Unless I’m missing something, the only sources for this article are a mix of speculation and anonymous sources who can’t even agree with each other about the layoff.
There's actually quite an involved skill to reading and fully understanding this kind of writing - and it's infuriatingly difficult to pick up that skill (I've been developing it by spending time talking to professional journalists, but I'm still not there yet).
When you read "another person familiar with the deal who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters", you need to translate it to something more like the following:
The journalist who wrote this has found a credible source, who has insider knowledge.
That source has requested anonymity, and the journalist finds that request credible.
The journalist then used their skills and experience in writing about this area over the course of their career to evaluate if that source was trustworthy. They also considered if the source had their own motivations which could affect what information they chose to share and why.
The journalist may have then cross-checked that information against other sources of information to help evaluate its credibility. This becomes more important the more high stakes the claim in question becomes.
An editor (and potentially even separate fact checkers) evaluated the statement as well, and applied judgement as to whether it held up firmly enough to be published.
There are so many phrases like this in top-tier journalism. When an experienced journalist reads an article from someone else that says "a senior official in the administration said..." they can often narrow that down to just a dozen or so potential people, based on their knowledge of that beat.
As a non-journalist reading newspapers this is pretty infuriating, because there's this whole language that you need to know about in order to fully understand what's being communicated here.
Click bait headlines, stories with weak fact checking or even printing outright lies has decreased (at least my) trust in news articles and has resulted in me questioning facts and anonymous quotes more frequently(which may be a good thing).
Examples are the New York Times writing a hit piece against Tesla, where it turned out they had driven the car in circles in a parking lot for hours to get the battery to run out, but didn't think that Tesla might be able to get data on what they did. Turns out the author of the article works for the oil industry. The NYT also regularly publishes as fact things told to them by the Pentagon and three letter agencies, rather than calling the information alleged.
My perception of recent news tends is that sources that were in the accurate/quality tier are shifting to the fast/anonymous tier. In the short term their reputation plus speed and sensationalism will make them seem like the best of both worlds. In the long run people will just recalibrate their opinions of previously esteemed sources.
The Washington Post and the New Yorker have higher editorial standards than Fox News.
There are important stories for which it simply isn't possible to get an expert to go on the record, for all kinds of reasons.
What's going on inside Twitter right now is a great example. Anyone who leaks details with their name attached to them will clearly get fired, or sued, or both.
That's why good journalists quote anonymous sources. If they could get a reputable source to go on record instead they would obviously do so!
Edit: forgot to mention the deli!
WaPo isn't the best of new reporting agencies [0], but it's certainly not the worst. They do have standards and they don't make up the large majority of their data. Meaning, they have actually talked to someone that is 'familiar' with the 'deal' at some point 'last week.' It's not pure speculation on WaPo's part, though it maybe pure-unrefined-grade-A speculation on the contact's part.
If I had to bet, and many HNers out there are currently in that seat, then I'd bet on their reporting over other forms of pure speculation.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Post#Criticism_...
News agencies are organizations made of humans that have flaws and we should always treat with a critical eye. But we shouldn't just dismiss one out of hand as not one of the best because of the existence of a "Criticism and controversies" section on Wikipedia especially when it is FAR tamer than many mainstream competitors.
- four people familiar with the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity
- numerous employees contacted by The Post, who spoke on the condition of anonymity
- tweets from some of the people involved
- photos obtained by The Washington Post
- A document filed with financial regulators Monday
- interviews and documents obtained by The Post
- court records
Numerous employees - how much insight does a web developer at Twitter have into the inner workings of the management shift happening right now?
Photos of what? The conference room? Are we going to pull in a body language expert to analyze what Elon was saying by walking into the room with sneakers instead of dress shoes?
There is no accountability for sources in journalism, and it's why I think it's 99% useless garbage and never read it. Journalists and publications find the sources they want to tell the story they already planned to write regardless of reality.
They were told that these were performance based terminations, despite not receiving any negative evaluations during their time at Twitter. They were also told they needed to sign NDAs in order to receive any severance.
Can't confirm the %.
It's probably worth it to find a labor attorney.
If the employee doesn’t like the terms, they’ll just get the statutory minimum.
It’s pretty rare anyone takes that option though!
In most cases, an employer will want at least something in return for providing severance pay.
But NDA is another reason, or even keeping unemployment insurance premiums low by having everyone that accepts severance state that they are voluntarily leaving the company in exchange for the severance.
By voluntarily separating, they cannot collect unemployment benefits from the state, which means the state charged the employer less in unemployment insurance premiums.
These kinds of things are not always about the strict minimum cost actions. In general, it is a better world with some degree of human consideration being part of things.
I am quite sure many of the cases I had involvement in could have been done cheaper. However, I am also quite sure the people involved had what they need to get through to their next gig with few worries too.
That is worth a lot and these days one can never know who may be working for or with who.
But I suspect it’s mainly as a carrot to sign the NDA/non-compete/whatever else they want you to sign to keep not talk about what happened.
I hope you start a company and are in a position to give severance to fired employees and not make them sign non-competes.
Tweeps are being told these are performance-related terminations, not layoffs. It was posited that "performance" was referring to Twitter, not the employee. I simply pointed out that's exactly what a layoff was, and performance in this context can only mean the employee, not the company.
Lots of coasters in big companies can get with good rating just be being on the good side of manager/peers and even get Bonus points if you are vocal about DEI and activism.
No, this is pissing on people and claiming it's raining.
There are people who build multiple successful companies and then there are who prioritize well-being and pick some weird hill to die on.
He's a really good marketer, a good businessman but I do not think he knows what he is doing when he requests access to the codebase behind a massively distributed and scalable system such as Twitters backend
People like Walter Isaacson have a better opinion about him
https://www.washingtonpost.com/search/?query=twitter+elon&fa...
Did a quick search of Elon + Twitter. Everything they reported seems factual and tied to things that actually happened? If Twitter does lay off a large amount of people will you admit that Washington Post probably had good sources or continue to be continually skeptical?
I think part of wanting a good media atmosphere is rewarding news sources that are shown to be reliable - and I would argue Washington Post is close to that.
This is basically what news is. The media "exploits" (reports on) current events, gets traffic and then pays its employees
How did people communicate before the invention of Twitter and employer provided email and slack channels?