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Comment by cochne | Hacker News Reader

Well, it's mostly not Twitter betting blamed for layoffs, it's Musk. Twitter provided those jobs, not Musk. Musk is doing the layoffs, not Twitter. So someone not responsible in the least for the creation of those jobs is ending them.

That is not to say the layoffs were not needed or justified (I don't know) but the asymmetry exists because it's an asymmetric situation.

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Layoffs that improve economic productivity should be celebrated. The executives who do them should be congratulated. They are creating economic surplus by freeing up labor to add value elsewhere in the economy where it's needed more. So few people understand how much human prosperity would be stunted if people weren't allowed to be terminated when they were no longer productively adding value in a position.

it's important to distinguish short-run productivity and long-term sustainability. systems need slack. if you take away all the shoulders on all the highways you will get improvements in throughput and cost per trip. and any breakdown will be much worse because responders can't get through to clear it.

layoffs shouldn't be celebrated because they cause pain and they mean someone screwed up.

time will tell whether Musk is putting the business on a sustainable footing or killing a golden goose.

I'm assuming here that the layoffs are overall net good for the company. If the layoffs jeopardize long-term sustainability too much, then that assumption is violated.

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