The company also dropped 80% in value [1]. I don’t think Musk his value destruction at Twitter is that inspirational.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/02/business/elon-musk-twitter-x-...
And that's what buying it was really about.
The point I made is that firing 80% of the workforce was not showing other CEOs that that is such a value generating move (as the person above me implied).
I think there's also a pinch of "we've run out of ideas / high margin projects" or "we're tired of funding 'platform 2.0' projects that end up creating more problems than they solve".
But generally I agree with your assessment. Especially the Musk effect I think gets underplayed.
As one of the Andreis: they already had us all working for them a long time ago and with fertility rates as they are (and have been for three decades now) around here, there's hardly any new talent to choose from.
Also we got hit with job cuts all the same. For instance, my team is currently working half its usual hours per week. It's not enough to cover all my family's expenses, but I was actually anticipating a layoff, so I count my blessings.
So yeah, 80% sounds about right. :(
Since that time HBO Max was acquired into an org that was an order of magnitude larger. I was downsized out when they cut 20% or so off, but honestly they could have cut another 40% and been Just Fine if the architecture and infrastructure had been built properly.
The backend stuff was super stable. My team had ~3 on call incidents across 3 years.
The front end and catalog systems had more issues. The front end basically used an in house system that was the same idea as react native but originally built before react native, and it was never given enough engineering resources so it kind of hobbled along. The other issue is that we had to support a lot of different platforms, and some used the in house system, some used bespoke systems, and one used screens rendered on a server farm streamed to the underpowered set top boxes because those boxes were complete pieces of trash.
The backend stuff was all amazing though, best dev ops tooling I've seen so far in the industry. True CI/CD, teams deployed to prod multiple times a day w/o issue.
General greater economy malaise over tariffs
> 25% musk (getting rid of 80% of twitter showing every CEO that at least half the staff is sleeping)
That was just a signal to the rest of the capital class that the labor class had gotten too big for their britches and needed to be shown their place. Twitter and all other companies that followed his lead have devolved into toxic cultures due to fewer staff being burdened with more work and asked to "be scrappy" and "do more with less."
Section 174 allows businesses to deduct their domestic R&D expenses.
In 2017 Trump made businesses have to amortize these expenses over 5 years instead of deducting them, starting in 2022 (it is common for an administration to write laws that will only have a negative effect after they're gone). This move wrecked the R&D tax credit. Many US businesses stopped claiming R&D tax credits entirely as a result. Others had surprise tax bills.
Trump's second term work is now to undo the disaster he caused (S.O.P.). Congress has reversed the amortization rule and businesses can again deduct R&D expenses immediately.
This is a good thing rolling back a bad thing. The bad thing might have been responsible for layoffs a few years ago, but it will have only positive impact on 2025.
BBB reverses the changes for years 2025-2029 (what happens after that, who knows) and provides retroactive relief to small businesses under a certain income cap. Large businesses can accelerate amortization, but remain impacted for those years.
- collapse of Silicon Valley Bank
- section 173
I had an internship at a place like that and the first disabled woman of color to apply would have been practically guaranteed a job. Needless to say I didn't end up working there after the internship - if they're willing to break labor laws just to improve metrics then what's stopping them from trying to cheat their employees.
Also, establising a link between DEI, a vague group of very mild and mostly ineffectual incentives, and the rise of right wing ideology is really dumb. No one would care about DEI if it hadn't been made a major talking point by right wing propagandists. If DEI didn't exist it would be something else that would "turn young men to the right".
Don't fall for such basic propaganda. The war on these supposedly unfair hiring practices is being led by rich heirs that never did an honest day of work in their entire lives. Those disenfranchised young men buying the hate are made to turn against their own interests by the very same ones that fucked their opportunities in the first place.
That's a circular argument (post hoc ergo propter hoc/begging the question). It also sounds backwards.
This is how your argument sounds to me:
1. DEI is made into a major talking point by right wing propagandists
2. How do you tell if someone is a right wing propagandist? They make DEI a major talking point.
This is backwards! Politicians adjust their messaging for the most votes[1].
TBH, this whole talking-point mess was not completely made up. The politicians aren't creating talking points and then trying to convert people, they are adjusting their talking points to what matters to the voters.
