Twitter To Begin Layoffs (nytimes.com) 138
An anonymous reader writes: Just a few days ago, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey returned to the company and took over the role of CEO. Now, the NY Times reports that the company will be facing layoffs as he cuts the company's costs. Twitter somehow manages to employ over 4,100 people across 35+ offices, so many investors are thrilled with the news. "Twitter's spending has been rising. In the last quarter for which Twitter reported financial results, costs and expenses totaled $633 million, up 37 percent from a year earlier. The layoffs will most likely affect multiple areas of the company, including the engineering and media teams, according to the people with knowledge of the plans." The company is also dropping plans to build a 100,000 square-foot expansion to its headquarters.
Re: (Score:2)
100% promoted tweets! no user content. now we're talking!
Great, another idiot (Score:5, Insightful)
So, cut everyone except the management positions. What's left? NOTHING. And I hope he becomes CEO of Facebook in a few years, too.
Re:Great, another idiot (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering the disparity in wages these days, firing just one guy from management would reduce costs 2-3 times as much.
Re: (Score:1)
The disparity isn't even in the wages but in the profits the early investors could make by having the opportunity to buy stocks of an unknown website and having its value skyrocket through the media coverage controlled by the same early investors who than can dump the shares right before the exponential growth of the stock value stops. It was the same with Facebook or with any other "offer for free, grow fast, increase stock value exponentially by selling to ignorant investors, promise profit by introducing
Re:Great, another idiot (Score:5, Funny)
Well, at least, I hope they inform their employees of their firing with a tweet.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
So, cut everyone except the management positions. What's left? NOTHING.
And I hope he becomes CEO of Facebook in a few years, too.
Well you get the manager to fire everyone below them.
Then, you fire the manager.
If you fire the manager alongside everyone under him, it will be a major clusterfuck.
That's what you hire hatchet men for. You put them in a management position with the task of shutting things down and firing people. It's part of the deal that they go away at the end.
Re: (Score:2)
I had one as a neighbor. I don't think he enjoyed it, but he took the work. He freed many Tektronix employees from the burden of employment.
Message from Management (Score:1)
You're fired. Reason: Check-in logs used too many characters. Server space is important.
Really...? (Score:5, Interesting)
What do they do? I would have thought this is one business that could almost be run in the cloud with no human involvement (apart from the tweeters)...
Re: (Score:2)
Agreed. If somebody had asked me how many employees twitter had I don't think I'd have guessed more than 1000. I'd be vaguely interested (as in I'd read it if it were in front of me but I won't go looking) to see what the employee distribution was by department and role.
Re:Really...? (Score:5, Insightful)
Presumably about 90% of them are selling advertising? Sorry, 'Sponsored Tweets' or whatever they call it.
Re:Really...? (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't be surprised if a good chunk of those were the paid moderators charged with investigating flagged tweets and suspected code of conduct violations. A lot of that can't be automated, so it must be one of their more labor-intensive tasks.
Actually, it *could* be automated. (Score:3)
I wouldn't be surprised if a good chunk of those were the paid moderators charged with investigating flagged tweets and suspected code of conduct violations. A lot of that can't be automated, so it must be one of their more labor-intensive tasks.
Actually, it *could* be automated. What we are probably seeing is them about to do a roll-out of exactly that, and the current moderator staff scaled back to the point that they only have to deal with explicit moderation and tweaking of the automoderation software, for things which fall through the filters in the wrong direction, either pro or con.
My suspicion is that there was an internal "secret project team" utilizing "big data" techniques until they ended up with a trained-up model that (mostly) ended
Re:Really...? (Score:4, Informative)
There are plenty of things to do in the company. For one thing, they have to have a bunch of people trying to convince advertisers to buy space. I assume that's the main reason to have a bunch of scattered offices; they have to have the people selling the ads where the buyers are. They also have a bunch of developers working on new features, like their new "moments" thingy, and presumably on better ways of targeting their ads. Finally, they have to have customer service and support people to do things like responding to abuse complaints.
