This begs the question:
If there is a major exodus, will it even matter? And, if it does, how will the problems manifest? Reduced reliability? Slower feature velocity? Less innovation?
Twitter spends more on R&D as a percentage of sales than 5 other large tech companies, even Facebook, and moreover, the percentage is increasing. Where is this "innovation"?
It's not a new platform. Its market is, arguably, saturated; I don't see a "next billion users" (as they say at Google) coming from anywhere.
So the answer to "If there is a major exodus, will it even matter?" is pretty clear: No, as long as it's not the operations people.
secondly, you are incorrect about it being "young."
It was founded March 21, 2006, making it 16 years old. For a web company, that's an eternity.
Can you find some companies you think are comparable?
RingCentral - 23 years old - R&D Expenses increasing for the last 3 or 4 years https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/RNG/income-statement
Anyway: Palantir is developing lots of new products, being in the security area, I imagine, while I don't know what RingCentral is doing.
In any case, getting aggregate info or industry info, seems inordinately difficult without having a paywall in the way. That's why I went straight to SEC filings, which are public. And that brings me to:
* So you found a couple other big spenders and you want to single out those as your comparables. I'll be more impressed when you define a class of tech companies that you think are comparable. We can argue about whether they are, but in any case: where does TWTR rank in that class?
And then the subjective question: what have they delivered to shareholders for all that spending?
You can buy that, or reject it. I won't try too hard to persuade.
Our whole system of financial reporting is based on trying to make things comparable, and CFOs are very well versed in the current doctrines and IRS rulings on R&D. But we'd be headed into the weeds if we went any further.
A list of "comparables" for Twitter might be hard to compile. If you take a really new company, of course they have to invest in R&D, a lot. Twitter really isn't coming out with radically new products, AFAICT.
My guess is Elon is restructuring the company so it's not beholden to advertisers. He knows that Twitter is going to always be inherently controversial and he wants to structure their revenue so they aren't always having to react to every new controversy. All the social media giants seem to be very reactionary to any controversy, and I think that's because any time a new controversy comes up they are scrambling to make sure they don't loose their advertisers. If your revenue is coming from the users who know what they are signing up for, you can weather those controversies much better without having to take any reactionary measures.
Based on a few articles I've read, it appears he may be bringing developers from Tesla into Twitter but I have not seen anything from him directly stating that. I doubt they will hit the ground running but with time can probably dig into the code and processes.
Sadly I've been in an industry that was focused on taking over after entire IT/engineering/development teams were let go. As rough as it is for the people let go, it is equally demoralizing to pick up the pieces from people either being let go or that were let go. It can be done accepting it will be rough around the edges at first. During the dot-com bust I was one of the people that had to sit with the soon to be let go team members and document their job and automate as much of it as I could. That's all I did for a couple of years.
To win money in a lawsuit you need to show damages.
As a shareholder, the damages would be drop in stock price.
Good luck convincing all 12 jurors that Tesla's stock price dropped because a few Tesla engineers did a code review of Twitter code.
Especially given that Tesla stock tends to go up, not down (recent beatings due to macro nonwithstanding).
Now let’s say that instead of a check, he gifts himself $100,000 of Tesla engineering time.
Two different calibre of engineers, doubt this will work out very well.
OP seems to assume anyone who works for Tesla must be inferior to anyone from Twitter.
Dubious.
I'll be explicit in my assumption. If it were actually possible to rank engineers in some measure of productivity/effectiveness, the median at Twitter would be more product/effective than the median at Tesla. This gap would widen if we are talking about productivity/effectiveness at tasks necessary for Twitter's business.
The median MIT student is of the same caliber as the median University of Miami student, and suggesting otherwise is snobbery.
I've also met lots of Big Ten students, and UT Austin / Duke / Utah / U. Washington /SUNY students. We can compare one to the other in terms of analyzing & fixing software and I'll take that bet anytime.
And he said "caliber" not "amount of experience."
If you're not, you'd probably stay for the severance package, and do absolutely no work in the meantime. No company or recruiter will be holding the fact you were fired against you if/when you're swept away in the layoffs.
If you genuinely like your job there and don't feel strongly about Musk either way, that's probably the toughest situation, and you should come to terms with the fact that even if you keep your job at Twitter it will likely feel like an entirely different workplace in a couple months.
If the layoffs are large all he need do is give 60 days notice to those being terminated.
*technically, notice. But companies can opt to pay 3 months pay in lieu of the notice, if they want to cut ties immediately.
(And yes, what you're suggesting is straight up fraud.)
I got a good laugh out of that. Twitter is easily the worst operating social platform I've used. Still, it will be interesting to observe if there is a slow and steady degradation of their software stack. Everything in the world degrades naturally and needs to be maintained to fight against entropy.
Elon himself once said: "The organizational problems of a company manifest themselves in the product". Knowing that it will be interesting to witness what "organizational problems" we can derive from the product as Elon takes over.
Slower feature velocity usually means higher reliability as changes to systems are usually what causes big systems to fail or enter degraded performance modes.
If Musk ramps up development and forces out more features faster, that'd lead to lower reliability most commonly.
Often coupled with a mindless executive team that has no idea that's the case, and eventually lays off the SMEs because they're "too expensive."
I think that is the goal of the announcements, it is always better for everyone if there are voluntary separations instead of layoff's and/or terminations.
0. http://www.yiyinglu.com/?portfolio=lifting-a-dreamer-aka-twi...
1. If it was, may an outgoing Twitter engineer please add it back as a last commit. I'll buy you a beer.
Imagine already being a bit nervous about your future and then seeing that one of the first priorities of the new CEO was to show up to the office and parade around the lobby with a porcelain sink in his arms?
If my job was approving the work of the guy who approves the work of the guy who writes emails for a living, then I'd be looking elsewhere.
I think that's who Musk is going to be targeting with the layoffs.
These people know who they are.
Further, these are great and rare times to learn about aspects of the business to which one has not hitherto been exposed, which in the long term is incredibly valuable practical education. When filling the breach, during mergers or downsizing, one finds many opportunities to wear multiple hats outside of what one’s traditional qualifications would warrant.
I can’t speak about Musk, obviously, but some people will leave because they feel Musk does not sufficiently “care about them”. Others will step forward into those vacancies potentially because they don’t need Musk to care about them, but recognize that Musk cares about the job being done, and they are in a position to get it done, and are willing to do it particularly if getting the job done represents some measure of reward (promotion, accelerated career, exposure, etc).
My own career advice would be that Musk “caring about you” is a ridiculous distraction in the short term, and that you should look at the professional skill development, education, and trial by fire opportunities with very lusty excitement. Truly, IME these are some of the most exciting times in a career if you can stand the heat and they produce very long lasting professional relationships and bonds that may pay dividends down the road.
Alternatively, a boring job with a CEO who pretends to care about you is an option too, but “wherever you go, there you are.” If one has issues with high blood pressure, anxiety or has a busy life outside of work, this may very well be a better option.