[Psyonic]

yeah I think Twitter isn't useful here. Having a dramatic change of management + a layoff + serious product upheaval is definitely different than just a layoff.

Now Elon is ending a policy literally called "Work From Home Forever" and with no flexibility -- back to the office 5 days a week.

Why would an employee feel safe when literally everything about Twitter changed overnight?

[lostcolony]

Yeah, Twitter is basically a running case study in what not to do when it comes to acquiring a company successfully, and can't be held up as anything other than "what happens when you do everything wrong". Certainly, it's not a useful example for others, even as a warning, because you can't easily tell what bad actions led to what bad consequences; there are so many of both.

[grog454]

While I suspect you're right, isn't it a little early to conclude the acquisition wasn't successful? Who even knows what successful means in this case?

[lostcolony]

I didn't conclude it wasn't a 'successful' acquisition. Just a case study of what not to do. Even if it somehow ends up in a place it gets spun as being a success, only Elon fanboys are saying "4d chess! Brilliant!"; anyone with an ounce of sense recognizes how dumb everything about this has been.

[331c8c71]

> how dumb everything about this has been.

Including pre-musk twitter as a directionless and weird company imo.

[55555]

You're being downvoted because it's too soon to judge so harshly. You may be just as biased in the opposite direction as the fanboys. There's been a lot of dumbness and silliness involved but it's pretty hard to assume that a random HN commenter is a better businessman than Musk.

[lostcolony]

So that comment is currently sitting at 1, so upvotes balancing downvotes. The original +12.

But I really don't care either way; to your point - even Musk didn't want to acquire Twitter once he sobered up to the fact he was in too deeply to pull out. It's just his brilliant business acumen meant he went into it waiving due diligence. Which, yes, this random HN commenter knows better than to do, for any company, let alone a social media company.

[mjevans]

Success might be difficult to define. If this produces the results that are desired by Elon and the investors then it's probably a success from their perspective. I worry if that's the case, it'll be like all the buy out, chop up, and liquidate value takeovers they made movies about.

[eru]

> I worry if that's the case, it'll be like all the buy out, chop up, and liquidate value takeovers they made movies about.

In general, if a company is worth more when chopped up than alive, it deserves to be chopped up.

[cmeacham98]

Elon Musk took on significant debt (i.e. interest payments) when he acquired Twitter, and Twitter was already losing money when he did.

It will take significantly more than just liquidating Twitter's assets for him to succeed, he essentially needs to turn Twitter into successful company.

[_djo_]

Twitter was doing pretty okay though, looking at revenue and profit trajectories. A fairly sharp layoff of around 20-25% might've been needed to trim back down from the pandemic hiring spree and the lack of the anticipated growth, but that should've been sufficient to restore profitability looking at their last reported numbers.

With Twitter Blue steadily and exclusively rolling out new features like edit functionality that might've begun contributing more to the bottom line in time too. It was still too new and too geographically limited to be certain.

None of this was necessary.

[justahuman74]

The debts are a choice though, he could just sell other assets if he didn't want that.

[cmeacham98]

So? We're in the timeline where he made that choice, so now he owes those debts and the interest on them. Yes, in theory he could have bought Twitter without going into debt, but he didn't.

[derefr]

...presuming the goal is to retain any of the current employees, rather than just building a new company around the existing IP+assets.

[whymauri]

And when the firing is coordinated by an outside party with little-to-no relevant expertise. It's hilarious that they immediately tried to hire back people they fired.

[tdeck]

The timeline also feels relevant here. The new CEO has only had a short time to really get to know the company. Who's to say that he won't cut more as he learns more and settles into his role? Combine that with the economic pressure and it looks pretty likely that either more people will be laid off or whole teams will be "managed out".

[SamReidHughes]

Knowing its financials, I would feel more "safe" after a 50% cut than a 25% cut.

But why would we want employees to feel safe? They should feel like they need to produce value, or they'll get cut.

[bruce511]

You're being down-voted (not by me) because your point is both cynical, and common as a caricature of management.

Employees need to feel safe because that improves their ability to focus on the job at hand.

Employees that do not feel safe spend time updating their resume, playing office-politics games to make others look worse, spend time with other employees (detracting them) to either spread rumours or get gossip.

In an unsafe environment, where the unsafty is internal, people don't "work harder" they work much less.

If the risk is external, then yes, people can pull together for the common good. When covid started our staff accepted huge pay cuts so that all jobs could bd preserved. They did a fantastic job, and all ultimately got back-pay, and all jobs were preserved. But that was "us against the world" - cuts included management, and salaries returned from the bottom to the top, not the other way around.

[quelltext]

That sounds like a great employer.

I only have anecdotal data but from recent discussions with friends who got laid off, they all lost trust in their company's leadership and losing arbitrary team mates has made them unhappy and reduced morale. I don't know if it's something special this time but if great teammates you worked with since before the pandemic are cut off while ones joining after and never having achieved or released anything remained (paraphrasing) does that. These layoffs seem haphazard.

[rsj_hn]

Higher management doesn't know who is productive and who isn't. The good lower-level managers have that visibility, and let's say the poor (or mediocre) managers don't.

But whoever has that visibility, they would have already taken steps to get rid of underperformers and replace them with good performers. Therefore good managers have disproportionately good people.

So when the senior management says "everyone lay 10% off", the good managers lay off good and bad people, and the poor managers lay off random people. The result is lots of good people get laid off, even if everyone is trying to avoid that.

[fbdab103]

>But whoever has that visibility, they would have already taken steps to get rid of underperformers and replace them with good performers.

Putting a lot of faith in management to cull weak performers. Depending on the organization, it can take a lot of effort and political capital to get rid of someone ("What do you mean you want to fire the guy you just hired?"). Significantly easier to just coast and let them hang around without any boat rocking.