Elon Musk's Twitter Teeters on the Edge After Another 1,200 Leave

[PSPS]

Elon Musk’s Twitter Teeters on the Edge After Another 1,200 Leave
Ryan Mac, Mike Isaac, Kellen Browning
Nov. 18, 2022 Updated 4:13 p.m. ET

Mr. Musk sent emails on Friday asking to learn about Twitter’s underlying technology as key infrastructure teams have been decimated. “Anyone who actually writes software, please report to the 10th floor at 2 p.m. today,” he wrote in a two-paragraph message, which was viewed by The New York Times. “Thanks, Elon.” About 30 minutes later, Mr. Musk sent another email saying he wanted to learn about Twitter’s “tech stack,” a term used to describe a company’s software and related systems. Then in another email, he asked some people to fly to Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco to meet in person.

Twitter is teetering on the edge as Mr. Musk remakes the company after buying it for $44 billion last month. The billionaire has pushed relentlessly to put his imprint on the social media service, slashing 50 percent of its work force, firing dissenters, pursuing new subscription products and delivering a harsh message that the company needs to shape up or it will face bankruptcy. Now the question is whether Mr. Musk, 51, has gone too far. On Thursday, hundreds of Twitter employees resigned en masse after Mr. Musk gave them a deadline to decide whether to leave or stay. So many workers chose to depart that Twitter users began questioning whether the site would survive, tweeting farewell messages to the service and turning hashtags like #TwitterMigration and #TwitterTakeover into trending topics.

Some internal estimates showed that at least 1,200 full-time employees resigned on Thursday, three people close to the company said. Twitter had 7,500 full-time employees at the end of October, which dropped to about 3,700 after mass layoffs earlier this month. The employee numbers are likely to remain fluid as the dust settles on the exits, with confusion abounding over who is keeping a tally of workers and running other workplace systems. Some employees who quit said they were separating themselves from the company by disconnecting from email and logging out of the internal messaging system Slack because human resources representatives were not available.

Mr. Musk and representatives for Twitter did not respond to requests for comment. But the billionaire on Friday tweeted what he said would be changes to Twitter’s content policy. Hateful tweets will no longer be promoted algorithmically in users’ feeds, he said, but they will not be taken down. He also reinstated several previously banned accounts, including the comedian Kathy Griffin and the author Jordan Peterson.

Perhaps the most crucial question now is how Twitter can keep running after the giant reduction to its work force in such a short time. The effects of the cuts and resignations have played out across the company’s technology teams, people with knowledge of the matter said.

More at: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/18/technology/elon-musk-twitter-workers-quit.html

[NewHendoLib]

1. It can be renamed - to Teeter

[reymega life]

2. ELMOS ON FIRE TOAST DONE

[republianmushroom]

3. darn darn

[ProfessorGAC]

4. A Question For Tech Pros

$5 billion in revenues, 7,500 employees. Does that seem OK?
It would be pretty bad in the industry from which i retired. We had $4.5 billion in revenues but under 1,800 worldwide employees. Our revenue per employee was in the upper quintile but I don't think it was in the top 1%.
Is $667k revenue per employee good, or was some culling in order and Musk just got carried away?

[Farmer-Rick]

6. How much profit does one business really need?

I'd be happy with $667k per employee. How much more do they actually really need? Maybe it's time for people over profits.

[ProfessorGAC]

13. Try Again

My numbers were REVENUE!
You must understand the difference between revenue & profit.
I can't believe you'd think every dollar in equals profit.
Besides, Twitter was showing under 4% pretax margins before SG&A.
They weren't that profitable which makes Musk's decision even dumber.

[Farmer-Rick]

15. I didn't catch that you were referring to revenue

Feel better now?

Can't keep an angry capitalist down.

[ProfessorGAC]

18. Seriously?

All you got is an unwarranted insult?
Pretty rich of you, since the term "revenues" is used 3 times in 4 sentences.
You demonstrate that you didn't actually read my.post, so you need to make your mistake my fault.
Also, big anti-capitalist that you are; were you aware that twitter lost money in '20 & '21? I thought not.
Is capitalism OK only when a company loses money?

[Farmer-Rick]

19. OMG you take your comments on a posts way too seriously

I don't want to argue with you. So good bye.

[PSPS]

21. LOL. Professors are like that!

[lapfog_1]

7. typically in the software industry... every software engineer needs to generate 1M in revenue...

we gotta carry all the execs, sales and marketing, HR, etc.

$5B in revenue is probably ok for a social media company (there isn't really any "hi tech" here, or IP for that matter, no matter how many patents they file).

A lot of employees are hired here to deal with customers... their tweets, their accounts, etc. Plus the regulatory environment. So that potentially explains the large number of employees.

Elon probably wants to try to run this without "minding the store" people. He is/was a Libertarian. "what guardrails, we don't need no stinkin guardrails"... etc.

Unfortunately for him, that isn't the company he purchased. And his chaos approach to mgmt has pissed off both the customer service / regulatory people... but the actual software engineers.

[ProfessorGAC]

9. So, On A Per Employee Basis...

...they were somewhat underperforming. Yes?

[lapfog_1]

12. they don't have 7500 software engineers... likely less than half that.

so they are doing fine. The problem is that there is a large (I believe) customer service operation... plus a regulatory compliance office. So per employee revenue might be a bit light.

[ProfessorGAC]

14. Yeah, You're Talking SG&A

I worked for major corporations so I understand how that all works.
Their profit margin was poor. They had negative net income of $220 million in 2020.
The only reason I asked is because it my experience had most successful outfits in my field were looking at $1.5 - $2.8 million per employee.
Wasn't sure if 2/3rds of a million was typical or not.

[Botany]

5. "Anyone who actually writes software, please report to the 10th floor at 2 p.m. today."

BTW a question for the smart I.T. / DU people. What will happen to Twitter if it has no real time
human type support people ready to go 24/7? Can Twitter "run on its own" through A.I. and the
programs that "run things" which already installed?

[lapfog_1]

8. all he really needs at the moment

is the server farm and the people that mind it.

That said... he will soon find out that many places in the world will start banning twitter because he fired all the people that make sure twitter follows the laws and regulations in the target country.

Plus, anyone having issues needs someone to answer the phone and deal with their complaint.

The software and servers will stay up... but nothing with improve without the software engineers... and, in a few years as the technology changes, it too will atrophy and die without software updates.

[PSPS]

22. Not really. The system software needs constant updates as bugs/exploits are detected.

[Disaffected]

10. He's going to port Tesla's

FSD software to the Twitter servers. Guaranteed not to crash..........

[SWBTATTReg]

20. There are always 'bugs' in the software, no software on Earth doesn't have any 'bugs' in it.

Software can be written, but there's got to be a limit as to how complicated, how complex the software can be, to account for every single thing, every single instance / or weird thing that may happen. No, is my best answer, no software is that advanced, even w/ the software way out on the Pioneer spacecraft beyond the edges of the solar system, upgrades, even slow as they are w/ the slow bit rate, still are needed.

[WarGamer]

11. I see no actual... evidence... that Twitter is "on edge"

From what I'd read, SpaceX engineers had analyzed the systems pre-purchase and there is now a core of Musk-loyal people to keep things running.

I mean... maybe there won't be anyone to refill the break room Keurig Station?

[kcr]

17. From what you read

At Elon Must Fanboys R Us.

[catbyte]

16. Well, at least in screwing up Twitter, he's not killing anybody.

https://www.tesladeaths.com/