I’m probably posting too early since I’m only 20 minutes in, but I think it’s likely the mess since the Elon takeover has been all about finances. Twitter was a poorly run company that ironically has Donald Trump to thank for their only 2 profitable years ever in 2018 & 2019. There are even rumors that they were on the verge of insolvenc…
I’m probably posting too early since I’m only 20 minutes in, but I think it’s likely the mess since the Elon takeover has been all about finances. Twitter was a poorly run company that ironically has Donald Trump to thank for their only 2 profitable years ever in 2018 & 2019. There are even rumors that they were on the verge of insolvency as early as 2016 prior to the Trump hysteria that buoyed it in a similar way to cable news orgs.
Not that insolvency was really something most people at Twitter seemed to think about. Based on tweets by former staffers...seems like they expected to be able to lose $200M every year forever (since becoming a public company they come out at -1.2B). This entitlement culture seems as if it was deeply entrenched.
This is not unique to Twitter, and a similar reckoning is in store for A LOT or SV companies that have lived for years even decades off VC investments. This is however probably the first such reckoning to be live tweeted. I actually think some of the crazy emails like “2PM 10th Floor” was more likely a process to identify leaks to the media, but obviously don’t know.
End of the day, I would never want to work for Elon Musk even though I respect some of the things he’s been able to accomplish. I also would have never wanted to work for Steve Jobs, who when all is said and done was probably a worse boss and person than Elon but has always managed to get a pass on awful behavior. At the end of the day, the whole ordeal seems like a very public reckoning between polar opposite extremes. I think Twitter was probably filled with a lot of overpaid people who wanted to believe they were saving the world and weren’t ever going to help make it into a sustainable company. I expect many didn’t even do that much (no idea how Twitter could have had almost 5K employees in the US).
Likewise Musk is (self-admittedly) on the spectrum, and expects employees to be as “hardcore” as he is which is just not realistic. Similar stories have come out of Space-X. I doubt many people singing Elon’s praises would tolerate working for him. I think Jesse is right that people embrace Musk more as the enemy of my enemy and it doesn’t need to go further than that.
It’s a shit show, but honestly given the state of Twitter over the last 6 years, could it really have gone any other way? Would someone other than Elon been able to come in and make a single change without facing a gauntlet of hysterical bullshit? I doubt it.
The end of free money, which had up until now incentivised growth at all costs in tech companies, is vital yet woefully under-appreciated context to this whole story
Yeah, I’m still waiting for a piece detailing exactly this. The perfect storm of free money and the mainstreaming of the smartphone created a climate in Silicon Valley where profitability & sustainability were an afterthought AT BEST. It enabled a LARP for people in the top 5% pay brackets that they were crusaders for good: working to “change the world” instead of for “profits”. It was always a lie, but it definitely made it an easier & more noble lie to tell themselves.
Now that the free money is gone for good, and the novelty of the smartphone has worn off, reality is going to crash in like the Kool Aid Man.
As I understand it: For over a decade, the culture of Silicon Valley investment has been to pour billions into unprofitable companies on the prediction that they will become profitable once they monopolize their market. Except now investors are realizing that strategy rarely works.
It appears to me that many people were investing in Twitter not for financial return. But for political capital. Because they realized it had undue power to influence public discourse. And a large portion of its staff were employed for those political reasons rather than technical.
I would say no, but most workplaces understand the ebb and flow. I worked IT in Finance years ago and during the good times it sounds as if it were very similar to SV firms like Twitter. After a bad year though? Those things were gone and that was just part of it. A lot of SV companies like Twitter skip straight to the excess and feel entitled to that regardless of actual performance. Based on the lamenting I’ve seen on Twitter it genuinely seems like many of the loudest voices felt entitled to all the perks money can buy while they lost millions of dollars of other people’s money (since they were a public company) year in year out.
PS I agree with the general sentiment - I’m not happy about people losing their jobs. That said, Silicon Valley is close to the bottom of places I am worried about unionizing. Excess is built into the culture right now. They are the least exploited, and if you pay attention what’s happened to SF because of how SV has been drowning in VC funds - the entire industry has hurt actual working class people in SF way more than they have benefitted them. It’s a tough issue, but this reckoning with reality has been long overdue.
They are definitely overcompensated, but outside of pay here (were?) a few:
*Beer in Tap (in office)
*Paid meals every day
*Stocked kitchen - free snacks, drinks, etc
*Paid Happy Hours
*Paid commuting passes
*Paid parking (in SF)
Do I object to these? Not really, but seems a little excessive for a company that was never actually making any money doesn’t it? I guess I would not feel like I was in a position to complain publicly that any of these were taken away while working for a company that is in a bad financial situation.
