Elon Musk Officially Purchases Twitter, Takes Company Private

[Elias Pettersson]

Twitter cuts 50% of its staff and the usage increases, breaking records...

 

 

[Elias Pettersson]

 

[24K PureCool]

29 minutes ago, Elias Pettersson said:

Twitter cuts 50% of its staff and the usage increases, breaking records...

 

 

 

28 minutes ago, Elias Pettersson said:

 

Yeah cause everyone is on there trying to be part of the fall.

You are not going to see the whole thing doing down in a day or two, the effect is going to take awhile with errors in the system arises and most likely increased cyber attacks bogging the system down.

 

The service level is going to go down exponentially until the back-end service become unusable. The number of engineers they have will not be resolve these tickets fast enough to keep up with the requests. Don't underestimate the amount of work and man power that goes in to maintain modern platforms as a wrong random sequence of text from a user can cause some errors in essential services that can take down production. Not to mention those still on payroll are locked out of their code base until Monday.

 

Craiglist is a very simple website from the .com era that barely have anything going on in the backend hence you don't need many people to maintain. Twitter is a different beast. Heck I won't be surprised that cragilist uses some stack from a third party vendor that does all these back end heavy lifting for them like many other websites.

 

All these tweets are clearly from people that are not in tech and have no idea how platform works these days. There is a reason SWE gets paid ridiculous amount of compensation. They have to do on-calls where they need to get up in the middle of the night to fix codes so you can have a seamless experience using these platforms.

Edited November 18, 2022 by 24K PureCool

[4petesake]

28 minutes ago, Elias Pettersson said:

Twitter cuts 50% of its staff and the usage increases, breaking records...

 

 

 

For such a smart guy Elon can sure be a dumbass.

 

Users scrambling to get information out to their followers about which other platforms they can be found if/when his platform collapses. Posting links to Mastodon, Telegram, Instagram, Facebook…and he’s bragging about traffic.

 

 

 

 

[Elias Pettersson]

7 minutes ago, 24K PureCool said:

 

Yeah cause everyone is on there trying to be part of the fall.

You are not going to see the whole thing doing down in a day or two, the effect is going to take awhile with errors in the system arises and most likely increased cyber attacks bogging the system down.

 

The service level is going to go down exponentially until the back-end service become unusable. The number of engineers they have will not be resolve these tickets fast enough to keep up with the requests. Don't underestimate the amount of work and man power that goes in to maintain modern platforms as a wrong random sequence of text from a user can cause some errors in essential services that can take down production. Not to mention those still on payroll are locked out of their code base until Monday.

 

Craiglist is a very simple website from the .com era that barely have anything going on in the backend hence you don't need many people to maintain. Twitter is a different beast. Heck I won't be surprised that cragilist uses some stack from a third party vendor that does all these back end heavy lifting for them like many other websites.

 

All these tweets are clearly from people that are not in tech and have no idea how platform works these days. There is a reason SWE gets paid ridiculous amount of compensation. They have to do on-calls where they need to get up in the middle of the night to fix codes so you can have a seamless experience using these platforms.

Apparently Twitter was doing just fine with only 1000 employees...

 

 

[Ghostsof1915]

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-63672307

 

Twitter has told employees that the company's office buildings will be temporarily closed, effective immediately.

In a message seen by the BBC, workers were told that the offices would reopen on Monday 21 November.

It did not give a reason for the move.

The announcement comes amid reports that large numbers of staff were quitting after new owner Elon Musk called on them to sign up for "long hours at high intensity" or leave.

The message went on to say: "Please continue to comply with company policy by refraining from discussing confidential company information on social media, with the press or elsewhere."

 

This week Mr Musk told Twitter staff that they had to commit to working long hours and would "need to be extremely hardcore" or leave the company, according to reports.

In an email to staff, the firm's new owner said workers should agree to the pledge if they wanted to stay, the Washington Post reported.

Those who did not sign up by Thursday 17 November would be given three months' severance pay, Mr Musk said.

Earlier this month the company said that it was cutting around 50% of its workforce.

Today's announcement that Twitter had temporarily closed its offices came amid signs that large numbers of workers have now also resigned as they have not accepted Mr Musk's new terms.

Employees have been tweeting using the hashtag #LoveWhereYouWorked and a saluting emoji to show they were leaving the firm.

 

One former Twitter worker who wished to remain anonymous told the BBC: "I think when the dust clears today, there's probably going to be less than 2,000 people left."

They added that everyone in their team had been terminated.

