Twitter Plans To Cut About 300 Jobs As Soon As This Week: Bloomberg (bloomberg.com) 105
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Twitter Inc. is planning widespread job cuts, to be announced as soon as this week, according to people familiar with the matter. The company may cut about 8 percent of the workforce, or about 300 people, the same percentage it did last year when co-founder Jack Dorsey took over as chief executive officer, the people said. Planning for the cuts is still fluid and the number could change, they added. An announcement about the job reductions may come before Twitter releases third-quarter earnings on Thursday, one of the people said. Twitter, which loses money, is trying to control spending as sales growth slows. The company recently hired bankers to explore a sale, but the companies that had expressed interest in bidding -- Salesforce.com Inc., The Walt Disney Co. and Alphabet Inc. -- later backed out from the process. Twitter's losses and 40 percent fall in its share price the past 12 months have made it more difficult for the company to pay its engineers with stock. That has made it harder for Twitter to compete for talent with giant rivals like Alphabet Inc.'s Google and Facebook Inc. Reducing employee numbers would relieve some of this pressure.
8% (Score:5, Interesting)
If 300 people is 8% of the workforce, that means there are something like 3700 people working at Twitter. That seems pretty ridiculous. What in the world do those 3700 people do?
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Re:8% (Score:5, Funny)
What in the world do those 3700 people do?
Certainly not anything that generates any profit.
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And sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
There's no really need to look beyond, "They're haemorrhaging money," in this case.
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And freaking out because nobody in their right mind would buy them and bail them out financially.
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Just det!
They won't take our money (Score:2, Interesting)
In my business, a small media in Brussels with around 100k monthly uniques, we allocated a 2017 budget for advertising and outreach; it's not a lot (1FTE and €50k), but it's by attracting many businesses like us that a tech company can be profitable. We've pretty much ruled out "traditional" web advertising because the returns are pretty small and our FTE has been experimenting with cross-posting our content on the social media platforms and paying small amounts for premium exposure.
With 30€, we
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What in the world do those 3700 people do?
Certainly not anything that generates any profit.
Citation needed.
Oh wait, here it is:
https://twitter.com/dcurtis/st... [twitter.com]
Profit per employee, 2015:
Apple: $464k
Facebook: $290k
Google: $250k
Microsoft: $102k
Yahoo: $54k
Twitter: -$129k
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No shit. If I had a goal, "I want to build Twitter, every feature, and I want it in 30 days" I can't conceive of needing more than 50 employees. That isn't just developers and UI people and sysadmins, it includes the janitors, HR people, a few accountants, the marketdroids, and enough suits to manage them all. Double the team to have it running at Twitter scale with an NOC manned 24x7. Double the team again for something I'm overlooking entirely, and then tell me what the heck those other 3,500 bodies are d
Re: 8% (Score:1)
Picking through tweets to ban anyone expressing views contrary to the Ministry of Truth.
That does not, incidentally, include anyone who wants to murder Jews, and only includes those who want to murder gays if they aren't Muslim.
Re:8% (Score:5, Informative)
sales people.
"important bloggers".
"influential people".
you have to look at twitters history from inception to today.
first off it was hacked together on pretty shitty codebase, which made scaling the service EXTREMELY expensive. they've since moved to different codebase that for some reason seems to be just as expensive to run. even back in the day when similar sized irc networks(to what size twitter was back then) were ran for _pennies_ twitters network was 100x more expensive to run. it's kind of amazing how they managed to do that and not have anyone tell them that their ideas were stupid and that they could have saved a lot of money.
basically, twitter _technical_design_ from day 1 was such that it could not scale to be profitable - which is kind of amazing since there were off the shelf products even back then that would have done it way, wayyy cheaper and with way, way more features.
actually part of twitters early rise was tied solely to american telcos way of screwing over it's customers. namely that you buy text messages as a package _and_ that incoming messages are part of said package, which let twitter send you info kind of free (for them anyways).
