The great Twitter cleaning has begun

[DKTanker]

11 minutes ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Probably an orbiting Space station where musk strokes a White Persian and practices giggling insanely.

 

Until 10 minutes ago Musk was seated firmly on the left side of the fence enjoying the adoration of fellow travelers.

[17thfabn]

2 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Probably an orbiting Space station where musk strokes a White Persian and practices giggling insanely.

[Der Zeitgeist]

 

[Rick]

Arrogance can be humbled by being unemployed, however brief. 

[nitflegal]

56 minutes ago, Der Zeitgeist said:

 

I've been through multiple mass layoffs over the years and when someone buys you out this has been pretty standard.  They go through with a machete and then go "hey Bill was actually pretty useful, want to come back for a 15% pay raise?". 

[Stargrunt6]

18 hours ago, sunday said:

 

[Murph]

7 hours ago, NickM said:

Since you have a feeling, should I post a linky to "That" song by 'Boston', just in case?

He moved Tesla there and the Tesla building is huge.  He seems to be consolidating much of his holdings in Austin.  

[Murph]

Now it is getting reported that Fakebook/Meta is going to have layoffs that dwarf Twitters.

[DKTanker]

It's big tech's prisoner's dilemma.  As Angrybk pointed out, many tech companies are warehousing engineers, many times paying them for doing next to nothing, to prevent competition from scooping them up.  Now that twitter has broken ranks and proved it won't be the end of the world to cull fat, the other companies are sure to follow.  To wit, Meta.  This could get interesting as big tech takes a big dose of Ex-lax.

Edited November 7, 2022 by DKTanker

[Ivanhoe]

 

[Stargrunt6]

2 hours ago, DKTanker said:

It's big tech's prisoner's dilemma.  As Angrybk pointed out, many tech companies are warehousing engineers, many times paying them for doing next to nothing, to prevent competition from scooping them up.  Now that twitter has broken ranks and proved it won't be the end of the world to cull fat, the other companies are sure to follow.  To wit, Meta.  This could get interesting as big tech takes a big dose of Ex-lax.

Lotsa gloating in the form of "learn to coal mine" on twitter. 

[Angrybk]

2 hours ago, DKTanker said:

It's big tech's prisoner's dilemma.  As Angrybk pointed out, many tech companies are warehousing engineers, many times paying them for doing next to nothing, to prevent competition from scooping them up.  Now that twitter has broken ranks and proved it won't be the end of the world to cull fat, the other companies are sure to follow.  To wit, Meta.  This could get interesting as big tech takes a big dose of Ex-lax.

Well, I have no idea how many people who were fired were programmer types vs non-techies. I certainly don’t feel bad for any programmer types who lost their jobs, they’ll be totally fine, they’ll go to Hawaii for a few weeks and then get new gigs. 
 

IMHO the US has had a problem for the past thirty odd years where a majority of the “best and brightest” college grads get jobs doing stuff that’s not very useful (or often detrimental) for society but makes them lots of money. Twenty years ago it was Goldman Sachs, more recently it’s been finding ways to maximize user engagement on a fucking app. I really wish they had more of a sense of duty to the country — join the military, go teach elementary school in rural West Virginia, work on space programs or renewable energy, whatever. 
 

Very much looking forward to the Facebook culls, and so is much of the Bay Area   

[sunday]

https://www.idahotribune.org/news/thousands-of-democrats-post-assassination-threats-against-elon-musk-on-twitter-following-acquisition-i-am-going-to-kill-elon-musk

[rmgill]

On 11/5/2022 at 6:46 PM, Angrybk said:

Obviously the Right has been completely consistent in how they approach Elon! I guess we'll have lots of Teslas in Dallas sometime soon...

Huh? How exactly?

[Stuart Galbraith]

 

[Stuart Galbraith]

 

[rmgill]

How much of this was pre-Musk Entry Twitter HR folks who probably can't be expected to keep things organized. They're too busy with culture and diversity and the latest fads to actually keep things orderly as far as what I've seen. 

[sunday]

Plenty of hateful comments on twitter now

 

[rmgill]

22 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

 

I suspect he didn't walk in with an entirely new HR department. So, those mistakes are happening in the extant team of HR wallas. 