Re: (Score:2)
There are plenty of things to do in the company. For one thing, they have to have a bunch of people trying to convince advertisers to buy space. I assume that's the main reason to have a bunch of scattered offices; they have to have the people selling the ads where the buyers are. They also have a bunch of developers working on new features, like their new "moments" thingy, and presumably on better ways of targeting their ads. Finally, they have to have customer service and support people to do things like responding to abuse complaints.
I have always wondered how Twitter makes their money. I suppose these layoffs answer that question... they don't make money.
Re:Really...? (Score:1)
There are plenty of things to do in the company. For one thing, they have to have a bunch of people trying to convince advertisers to buy space. I assume that's the main reason to have a bunch of scattered offices; they have to have the people selling the ads where the buyers are. They also have a bunch of developers working on new features, like their new "moments" thingy, and presumably on better ways of targeting their ads. Finally, they have to have customer service and support people to do things like responding to abuse complaints.
So, like, about 100 people?
Re: (Score:2)
don't forget all the accounting, it, hr, admin, all the back office stuff that is not directly related to the software, the service, or the adds. those people have a target on their backs. the people who fill out the tps reports.
Re:Really...? (Score:5, Funny)
What do they do? I would have thought this is one business that could almost be run in the cloud with no human involvement (apart from the tweeters)...
C*O and Senior Management: 20
Middle Management: 10
Administration: 5
Devs: 2
Legal: 4063
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: Fail Whale? (Score:2)
I don't see that as a problem. If I automated something so well to increase efficiency and lower cost, I see that as a career success that I could easily sell as a talking point at my next interview.
Like they say at Netflix, a company is like a pro sports team, not a family. For instance, I'm sure all of the engineers who got laid off at Netflix when they moved everything to AWS wont have a problem
Re: (Score:2)
When last did you see the infamous Twitter Fail Whale?
I predict we'll be seeing the big fella a lot more, starting roughly 12-18 months from now.
Re: (Score:1)
Maybe you ought to have a look at all the technology that has come out of Twitter.
https://engineering.twitter.com/opensource/projects
Then there's also Apache Storm, and Nathan Marz's book on the Lambda Architecture.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Really...? (Score:1)
Wow (Score:5, Funny)
It seems to me that...
comment continued in next post
Re:Why did it go public? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Probably because they had no real business model beyond attract users for a long time which meant they needed to take on venture capital to pay for everything. The VCs know that the best way to get their payout is to take the company public and cash in on the IPO.
And this is different than with other internet startups how, exactly?
Re: (Score:3)
And this is different than with other internet startups how, exactly?
It's not. This is Internet Bubble 2.0.
Re: (Score:2)
its not a startup, its a publicly traded company with a half billion in revenue. it was a startup, but not in a long time.
Re: (Score:2)
its not a startup, its a publicly traded company with a half billion in revenue. it was a startup, but not in a long time.
In 2014 revenue was 1.4 billion. Unfortunately they made a net loss of 0.57 billion, and have had losses for the past five years.
Their financial results are more like those of a start up than a normal publicly traded company.
Re: (Score:2)
Ah, very very good point. Cloud/internets things don't HAVE to employ people at all, just machines.
Which speaks to Twitter and cloud-based corporations not nearly as much as it speaks to the stock market in general.
If it's nothing but a brainless stampede to what has the best valuation, it raises the question of 'is the highest valuation of a public corporation reserved for those that destroy all human resources leaving only capital itself and a bunch of cloud computers?'
If humans do not think so, then when
Re: (Score:2)
Come on. It's not like the world will end when Twitter goes bust.
The ones who'll really lose are the ones left holding the shares when that happens.
Re: (Score:3)
To make the original investors and owners rich.
Investors are parasites (Score:4, Insightful)
Twitter's spending has been rising and it's a good thing they're laying people off to cut costs because god forbid they allow people to make a living, own a house and have a family. I'd rather see profits go up by half a percent than help hundreds of people live a comfortable, happy life with a steady income!