I think another thing that happened was that they hired 2000 sales people without thinking what they were going to ask those 2000 sales people actually sell (and if they had something to sell why the fuck they would need sales people to sell it anyways).
another big fuckup from twitter was that they missed their sales window - being unable to scale to profitability would not have been such a problem if they had sold out to ms or someone else 5 years ago, though even then it might have been hard to get a sum out to pay the previous investors - what happened between 5 years and today? well everybody knows already that twitter is just.. twitter. it's not the next facebook - it's the next myspace - and even dimmer buyers know that twitters tech is worth shit ALL NOTHING. for example, if their tech would scale at pennies then all the limits about message lengths and content, client apps and all that would be understandable - but it has all the downsides of a highly optimized system without any cost benefits of such a system.
and well.. another reason to the high headcounts is simply this: the more people work under you the more money you will get paid (out of the investors money). it was just a way to pump out the cash from the sinking ship. ...or to put more simply: it began as a fucking one liner message wall script for bloggers by bloggers who never bothered to learn anything else because blogs. it was just links to blogs with couple of comment lines. made with _blog_ technology. by people who for some reason ignored _all_ cheap off the shelf scalable methods to achieve the same fucking thing when they made it. and it got popular enough that said bloghipsters could manage to get enough funding to run it for a decade burning money all the way(and pocketing a lot of it in the process).
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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You need only team players for a pump n dump scheme
Re:8% (Score:5, Insightful)
What in the world do those 3700 people do?
engage is sjw activism under orders?
problem with twitter is, its leadership does not seem to know what it does.
if it is a facilitator for expressing and communicating( a micro blogging site, media site, or whatever, it calls itself), it should not be putting any limits on any of that unless specifically asked to do so by courts after due process. instead, irrationally, its leaders seem to think expressing and communicating will be helped by a creating a "safe space" where some people's feelings and sensibilities will be privileged over others.
depending on 'delicate' people who must be protected from words( who are by definition spongers on more robust people), for profits, inevitably leads to ruin. this was predicted by many and will happen.
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> where some people's feelings and sensibilities will be privileged over others
Why do some find the idea that treating everyone with some amount of respect, by minimizing harassment and brigading campaigns from trolls who don't seem to have anything constructive to do, isn't worth doing?
Obligatory XKCD reference: https://xkcd.com/1357/ .
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Then explain to me please why certain women can cry #killallmen and aren't banned but a scientist making a joke about women and men falling in love at the lab can have his positions terminated? I think you missed the OP's point that SOME people's feelings are protected and others are trampled.
Re:8% (Score:4, Interesting)
Obligatory XKCD reference
Here, let me fix that for you. [imgur.com]
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that xkcd has very little to do with my point.
twitter is free to ban people they subjectively deem trolls/racists/whatever, but twitter has to accept the consequences (such as ruin and lay offs) of limiting robust contentious intellectual diversity (which is preferred by anyone who achieves, or try to achieve, anything in real world) to protect sensibilities and privileges of sponging snowflakes offended by politically incorrect speech.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
That comic deliberately mis-interprets and contradicts itself to make a point.
For example, it quotes Mill's comments on the necessity of protection against the "tyranny of prevailing opinion." However, that doesn't mean freedom from consequences, it means that anonymous speech must be possible and protected.
It mentions "liberty of circulation" and "access to infrastructure" for minority opinions. That doesn't mean that Twitter has to host your bullshit, it means that the government shouldn't ban you from us
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That comic deliberately mis-interprets and contradicts itself to make a point.
This coming from the person who deliberately misinterprets and contradicts their own points and the points of others to try and make themselves seem morally superior? Right. Let me know when you figure out the whole "yes people should be treated equally, and not attacked for having a differing opinion" that you're so up in arms against. After all, you're quite happy to see people attacked for "freedom of consequences" as long as they're on the opposite side of the ideological isle. While I'm quite happy
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"that treating everyone with some amount of respect"
motte & bailey, nice try pal
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They have 2000 engineers. I find it hard to imagine what twitter needs 2000 engineers for.
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Because if they have more engineers, they win.
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It's weird whenever a company expands, alters its technology, or merges, they have redundant employees, and so eliminate a small chunk of the workforce (I mean, 5,000 at Dell where they have 100,000 employees is only 5%), and Slashdot loses its shit and goes on about how we should all pay higher prices to keep these people in useless jobs instead of moving that money to buy other products supporting other jobs.
Twitter cuts 300 jobs in a desperate attempt to save money, with a statement of "We can't pay f
Re:8% (Score:5, Informative)
A managers salary is based on how many people they have under them, so if they are greedy, they'll hire as many people as they can. It doesn't matter if they do anything or not.