I’m probably posting too early since I’m only 20 minutes in, but I think it’s likely the mess since the Elon takeover has been all about finances. Twitter was a poorly run company that ironically has Donald Trump to thank for their only 2 profitable years ever in 2018 & 2019. There are even rumors that they were on the verge of insolvency as early as 2016 prior to the Trump hysteria that buoyed it in a similar way to cable news orgs.
Not that insolvency was really something most people at Twitter seemed to think about. Based on tweets by former staffers...seems like they expected to be able to lose $200M every year forever (since becoming a public company they come out at -1.2B). This entitlement culture seems as if it was deeply entrenched.
This is not unique to Twitter, and a similar reckoning is in store for A LOT or SV companies that have lived for years even decades off VC investments. This is however probably the first such reckoning to be live tweeted. I actually think some of the crazy emails like “2PM 10th Floor” was more likely a process to identify leaks to the media, but obviously don’t know.
End of the day, I would never want to work for Elon Musk even though I respect some of the things he’s been able to accomplish. I also would have never wanted to work for Steve Jobs, who when all is said and done was probably a worse boss and person than Elon but has always managed to get a pass on awful behavior. At the end of the day, the whole ordeal seems like a very public reckoning between polar opposite extremes. I think Twitter was probably filled with a lot of overpaid people who wanted to believe they were saving the world and weren’t ever going to help make it into a sustainable company. I expect many didn’t even do that much (no idea how Twitter could have had almost 5K employees in the US).
Likewise Musk is (self-admittedly) on the spectrum, and expects employees to be as “hardcore” as he is which is just not realistic. Similar stories have come out of Space-X. I doubt many people singing Elon’s praises would tolerate working for him. I think Jesse is right that people embrace Musk more as the enemy of my enemy and it doesn’t need to go further than that.
It’s a shit show, but honestly given the state of Twitter over the last 6 years, could it really have gone any other way? Would someone other than Elon been able to come in and make a single change without facing a gauntlet of hysterical bullshit? I doubt it.
The end of free money, which had up until now incentivised growth at all costs in tech companies, is vital yet woefully under-appreciated context to this whole story
Yeah, I’m still waiting for a piece detailing exactly this. The perfect storm of free money and the mainstreaming of the smartphone created a climate in Silicon Valley where profitability & sustainability were an afterthought AT BEST. It enabled a LARP for people in the top 5% pay brackets that they were crusaders for good: working to “change the world” instead of for “profits”. It was always a lie, but it definitely made it an easier & more noble lie to tell themselves.
Now that the free money is gone for good, and the novelty of the smartphone has worn off, reality is going to crash in like the Kool Aid Man.
Some good descriptions in here of the basic economic problems the tech corporate model is starting to face
(author is bearish twitter for subjective reasons I don't necessarily agree with)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-11-15/the-easy-money-era-is-over-and-the-crypto-bubble-with-it
good points here.
As I understand it: For over a decade, the culture of Silicon Valley investment has been to pour billions into unprofitable companies on the prediction that they will become profitable once they monopolize their market. Except now investors are realizing that strategy rarely works.
It appears to me that many people were investing in Twitter not for financial return. But for political capital. Because they realized it had undue power to influence public discourse. And a large portion of its staff were employed for those political reasons rather than technical.
I would say no, but most workplaces understand the ebb and flow. I worked IT in Finance years ago and during the good times it sounds as if it were very similar to SV firms like Twitter. After a bad year though? Those things were gone and that was just part of it. A lot of SV companies like Twitter skip straight to the excess and feel entitled to that regardless of actual performance. Based on the lamenting I’ve seen on Twitter it genuinely seems like many of the loudest voices felt entitled to all the perks money can buy while they lost millions of dollars of other people’s money (since they were a public company) year in year out.
PS I agree with the general sentiment - I’m not happy about people losing their jobs. That said, Silicon Valley is close to the bottom of places I am worried about unionizing. Excess is built into the culture right now. They are the least exploited, and if you pay attention what’s happened to SF because of how SV has been drowning in VC funds - the entire industry has hurt actual working class people in SF way more than they have benefitted them. It’s a tough issue, but this reckoning with reality has been long overdue.
They are definitely overcompensated, but outside of pay here (were?) a few:
*Beer in Tap (in office)
*Paid meals every day
*Stocked kitchen - free snacks, drinks, etc
*Paid Happy Hours
*Paid commuting passes
*Paid parking (in SF)
Do I object to these? Not really, but seems a little excessive for a company that was never actually making any money doesn’t it? I guess I would not feel like I was in a position to complain publicly that any of these were taken away while working for a company that is in a bad financial situation.