Elon Musk to reportedly fire 3,700 Twitter employees

Following mass firings, remote Twitter employees will need to report to in-person offices.

Kim Kulish, Getty Images
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There have been some massive changes to Twitter’s operations since Elon Musk took over, both on the user side and behind the scenes. The former CEO, CFO, and other top leadership have already been dismissed from the company following his takeover, and it now appears that a large portion of other employees will be shown the door as well. According to new reports, Elon Musk is planning to fire roughly half of Twitter’s staff.

CNBC reported that Elon Musk would be firing half of all Twitter staff following his takeover of the social media company. The outlet got a hold of internal communications where Musk coordinated a meeting with his top advisers to determine precisely how to go about the layoffs. Among the people expected to be present are David Sacks (Craft Ventures), Steve Davis (The Boring Company), and Sam Teller and Antonio Gracias (Valor Equity Partners). What’s more, details of this meeting were seen by a large share of Twitter workers, accidentally.

Elon Musk sitting in a chair on stage holding a microphone.

It’s no secret that Elon Musk is against remote work, and he’ll also bring that philosophy to Twitter. CNBC reports that of the Twitter employees that aren’t fired, the ones previously authorized to work from home will be required to come into the company’s in-person offices.

This story comes on top of what has been a whirlwind of Twitter news ever since Elon Musk officially took over as CEO. Within the next week or so, the billionaire is expected to launch a revamped version of Twitter Blue, which will put account verification and other unique features behind an $8 monthly paywall. It certainly won’t be the last major change coming to the company either, so be sure to bookmark our Twitter topic page for all future updates.

News Editor

Donovan is a journalist from Maryland. His oldest gaming memory is playing Pajama Sam on his mom's desktop during weekends. Pokémon Emerald, Halo 2, and the original Star Wars Battlefront 2 were some of the most influential titles in awakening his love for video games. After interning for Shacknews throughout college, Donovan graduated from Bowie State University in 2020 with a major in broadcast journalism and joined the team full-time. He is a huge film fanatic and will talk with you about movies and games all day. You can follow him on twitter @Donimals_

From The Chatty
  • reply
    November 3, 2022 7:40 AM

    Donovan Erskine posted a new article, Elon Musk to reportedly fire 3,700 Twitter employees

    • reply
      November 3, 2022 7:55 AM

      > "Because it consists of billions of bidirectional interactions per day, Twitter can be thought of as a collective, cybernetic super-intelligence" - Elon

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        November 3, 2022 2:29 PM

        More like a racist, self-absorbed, narcissistic cybermoron.

    • reply
      November 3, 2022 7:57 AM

      "I'm not going to fire 75% of employees"

      "phew"

      "I'm just going to fire 50% of employees"

      "..."

    • reply
      November 3, 2022 7:58 AM

      Following mass firings, remote Twitter employees will need to report to in-person offices.

      It gets even better!

      • reply
        November 3, 2022 8:07 AM

        Anyone with a halfway decent skillset is going to abandon this company.

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          November 3, 2022 9:36 AM

          That should have happened long ago. Anyone still there is probably not the cream of the crop.

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            November 3, 2022 5:20 PM

            Or stuck on a visa. I have to keep reminding the shack that people on visas exist.

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          November 3, 2022 10:08 AM

          Not sure why I've never really noticed that twitter is not considered part of FAANG. Not sure if that has any ability for them to job hop as easily.

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            November 3, 2022 10:16 AM

            It's probably not large enough or with a broad enough tech platform / stack to hang with the others. But certainly there are extremely smart people working there. It's just a failure of leadership.

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            November 3, 2022 10:19 AM

            It’s because FAANG is a group of companies that actually make money

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        November 3, 2022 8:10 AM

        My god. Twitter is going to burn to the ground very soon.

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          November 3, 2022 8:12 AM

          this seems like a situation that could very easily lead to employee malice. i wonder if he's smart enough to revoke access before he starts.

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            November 3, 2022 9:47 AM

            I think that's the job of HR or IT unless there's enough pissed off employees in these departments.

            I wonder how much it would take to buy twitter from Elon if all the fired employees banded together?

            Divide $44 billion / 3700?

