Elon Musk keeps laying off Twitter employees after saying cuts were done | Hacker News Reader

Elon Musk keeps laying off Twitter employees after saying cuts were done

theverge.com

14 pointsmfiguiere4 comments

The layoffs are honestly less shocking than the demand that engineers "make twitter ad targeting work like Google's.... in a week."

The targeted ad thing is especially egregious. It goes to Elon's childishly blaming predecessors. Twitter, rightly or wrongly, was never a targeted ad platform. So of course targeted ads don't work on Twitter, especially compared with Facebook and Google who have refined the ability to target ads for decades now. He fired thousands of employees and did not hire replacements with ad infrastructure experience. Elon believes he can will a targeted ad system into existence with a tiny fraction of his competitors' resources.

Elon spent tens of billions of his own money that's now gone for good as Twitter's value is likely below that of the LBO debt. In addition to not understanding ads, it appears he does not understand LBOs. That makes him cranky. He is taking it out on his employees, suppliers, and landlords.

The real story about ads is buried in the subhead -- likely because Verge thought they could get more clicks about "constant layoffs," which is sort of disingenuous -- Musk said "no more layoffs are PLANNED" back in Nov, which is typical corporate-speak CEOs use to cover their butts when more small layoffs occur in the future. The layoffs since the massive one in Nov have been smaller and targeted -- 40 in data science, 15 in sales, etc.

The data in the first paragraph is also misleading:

> On November 21st, Elon Musk gathered Twitter’s remaining employees at its San Francisco headquarters to tell them that, after forcing out roughly two-thirds of the workforce in a matter of weeks, layoffs were over. He keeps laying people off anyway.

Musk "forced out" half of the workforce, not two-thirds. The other swath of employees that brought the final number of departed employees to two-thirds CHOSE to leave. It's little liberties with language that journalists use like this that erode trust in readers. This doesn't detract from the main story that Musk has made Twitter an inhospitable place to work, laid off thousands, destroyed the ad business, etc., but why have sloppy reporting on the details when the facts speak for themselves?

I think “forced out” is the appropriate wording for what would qualify as constructive dismissal in many jurisdictions.

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