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(1) You can't assume losing half of staff is a downside. RTO is a great solution for bloated companies which overhired during the pandemic. (2) On the flip side, RTO is only a lever for large tech companies who pay great salaries. Startups' advantage is that they can compete for talent by offering remote work that large companies are not willing to offer due to their large real estate commitments. You may just be better off embracing remote work forever.


>You can't assume losing half of staff is a downside. RTO is a great solution for bloated companies which overhired during the pandemic.

The problem is that the less talented staff won't be the ones leaving; it'll be the ones with more options that leave, i.e. the more valuable staff.


> RTO is a great solution for bloated companies which overhired during the pandemic

Not really. A bloated company that overhired during the pandemic would presumably like to choose who they let go.


On the flip side, it's expensive to lay off people whereas people going on their own is cheap. When the CEO is looking at short term margins, which he seems to do in the article, it's all positive to cut by 2 your biggest expense for "free".

Challenges will arise in 6 months or even later, but maybe Arison doesn't really care. He's been CEO since barely 1 year and may leave the boat when he will boast massive profits before a downturn.


Obviously, but if we're talking about scales like 50%, it's probably more efficient to roll the dice.


> You can't assume losing half of staff is a downside. RTO is a great solution for bloated companies which overhired during the pandemic.

Grindr didn't have a bloated staff. It had less than 200 employees, half that sw engineers. Tech stack is modern, solid and has no legacy code in it. It wasn't stripped to the bone, but now the company lost any fat it had, lost all muscle, and some bones in the process too.

The salaries were not high, but people enjoyed working there because they were at the same time helping the LGBT+ community which majority of employees were a part of.


> You can't assume losing half of staff is a downside.

Said Elon Musk about Twitter. How's that working out for him?


Great.


"Elon Musk says Twitter’s ad revenue is down 50% and cash flow is negative" https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/15/business/twitter-cash-flow-el...


Ha, I thought this was positioning for the new lawsuit when I clicked the link, and then I saw the date.

It really isn't working out well, is it?


That has absolutely nothing to do with the number of staff. It is directly related to the ADL’s campaign of convincing advertisers to pull out. It appears there will be a lawsuit.

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/09/05/tech/elon-musk-adl-lawsui...


Just because Musk says something doesn’t make it true. In fact it usually means the opposite.


What about the ADL itself? Here’s their call to action against Facebook. Why wouldn’t they go after twitter… Oh wait they did barely one month after acquisition.

https://www.adl.org/resources/letter/open-letter-companies-a...

https://theweek.com/controversies/1018137/one-month-after-it...

https://forward.com/news/556095/adl-twitter-advertising-boyc...


Sorry, I should have been less brief. I don’t deny that the ADL has been campaigning against xitter, I just hold extreme doubt that they are the main reason xitter lost half of its ad revenue. I think that is more likely caused by other factors.


Do you have insider knowledge of the _other factors_ you _think_ is more likely the cause of revenue loss? Isn’t almost all of twitters revenue pre paid blue check, advertising? Where else are they generating income? Wasn’t twitter losing money before? Has twitter ever been profitable?

I’ve linked to proof of boycotts and the ADLs position in convincing advertisers to drop twitter due to the ADLs “research.”

You provide nothing other than you opinion or assumption presented as fact. I digress, you can believe whatever you want to.


You've proved that the ADL is calling for an advertising boycott, which is a 1st amendment protected right. You haven't proven anything in regards to the effectiveness of that action.

Here's some vetted research from reputable institutions unconnected to any boycotts showing a demonstrable increase in hate speech on twitter https://arxiv.org/pdf/2304.04129.pdf.

I don't have insider knowledge, but I would be perfectly willing to believe that advertisers find it untenable to risk advertising alongside hate-speech, or to be associated with a platform that has failed to signal that they won't tolerate hate speech, and as a result they have pulled their campaigns.

Whether that is because the ADL alerted them to the increase in hate speech, because it is their job to understand cultural phenomenon and trends, or because they have web browsers and eyes, I would not be able to tell.


> You've proved that the ADL is calling for an advertising boycott, which is a 1st amendment protected right.