What do they do? (Score:1)
ok and you need to go one the H1B black list (Score:2)
ok and you need to go one the H1B black list
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I'm old enough to remember when people said that about Google.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Really? (Score:1)
They had $2.21 billion revenue last year. They still somehow managed to burn through all of that and lose money.
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They had a great pitch - broadcast text messaging, set to become the big new communication platform. Easy for investors to understand, millions and millions of users... Throw in some ads and rake in the cash.
Problem is ads don't pay much and people hate them. Problem is that they couldn't deal with the trolling, and their initial claim to be a more or less unlimited free speech platform was naive at best. Some of their ideas were clearly half-baked too, like becoming a platform for companies to reach their
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Twitter also has a habit of changing how it works every couple of years to try and make it easier on new users instead of keeping the system the same and making better tutorials. Every time they change the system behaviour the core base that has kept Twitter around gets further alienated and part of them leaves. They created the community and were the reason Twitter was successful in the first place.
Every change makes it seem like Twitter wants to become more like Facebook. For example, they changed the
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I'm old enough to remember when people said that about Google.
I remember when Google came out with text ads, and people laughed at the very idea of an ad that didn't blink garishly, have eye-gouging animation, or invite you to punch a purple monkey. After they made 73 kabillion dollars off of those ads, people stopped laughing.
Re:Companies that never made money and never will (Score:5, Insightful)
That's because idiots thought Google gave away free search and didn't know it was raking in money with AdWords because they never looked at any financial statements.
Twitter is a pure money sink that is trading on their fame. I'm not even sure how they would monetize it and I don't think they know either.
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I'm old enough to remember when people said that about Facebook.
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You would miss me. Admit it.
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> I'm old enough to remember when people said that about Facebook.
Well, Facebook was founded on February 4, 2004 [google.com], so welcome to the over 12 crowd, I guess? :) That'd also imply that you got that username at age one [google.com], though.
Anyhow, Facebook has a lot more user data to sell to advertisers, but most people tell me the ads convert like crap. Marketers love just how fine you can tune your targeting, though.
Don't get me wrong, Twitter does monetize its users to people who datamine the stuff and such, but the
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My Slashdot profile bio explains the nickname in great detail and it preceded the Nazi pontiff by many decades.
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I'm not even sure how they would monetize it and I don't think they know either.
If the rest of the web is any indication, it'll be by shoving advertising down our throats.
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Youtube was 'breaking even' up through a year ago: http://www.wsj.com/articles/vi... [wsj.com]
After paying for content, and the equipment to deliver speedy videos, YouTube’s bottom line is “roughly break-even,” according to a person with knowledge of the figure.
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I very highly doubt that. How many "youtube millionaires" are there? If youtube ads are generating that kind of cash for uploaders, it's making A LOT more for youtube. The only way they can be "breaking even" is by accounting tricks to hide money. (i.e. "buying" services from other parts of the company.)
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*cough*Google Datacenters*cough*
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Twitter is a pure money sink that is trading on their fame. I'm not even sure how they would monetize it and I don't think they know either.
They reportedly get somewhere between $2 to $3 billion per year in advertising revenue. They are probably an extremely bloated company geared for growth. It looks like they are starting to trim the fat. Just how much money would it take to run Twitter on a budget? My guess is not much.
Further Evidence (Score:2)
All Hyped Up and No Where To Go (Score:3)
again
Facebook i understand, it allows people to share in your life, Instagram makes people jeleous of your life, or you want to share part of someones experience
Re:All Hyped Up and No Where To Go (Score:5, Funny)
Perhaps they haven't discovered strlen() and they have to manually check that they don't go over the limit?
They might try getting rid of the censors (Score:2)
Nahh that's probably the big perk at Twitter these days. You get to censor people you don't like.
The cupboard of history (Score:5, Interesting)
Twitter used to be free speech, but now it seems to be banning people right and left with the excuse "hate speech". In many cases the speech contains no insults whatsoever, and in many cases the speech is using clear terms in a non-insulting way to put forth a political view.
Google has several clear examples [google.com]. For example, Scott Adams was banned from twitter [dilbert.com] for no apparent reason, and apparently gets banned from periscope [dilbert.com] [streaming app owned by twitter] whenever he starts talking about Trump.
Twitter is trying to engineer a "safe place" where no one can be insulted, and only approved speech is allowed.
