[blindriver]

Elon proved with Twitter that large corporations can survive drastic, chaotic and insane levels of cuts/layoffs (80%+) and still survive. If DOGE waited to do things less drastically, nothing would ever get done. The cuts that are going through are nothing as drastic as what Twitter endured (except USAID) so I guess he is willing to risk short term disruption for long-term spending cuts and that the organization will reorganize and restabilize pretty quickly.

[viccis]

> can survive drastic, chaotic and insane levels of cuts

I get ads on X that are just videos of animals being slowly shot multiple times to death. There's also some for tools to slim jim car locks. None of the mainstream/normal accounts I used to follow (shout out SwiftOnSecurity) are there, and instead it's a hotbed of crypto scams and deranged vitriol. The site is still running, but is a shell of its former self, making so little money that Elon is trying to sue people (and now, abusing US govt payment systems) to force them to pay him for advertising.

I can see how if you think that's a success, that you would think similar actions with regard to the US government are successful. The necessary cuts he's making are not necessary, and I'm guessing you aren't impacted, so, given the general lack of theory of mind towards others, I'm not surprised you think they're ok. The rest of us out there who understand the idea of human suffering are concerned for our fellow citizens facing arbitrary and unnecessary pain as the result of a capricious court eunach's drug influenced decisions before the "restabilization" that will never happen.

[BenFranklin100]

This is false. Twitter is not the US government. And Twitter is certainly not the US scientific establishment which is dispersed broadly across the nation and which has taken decades to build up. Many research universities will shutter their research departments permanently if these overnight changes are implemented. This is especially true in smaller states like Alabama, which is why Republican Katie Britt is sounding the alarm. Moreover, many people will leave the field permanently.

Moreover, scientific R&D is a strange place to slash if cost savings are the goal. Medicare and Medicaid comprise over 50 times the NIH and NSF combined budget of approximately $50B. If we want to save costs, research into diseases like Alzheimer’s Disease is the way to go. Alzheimer’s currently costs the nation $412B per year [1], eight times the NIH annual budget. Therapies which delayed the onset of Alzheimer’s Disease by 20 years would nearly eliminate this cost.

Let’s be clear: DOGE is led by a self described autist who has little idea how government and broader society functions. The damage he will do if left unchecked is vast.

[1] https://nchstats.com/alzheimers-disease-in-the-us/

[addicted]

Twitter’s valuation has plummeted since Elon’s purchase.

And to the extent Twitter is still limping along it’s because Twitter due to its very nature benefits immensely from the stickiness of social networks.

For example, Facebook is almost completely junk. It hasn’t improved or been relevant in a long time. And yet it survives and makes tons of money simply because people don’t want to rebuild their networks.

There are many other examples where even minor cuts have been devastating. The classic example is of course GE, the ultimate example of cutting a company to the bone, which worked for a decade or so, but set the company up to essentially cease to exist after.

Then you have Boeing, a company in an industry with less competition than probably any other in the world and it’s struggling to make money because of this thinking.

[cudgy]

Boeing and GE are inappropriate comparisons. Their cost-cutting maneuvers were primarily driven by moving existing, quality work to overseas contractors. It was simply about saving money without worrying about efficiency or long-term benefit. The overhead of managing contractors spread throughout the entire world is much more difficult than overseeing groups say within the Seattle Washington area. I really don’t see how this compares to reduction of work forces in government divisions. These government positions are not being moved overseas along with the complicated overhead of managing the groups all around the world.

[sudosysgen]

The functions will end up being outsourced to contractors and bureaucracy will have to deal with managing them and their failures. This is exactly what has already happened to many departments and direct cuts to workforce will only worsen it.

[cudgy]

Sorry, but I just don’t feel like you have the authority or knowledge to make that statement. How could you possibly know whether direct cuts will only worsen things? This is the type of issue that is argued between people inside of an organization that are fully aware of all of the factors at play.

[sudosysgen]

It's not really a prediction I'm making, this already happened in the 70s with Nixon, the 80s with Reagan and the late 90s with Clinton. Direct cuts to employment in valuable functions have historically always ended up with core employees being replaced by armies of contractors which then need armies of bureaucrats to manage instead of doing things in house. It's why the US Digital Service started, for example. The issue has been argued for about 50 years now and the outcome has been pretty clear. It's the inevitable conclusion of firing federal employees but still wanting the program function to live on, you will inevitably end up with contractors and that has meant armies of bureaucrats to manage them.

[costigan]

This equivalence between a company that provides one app that, if it were to disappear, would hurt no one, and a government that has thousands of functions, many of which are life-and-death in both the short and long run, is just ridiculous.

[ars]

Very few government functions are life or death.

[costigan]

Let's take one example. The Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) is a two-year post-residency program that trains health professionals in applied epidemiology. These officers are crucial for on-the-ground investigations of disease outbreaks. It's a 2-year program, with 50-60 doctors in each year. All of the first-year doctors in this year's program were fired by DOGE, so far, for a capacity reduction of 50%. Both years are in the 'probationary' civil servant category, so the jobs of the rest of them are still at risk.