"The manager of that team, his manager was terminated. And then that manager's manager was terminated. The person above that was one of the execs terminated on the first day. So there's nobody left in that chain of command."

Despite the turmoil at the company, Mr Musk tweeted on Friday: "And... we just hit another all-time high in Twitter usage lol".

Satirist Frank Lesser replied: "'Rome has never been this brightly lit at night!' - Nero" - a reference to the Roman emperor who is reputed to have fiddled while Rome burnt.

Before Mr Musk took control of Twitter the company had around 7,500 staff. The firm was also reported to have employed thousands of contract workers, the majority of which are understood to have been laid off.

 

Another person said they had resigned even though they had been prepared to work long hours.

"I didn't want to work for someone who threatened us over email multiple times about only 'exceptional tweeps should work here' when I was already working 60-70 hours weekly," they said.

The world's richest person became Twitter's chief executive after buying the firm last month in a $44bn (£37bn) deal.

In response to a question about concerns that Twitter was on the brink of shutting down after the message about Twitter's offices being closed was sent Mr Musk tweeted: "The best people are staying, so I'm not super worried".

In separate posts he tweeted a skull and crossbones emoji and a meme showing a gravestone with the Twitter logo on it.

Edited November 18, 2022 by Ghostsof1915

[Playoff Beered]

After Elon Musk's ultimatum, Twitter employees start exiting

https://www.reuters.com/technology/after-elon-musks-ultimatum-twitter-employees-start-exiting-2022-11-18/

 

 

Quote

 

Nov 18 (Reuters) - Hundreds of Twitter Inc employees are estimated to have decided to quit the beleaguered social media company following a Thursday deadline from new owner Elon Musk that staffers sign up for "long hours at high intensity," or leave.

The departures highlight the reluctance of some of Twitter's 3,000 or so employees to remain at a company where Musk earlier fired half of the workforce including top management, and is ruthlessly changing the culture to emphasize long hours and an intense pace.

Musk took to Twitter late on Thursday and said that he was not worried about resignations as "the best people are staying."

The billionaire owner also added: "We just hit another all time high in Twitter usage...," without elaborating.

Musk met some top employees on Thursday to try to convince them to stay, said one current employee and a recently departed employee who is in touch with Twitter colleagues.

The company also notified employees that it will close its offices and cut badge access until Monday, according to two sources. Security officers began kicking some employees out of one office on Thursday evening, one source said.

Over 110 Twitter employees across at least four continents had announced their decision to leave in public Twitter posts reviewed by Reuters, though each resignation could not be independently verified. About 15 employees, many in ad sales, posted their intention to stay at the company.

A poll on the workplace app Blind, which verifies employees through their work email addresses and allows them to share information anonymously, had showed 42% of 180 respondents opting for "Taking exit option, I'm free!"

A quarter said they had chosen to stay "reluctantly," and only 7% of the poll participants said they "clicked yes to stay, I'm hardcore."

The exact number of employees intending to leave the company could not be immediately established.

Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.

PLATFORM STABILITY

The departures include many engineers responsible for fixing bugs and preventing service outages, raising questions about the stability of the platform amid the loss of employees.

On Thursday evening, the version of the Twitter app used by employees began slowing down, according to one source familiar with the matter, who estimated that the public version of Twitter was at risk of breaking during the night.

"If it does break, there is no one left to fix things in many areas," the person said, who declined to be named for fear of retribution.

Reports of Twitter outages rose sharply from less than 50 to about 350 reports on Thursday evening, according to website Downdetector, which tracks website and app outages.

In a private chat on Signal with about 50 Twitter staffers, nearly 40 said they had decided to leave, according to the former employee.

And in a private Slack group for Twitter's current and former employees, about 360 people joined a new channel titled "voluntary-layoff," said a person with knowledge of the Slack group.

A separate poll on Blind asked staffers to estimate what percentage of people would leave Twitter based on their perception. More than half of respondents estimated at least 50% of employees would leave.

Early on Wednesday, Musk had emailed Twitter employees, saying: "Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore".

The email asked staff to click "yes" if they wanted to stick around. Those who did not respond by 5 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday would be considered to have quit and given a severance package, the email said.

As the deadline approached, employees scrambled to figure out what to do.

One team within Twitter decided to take the leap together and leave the company, one employee who is leaving told Reuters.

Blue hearts and salute emojis flooded Twitter and its internal chatrooms on Thursday, the second time in two weeks as Twitter employees said their goodbyes.

Notable departures included Tess Rinearson, who was tasked with building a cryptocurrency team at Twitter. Rinearson tweeted the blue heart and salute emojis.