It's bad enough that wikileaks threatened to start its own Twitter [theverge.com] in response to the ban of Milo Yiannopoulos.
I think people are starting to realize that twitter's war on free speech makes it less interesting. When a celebrity with 9 million followers gets banned, that's 9 million customers who get put off and go somewhere else.
And I think that wikileaks will eventually be the answer. There's been no public announcement, but it's entirely possible that wikileaks *is* working on a twitter replacement, and of course it would be completely free speech.
By catering to the censors and thought police, twitter is digging its own grave and will get replaced by someone who's not afraid to stand up for free speech.
In a year or two, twitter will be on the cupboard of history, alongside companies (such as Google+) that restricted and pissed off its customers.
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"For example, Scott Adams was banned from twitter"
--"I would regard it as treason"
lol no. He knows about as much about the Constitution as his favored candidate knows. Treason is a capital offense from the constitution, one of few, and this is not that. It's doesn't even violate the First Amendment, although it might be censorship.
I don't know anything either way about the trueness of his claims of being shadowbanned by Twitter, but it's not treason, and it's not a First Amendment issue, and it's not eve
Sell Twitter to Trump (Score:2)
Re: The cupboard of history (Score:1)
Scott Adams was literally not banned, though, he just went on a paranoid rant because someone told him (on twitter) that he was (double-secret) banned (but only some of the time, so he wouldn't realise).
He's a fucking idiot, but not one who got banned from twitter.
Re: The cupboard of history (Score:1)
And Milo actually supported rump! We need a word for his kind. Gays that go against who they are needs a term like Uncle Tom.
Trump & gays (Score:2)
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[a] Trump is not nor has ever been "anti-gay."
[b] Hillary, like Obama, was anti-gay and gay marriage for decades before it became politically expedient to be "pro-gay." And her foundation routinely accepts donations not only from governments with capital punishment for homosexuality, but from some of the actual guys who have thrown the stones.
Beginning of the end (Score:2)
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Your pedantry is poorly planned and executed.
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Cant cults, kingdoms and big gov help grow the safe brand?
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Josiah Wedgwood did.
hashtag (Score:2)
3.7k Employees? (Score:3, Insightful)
If 300 people is about 8% of the work force, that means that Twitter employs about 3,750 people.
3,750 people for a 140-character-at-a-time posting system.
What the heck do all of those people actually DO all day? Support? Moderation? Legal and Regulatory compliance?
we need more programmers! (Score:2, Insightful)
There's a programmer shortage! We need more women programmers! We can't figure out why women don't go into these careers! It's all the fault of programmers assigned the male gender at birth! FEEL GUILTY!!!!eleven!1!
It couldn't possibly have anything to do with gaslighting asshole managers.
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Had to look that one up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"...a form of psychological abuse in which a victim is manipulated into doubting their own memory, perception, and sanity..."
Twitter is dead anyway. (Score:2)
It's being replaced by Gab [gab.ai]
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Trust & Safety/Abuse needs to go. (Score:3, Insightful)
How many from Trust & Safety/Abuse? Their Abuse/Trust & Safety department has helped cause Twitter's losses through arbitrary enforcement (or even defense of harassers such as Leslie Jones).
Cut those departments, remove the blocking tools, and make Twitter a better company.
diversity? (Score:2)
I do wonder if the people being let go are going to all be "non-diversity" individuals, meaning all white guys. If not at the time of hiring, they certainly have a case for discrimination when being fired.
Its unlikely they are a sinking ship. (Score:2)
Its unlikely they are a sinking ship.
They have 258 positions currently open in sales, concurrent with laying off 300 people.
Intuitively, that means that the people being ejected are mostly underperforming sales account managers.
Other jobs are in machine learning, data analytics, and data scientists, which likely means that they are also having content control problems with troll and sock-puppet accounts, and they have little understanding of network effects, despite being a "social network".
Or... it means t
8%? Damn, not enough (Score:2)
I was hoping it would be 100%.
Since Twitter has become the mindless echo chamber of the regressive left it has no place in modern society and is in fact doing considerable damage. It needs to die as soon as possible.
Twitter is Propped up by TV (Score:1)
Time for a classic /. style business plan! (Score:2)
Twitter and profit... (Score:2)
Twitter should have positioned themselves as Craigslist. Then they would have been a valuable service and might have lasted. For that to happen the people behind Twitter should be less greedy.