Employing people shouldn't be a sin. It's enough of an insult we have to work like dogs our entire lives just to be able to eat and survive then you get shareholders who want more and more profit and are willing to screw us over to get it.
How many of these people being laid off will lose their home or significant other? How many will end up in a god awful job they'd sometimes rather be dead than go to? How many lives have to be ruined in the constant pursuit of profit?
Re: Investors are parasites (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, employing people should not be a sin. To Wall Street investors, however, it is a huge unforgivable one. Unless of course we're taking about H1-Bs from India. Then it's ok.
Bottom line: don't work for a publicly traded company if you can at all arrange not to. Your income is a lot safer that way.
That said, I'm surprised that a useless social networking company that caters to narcissists employs anyone at all, but that's kind of a special case. Then again, considering everyone under 40 has a portfolio consisting entirely of Facebook, Twitter, GoPro, and maybe Apple such a collapse repeated a few times could cause the ruination of a whole generation...
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
Dude, you do realize you can, you know, like, invest in the public company you work for that's, like, enriching their investors?
Oh, no, better just to bitch about the EVIL 1% than actually do something.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If you are part of a public corporation you can get stock options, stock grants an also invest in the employee share buying program where you get shares at a discount. In a private corporation you get nothing - just your salary. I much prefer to be part of a public company. That is how I made all my money.
Re: (Score:2)
Private companies can offer ESOP plans giving the workers a stake in the companies success.
Re: (Score:2)
Uh, is selling stock the only way to make money? All those private companies out there must be blackholes.
Re: (Score:2)
The shares are issued and held by the company and paid out in it's entirety if you change jobs or just want the money. There is no trading of the shares. Shares increase in value based on the performance of the company and can go up or down but they are less volatile than the investment packages people carry in their 401K.
Re: (Score:2)
don't work for a publicly traded company
+1. also, public companies are just a scam to enrich a small group of executive insiders. why should I show up every day and work my ass off to make some fuckhead rich? at least with a small private company I can keep an eye on the top people and get an idea if they're taking too much of the pie.
Nonsense, unless you're the Head of Finance or something, you will have absolutely no idea how much the directors in a private company are earning.
Re: (Score:2)
Wait, wait, wait a minute. I see this characterization all the time and it's getting tiresome. Yes, there are plenty of narcissists on Twitter. Fine. But there are also plenty of us who like to curate feeds of interesting people and organizations we like to follow. Twitter fills that niche for me, and it's pretty easy to skim past their minimal advertising.
i.e., people making these pointless observations about T
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, employing people should not be a sin. To Wall Street investors, however, it is a huge unforgivable one. Unless of course we're taking about H1-Bs from India. Then it's ok.
Bottom line: don't work for a publicly traded company if you can at all arrange not to. Your income is a lot safer that way.
That said, I'm surprised that a useless social networking company that caters to narcissists employs anyone at all, but that's kind of a special case. Then again, considering everyone under 40 has a portfolio consisting entirely of Facebook, Twitter, GoPro, and maybe Apple such a collapse repeated a few times could cause the ruination of a whole generation...
Employing people is not a sin, but being employed is also not a God-given right.
Employees need to create value for companies. If an employee costs the company $100k/year, and the company only benefits $80k from that worker, it would be charity to continue to keep the employee on the payroll. That's all well and good, until there's no more in the piggy bank.
Re: (Score:2)
You are mistaken. The sole purpose of a company is to make money for the owners. Owners (which includes shareholders in the case of publicaly traded company) are number one. Nothing else makes sense. Customers if given the chance would take everything, humans have unlimited wants.
Re:Investors are parasites (Score:5, Insightful)
Companies do not exist to lose money either. Now, their market cap is $20B, they lose $750M per year, and have 4,100 employees. They have about $2B cash less debt. While their CFO did make an obscene amount last year ($72M), and likely should be fired as he doesn't seem to be doing much for the company, that won't solve all their problems.
This type of situation has the dot-bomb written all over it. Trimming things back at least gives the company a chance to survive.
Re: (Score:2)
It may not totally solve their problem, but cutting him will do as much for them as cutting nearly 1,000 other employees.