I asked ChatGPT 4o for other examples, and it generated a list of 40. You can do that for yourself, if you're interested.

[johnnyanmac]

Regardless, the life-and-death ones are being slashed too. They aren't discriminating in these plans.

[juniperus]

when it comes to scientific research, sometimes a research breakthrough is life or death to people.

[robwwilliams]

Except when they are.

[eli_gottlieb]

Plane crashes are life-and-death. Mostly death.

[rasz]

FAA, CDC, NNSA, it goes on and on

[duxup]

> and still survive

Twitter hardly ever made money before and after is in the same state now. Its contribution (anything?) to this country is far different than a government institution.

The comparison here isn’t encouraging and makes no sense.

[antman]

Amazon made almost no profits for many many years others too. They follow a reinvest or expansion strategy and if investors believe it the stock goes up. It is not encouraging that Twitter lost 80% of its value under Musk's leadership and not something pne wants for the US Government which also does not work on a for profit basis. Ofcourse Musk fakes that he doesn't know that and promotes his unsubstantiated wins stories daily.

[johnnyanmac]

Amazon offered very obviously valuable and profitable services. I think we're starting to realize ad-based monetization is not how to maintain a billion dollar corporation anymore. I wouldn't have much aspects for Twitter even if Musk never took over. But he sure did accelerate things.

[Fade_Dance]

>ad-based monetization is not how to maintain a billion dollar corporation anymore.

Online ad revenue has been growing, 15% per year recently. Huge growth. That includes legacy networks like (decrepit) Facebook, which is seeing double digit growth, and the short form video frontier is growing considerably faster and constantly pushing out new ad/partnership models and is very much a strong growth industry in an of itself.

Ad revenue is more than sufficient to sustain a billion dollar corporation. It can and does sustain trillion dollar corporations, and the industry is currently in a strong growth phase with a lot of obvious green fields for innovation.

[khazhoux]

You seem to miss the point.

Twitter was an imperfect yet functional website before Elon. Elon fired most of the staff. Twitter then continued to be an imperfect yet functional website.

Hell, I remember ten years of HN saying "WTF does Twitter need so many people for??", and then those same people said "OMG Elon is insane to fire so many people!!".

[duxup]

I don't know what that means as far as a comparison to a government institution.

Twitter could be massively profitable, or woefully unprofitable ... it has no impact on anyone outside investors.

[cudgy]

Many people are more concerned about the messenger than the message. They’ll flip-flop their opinions solely based on who is doing the bidding.

A glaring recent example. If Biden had taken action like Trump has to negotiate with Russia to stop the Ukraine war, would the Democrats be screaming that Biden is a “Putin apologist”?

If Barrack Obama made statements about deporting undocumented immigrants (which he did), Democrats fall largely silent. If Trump makes similar statements, same Democrats scream fascism, racism, and Nazi/white supremacy.

[naijaboiler]

Not just the act matters. The rhetoric used by the messenger matters to.

[cudgy]

Sure, rhetoric matters for style points, but the act supersedes stylish rhetoric. I’ll take proper action with clumsy rhetoric over inaction or improper action backed up with eloquent rhetoric, which is what most politicians provide.

[rayiner]

Twitter’s cash flow has doubled: https://www.teslarati.com/elon-musk-x-doubled-ebitda-since-2...

[abduhl]

This is an incorrect statement. Twitter’s revenue halved but its expenses were cut as well meaning its EBITDA doubled. The most likely conclusion on cash flow is that it went down actually, probably by a half in line with revenue (since revenue is a sign of flow in).

This is not the stunning retort to criticisms of Elon’s “fire them all” approach that some imagine it to be. It basically says “we cut expenses by 75% and only lost half our business.” Which half of the US government are you willing to lose, and are you sure you’re cutting the right 75% to lose the targeted half? Which half of the subjects that we fund R&D for are you willing to lose?

[rayiner]

https://www.bankrate.com/investing/ebitda/ (“Some investors and analysts use EBITDA to assess the operating performance of a business or as a broad measure of its cash flow.”)

Increasing EBITDA by downscaling the business and severely cutting expenses is a common approach when turning around an unprofitable company.

[abduhl]

https://altline.sobanco.com/ebitda-vs-cash-flow/ ("EBITDA and cash flow are both important financial metrics, but they serve different purposes and provide different insights into a company’s financial health.")

We can quote secondary sources back at each other all day, but it's somewhat pointless because the truth is what I said already: EBITDA and revenue are merely indicators for cash flow, not synonyms. You used the wrong words dude.

I also noticed you only replied on a pedantic point while leaving the substantive questions on which half of the government and research funding you'd like to see gone (and how these cuts target that half) as an exercise for the reader.

[rayiner]

I think it’s common for people to refer to “cash flow” (without referring to OCF or FCF or whatever specifically ) when they mean EBITDA, but I’m happy to be wrong about that. I’m not a financial analyst. But as you acknowledge, EBITDA is an indicator of cash flow. Is there a difference between the two measures that you think is relevant to X? X is increasing how much money they’re making right?

