Slashdot Mirror
Twitter To Begin Layoffs (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Just a few days ago, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey returned to the company and took over the role of CEO. Now, the NY Times reports that the company will be facing layoffs as he cuts the company's costs. Twitter somehow manages to employ over 4,100 people across 35+ offices, so many investors are thrilled with the news. "Twitter's spending has been rising. In the last quarter for which Twitter reported financial results, costs and expenses totaled $633 million, up 37 percent from a year earlier. The layoffs will most likely affect multiple areas of the company, including the engineering and media teams, according to the people with knowledge of the plans." The company is also dropping plans to build a 100,000 square-foot expansion to its headquarters.
There are plenty of things to do in the company. For one thing, they have to have a bunch of people trying to convince advertisers to buy space. I assume that's the main reason to have a bunch of scattered offices; they have to have the people selling the ads where the buyers are. They also have a bunch of developers working on new features, like their new "moments" thingy, and presumably on better ways of targeting their ads. Finally, they have to have customer service and support people to do things like responding to abuse complaints.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
In the latest quarterly report they reported about $500 million in revenues and about $630 million in cost (including administrative and R&D) for a total loss of $130 million.
Pretty incredible raking in half a billion on online advertisement and still make a loss.
In american companies its routinely accepted that they maintain 15% growth each quarter to be seen as profitable in the eyes of investors. traditional managers will try to maximize this by the product offered, but rarely does a product outside of things like fast-casual food or illegal narcotics offer anything close to this revenue trend. So, what do we do? infrastructure has to be repaired and replaced, and talented engineers in the most expensive city in america aren't cheap. eventually you reach a revenue plateau and have to resort to book-cookery to make the company meet the unspoken 15%. You cant cut project managers, mid management, or upper management because theyre implicit in maintaining the revenue illusion. So, you cut engineering, support, NOC, network and any other skilled craft because they get paid in non-trivial sums.
once this trend starts its hard to buck. uptime suffers, features are placed ahead of security and bugs, and what once was a well oiled machine now becomes, er, a slashdot of sorts. layoffs continue until morale improves, or more likely you find a buyer. After that your once proud brand just becomes another cog in the internet of things.
and for those wondering why you have layoffs in america instead of terminations? its because fired employees are entitled to unemployment compensation and laid off employees arent. Sure, they may never be rehired at that job, but the simple fact is companies do it to skirt a myriad of prtotections americans fought for in the early and mid 20th century.
Good people go to bed earlier.