Re: (Score:2)
I'll never forgive those fuckers for what they did to us.
Re: (Score:1)
how hard it is
Yes, and have known since high school. Companies never give anything and neither should you (or anyone). Trade your time for money, sure, but do your own planing that should include planning on getting laid off at any moment for any reason.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Maybe it is time to start a new business? We can't call it Slashdot Inc. or anything... Hmm...
How about Graybeard International LTD?
They can specialize in contract crisis work where people who retain the talents of yesteryear are able to run in and solve emergency IT problems or crisis work in engineering new projects. We can even have a superhero logo. Someone draw up some plans. I'd consider investing in something like that. Kind of like a mature Geek Squad (only with talent/skills) for businesses.
I can s
Re: (Score:2)
--You misspelled "Neckbeard" ;-) but I'm with you 99%. I would invest in that company, maybe work for it when the time came :-D
// not even half joking, somebody DO THIS
Re: (Score:1)
It's tempting. I've got the funding to get something of that nature started - I think it'd have to be expensive, very pricey, and would need to have people on-site in many instances so these people would have to be able to up-root and move, with a quickness, for an indeterminate amount of time. I'm really thinking the "super heroes" of IT, Comp Sci, etc...
It needs some mulling and refining but I already sold my business and retired. I'm not sure that I'd want to do much more than provision investment funds
Re:Investors are parasites (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh bullshit. Twitter burns money like there's no tomorrow. They've never made a single penny of profit. To think that this would somehow go on forever, without consequences, is ridiculous. If anything, investors have been way to forgiving of twitter for far too long. Also, you're not doing anything to preserve jobs when you risk the company going under. Grow up.
Re: (Score:3)
Your rant might make more sense if Twitter was profitable. They posted a $137 million loss. So yea I suspect the share holders do think getting EPS (as there are no profits) up by half a percent is pretty important, because I am sure none of them signed up to fund, other people's desire to: "own a house and have a family".
Re: (Score:3)
Twitter's spending has been rising and it's a good thing they're laying people off to cut costs because god forbid they allow people to make a living, own a house and have a family. I'd rather see profits go up by half a percent than help hundreds of people live a comfortable, happy life with a steady income!
Employing people shouldn't be a sin. It's enough of an insult we have to work like dogs our entire lives just to be able to eat and survive then you get shareholders who want more and more profit and are willing to screw us over to get it.
How many of these people being laid off will lose their home or significant other? How many will end up in a god awful job they'd sometimes rather be dead than go to? How many lives have to be ruined in the constant pursuit of profit?
What profits? There aren't any profits. There never have been. Twitter's operating margin is -30.2%. If they can't reduce expenses, everyone loses their jobs.
Re: (Score:2)
What profit? I don't think Twitter has ever made one.
Twitter's 6 employees (Score:1)
Twitter is such a simple service that its employee roster is easy to quantify: one CEO (needed to rake in the cash and phone for hookers and pizza), and 5 software engineers who are permanently asleep in their hammocks except when something breaks and the alarms go off.
So who are they going to lay off? I'm confused.
Re:Twitter's 6 employees (Score:5, Funny)
You forgot all the UX people whose job it is to randomly change Twitter's UI around for no real reason. Don't forget, Twitter is a modern web-based application, it needs UX because if there's one thing a platform based around sending 140-character messages shouldn't be, it's simple.
(No, really, they seem to love randomly changing their website and client apps. I guess so those 4100 employees can justify their existence. Alternatively they feel they need to mimic Facebook.)
Re:Twitter's 6 employees (Score:4, Interesting)
UI people decided that "UI" wasn't pretentious enough, and so created "User Experience". The don't just fuck up the UI these days, they fuck up every part of the user experience.
Re: (Score:2)
User Experience As in how do we make the experience for the user as miserable as possible while at the same time making it look 'pretty'
They ought to let go of abandoned handles also (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That's probably about 90% of their userbase though, which would make advertisers pay even less for sponsored tweets than they already do.