In an apparent jab at Musk's call for employees to be "hardcore," the Twitter profile bios of several departing engineers on Thursday described themselves as "softcore engineers" or "ex-hardcore engineers."

As the resignations rolled in, Musk cracked a joke on Twitter.

"How do you make a small fortune in social media?" he tweeted. "Start out with a large one."

 

 

 

 

[Playoff Beered]

 

[Playoff Beered]

3 hours ago, Elias Pettersson said:

Apparently Twitter was doing just fine with only 1000 employees...

 

 

 

[Playoff Beered]

[Playoff Beered]

[Playoff Beered]

Goodbye Twitter, Hello Mastodon...

 

[Boudrias]

6 hours ago, Elias Pettersson said:

Apparently Twitter was doing just fine with only 1000 employees...

 

 

Not being a Twitter user I find this all to be a bit of a joke. Yes the world's richest man is chastised for layoffs just before X-Mass. The fact that this is going on throughout the business world right now doesn't seem to register. Most tech companies are laying people off as their revenues plummet. Musk buys Twitter and pays far to much for it but the Twitter Board sees him as a 'white knight' and endorses the takeover almost immediately. Maybe because they couldn't make money? 

 

Meanwhile the world of crypto is imploding with fraud that dwarfs Enron and the world of social media hears crickets. FTX wasn't even keeping proper books! Thousands are losing their jobs in that industry (?). Are they better than Musk? $10's of billions missing. This is just getting started. But Musk, misdirected or not, who does employ 100,000's of people in his companies is a bad guy. Wow. 

 

How about we start another thread based on the crimes of FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried? Where did Sam hide his billions? How many jobs did he cost people? Was his company ever legitimate? Mush versus Bankman-Fried? Which person has benefited mankind the most? Questions to ponder.  

[JM_]

12 hours ago, RUPERTKBD said:

What reaction? I confess that I haven't been devoting a lot of time to it, so maybe you can show me some examples of people lighting their hair on fire....

 

I'm fine with being proven wrong...I just haven't seen what you have...

thats OK, we don't have to agree. 

[JM_]

1 hour ago, Boudrias said:

Not being a Twitter user I find this all to be a bit of a joke. Yes the world's richest man is chastised for layoffs just before X-Mass. The fact that this is going on throughout the business world right now doesn't seem to register. Most tech companies are laying people off as their revenues plummet. Musk buys Twitter and pays far to much for it but the Twitter Board sees him as a 'white knight' and endorses the takeover almost immediately. Maybe because they couldn't make money? 

 

Meanwhile the world of crypto is imploding with fraud that dwarfs Enron and the world of social media hears crickets. FTX wasn't even keeping proper books! Thousands are losing their jobs in that industry (?). Are they better than Musk? $10's of billions missing. This is just getting started. But Musk, misdirected or not, who does employ 100,000's of people in his companies is a bad guy. Wow. 

 

How about we start another thread based on the crimes of FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried? Where did Sam hide his billions? How many jobs did he cost people? Was his company ever legitimate? Mush versus Bankman-Fried? Which person has benefited mankind the most? Questions to ponder.  

the attention blinders are pretty funny, who does CNN e.g. tell me to hate today? I'm just so tired of the way the left media in the US handles things now. 

 

I am interested to see how Musk handles the employee exodus. Is there enough internal legacy in that companies systems to survive? we'll see. 

[bishopshodan]

1 hour ago, Boudrias said:

Not being a Twitter user I find this all to be a bit of a joke. Yes the world's richest man is chastised for layoffs just before X-Mass. The fact that this is going on throughout the business world right now doesn't seem to register. Most tech companies are laying people off as their revenues plummet. Musk buys Twitter and pays far to much for it but the Twitter Board sees him as a 'white knight' and endorses the takeover almost immediately. Maybe because they couldn't make money? 

 

Meanwhile the world of crypto is imploding with fraud that dwarfs Enron and the world of social media hears crickets. FTX wasn't even keeping proper books! Thousands are losing their jobs in that industry (?). Are they better than Musk? $10's of billions missing. This is just getting started. But Musk, misdirected or not, who does employ 100,000's of people in his companies is a bad guy. Wow. 

 

How about we start another thread based on the crimes of FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried? Where did Sam hide his billions? How many jobs did he cost people? Was his company ever legitimate? Mush versus Bankman-Fried? Which person has benefited mankind the most? Questions to ponder.  