The First Amendment is somewhat beside the point, since Elon is alleging that they are defaming him/Twitter. Defamatory speech is not protected by the First Amendment. So it's totally fine to call for a boycott — but totally actionable to call for a boycott using defamatory statements.

It will be difficult for Elon to prove defamation, since he is a public figure, of course.


It will be virtually impossible since none of the "defamatory" claims fall under matters of (legal) fact. In fact, unless Elon really wants to burn more money, I doubt he ever files an actual lawsuit and this is all bluster. Then again I'd probably lose my shirt betting agains Elon doing foolish things.


elmu could wake up tomorrow and allege space aliens were trying to break into his brain, and the same group of sycophants would take his word for it as is now

for everyone else, he is an entitled, inherited-wealth internet troll with a history of lying

you don't see him filing his lawsuit against the ADL like he said he would, do you?

how about him stepping down as CEO of twitter like he said he would?

he's just an attention whore.


How much wealth did he inherit from the emerald mine?

It takes more than a couple days to create the suit. We’ll see what happens. If you have any _facts_ that he’ll never sue I’m all ear. Probably just your assumptions.

He isn’t CEO. He hired a CEO, Linda Yaccarino. Again either you don’t follow what’s going on or you’re intentionally dense and arguing points that you don’t know about.

Just admit it you hate the guy and will recite anything and everything to reaffirm your unsubstantiated claims.


The ADL is not powerful enough to cause a 50% drop in Twitter revenue…most businesses don’t care about what they say.

The reason for the drop is Musk’s erratic behavior. Advertisers paused or halted their spending entirely because Musk is known for making on-the-fly decisions, and businesses don’t want to get caught up in his latest antics.


Cool show your proof. Thanks. Anything else is just your opinion presented as fact.


Your “proof” is that Mr. Musk says so.

There is no proof outside of Musk’s statements that revenue has dropped since X no longer makes public their finances, and there is no proof that anything the ADL has done rises to legally actionable defamation. They have certainly mounted a boycott campaign, but that is not proof of defamation. Myriad other organizations have also called for boycotts. It is curious to me that you are so personally focused on the one boycott that Mr. Musk cited as the sole cause of the revenue drop.

I did link in another post a peer reviewed study from a third party showing that hate speech has measurably risen since Mr Musk’s takeover.

There certainly is a lot of correlation here, but all of us, including you, are speculating on the causality. You are leaning heavily on the statements of a single man who has a proven track record of being incorrect, to put it gently. We are leaning on a variety of other heuristics that can be summed up as “A known bullshiter has said something that sounds like bullshit, and makes no sense to our understanding and experience of the world.”


What kind of proof would be sufficient to you for the claim “Elon Musk makes erratic and unpredictable decisions with his businesses”? Would a list of previous erratic decisions sway your mind?


I mean, Elon is also blaming the CCDH for his loss in advertising. He’s not exactly an unbiased source here. Just because he says it, doesn’t make it true.


Do you have any sources or insider knowledge that you can present that would put Elon himself on the hook for loss in advertising? I’ve replied to multiple comments citing ADL CCDH and others actively seeking to sway advertisers away from twitter using “research.”

Instead of presenting a counter argument with facts or data to back it up you resort to calling Elon a liar. It obviously shows your bias. You can believe whatever you want to believe.


elmu is a liar, thus him and his word simply can't be trusted

do you have any reliable sources or insider knowledge that you can present that would prove true these unreliable, unconvincing claims of an infamous liar?


> unreliable, unconvincing claims of an infamous liar

Again that’s you opinion.

How long has it been since you stopped beating your partner?


it is actually a fact as determined by a court of law

but your opinion that he is not is cute

I imagine such silly, reality-denying opinions accompany the same derangement that drives a very small, very loud minority of people to shriek hate and "hate!" at everyone who points out that elmu is a notorious liar


It’s gotten a lot speedier. I’ve been impressed


For very small values of 'great'.


The app is a lot faster and so is the mobile web client. They are shipping


It's dead simple easy to make things go faster if you take away features like blocking and limit users to reading a few hundred posts a day.




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