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I don’t think the point is that the layoffs themselves are “not nice”—I think most people are in agreement that Twitter was not particularly well-run. But there’s a difference between e.g. the layoffs we saw at Stripe yesterday and what’s happening at Twitter today.

The Stripe layoffs came with a clear message from the top brass, solid severance and benefits continuation options, etc., while Twitter staff have received no communication from new management (until the unsigned and rather robotic letter last night), arbitrarily implemented deadlines that require extreme hours, and what appear to me at least to be attempts by Twitter to construct cause in order to weasel out of severance and notification requirements.

Nobody is owed a job, layoffs are sometimes necessary, and Musk bought the company and can do whatever he wants within the bounds of the law, sure. But I think we’re all better off when we treat each other with respect, and that doesn’t seem to be happening here.

Even if we assume the changes are for good and will "fix" the company, asking people to work nights and week-ends while conducting mass layoffs in less than a week is a "treat employees nicely" issue.

Actually, I think we're more on the level of "threat employees with basic decency".

We don't actually know the situation. If he wants people to work 84 hour work weeks regularly - yeah that's a problem. I looked at it charitably. Twitter is in such bad shape the only choice is to burn out engineers in order to fix it. This points to terrible product management, which points to terrible engineering leadership, which points to a terrible C-suite. It sucks, but once you pass the point of no return you can't hire more people (they take months to ramp up), and you're gutting the low performers (they will slow you down), so unfortunately the work has to be foisted onto the rest. It's not a fun time, it will cause more people to quit, but it's also the only solution to fix a trainwreck if you notice the speeding freight train too late.

Being this hostile though will end up chasing out the high performers too, since if they’re good they can relocate easily.

To be clear, that's not the only choice, it's the path of least resistance and framed as the only choice.

The other choices are just more work.

> If he wants people to work 84 hour work weeks regularly - yeah that's a problem.

No. The fact that it even crosses his mind as an acceptable demand at any time is a problem. No one, under any circumstance, should ever be asked to work that much in a week. It should be a criminal offense for an executive to even allow employees to work that much.

> Twitter is in such bad shape the only choice is to burn out engineers in order to fix it.

Nope. Even if it would otherwise go bankrupt that choice shouldn't legally be available.

Dang dunno why I got downvoted. Guess people are upset at reality.

> Elon's premise from day 0 was that Twitter was mismanaged -- bloated, misguided, bad as a business and broken as product.

And then he bought misguided broken product for 4 time the price and took deep debt for it.

And through a set of misguided decisions initially he caused advertisers to depart Twitter and revenue collapse.

I imagine the last man is dying 500 years from now and thinking "... now we just could have gotten to Mars if Elon Musk hadn't posted that tweet"

Selling advertising is all about the emotions of the buyer: you'd better believe that half the price of ads on the radio has to do with how the business owner feels when they hear their name on the radio and that the first, second and third tactic of the person who sells ads for your local newspaper is "I know this tiny ad in our paper costs about as much as an employee and it might not seem to pay for itself, but if you stop advertising your customers will think you went out of business."

> I imagine the last man is dying 500 years from now and thinking

Women inherit the earth.

or cats

> If an employee's layoff is inevitable, it is much nicer for that is be part of a mass layoff like this,

you mean an illegal one?

I suggest you try it.

Look the issue is this, Musk is creating a climate where it is expected that people effectively sleep at the office. Do you have a family? well you don't anymore.

and through all of this pain, shit stirring and general "disruption", there is no strategic leadership, or clear headed product leadership. Unless you count "pay to spam/harass" & scaring away your advertising partners as a product strategy.

Layoffs are not a strategy, they are a side effect.

Mixing a lot of issues:

* Not treating employees "nicely" (original comment above)

* Legality of layoffs (should be straightforward to determine)

* Environment where people are asked to work unreasonably-long hours --> Irrelevant to layoffs.

I would argue there is very clear leadership happening: Musk made the unambiguous (and by definition, clear) determination that Twitter's staff is bloated by 50%. Cut the fat, take the short-term hit in ads and usage, rebuild it stronger. Whether I agree with how he determined the "fat" isn't important.

While the idea that Twitter was mismanaged is certainly part of his motivation, it doesn’t explain Musk’s behavior at Tesla or “SlaveX”. In fact, flipping the table over the first week belies more than a little arrogance and little motivation to understand what he bought. (There’s reports that he wants to cut half of infrastructure costs. Fail whale anyone?)

He’s a billionaire that treats employees like shit.

That's not obviously unreasonable to me. "Half" is a suspiciously round number, but coming out of an era of very easy money, it'd surprise me if any large company doesn't have some double digit percentage of infra spending that's not really necessary.

> flipping the table over the first week belies more than a little arrogance and little motivation to understand what he bought

Typically you want to make major changes as soon as possible after a transition of power. It sets a new baseline to work from and avoids an overhang of fear that more drastic changes may be coming. You change regime and set a calm new normal.

It's also crucial to not then continue making drastic changes. Tbd on that.

I say that both for the weekend work crunch and the layoffs. The long hours and removal of benefits should be harsher on day one than going forward. You want to set the tone upfront and shake out people who aren't willing to go along, but you don't want to make unsustainable practices a constant. And you especially do not want the overhang of fear of additional layoffs coming.

So important to make harsh decisions day one and then back off a bit going forward.

We already know what's happening at his other companies. You're very optimistic if you think this isn't a continuation of that.