[duxup]

Elons own statements at his meetings indicates otherwise.

[rayiner]

The linked article, which is relying on WSJ reporting, says EBITDA increased from $682 million to $1.25 billion.

[duxup]

Elons own description of his business is that they’re only just profitable some quarters.

Let alone that we’re talking about comparing an advertiser based social network to a government institution.

[hedora]

> short term disruption

Great euphemism for “In one month, we’re going to kill tens of millions by withholding food/medical care and permanently destroy institutions that took a century to build”.

I’m going to use that phrase.

[shusaku]

This is the most infuriating part of this. Musk acted like a moron and overpaid for twitter. Then cash constrained, he rapidly cut things to save money. Now twitter is completely diminished in its reach, at an all time brand low, and at real risk from competitors.

Meanwhile, the companies Musk built that actually have dominated their space are big idea innovators like Tesla and SpaceX. Musk wasn’t successful because he’s a good penny pincher, he was successful by burning cash on big ideas and talented people.

But somehow we decided its case 1 that we’ll apply to the government.

[johnnyanmac]

Case 2 had a lot of safeguards around Musk to keep him isolated from the talented people. But Case 1 made Musk feel better. So we know which one he prefers. Not like he's going to suffer the losses the most.

[ks2048]

It seems Twitter is in a death spiral. That is the model to apply to scientific research and academia that has powered Americas dominance for the past 100 years?

[johnnyanmac]

Define "survive". Elon is still a billionaire?

Sure, if we detonate all nukes, I imagine 20% of humanity will survive. "We" won't die out that easily. Me and you are probably dead, though. Statistically speaking.

[antman]

Elon proved with Twitter that he doesn't know what he is doing. Huge loss, zero lessons. If US ends up being downsized financially and ethically the way Twitter has, that will also provide zero lessons for Musk.

[amluto]

Having spoken with people who worked there, Twitter built a system for which the technical its mostly ran without much help. So it’s not surprising that you can still tweet with most of the staff gone.

[thcipriani]

"Elon Musk’s X is worth nearly 80% less than when he bought it, Fidelity estimates"[0]

[0]: <https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/02/business/elon-musk-twitter-x-...>

[rdtsc]

> Twitter that large corporations can survive drastic, chaotic and insane levels of cuts/layoffs (80%+) and still survive.

US Government is not Twitter, but yeah, I can see some element of it. Now I suddenly remember, the various comments here convinced me that X/Twitter will be dead in just two months. Yet, it's still around. Not that I care to make account there or bother looking at it, but I figure if it kept crashing, it would show up in the news. Maybe everyone moved to bluesky and it just doesn't have any customers?

[johnnyanmac]

So you're still just going to attack the most extreme interpretations and dismiss the truth because it's not literally dead?

Digg is still alive. Myspace is still alive. These big brands don't literally die often; someone will want to try and play around with it.

>but I figure if it kept crashing, it would show up in the news. Maybe everyone moved to bluesky and it just doesn't have any customers?

Twitter is technically stable in terms of servers. They did a good job doubling up by 1) minimizing the load needed by making users sign in to see more than a literal permalink (you can't even see comments anymore) while 2) being a bait to get more new accounts to report on engagement. Not that that matters now since Twitter is no longer publicly traded.

It's the everything else around it that caused it to plummet.

[rdtsc]

> So you're still just going to attack the most extreme interpretations and dismiss the truth because it's not literally dead?

I can attack my own interpretation, that seems fair, doesn't it? You can have your own interpretation, and then attack it, (or not attack it) later.

> Digg is still alive. Myspace is still alive. These big brands don't literally die often

I had no idea! That's cool. I never really used either one that much. I do know yahoo is still around. One difference is I periodically I see links to X/Twitter. I never see people link to digg or myspace. But sounds like you have a different perspective, which is also cool.

> dismiss the truth because it's not literally dead?

Just to be clear, the truth for me is my impression from reading HN about 2022 or so. Namely from comments like these:

> (Nov 18, 2022) I very much doubt that. Twitter must have had some bloat, but there's no way that 80% of the workforce was bloat. I'd be extremely surprised if Twitter(as in, the website/app, not the registered legal entity) still exists and works by the end of this year.

I agreed to them at the time. So not sure how "truth" and "dismissing" applies; it's really just an impression. Am I allowed to dismiss my own impression? Seems odd to object to that...

[johnnyanmac]

>I can attack my own interpretation, that seems fair, doesn't it? You can have your own interpretation, and then attack it, (or not attack it) later.

Your comment just gave some vibes that because Twitter didn't literally die 2 years ago (as you and others predicted) that it seems that introspection was completely proven wrong, "Yet, it's still around". I just simply wanted to assert that being nearly dead doesn't exactly inspire confidence, even though the doctor was technically disproven by his statement of "you'll be dead in 6 months".

[rayiner]

Twitter’s cash flow has doubled: https://www.teslarati.com/elon-musk-x-doubled-ebitda-since-2...