Intel had over 130,000 employees as of a couple of months ago.
15% layoffs is nearly 20,000 people.
15% layoffs is nearly 20,000 people.
>Fire 80% of them. Twitter had probably more talent per capita than Intel. If they can fire 80% most companies should.
What's special about "them"? Twitter was technically never a particularly complex product that required some kind of exceptional talent. Not even remotely in the same ballpark compared to what Intel is doing (or trying to do anyway...)
But there are also likely to be countless "twitter-like" employees too, paid to sit on their hands or faff about with branding or tinker with devops parlor tricks or gate access to resources that engineers need.
So the current level of cuts passes the "gut" check for me. They surely have less "chaff" than Twitter, and it's crucial not to accidentally cut too many key personnel in the process.
The only reason Twitter isn't a dead husk is because network effects are really damn strong. That's it. The attrition to Bluesky or Mastodon or whatever won't be as drastic as the Myspace days when single percentages of the current internet populace were connected.
You don't get network effects with hardware, especially since most people these days buy laptops and won't bother to specify an intel chip (if available at all).
Their financials tanked as advertisers fled the platform or reduced spend drastically. It's now basically a money pit that at present trajectory will continue to burn money until Elon's other ventures can't afford it. Given his wealth he can keep losing a billion or two a year forever even if people stop buying his overpriced poorly built cars.
I predict however that eventually it looks less interesting and they try a rebrand as twitter with 90% less Elon for 2x the advertising dollars (for real this time) and borrow as much money and assets as possible and eventually exit.
Musk thought that what people wanted was raw unfiltered “free speech”, but he thought his kinds of views were restricted. The result was when he got control, the guardrails were mostly removed and a lot of users recoiled, and advertisers left due to the desirable users targets disappearing as well as having their ads shown next to questionable content. Then he contradicted himself by blocking accounts that hit his ego.
I’m a geopolitical nerd and loved twitter, but finally gave up on it when I started getting fake news as well as promoted tweets by musk himself, whom I didn’t give a shit about his at best bizarre opinions. The blocking of third party clients meant that I couldn’t even filter client-side anymore (RIP Tweetbot).
Censorship is when the government won't let you publish something. It's not when Twitter doesn't let you post something, it's not when your post isn't shared, it isn't when Pepsi won't pay you to run ads, and it's not when users stop engaging.
All of these things are things people are morally entitled to do.
Elon is the wrong person because he's ruining it and because he's doing so in service not to a different tax or economic policy but in service to evil.