This was an interesting article until it started praising musk for slashing half of twitter - I don’t think the HR and legal departments were doing fake work, and the current lack of stability seems to indicate that a good portion of those people layed off where actually important.
The fact that Twitter had to ask some of the people it laid off to come back shortly after having fired them says it all about how incompetent and self-defeating those layoffs were.
If they asked most of the fired people to come back you would have a point, but they just asked a small fraction of the fired people to come back. That doesn't seem unreasonable, you will make errors and it is good to admit when you made an error.
Would you think the whole ordeal was done better if they just refused to admit that any of the firings were in error? Nobody makes no mistakes when firing. There are many issues with the Twitter firings, but asking some of them to come back isn't a negative sign at all.
The truth about the Twitter layoffs is that the company is not even remotely profitable and likely never will be, so it doesn't really matter that much as long as the company barely continues to operate. You can certainly barely operate a web services company with a barebones crew: we all do it every year during the holidays! But long term growth? Yeah, good luck with that.
Twitter is now just nice yacht for a billionaire. The acquisition was no different than Ron Watkins buying 8chan.
Staff reductions for changes in priorities/direction is normally fine, I think the problem Musk's Twitter had is they cut far too fast, far too quick, with seemingly a balance sheet at the forefront.
It is the whole "Learn WHY things are how they are, before you suggest changing them" which all new engineers need to learn, also seemingly applies to restructuring. If they had waited a couple of months, they could have made strategically smart changes, and over the long term it likely won't cost them more.
Really? Since the sale I’ve seen lots more bugs (e.g. replies failing to load, like button not working, images not loading, menus not working, Tweets not loading, etc.)
What differences have you noticed? The main one I see is that there are more blue check marks but now I have kind of trained myself to ignore those more and just pay attention if it’s gray/gold or an official org page.
Musk stressed the hell out of twitter. His technique and demeanor were total trash. They probably fired the wrong people in many situations. But he did prove that they were overhired by 50% or more.
This is and has always been nonsense. FAANGs (and more) all compete against each other and if they do not derive significant value from these hires, it doesn't make any strategic sense to bloat your headcount just to prevent your rivals from also bloating their own headcounts.
In case someone goes "but what about the startups" - it doesn't make sense for any individual large tech company to hire people just to prevent them from starting startups or being hired at startups, given that most startups don't compete with them and often help create moat for their own business, not to mention that their own hiring (as opposed to big tech hiring as a whole) has a negligible effect on the talent pool as a whole.
It feels like an open secret, but that's still not evidence. I was expecting something like leaked emails from execs explicitly talking about it or something.
I kinda doubt Google is having anyone do actual known-useless-to-all work just so they don't work at a competitor, but I think it's probably very possible that preventing someone form working at a competitor is _part_ of the value-add Google sees in hiring someone, which means they don't need to see quite as much clear value in what they'll be working on at Google.
Sure, Rabois will Rabois. My comment was aimed at the editorialized headline, which treats his provocative comment as fact and serves as clickbait for the article.
In my experience, companies don’t need to go out of their way to create bullshit work or keep around useless people. They’ll do that incidentally anyway.
"Fake work" is a pretty funny accusation from guy whose company (Opendoor) is 97% down from all time high and dangerously close to getting delisted from NASDAQ.
This happened to someone I bumped into on a Meetup group last year. She'd been hired by Google for a research project. She said she hadn't done anything useful for a year and was just there to put it on her CV and was suicidally bored. I bet she got laid off recently.
Anyway it's not like it doesn't happen anywhere else. On two separate contracts I completed the work embarrassingly early and was paid to finish the contract and look busy so I didn't show the managers up or the staff on the team I was working on. We're talking really basic shit here like being hired to make a single web form that writes a row into a SQL table.
This article is a word salad. The headline is not supported by evidence and looks like a causal fallacy.
The outcome can be explained by the archetype of too much money, large company politics, leadership that lacks understanding of the problem space, the Peter principle and the innovator's dilemma.
Pfft, these guys are amateurs, I work in government contracting and we’ve been doing this for years!
Note that I think my job is at least somewhat important, I write code so at least I produce something. But there’s dozens of not hundreds of people whose jobs consist entirely of meetings, signing paperwork, and taking multi-hour lunch breaks…
>Sundar Pichai previously said he takes "full responsibility" for the decisions which lead to mass layoffs, and has now been accused of hiring sprees for "vanity".
How does one take "full responsibility" for such decisions? Give yourself pat on a back? Pay raise to compensate for moral losses?
Readit News
Would you think the whole ordeal was done better if they just refused to admit that any of the firings were in error? Nobody makes no mistakes when firing. There are many issues with the Twitter firings, but asking some of them to come back isn't a negative sign at all.
Twitter is now just nice yacht for a billionaire. The acquisition was no different than Ron Watkins buying 8chan.
It is the whole "Learn WHY things are how they are, before you suggest changing them" which all new engineers need to learn, also seemingly applies to restructuring. If they had waited a couple of months, they could have made strategically smart changes, and over the long term it likely won't cost them more.
Deleted Comment
> Google overhired talent to do ‘fake work’ and stop them working for rivals, claims former PayPal boss Keith Rabois
The submitted title makes it look like a settled fact/conclusion, but there's no evidence provided AFAICT.
I thought this well known within the industry? Isn't this the point of the university to FAANG pipeline?
In case someone goes "but what about the startups" - it doesn't make sense for any individual large tech company to hire people just to prevent them from starting startups or being hired at startups, given that most startups don't compete with them and often help create moat for their own business, not to mention that their own hiring (as opposed to big tech hiring as a whole) has a negligible effect on the talent pool as a whole.
I kinda doubt Google is having anyone do actual known-useless-to-all work just so they don't work at a competitor, but I think it's probably very possible that preventing someone form working at a competitor is _part_ of the value-add Google sees in hiring someone, which means they don't need to see quite as much clear value in what they'll be working on at Google.
It doesn't make much sense to not fully utilize people once hired.
Wait, what do VCs like him do with their time? Or are those meetings somehow more legitimate?
Anyway it's not like it doesn't happen anywhere else. On two separate contracts I completed the work embarrassingly early and was paid to finish the contract and look busy so I didn't show the managers up or the staff on the team I was working on. We're talking really basic shit here like being hired to make a single web form that writes a row into a SQL table.
The outcome can be explained by the archetype of too much money, large company politics, leadership that lacks understanding of the problem space, the Peter principle and the innovator's dilemma.
Note that I think my job is at least somewhat important, I write code so at least I produce something. But there’s dozens of not hundreds of people whose jobs consist entirely of meetings, signing paperwork, and taking multi-hour lunch breaks…
How does one take "full responsibility" for such decisions? Give yourself pat on a back? Pay raise to compensate for moral losses?
In practice it's just a rhetoric figure