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Comment by mynameishere | Hacker News Reader

So, they have one product but multiple VPs of product? Sounds like some trimming was in order.

It's just a title, and titles are free. If you want to see a lot of VPs, go visit your friendly neighborhood bank. :-)

Outside of banks, a VP title usually means "company officer", and usually comes with perks and legal changes that do cost something.

Unless you visit a tech company outside of the financial business... or really a ton of other companies.

So, Twitter VPs aren't company officers?

Edit: Twitter's bylaws suggest that a VP is a company officer.

Twitter's bylaws (and those of the other companies) are ambiguous. They do not clearly say a VP = officer. They only use them in the sense that they mention them in the same sense.

Nope. I've been a VP without being an officer.

That's why I said usually. I did just check the bylaws for Alphabet/Google, Twitter, Amazon, and eBay. All have similar language showing vice presidents as officers. It's also been that way at the companies I've worked for, across several industries.

I know this may be naive, but what does the officer part entail or mean?

An officer has authority to sign contracts on behalf of the company.

It's very company dependent.

2 data points from other industries, based on LinkedIn:

1) Ogilvy & Mather: 7,289 employees, 188 with Vice President in the title.

2) Johnson & Johnson: 63,072 employees, 1,154 with Vice President in the title.

3) Microsoft: 129,445 employees, 2,514 with Vice President in the title.

I think Vice President doesn't mean as much as it used to. :-)

I am not sure what you are trying to say. The ratios seem quite well aligned. 1) One VP for every 39 employees 2) One VP for every 54 employees 3) One VP for every 51 employees

Yes - that this isn't an elite group of "Top 10 execs" at a company. That it's reasonable for Twitter to have several VPs of Product.

That has to do with signature authority...

Titles are not free. Titles convey job responsibilities and authority.

Honarary academic checking in - everything about my title is free.

What neighborhood do you work in?

Facebook has multiple VPs of product. So does Google. This is common...

Facebook and Google aren't financially struggling. There's something to be said for "too many chefs" when your main issue is doing something, anything to make some cash. Perhaps some downsizing was truly in order.

On the other hand, losing this many execs in this short of time almost never bodes well, which means their stock price is going to tumble even further without something drastic happening soon.

> Facebook and Google aren't financially struggling.

Because advertising on Facebook and Google pays off.

Twitter, afaik, has struggled to be a relevant ad platform.

Depends on what you mean by "relevant"... It took in nearly $550 million last quarter.

At $2B/year, I can only hope to be that irrelevant.

Now, if you want to talk about the $2.5B expense line....

$2.5B!! What are they blowing that kind of cash on?

It took them 6 weeks to change the star button into a heart, which nobody wanted because we don't "like" all the things we save for later. Twitter has been going in the wrong direction all year.

They changed "moments" to "explore" but thankfully changed it back.

Goes to show that their product leadership has no clue what they are doing

It is common when you have more than one product.

Twitter has more than one product.

Off the top of my head:

Twitter App- Web, IOS, Android, Other

Twitter API

Twitter Firehose

Twitter Advertising

Twitter Analytics

Don't forget Periscope...not sure how that fits into the company structure though, admittedly

Isn't periscope being shut down?

That's vine I guess.

I think that's Vine.

The public facing platform is just one of many products twitter offers. They also offer advertising that is probably considered its own product...

I'm sure Twitter has far more than one product.

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