@world, just lost my job at twitter #techboomover (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
Re:@world, just lost my job at twitter #techboomover
What's a Tech Boo Mover? Never heard of that before. Is that something to do with Honey Boo-Boo?
Whoopdeedoo (Score:2)
....and nothing of value was lost.
Latest quarterly report (Score:5, Informative)
Pretty incredible raking in half a billion on online advertisement and still make a loss.
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You're not form the US are you? Having been laid off, and having received my severance package, and having been entitled to unemployment, and having been entitled to a fair few other things, I assure you, you don't know what you're talking about.
Re: (Score:1)
Stick a fork in Bootsrap? (Score:2)
Is it done?
Re: (Score:2)
Well final batch of VCs exiting? (Score:4, Interesting)
Hopefully it affects the Narrative^W Abuse Dep't. (Score:2)
The Abuse department no longer does any abuse-related work - just narrative control for some few thin-skins.
Arrogant twats (Score:5, Interesting)
The feeling I got from them was that there was a coked up arrogance to them. That sort of god's gift to mankind attitude.
What would burn their balls though was when I would say, "Seeing that twitter will eventually peak in usage what comes next to justify that massive valuation? Surely tiny blogging doesn't justify that much value with so little revenue and pretty much no profit."
Usually they would tell me that it was secret. I would then ask if they were working on the secret. This is where their balls got scorched as if they were so important then why were they just working on a bit of data mining?
I met exactly one twitter guy who was only somewhat arrogant and he quit. Still a twat though.
So if I had to guess what their failing was; I would say that it was that they had a tiger by the tail. So they hired people with awesome resumes who went around telling people (and each other) how awesome they all were and thus it became a circle jerk as to how they were going to succeed. But the people they hired were more expert at pleasing teachers and going through checklists in life rather than actually producing anything of value. Had someone of genius assigned them a task they all probably could have done it very well. But on their own they could only massage what already existed.
Basically these were the kids with an A+ in chemistry and memorized the period table at the beginning of the year but had never just blown shit up in their back yard.
Re: (Score:2)
First it would be the uber degree from the uber university
I know this isn't what you meant, but I couldn't help but imagine an app that tells you there's a guy who knows something about sorting algorithms around the corner. You use it to meet him in a coffee shop, where he explains that stuff to you, and you code some exercises in your language of choice. Next thing you know, you've got an Uber degree in CS from Uber University.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
For God's sake don't give them ideas o_O
oh, gosh, I hope they stay in business (Score:5, Funny)
Twitter provides such a useful service, sucking up celebrities, politicians, journalists, SJWs, and all sorts of other unsavory characters.
If Twitter ever closes its doors, these uncivilized hordes will wreak havoc on the rest of the world.
Re: (Score:2)
The rest of the world is hard. Look at how they tried (and failed) to brigade Slashdot during Brianna Wu's AMA. "I don't understand how the Slashdot works". They think they can overwhelm something with shear numbers and a hash tag.
I'd rather deal with one or two roaches in my corner of the internet than walk into a mass of all the roaches in the world in a single spot.
Well Duh. (Score:2)
All they have to do is reduce tweets down to 40 characters and they'll need fewer people. Makes perfect sense.
The future of jobs (Score:2)
Something is really off about the "new economy".
Twitter is still considered a "rising star", and one of the biggest and most used tech brands.
YET it only employees about 4k people AND is laying off.
Craiglist is also one of the most-used services, yet only employs about 60 people.
Re:The future of jobs (Score:4, Interesting)
It's the 'cloud' paradigm, very typical of this stuff. The 'new economy' is stuff that can just GO AWAY, silently in the night. Something happens or somebody buys something or the company's just all execs and PR people, and it becomes like a Google technology millions of people lean heavily on: suddenly, just gone, nobody to talk to about that.
'Disruptive', no?
Twitter could just go away, and a bunch of Slashdotters would snark that nothing of value was lost. Not quite true. The real take-away point is that in the new economy, nothing of value is being made. It's shared fantasy sucking up all the capital that otherwise would have to go find real work.
Why have investors? (Score:2)