[nitflegal]

I wonder how much of this is collateral damage to make a point?  This is effectively a hostile takeover with a very resistive and entitled workforce who have publicly challenged their new CEO.  This may be Musk letting them know that he is not going to play gently to reset their expectations.

[Skywalkre]

On 11/6/2022 at 10:46 PM, Angrybk said:

Well, I have no idea how many people who were fired were programmer types vs non-techies. I certainly don’t feel bad for any programmer types who lost their jobs, they’ll be totally fine, they’ll go to Hawaii for a few weeks and then get new gigs. 
 

IMHO the US has had a problem for the past thirty odd years where a majority of the “best and brightest” college grads get jobs doing stuff that’s not very useful (or often detrimental) for society but makes them lots of money. Twenty years ago it was Goldman Sachs, more recently it’s been finding ways to maximize user engagement on a fucking app. I really wish they had more of a sense of duty to the country — join the military, go teach elementary school in rural West Virginia, work on space programs or renewable energy, whatever. 
 

Very much looking forward to the Facebook culls, and so is much of the Bay Area   

You probably have better access to folks/sites/etc. to judge how his handling of twitter is going.  Reddit, for example, is losing their shit over how he's handling it and portending twitter tanking in the near future (if all the advertisers leave that's a certainty).  What are your thoughts?  What are you hearing?

Frankly I couldn't care less.  I've never understood what twitter gives us that couldn't be done better elsewhere or that's even necessary in the first place.

[Skywalkre]

On 11/6/2022 at 2:56 PM, Rick said:

Arrogance can be humbled by being unemployed, however brief. 

This notion of folks be employed and barely working isn't something that's solely found in the tech industry.  I've mentioned before that I work a blue collar job in a warehouse for a company that pays well above what our competition does (before the local excesses in inflation and cost of living that translated to a very comfortable life here in the Valley).

The reality is a majority of my co-'workers' spend over half their day standing around talking.  Many are able to pick up hours to do nothing.  With the recent realities of highest-inflation-in-the-country coupled to largest-increase-in-cost-of-living that's pissed off those of us who actually do work.  A few managers have been asked why all this wasted payroll isn't cut, the money spent on it split between the company and the rest of us, and we're just met with shoulder shrugs.  (I've mentioned it before, too, that most of these co-'workers' are die-hard Rs who if you were to ask them think they're working their asses off every day).

This is just the reality of business everywhere.  This is also a big reason I just chuckle when so many of you defend businesses as these holy institutions who are doing everything right and proper and how dare we question them.  So many, everywhere, are being run poorly, inefficiently, and greedily (the latter happening at my company as well as we're one of those places who have upped prices far more than inflation can justify but writing it off to customers as due solely to inflation).

[Angrybk]

10 minutes ago, Skywalkre said:

You probably have better access to folks/sites/etc. to judge how his handling of twitter is going.  Reddit, for example, is losing their shit over how he's handling it and portending twitter tanking in the near future (if all the advertisers leave that's a certainty).  What are your thoughts?  What are you hearing?

Frankly I couldn't care less.  I've never understood what twitter gives us that couldn't be done better elsewhere or that's even necessary in the first place.

I don’t know anybody who works there so don’t have any insider info. General perception is that Twitter was a money loser and pretty over staffed, but Musk is going loco and doing s chainsaw approach, and that his decisions are being driven more by emotions than any genuine desire to “save” Twitter. 
I mostly don’t care about Twitter, especially not the mob/circle jerk aspect of it, but it’s also used a lot for legit information-conveying purposes by local governments etc, so I hope it doesn’t go away entirely. From a Bay Area economy standpoint, the Meta layoffs this week will likely be much more impactful. 

[Stuart Galbraith]

16 minutes ago, Skywalkre said:

You probably have better access to folks/sites/etc. to judge how his handling of twitter is going.  Reddit, for example, is losing their shit over how he's handling it and portending twitter tanking in the near future (if all the advertisers leave that's a certainty).  What are your thoughts?  What are you hearing?

Frankly I couldn't care less.  I've never understood what twitter gives us that couldn't be done better elsewhere or that's even necessary in the first place.

Twitter is the worst possible social news system, apart from all the others.

 

[Angrybk]

3 minutes ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Twitter is the worst possible social news system, apart from all the others.

 

I think well-moderated Reddit subforums can be pretty good.