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Comment by kzrdude | Hacker News Reader

Selling off a twitter bird statue makes it look bad. What a signal that the company doesn't believe in itself anymore.

If you have less offices you have less needs for corporate branding. If you were to consolidate all branding into the remaining offices it would take up too much space. You can not be sentimental about this stuff.

But you can be smart and care about branding and reputation.

Throwing them away would be more beneficial.

If there is only one thing business and companies should be sentimental about is about their origins. No room for sentimental stuff when doing anything else. Twitter is employing humans and the end of the day, not robots.

I imagine there are still plenty of statues all over.

To be fair, Twitter is also employing a lot of robots.

The new owner is opposed to Twitter's origins, and his goal is to employ robots, not humans.

Right, but when it comes to their branding stuff, I would expect the company to either store it (if they have enough space somewhere) or move it straight to trash. Selling their corporate logos for 25 USD looks like they are being liquidated and closing the shop. I can't understand how someone even come up with such idea ...

Companies do this sort of stuff all the time. Loads of companies sell merch, and even very brand-sensitive companies will sell old equipment for fans/nostalgia (see: Disneyland selling old animatronics and ride vehicles).

They aren't selling it for 25 USD anyway, it's a start price at an auction. I listed my iPad at a $0.01 start price, but that doesn't mean I'm broke and need the penny :)

If Disneyland does that while shuttering 88% of parks and staff, would you have the same takeaway?

Disneyland does this when they close a section of a park to rebuild it into something else, removing most of that sections staff from their company in the process, so... yeah, kind of?

You have a good point. That said selling merch or auctioning vintage equipment doesn't feel the same as what is happening here. If they just stored it somewhere and auctioned it few years later, it would send a completely different message.

Musk doesn't seem to believe in this version of Twitter and therefore has no issues dismantling it. There's still lots of damage done to Twitter the employer but I don't think it matters in the long run: there are always suckers who are willing to work for despotic leaders.

Or people on H-1B visas that can't take the risk of leaving.

Apologies I forgot about those people, who really are in a vulnerable position.

I'm surprised nobody walked out the door with it as a trophy. It's not unusual for things to go missing when a company goes through an acquisition.

I’m sure Elon is checking the cameras. Taking items is a great way to turn a layoff into a for-cause firing.

Checking the cameras, overseeing key product decisions at 3 companies, tweeting at all hours of the day....how does he find the time? /s

Pharmaceuticals.

There is one lot of 10 jamboard stands, which makes you wonder where 10 jamboards went

I heard they need the space to replace it with this:

https://edition.cnn.com/videos/business/2022/12/02/elon-goat...

(ultimate ... infinite ... cringe)

That's strangely befitting.

I'm not one of Elon's fans, trust me on that. But I do enjoy different perspectives to things.

And this sure seems like Elon doesn't give a f*ck about people, he's honestly trying to assemble the smallest team necessary to keep Twitter going, in whatever direction he wants it to go.

So yeah he's gotten a lot of criticism but I believe there's a different perspective here of a ruthless businessman just doing anything he wants to save his 44bn investment. Including downsizing it to the bare minimum, and then rewarding the people who stuck around and helped him through it.

He's "assembled" a team of H1Bs who can't quit, but he comes from apartheid money so it's just the old family business model redux.

> He's "assembled" a team of H1Bs who can't quit

So the (still after weeks) unsubstantiated rumours say...

I heard this from multiple sources of my own.

Do you not feel this would be big news if accurate? I'd imagine a lot of media outlets would love to break this story and would be hunting for any source of this, of which there would be hundreds.

I see it as a commitment to removing the old way of doing things, and starting fresh. Also it's common for companies to erect monuments to their own worship, but only once they've had lots of success and have money to burn. It isn't clear that the new twitter will succeed, and everyone knows it.

It's also a security risk. Get ahold of enough branded stuff and you can make people think you work at Twitter on a video call.

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