What if Twitter actually succeeds after this? I'm not saying that it's likely, but what if? Let's imagine it as a thought exercise. What will this say about the current state of software engineering in startups and big techs?
For a long time tech was eating the world and the more engineers you had the more likely you were to accidentally walk into a massive piece of the pie (the google model). Now things are more mature and there’s probably just less opportunity to do that.
But really I think leadership styles have to match the leader. Most leaders can’t get away with this because they fundamentally don’t want to.
It will be really hard to take the right lessons away from this situation. 90% of what Elon is doing that is successful is probably below the surface, if the lesson is, come into a company and fire 90% of people and you’ll thrive, I think you’re going to have a bad time.
Most important Edit: you have to have fuck you money for this to work so you can sell $4 billion in stock to keep the company afloat after you tank the revenue.
Might be true, just easily might not be. Seems too uncertain to draw conclusions. Like, why didn't this happen ten years ago? Twenty? OK, take those explanations. Why can't they happen again?
I suppose that we would need to first decide whether (in this scenario where he succeeded) Elon had actually fixed Twitter, or whether he tore it down to the studs and built a different company out of it, one which happened to be called Twitter, but did something completely different, with new people and new leadership. It feels like that's what he wants to do, and maybe that's why he's not backing down as everybody in the company leaves.
I really just want to make sure this isn't a cop out in the chances his stunts succeed(ie yeah it's successful now but it's different!)
I have no idea what his vision for the company actually is, it just sounds like his mantra is "anything is on the table at this point, but we need to make money fast".
That said, I do think it's very likely that 80% of the present value of any given company is derived from work that was done on the very first version. Twitter the product can likely coast as is for a long time. However I think the reason for having large product teams at mature companies working on marginal projects is because the stock price depends on it. Your potential for discovering new S-curves is priced into your revenue multiple. So while a private twitter might be able to find profitability as a 700 person company, theres (probably) no way for them to achieve meaningful growth. As a result, public companies probably wouldn't view this as a viable playbook.
However I feel like Elon's public statements (and track record as an eng focused leader) make me doubt this will happen. He seems much more enamored of Hardcore Engineers who can ship new features (ie fart pillows[1]) rather than the ops/business side, so I don't think creating a glorified lifestyle business is something he's interested in pursuing.
[1] https://electrek.co/2021/01/19/how-to-make-your-tesla-fart/
Now, I don't really believe that will happen because software and technology is mind numbingly complex now, and I think only through large bodies of software engineers are we able to tame it, but it is one distinct possibility. Obviously it is the outcome Musk believes in.
Issue is, people kill themselves to make awesome electric cars and rockets straight out of scifi, but to make a better twitter? I'm not seeing it.
But I'm often (usually?) wrong!
Look, Twitter was over-hired, no doubt about it. I have no clue how you would need as many engineers as they had. That said, Twitter did/does have hard problems. People joke about how simple Twitter is but it's just not. The ability to search across all tweets alone in realtime is a massive undertaking at their scale. Even with that they had more employees than they problem needed. My issue with how Elon has managed this is more about how ham-fisted these multiple rounds of layoffs/firings are coupled with how inconsistent he is. Just 18 hours ago they said not to come in till Monday and then with only a few hours notice you need to be in the building with a list of achievements and screenshots (!?) of your code.
I've produced a lot of code over the last 6 months, I'd want more than a couple hours (including traveling) to put together a "portfolio" of sorts. Though has I worked at Twitter I'd have taken the layoff yesterday rather than continue to be jerked around by this... jerk.
To me it matters less if Twitter survives this and more about what that means for the employees that are left. Are they going to see any of the "success" if they turn it around? As it stands they have been asked to work longer hours/weekends but their salaries aren't changing (that we know of). The company isn't public and I've yet to hear of any sort of profit-share/equity/etc that's being given out to those who are going to stay. Also Twitter succeeding != Twitter being a good place to work at. Currently the only person that benefits from Twitter succeeding is Elon. I can't imagine putting my life on hold to enrich a billionaire, especially since Twitter itself isn't a noble cause, no matter what some people deluded themselves into thinking.
I'm not anti-hard-work, I'm anti-hard-work if I'm not going to get something in return which as of now Twitter/Elon has not outlined any rewards other than "being part of Twitter 2.0".
Perhaps a union or guild of some description would be in order.
Once you have a working product, it's a bit easier. Maintenance is more predictable. But without R&D/innovation, you're slowly going to fall behind, and that's hard to overcome.
So it might not be impossible that Twitter can keep running with a much smaller staff, but even then it might be the beginning of the end. We'll know in a few years...
Regardless of Musks success or failure at Twitter, the concentration of wealth in fewer hands will march on (due to automation and software eating everything, eventually, software will eat software). The middle-class SDE-type have been ignoring this reality for a while now, feeling safe because we thought we could find a different well-paying job at the drop of a pin. The bimodal income in the Software world is about to become more defined, with more folk shifting to the lower-income peak.
If it works then I think senior managers will be more willing to reorg quickly and build from the solid core.
However, I'm not sure it will change most things at most places. Managers love headcount more than anything. Each person under them makes them more important. Managers love this. I've had roles where I don't need anymore headcount but I was forced to add it because my managers wanted more headcount.
Worst case, we'll have profitable tech companies far earlier in the lifecycle.
The degree you would buy into this probably depends on how much you believe that Twitter is a good representation for the rest of the industry. I imagine a number of people would prefer to believe it is not in the case of success if it is their self value in question.
But yeah likely if Twitter does well then we'll also see a bunch of copycat douchebaggery at the C level because "it worked for Elon". For whatever reason, history seems to show us that any time some douchebag succeeds, all the wannabes come out of the woodwork to emulate it.
Or it might just mean less stuff gets done.
My company’s had enough turnover without adequate replacement lately that pretty much everything that isn’t high-priority maintenance now just gets backlogged.
There is no publicly listed stock that can rebound. Any new investor will surely want to look at the books first:
Twitter stock didn't tank, it actually stayed really high because he was locked in to purchase it well beyond the market value (as the entire sector was falling). It oscillated a bit, but you couldn't really call it a tank (especially in light of how the rest of tech was doing at the time)
EDIT: I assure you, this made sense in response to the non-stock part of the now-edited-away parent comment. :D