[TheBlueDot]

Well, there goes my weekend/week.

As someone who joined Twitter recently this sucks. I left a great job to come work at Twitter because I believe in what they're building and now a few months in I might be looking again. :-(

To be fair, the first week I was asking myself what all of these people do. I wish the company had been more transparent with this but I understand why they can't start telling people there will be layoffs, people panic and worry like all 4000+ employees are doing now.

Think before you type a rude comment too, most Twitter people read HN and will see it. :-/

[fizx]

Ex-Tweep here. You'll probably be fine. You'll probably continue to do meaningful work at twitter. I hope they cut people who have done nothing for a long time, not people who joined recently.

If not, there is a vibrant alumni community who is happy to welcome you and help you network and adjust, even if you were only working at twitter for a week. If you don't find it, email me (in my profile) and I'll help you find it.

Good luck (but you don't need it)!

[TheBlueDot]

Also, it's amusing yet disturbing the disconnect.

Just three days before this leak everyone was told we're doing well, we're going to grow and hire more people and build these great new things. They also had a big talk about leaks and then went on to show 4000+ people the full product plans for the next year. Then, sorry, we're firing a bunch of you. Oh yeah, don't leak anything we just told you. :-O

[tragic]

> They also had a big talk about leaks and then went on to show 4000+ people the full product plans for the next year. Then, sorry, we're firing a bunch of you. Oh yeah, don't leak anything we just told you. :-O

I find this mindset frankly mind-boggling. I work for a significant corporation, and we recently changed CEOs. The trade press was reporting the change three months in advance; and anyone who cared to know about it on the shop floor probably did. But they didn't tell us ... presumably because it would get leaked. Which it, of course, did anyway. It seems to be almost an unconscious corporate reflex to treat the bulk of your staff like morons.

My feeling about Twitter is that there was an opportunity to seriously monetise it around the moment it started getting serious traction for PR. The celebs had given it critical mass, and Coke and McDonalds had to follow.

Now, however, the shills are basically just given an enormous amount of free advertising space with a not-great premium option on top of that. (A promoted tweet is not as good as an embedded tweet in a 'proper' news outlet, which will be part of the PR package, sold together to a client as advertising-equivalent exposure.)

They could still do something like start charging per tweet per thousand followers for content promoting a specific product or service (a made up back-of-the-fag-packet example, I'm sure there are better ways), of course, but it would be much harder given the expectations that have built up around what the platform is.

EDIT: clarity

[jacques_chester]

> It seems to be almost an unconscious corporate reflex to treat the bulk of your staff like morons.

My understand is that there are laws about the disclosure of market-moving information make a lot of C-suites paranoid.

The thing is that refusing to answer, or being vague, is itself an answer. The incentives are to lie. If you equivocate, the effect is frequently more destructive because of the amount of rumour and innuendo that builds up.

This is why changes of policy in business and politics are often sudden and contrary to previous promises.

[scottu]

Is there enough demand in the San Francisco area to absorb say 20% of Twitter employees? It always feels like everyone is hiring out there.

[rconti]

Absolutely. And if this is a sign of a few unicorns starting to drop, you're better off being one of the first ones to go than the last.

This is probably a very wise move. 4000 employees is just insane for what they do. Grow wisely.

[jedc]

> 4000 employees is just insane for what they do.

Yes and no. Twitter will make ~$2 Billion in revenue this year (and it's their massive revenue growth that's kept the stock price where it's at). That takes a LOT of sales and marketing people to achieve.

[ryandetzel]

They have over 30 offices so some if not most will be in other offices around the world.

[tarblog]

I'd guess that most are in the SF office, but I didn't know that had 29 other offices until 5 seconds ago.

[mahouse]

> Think before you type a rude comment too, most Twitter people read HN and will see it. :-/

No criticism? Is it bad if I say that they have a very simple product that doesn't need so much people? Is it bad if I say every feature they add they ruin it more? Is it bad if I say I would rather go back to 2010 Twitter?

[TheBlueDot]

I'm talking about rude comments about the intelligent people that work there.

Where do you work, lets compare products/people and the impact the product makes on the world shall we?

[mahouse]

Engineering team is impressive. Such a website at such scale works very well, I must say I'm amazed (compared to around six years ago when the website was down daily).

Product team: not so much.

[jasonlotito]

> I'm talking about rude comments about the intelligent people that work there.

There are intelligent people that work at many companies. You should avoid rude comments about people in general. Twitter is not special in this.

> Where do you work, lets compare products/people and the impact the product makes on the world shall we?

This is fairly egotistical. Twitter doesn't solve all problems for the world. It's a great service, but your comment is fairly negative and insulting. Especially for someone that only recently joined.

[calibraxis]

I would be grateful if people could now leak what's up with all the racist/misogynist terrorist bullying, which I constantly see when looking at Twitter responses. (I'm sure many would defend Twitter's actions despite getting fired, but there's gotta be a couple ethical people who wanted to seriously act.)

[TheBlueDot]

That's called life, it's not unique to Twitter. How would one "leak" such information?