You could lay off half of the 7,000 employee Twitter workforce with absolutely no product impact.
It's not just about profitability, it's a bloated, ineffective, behemoth.
It's not just about profitability, it's a bloated, ineffective, behemoth.
You read on here: it is just tales of giga, 10x programmers...I only work at companies with sufficient technological prowess, 7 figures, I expect my workplace to be staffed with those of similar intelligence to myself, Ivy League PHds only, send me full resumes of everyone who will be on my team, I only deal with problems that are world-changing...on and on.
You read financial statements: inept management, no controls, massive staff expenses, development budget is usually totally out of whack with revenue, growth in staff faster than revenue, struggle to develop new features (despite a relatively simple product), over-engineered, bloated maintenance...on and on.
Financial statements don't lie (the consistency between these two stories is: most engineers are massively overpaid, they aren't good at doing useful things, many tech companies have monopoly products, they then hire lots of engineers who do nothing but bloviate about how influential they are).
In the case of TWTR, comically mismanaged company. I don't know where the bloat is but Dorsey isn't someone who should be running a listed company (and has crashed and burned several times at Twitter alone). The guy who he appointed was an obvious stooge who was clearly not up to it. If nothing else, hopefully Musk will put them back on an even keel (I don't Musk is a good exec either, but this job is far simpler than Tesla so hopefully he will bring them back to an even keel).
The purpose of my comment wasn't to suggest how to remedy the situation but your answer is indicative: there is no separation between money-making and non-money making (engineers' viewpoint, as with everyone else, on who is making the money tends to vary quite significantly...when it is pay discussions, they are responsible...when a product has gone wrong, I can't believe these managers did this to me), if you work at a company your job is to make money...that is where your salary is coming from, customers. The precise problem is that so many engineers are paid for specialising in arcane knowledge unrelated to any revenue or consumer demand. In my experience, companies that move this responsibility over to engineers do better (indeed, companies that don't, won't survive at all...the only reason these jobs exist is because some tech companies happen to have monopoly products and choose to overhire...if banks had a monopoly product, you would see a profusion of very over-educated people specialising in some arcane area of finance with no consumer demand but which get hired for cultural reasons).
There is no-one else to blame. The distinction between product and engineering is a function of dysfunction.
Curious to know why you think so?
But he also gave the impression consistently of someone who was in the wrong job. Communication is an important skill for a CEO, the least worrying interpretation is that he was making choices about PR with no reference to his PR people...least worrying...if PR actually was involved, that is worse.
- They killed Vines, and then proceeded to lose on short videos to TikTok a couple years later with no response
- Their Substack competitor is a joke that nobody uses, and also took years to produce
This is not an organization which ships products! You don't have to be a Harvard MBA to evaluate the output of this organization. The ratio of employees to product development is not in line with any other major engineering organization.
I was hearing credible stories back in 2014 about them having way too many junior devs with nothing, or very marginal amounts to do.
They had the excesses on the spending side covered without the insane growth or profitability to go along with it. Can be a great business if it's hugely downsized in headcount
In addition, those who are let go are not tainted as underperformers, just unlucky.
I don't know what 7,000 Twitter employees do but it does seem like a rather high number to me.