            Or would Elon want more than 44 billion? How many has been fired so far?

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              November 3, 2022 9:51 AM

              $11,891,891.89189189 apiece for the 3700 employees? lol not going to happen unless more employees join in.

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              November 3, 2022 8:56 PM

              Who the fuck would buy Twitter from Elon right now? Elon was the only person stupid enough to believe Twitter was worth buying in the first place!

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                November 3, 2022 8:58 PM

                People who don't want to be controlled by the likes of Elon?

                I liked Twitter when it was new and nerdy. Maybe somebody could take it back to those roots.

        • reply
          November 3, 2022 11:30 AM

          [deleted]

          • reply
            November 3, 2022 11:47 AM

            WhatsApp was 55 employees with 420 million monthly active users

          • reply
            November 3, 2022 11:49 AM

            I'd say it has more to do with a small number of employees having a huge impact on social media.

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            November 3, 2022 11:56 AM

            Maybe on the pure infrastructure side but they'd need to have built for that

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            November 3, 2022 7:30 PM

            You need about double the employees Twitter currently has to do effective content moderation.

            But we never thought Elon cared about that, did we?

    • reply
      November 3, 2022 9:20 AM

      > Musk’s purchase of Twitter, and his immediate move to charge verified accounts $8/month poses a rather fundamental question.... Why the hell are any of us doing this?

      https://theline.substack.com/p/james-mcleods-twitter-reality-check?utm_source=shacknews&publication_id=70032&post_id=82335512&utm_medium=web

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        November 3, 2022 10:20 AM

        Don't ask me, I'm not on Twitter

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          November 3, 2022 1:44 PM

          So much this.

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          November 3, 2022 1:51 PM

          me neither, I've seen some twats here and there but mostly when I clicked on a link it wanted me to login so I say fuck that.

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          November 3, 2022 8:55 PM

          Same.

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        November 3, 2022 10:21 AM

        Agree with Stephen King, Musk should pay all blue checks to stay.

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          November 3, 2022 10:47 AM

          Only problem is that Elon just spent $44 billion to purchase so he's probably strapped for cash right now.

          Ultimately he's just either going to eventually shut down Twitter or find some other way to monetize that works.

    • reply
      November 3, 2022 10:42 AM

      lets go team blue check?

    • reply
      November 3, 2022 10:45 AM

      He should include 2 years of free blue check in their severance.

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      November 3, 2022 10:47 AM

      I wonder if we'll start to see internal sabotage of the platform in protest.

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      November 3, 2022 10:57 AM

      I'm pretty sure once it became clear he couldn't get out of the deal he just said "Fuck it, I'm going to buy it and run it into the ground and then invest a ton of money in whatever my buddy Jack is building next."

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        November 3, 2022 5:28 PM

        He had to borrow a shitton of money to pay for Twitter, intentionally running it into the ground seems like a very bad idea. Like, he could lose control of Tesla if Twitter crashes.

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      November 3, 2022 11:00 AM

      Elon will fire hundreds or thousands of people, then he will pretend he can't hire replacements without looking overseas for cheaper talent. The platform will be riddled with back doors (just what every authoritarian government on Earth wants) and no one's information will be safe.

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        November 3, 2022 4:32 PM

        You're saying it was safe before?

      • reply
        November 3, 2022 5:27 PM

        Might want to read Mudge's reports on their security issues.

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      November 3, 2022 11:05 AM

      Kinda thinking he's one of those "employee salaries are our biggest expense" kind of managers.

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        November 3, 2022 11:24 AM

        acanis went on to argue that Twitter could meet the standards of its Big Tech peers, at least in terms of revenue per employee, if it dramatically cut staff.

        In a “back of the envelope” calculation, he said Twitter’s revenue per employee was just $625,000 in 2021, compared to $1.9 million per employee for Google and $2.37 million per employee for Apple—but if Musk were to cut 5,000 of Twitter’s 8,000 workers, he could increase Twitter’s revenue per employee to a “more industry standard” $1.66 million.

        “Insane potential for improvement,” Musk responded after emphasizing Calacanis’s text.