I think @Warhippy floated this in one of the threads. That Elon might be the guy that benefits down the road of by the devaluation of crypto. I don't play with that 'currency' nor do I do the twittty but something about the fact that he is so much an influence in both these digital arenas makes me raise an eyebrow and wonder what his game really is. 

 

[DrJockitch]

3 minutes ago, JM_ said:

the attention blinders are pretty funny, who does CNN e.g. tell me to hate today? I'm just so tired of the way the left media in the US handles things now. 

 

I am interested to see how Musk handles the employee exodus. Is there enough internal legacy in that companies systems to survive? we'll see. 

Things have gotten so distorted that we think of CNN as leftist media. CNN sits in the middle, MSNBC, HuffPost, these are left biased outlets. 
‘Problem is the reasonable, middle of the road assessment of Trump was that he was an inappropriate person to be president that had major Autocratic leanings and did what autocrats do, ran against the media because he knows there is so much about him that is negative that will and has come out. He can’t defend his actions so he rallies against those uncovering his chronic scumbaggery. 

[Boudrias]

4 minutes ago, DrJockitch said:

Things have gotten so distorted that we think of CNN as leftist media. CNN sits in the middle, MSNBC, HuffPost, these are left biased outlets. 
‘Problem is the reasonable, middle of the road assessment of Trump was that he was an inappropriate person to be president that had major Autocratic leanings and did what autocrats do, ran against the media because he knows there is so much about him that is negative that will and has come out. He can’t defend his actions so he rallies against those uncovering his chronic scumbaggery. 

What is far more important is that the vast majority of the public do not trust media. That situation predated Trump. When the public does not trust what they are reading or hearing it undermines our society. Those on the left or right can take advantage. Media was supposed to be the unbiased medium that could expose excesses that inevitably happen. I suggest that if media was the pillar we expect then people like Trump never would have got traction in the first place. Many on the left also get away with preying on public ignorance of their actions. BLM is a classic as the principals pocketed millions of $. The excesses of a few cannot be the standard that the majority aspire too. 

 

Our society has descended from great aspiration to being 'influencers'. The idea that being an 'influencer' would have the highest hit rate in a poll versus the Chinese where being an astronaut was #1 is incredibly sad.  

[JM_]

8 minutes ago, DrJockitch said:

Things have gotten so distorted that we think of CNN as leftist media. CNN sits in the middle, MSNBC, HuffPost, these are left biased outlets. 
‘Problem is the reasonable, middle of the road assessment of Trump was that he was an inappropriate person to be president that had major Autocratic leanings and did what autocrats do, ran against the media because he knows there is so much about him that is negative that will and has come out. He can’t defend his actions so he rallies against those uncovering his chronic scumbaggery. 

what bothers me about CNN isn't that they lean left or centre-left, its the panic driven nature of a lot of their stories. Everything is a crisis. 

 

The other part of the left US media is they claim to dislike Trump, but he's their biggest money maker ever. Now that Trump is "back" as a candidate, the majority of lead stories will all be Trump 24/7. It sucks the oxygen out of so many important issues. But its easy. 

 

But I also don't care anymore about the US left. They really dropped the ball in the mid-terms. Roe/Dobbs was supposed to be such a big issue, but not even 1/2 of dem voters could be bothered to show up at the polls and handed power back to the GOP in the House.

 

Now I'm supposed to care about Elon and Trump and what AOC has to say about it, meanwhile most dem's didn't care enough to stop the GOP from being able to derail Bidens last two years. 

 

[DrJockitch]

Just now, JM_ said:

what bothers me about CNN isn't that they lean left or centre-left, its the panic driven nature of a lot of their stories. Everything is a crisis. 

 

The other part of the left US media is they claim to dislike Trump, but he's their biggest money maker ever. Now that Trump is "back" as a candidate, the majority of lead stories will all be Trump 24/7. It sucks the oxygen out of so many important issues. But its easy. 

 

But I also don't care anymore about the US left. They really dropped the ball in the mid-terms. Roe/Dobbs was supposed to be such a big issue, but not even 1/2 of dem voters could be bothered to show up at the polls and handed power back to the GOP in the House.

 

Now I'm supposed to care about Elon and Trump and what AOC has to say about it, meanwhile most dem's didn't care enough to stop the GOP from being able to derail Bidens last two years. 

 

That isn’t a left exclusive things. Right wing media describes immigration as invasion.  All Fox News and OAN do is fear monger. 
It is more I think the 24 hour news cycle and the constant need for ratings in an increasingly divided society.  Make you think that group B is trying to take away your life style…constant fear mongering and division.  Look at Tucker all he does is racism and fear mongering.