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Comment by LarsDu88 | Hacker News Reader

This is way worse than the Twitter layoffs. Twitter engineering built a system that was robust to a 50% layoff. Twilio -- not so much.

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Was it really robust though? Twitter has been plagued by random outages or service degradations since the layoffs. Not all of those can be attributed to changes in code or deployments either.

If you're solely judging that based off complete downtime, I guess, but I think it's misleading to claim there's been no impact from those layoffs that affected service availability.

Most of Twilio is working. The status page shows must things in green. The same could be said of Twitter. However, in both cases, there have been serious issues. The difference is Twilio is paid to keep these features running, whereas with Twitter, less so. Even then, people were losing their job at Twitter just a few days ago because they couldn't explain why their CEO's tweets weren't popular. There have been numerous reports of Twitter failing at properly handling CSAM despite claims by their CEO. There were reports of massive issues with regards to getting service for advertisers.

Robust? No. I mean, if the only thing you look at is your feed, maybe? But that's not Twitter.

> robust to a 50% layoff

That's an interesting metric worth considering.

It really is, but it’s also a little crazy that a company could lose 50% of its staff and keep working.

But companies like twitter, until it was taken private at least, heavily depend on growth and adapting to emerging trends. You might keep the platform 'running' as is, but not more than that. I don't disagree that companies have people not pulling their weight but when there are large layoffs, the future of a company is, as the kids say, 'sus'. (Did I use that right?)

Did Twitter heavily depend on growth? They seemed to flat line for an awfully long time.

I guess not growth, but the potential for growth - as an investor, it's what I look for. If growth is already happening, then it's likely already priced in. If growth is not expected to happen, then unless there's a generous dividend, there is no reason to hold a stock. But if as an investor, you thought Twitter (when public) was primed for growth, it might have made a good bet as an investment. As it stands, I don't see it having any potential for growth, but again, the Twitter example is moot, as it's not public.

I mean, I'm glad it's working for you, but things have been breaking since the layoffs.

Touché. I never used it much and find Musk repellent. As you say, ‘working’ is used loosely.

Objectively, it really isn't.

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