref_src=twsrc^tfw|twcamp^tweetembed|twterm^1585619322239561728|twgr^5b090d0ac961044ba43fabf3cf806cd3957bdcf8|twcon^s1_&ref_url=https://nypost.com/2022/10/27/elon-musk-issues-bold-pledge-to-advertisers-about-twitter/
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The thing is that's not his only public statement about free speech on twitter and making it doesn't automatically make advertisers forget what he's said in the past. So they are a bit nervous. Then you add to that the fact that he started feuding with the publicly on twitter, after being on a call where they expressed their concerns and threatening to "name and shame" them. Then he does and lays off a ton of the moderation staff. This has them even MORE nervous.

As I said: This isn't a moral issue to them, it is a brand issue.
 
Sycraft said:
The thing is that's not his only public statement about free speech on twitter and making it doesn't automatically make advertisers forget what he's said in the past. So they are a bit nervous. Then you add to that the fact that he started feuding with the publicly on twitter, after being on a call where they expressed their concerns and threatening to "name and shame" them. Then he does and lays off a ton of the moderation staff. This has them even MORE nervous.

As I said: This isn't a moral issue to them, it is a brand issue.
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Well, Musk has 'fuck you' money so I don't know how seriously he takes anything.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Exactly.

The type of no holds barred, anyone speak absolutely anything on your mind, from crazy conspiracy theories to neo-nazi crap just can't work in an ad-revenue based platform.
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Like the conspiracy theories how vaccines don't prevent transmission? You know what was the main thing separating conspiracy theores from accepted facts the last several years? Time.

What gets old when there isn't much you can't say? Saying naughty words. There wouldn't be as much of them if they weren't forbidden fruit. Also, word filters and such are stupid easy to implement, and everyone could have an option to choose their preferred level of sanitation for their account interaction.
 
1_rick said:
IDIC, man. It's OK if you don't care.
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While 3,700 is a lot, other companies have fired as many employee's this year. Microsoft laid off 1,000 last month. Ford laid off 3,000 people last month. There's a wave of tech layoffs recently. Why is Twitter getting the most attention? That was a rhetorical question, because the internet has a hate boner for Elon Musk. Elon Musk isn't exactly someone to look up to but there's far worse. Just some perspective but Elon Musk was shown with Epstein's wife and the internet made a big deal of it. Meanwhile Tim Cook is listed in Epstein's black book on page 67, but nobody ever talks about that guy. He was to free speech Twitter and everyone hates him for that.

Best thing to do about the Twitter firing hate is just ignore it.
 
Bonuses being based on your personal performance are 100% not how they all go.

The one I get is based off these vague, global, overarching numbers that have literally nothing to do with my day to day job. Example being: Customer Retention/Growth. I'm a fleet manager that deals with staffing and planning routes. None of my guys ever interact with a customer.
 
Sycraft said:
Precisely. You can whine about activists, wokeism, PC, etc, etc all you want but none of that actually matters to advertisers. They don't care what a company's culture is, they don't care who the CEO is, they don't care how workers are treated, etc. What they care about is how it makes their brand look, full stop.
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Seing how Twitter is one of the main, if not the main, children grooming and sexual abuse platform, I guess they've concluded that child molestation doesn't make them look bad. Wrong political opinions on the other hand, shees.
 
Meeho said:
Seing how Twitter is one of the main, if not the main, children grooming and sexual abuse platform, I guess they've concluded that child molestation doesn't make them look bad. Wrong political opinions on the other hand, shees.
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Not even close its Minecraft and Roblox, those ones pop up more in my reports and the amount of filtering and logging I have to put on them is crazy. So many classes use them both as educational tools, and predators know it, sting operations on those apps are done on a semi-regular basis it's disgusting.
 
Lakados said:
Not even close its Minecraft and Roblox, those ones pop up more in my reports and the amount of filtering and logging I have to put on them is crazy. So many classes use them both as educational tools, and predators know it, sting operations on those apps are done on a semi-regular basis it's disgusting.
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Was thinking more amongst social platforms, but OK, just 3rd then.

This one is my "favorite":
https://nypost.com/2021/01/21/twitter-sued-for-allegedly-refusing-to-remove-child-porn/

Twitter refused to take down widely shared pornographic images and videos of a teenage sex trafficking victim because an investigation “didn’t find a violation” of the company’s “policies,” a scathing lawsuit alleges.

But dare to misgender someone and you'll be banned before you can say "It's ma'am!"

Advertisers currently leaving don't give a shit as long as it's in line with their ideology.
 
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Elon Musk should build some Oil refineries and shut down Tesla.....if he really wanted to do some good.
 
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techie81 said:
Also, why do people feel the need to announce they are leaving twitter? NO ONE CARES.
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Unless someone reposts it to the general public doesn't it take effort to see a person whom you don't know, and is in no way famous Tweets? e.g. you need to be following them? I'm not sure why people are getting so hung up over what someone else is posting, maybe people they know who are following them do in fact care about what's happening in their lives?

Besides wasn't Twitter the OG "post the inane details of my life" social medial platform? "Just woke up, taking sitting on toilet taking shit, mmm that's victory I smell in the air... or something else" (all in under 140 characters)
 
1_rick said:
Drama queens. It's like the people who swear they're leaving the country if $politician gets elected. (In either case, they almost never do.)
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That's happening right now in my country (Brazil). Many famous people stated, before the official results were given, that they would leave the country if the leftist presidency candidate won, which actually happened. Needless to say that nobody went anywhere, but they keep on barking loud on Twitter over an alleged fraud without any proof of it. Many of them had their accounts suspended by legal decisions, based upon the fact that they repeatedly posted fake news all along the elections and even afterwards. These people are just a bad joke.
 
My father used to work for GTE data services, work from home only happened when you were sick or had extra work to do into the weekend. He brought home those monochrome screens IBMs in a box units in the early to mid 80s. The earlier unit had you set a phone handset into a cradle to connect, the later unit had just plug in the phoneline.

I rarely use Twit-ter so I don't really care, shame Musk didn't buy Farkbook.
 

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Meeho said:
Twitter refused to take down widely shared pornographic images and videos of a teenage sex trafficking victim because an investigation “didn’t find a violation” of the company’s “policies,” a scathing lawsuit alleges.

But dare to misgender someone and you'll be banned before you can say "It's ma'am!"
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I think about this when I think about how many people developed a rabid hate for Musk when he started to talk about cleaning house there--like the commenters at Arse Technica, who went from loving the guy 5 or 6 years ago, to having an incandescent hate for him now.

From where I'm standing, every one of the people who oppose his attempts to clean up the place and allow free speech are sketchy--they have indicated a preference, possibly unexamined, for the way it has been.
 
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