        Then Calacanis proposed using a return-to-office mandate to get rid of some of Twitter’s staff without having to pay the typical exit packages. Twitter’s previous CEO, Jack Dorsey, implemented a “forever” remote-work policy in 2020 that allows Twitter employees to work wherever they are most productive.

        “2 day a week office requirement = 20% voluntary departures,” Calacanis wrote. “Day zero…sharpen your blades boys.”

        The two then decided maybe it wasn’t the best idea to discuss slashing Twitter’s staff using Twitter direct messages.

        “Maybe we don’t talk Twitter on Twitter,” Calacanis wrote.

        “Was just thinking that haha,” Musk replied, adding that “nothing said there so far is anything different from what I said publicly.”


        https://fortune.com/2022/10/06/elon-musk-jason-calacanis-return-to-office-gentlemens-layoffs-twitter/

    • reply
      November 3, 2022 11:24 AM

      [deleted]

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        November 3, 2022 11:39 AM

        Is this the new "Fuck Facebook"?

        I'm on board. My only regret is I can't watch the wreckage up close.

      • reply
        November 3, 2022 11:44 AM

        Stop. Buying. Teslas.

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          November 3, 2022 11:55 AM

          I wish Tesla had more competition. I mean, there's some competition but I wish it had more.

          • reply
            November 3, 2022 11:59 AM

            I'm guessing you don't watch any sports. Otherwise you would see every major car manufacturer advertising their new electrical car(s).

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              November 3, 2022 12:00 PM

              You're right, I don't watch much sports.

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              November 3, 2022 10:17 PM

              Yeah... sure would be nice if you could actually buy one.

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            November 3, 2022 1:02 PM

            they have massive amounts of competition in everything but their charging network. that is still #1 by far. but they had a long head start. 5 years from now that will be different.

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              November 3, 2022 1:11 PM

              Can the competitors not use the charging network?

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                November 3, 2022 1:14 PM

                lots of people got lifetime charging when they bought their teslas. not even tesla offers that any more.

                not sure if someone with a ford lightning can just pull up and charge at a tesla charging center. besides paying, are their different charger connections? don't know.

                Mercedes and bmw and lexus and volvo will all have 5 or 6 electronic options in the next couple years. and I don't know what the lower cost brands are at.

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                November 3, 2022 2:11 PM

                For fast charging? No. Tesla uses a proprietary fast charge (supercharger) connector and communicates with the car to authenticate if you are allowed to. These stations are supposed to be converted to allow other car brands on a standard CCE connector to use them at some point but I haven't heard about this recently.

                The Tesla branded slow chargers or "destination chargers" also are proprietary but there are converters you can buy aftermarket to plug into a car with a standard type 2 connector.

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                  November 3, 2022 2:24 PM

                  "Tesla uses a proprietary fast charge (supercharger) connector"

                  I'm not surprised at this development. I suspected this was the truth but I wasn't sure how much it was enforced on every charger.

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                    November 3, 2022 2:28 PM

                    To be fair, they were trail blazing this stuff before a standard was determined. And rather than pay Tesla for a license to use their connector design, the rest of the industry formed an alliance and came up with a separate standard. Tesla is now coming around to it. I was surprised the Model S didn't go CCS. I wonder if they will stick with it.

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                      November 3, 2022 2:31 PM

                      Is there a technical difference between Tesla's charging and CSS or whatever standard for charging? Does one charge faster than the other or anything else from a technical point of view?

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                        November 3, 2022 2:50 PM

                        No, it's just how the pins are aligned. You can buy a CCS converter for the Tesla charge port so they can use non-Tesla fast chargers for example.

                        It's because of how the fast chargers authenticate with the car that prevents an adapter with another brand working with it.

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              November 3, 2022 1:12 PM

              I mean, can the competitors not use Telsa's charging network for some reason?

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                November 3, 2022 1:23 PM

                It’s coming but not enabled yet as far as I’m aware

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              November 3, 2022 2:56 PM

              [deleted]

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              November 3, 2022 9:04 PM

              I don't consider them to have real competition for trucks yet. Yes I'm aware they haven't released one. I'm going off of plans/reported specs.

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                November 3, 2022 10:19 PM

                rivan is way ahead of tesla in trucks and ford is next. I have rode in both and they are great trucks.