If DEI didn't matter, and we weren't constantly under a barrage of "If you disagree you're a nazi", the Trump campaign would have found something else to make one of the major talking points.
===================================
[1] Well, the Trump does, anyway. The major difference I, as an outsider, saw between the two parties in the most recent presidential election was in the adjustment and delivery of messaging.
The Left's message was "This is what we stand for. You need to fall in line in order for us to win".
Trumps message was "This matters to you? Okay, then it matters to me too".
It's not hard to see that one of those are backwards.
1. DEI is made into a major talking point by right wing propagandists.
2. DEI suddenly becomes a core issues for right wing voters.
Conservative politicians didn't adjust their messaging to address what matters to the voters, they made up an issue to galvanize hate against minorities and turn it into political goodwill. It's like the Jews under nazi Germany (but far, far less extreme). DEI/Jews aren't actually making that much of a difference in society, they're just a convenient scapegoat to point to and command hate from the masses.
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&ge...
As for your note: yes, the democrats are severly lacking in the populism area. But don't mistake Trump's populism for any actual interest in voters' issues. After all, only a fool would think MAGA stands for equality and against discrimination.
Except for the 6 that just died, right before a local election [1].
[1] https://www.thetimes.com/world/europe/article/germany-afd-ca...
Luckily it gives us the most critical bit of info we could ask for, that Musk tweeted "!!"
In summary this article is shit.
Nobody knows how to actually hire competent staff because it's a constantly changing bar: if you give people leetcode, they start cramming leetcode; if you review their GitHub profile, they start spending disproportionate amounts of time on projects; if you give them take-homes, they spend 5x the recommended time; if you give them real-world problems in a timed interview, that's probably harder to game, but some candidates will send a completely different person along. On top of that, some people just interview really well but aren't good 9 to 5. At a big enough company, you've always got a list of people who you incorrectly hired and want to get rid of.
DEI is a minor barrier to doing that for some cohorts. It's not that you hired incompetent people in XYZ groups to bump up your diversity numbers, it's that you hired incompetent people in every group and now you're unable to get rid of some of the ones in XYZ.
Also, let's not forget that some people are just genuinely sexist and/or racist and/or whateverist, either consciously or unconsciously. What happens when those people aren't held back by HR as strongly?
C-level executives would flag certain job openings as only eligible for women or minorities. I clearly remember a meeting where our CTO declared that he had rejected an extremely qualified male candidate because "we have enough of those".
When some people complained they started hiding the details, but it was still obvious. There would be hiring rounds where the only candidates coming from HR were dozens of women for a specific role. After interviewing all of them and giving several second chances we couldn't find anyone qualified in that batch of candidates, so there was a very tense meeting where we were heavily pressured to just pick one.
You could tell a lot of the candidates involved in this process were catching on and/or being pandered to and they really didn't like it either.
I referred someone incredibly qualified for a Chief of Staff role at a company. Their resume was well beyond what the company could have hoped to find. The executive recruiting firm was over the moon with him. However, they basically told him that this company was looking for a 'more diverse background' and as a straight white guy, he wasn't it - but they were excited to take him around to other clients.
For a few years, the hiring process seemed broken overall, and in retrospect, it didn't do much to actually help the people it claimed to.
I'm all about strength from diversity, but you can't throw away everything to get there.
Depending on what industry you are in, absolutely. I can offer one anecdote that I can personally attest actually occurred. (though I was not the protagonist).
There was an opening for a new, salaried, full-time faculty member after the unfortunate death of the previous position holder. During the hiring discussion at a staff meeting at this (private) NYC college the Dean stated, "we aren't hiring or promoting any more straight white men". They said this openly, and without shame, in front of a room full of people including a well-credentialed adjunct (who happened to be a straight, white man) who had worked there for several years, without an annual contract or any of the accompanying benefits. And, in fact, they ended up hiring a completely unqualified black, LGBTQ woman for that position. The woman was so unqualified and out of her depth that she stopped showing up entirely just a month into the semester. The passed-over adjunct tried to file an EEOC complaint but was told (rightly or wrongly) that since he wasn't part of a protected class he didn't qualify. For the next several years, of the ~10 people that were hired or promoted at this NYC college, none were straight white men.
They never did DEI as for me as a gay man anyway, only for women & PoC.