                • reply
                  November 3, 2022 11:05 PM

                  5.5' beds don't cut it for me. 6.5 is as low as I'll go...

      • reply
        November 3, 2022 11:52 AM

        Never.Fucking.Did

        :D

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        November 3, 2022 12:03 PM

        If you simply use Twitter and don't pay for any extra bullshit they try to sell you...aren't you technically losing Elon Musk money?

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        November 3, 2022 12:43 PM

        It's gonna be so fun to watch that thing burn. Hope it dies a quick death.

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          November 3, 2022 12:46 PM

          Oh, I hope it drags on forever and fucks Musk over. I can't stand him.

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        November 3, 2022 10:45 PM

        Exactly, it's trash, nothing will be lost if it dies.

    • reply
      November 3, 2022 11:54 AM

      Wonder when they'll have their first major outage. a week? two weeks?

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        November 3, 2022 11:56 AM

        probably like a month.. previous staff were likely pretty talented and built stuff that will run fairly well until some new, outsourced contractor starts adding stuff to "improve efficiency"

    • reply
      November 3, 2022 12:02 PM

      How to kill a company in 10 days

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      November 3, 2022 12:03 PM

      So deleting the account requires you to log in, deactivate your account and it will delete eventually.

      I made an account that I never use other than with twidere to read other peoples linked tweets.

      Removed that shit from the app. Trying to log in with the mail used to make the account... Nothing. Trying to get the password for the mail. Nope. Basically twitter is ghosting me lol. Last time that happened was when yahoo was hacked and they basically locked account deletion and mail forwarding to stop the ship from sinking.

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      November 3, 2022 1:07 PM

      Sorry if this has been said but…maybe he’s doing this on purpose? Maybe he actually wants twitter gone? Wouldn’t that be lovely? Just wishful thinking.

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        November 3, 2022 1:09 PM

        I don't think there's any doubt in his head that what he's doing will save twitter

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        November 3, 2022 2:46 PM

        So he intentionally lit $44 billion dollars on fire, a chunk of which was his own money? It's possible, but I don't believe it.... I'm pretty sure he thinks he knows how to save Twitter.

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          November 3, 2022 2:57 PM

          I was half joking, half hoping. I know that’s not the case but one can dream.

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          November 3, 2022 7:33 PM

          I think he was trolling and committing his usual SEC violating pump n dumps when the music stopped. He fucked around and found out.

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      November 3, 2022 1:27 PM

      good & i hope whole platform evaporates

      • reply
        November 3, 2022 1:28 PM

        twitters literally among the toxic/worst things to happen to the internet

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          November 3, 2022 1:39 PM

          [deleted]

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            November 3, 2022 1:50 PM

            One thing I liked about Twitter was that you could tell a earthquake is in progress within seconds of it happening.

            Sure, you could get equipment and machines to do the same but Twitter gets more attention on the news.

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            November 3, 2022 1:58 PM

            it's phones. People can just toss any random/unexamined thought from the comfort of a thing in their pocket, while standing in line, while drunk at a bar, while driving. it's an evaluation-of-input problem

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            November 3, 2022 8:06 PM

            I think there's 2 main components to why social media platforms become shit once they get too big:

            1) Once social media companies go public, they have an obligation for both growth, and to a lesser degree, perceived profitability. They may have had great success pulling in whatever niche market they originally targeted, but once they've saturated that market, where do they go from there? There will be some expectation to have YOY growth in DAU, with some hope for that to be turned into profits. So instead of focusing on what made them successful, they have to start focusing on growth beyond what the product or platform was originally intended for, in addition to finding a way to make that growth turn into revenue. This eventually will come into contrast with that the users originally liked about the product or platform, whether it's ads or branching into new features. Rather than a focus on "how do we make this the best version of the thing we originally wanted it to be?" the focus becomes "how do we get more people to sign up and how do we monetize it?".

            2) Moderation doesn't scale. Once a social media network becomes big enough, couples with #1 where there's an incentive for more engagement, there's going to be contrasting motives between moderating spam/bots/misinformation versus whatever garners more clicks. Even if you had the best intentions to have good moderation, once you hit a certain amount of content, there's no possible way to moderate that content without spending way more money than the platform is capable of bringing in. Economics aside, it becomes a massive task just to moderate the shear volume of content coming across your platform, but once you mix in trying to balance engagement with the cost of moderation, we all know which side is going to win out.

            Ultimately, I don't think it's a bad thing for these networks to run their course and expire when the next big thing takes over. The problem is that with the big push on mergers and acquisitions, there's less and less opportunity for the next big thing to take off before they get gobbled up by the big dogs in tech. I don't know that we'll ever see another Twitter, because once something gets any traction, one of the big players is going to buy them out and try to integrate them into their existing growth/engagement/monetization strategy and likely kill off what little momentum the platform had. It's unfortunate.

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          November 3, 2022 2:07 PM

          It's also one of the best things to happen for artists, journos and many other people.

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          November 3, 2022 2:07 PM

          if you think twitter is worse than reddit, 4chan, and 8chan, wow.

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            November 3, 2022 2:20 PM

            It is the worlds "town hall" and its toxic, reddit,4chan,8chan do not have the worlds eyeballs on them

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              November 3, 2022 2:24 PM

              reddit is/was approximately as ambitious as twitter, it just failed at it (so far) because it's too fucking nerdy and disproportionately catered to weirdos

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            November 3, 2022 2:22 PM

            [deleted]

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          November 3, 2022 2:32 PM

          Facebook is worse, but Twitter is second worst. I won't be sorry to see it go... the quality content that's on there will find some other place & way to shine.

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          November 3, 2022 2:36 PM

          can't you just set it up to just follow only things you like?

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          November 3, 2022 2:41 PM

          facebook is the worst

          i put instagram second, for spreading influencer and selfie culture and stupid trends like fucking wildfire (i.e. gender reveals, various 'challenges' like the tide pod shit) and creating this entirely fictive reality-through-media that makes people feel shitty about what they're doing or not doing

        • reply
          November 3, 2022 3:28 PM

          [deleted]

        • reply
          November 3, 2022 8:32 PM

          [deleted]

    • reply
      November 3, 2022 2:35 PM

      [deleted]

      • reply
        November 3, 2022 2:42 PM

        I wonder how that was funded or planned to be funded. Bandwidth is expensive.

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      November 3, 2022 2:36 PM

      [deleted]

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        November 3, 2022 2:39 PM

        Yeah I don’t work in tech but I am amazed that they have that many people on staff.

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          November 3, 2022 2:48 PM

          Back when the rumor was 75% reduction:

          I’ve had a few friends and sources inside Twitter over the years, and I’ve long heard that Twitter is vastly overstaffed. There’s just no reason for Twitter to have so many employees given the scope of what they offer today. And it’s ossifying for a company culture to carry a lot of dead weight.

          https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/10/21/twitter-musk-wapo-layoffs

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          November 3, 2022 8:23 PM

          There is no way they need that many.

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      November 3, 2022 3:13 PM

      Since blue checks are essentially going to become cosmetic flair, not unlike lightning bolts used to be on this site, only the most hard-core Twitter super fans are going to get. The functional side of it - verification, is still a very necessary piece of functionality to create trust in the platform. I wonder how that will be handled considering the fact that the presence of bots was such a driving factor in his decision to acquire. 

    • reply
      November 3, 2022 3:15 PM

      double digit % layoffs at stripe and lyft too

    • reply
      November 3, 2022 3:43 PM

      #TrumpIsDead trending on Twitter after Tim Heidecker hijinx.

      https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/why-is-trump-is-dead-trending-twitter-misinformation-tim-heidecker-b1036996.html

    • reply
      November 3, 2022 4:22 PM

      Its so funny how he's haranguing bigtime accounts that bring in incredible amounts eyeball views to ads and engagement over eight bucks lol

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        November 3, 2022 4:23 PM

        This would be like IG, TikTok, or Twitch going after their most popular accounts over the cost of a Starbucks instead of paying them $$$$$

        • reply
          November 3, 2022 5:24 PM

          other socials literally trying to figure out how many millions to pay influencers to boost their network's attraction while Elon attempts to charge them $8/mo to avoid being impersonated by trolls

    • reply
      November 3, 2022 8:51 PM

      AKA “the lucky ones”

Hello, Meet Lola