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The CEO was cheering on when Musk laid off half the company. Not surprised.

dzader 4y ago
calling Austen a CEO is like calling Bernie Madoff an investor. sure maybe it's 'technically' true, but they're both just clueless scammers looking to make a buck.
mikeyouse 4y ago
Not aware of that but he always seemed like the kind of CEO who would benefit from a lot less time on social media trying to be a thought leader and a lot more time working on the company.
- austenallred 4y ago
  Hmm, perhaps. I actually don't spend as much time on social as it would seem. It takes very little time to dash off a tweet. It's almost like a background process that runs in my mind, and it helps me think through things and shave the edges off of my thinking. There's also probably a dopamine hit that I get from it that I'm not as aware of being a driving indicator, but I don't believe it negatively impacts my ability to run the company.
  - astura 4y ago
    Dude, bragging about how little thought you put into your social media posts is really not a good look.
wittycardio 4y ago
Absolute dirtbag
austenallred 4y ago
I wouldn't say I was cheering; I was simply acknowledging that, though difficult, Twitter certainly has too many employees for the amount of revenue they're bringing in, and I am skeptical of claims that Twitter will cease to function as they go from 8,000 employees to whatever the new number is (2,500 seems to be the latest)? There's certainly internal knowledge that is lost in a transition of that kind, but the amount of money Twitter was burning makes no sense, and while reducing numbers of engineers is risky (and complex systems require more engineers than most people assume), I completely believe that Twitter will be able to sustain the technical operations and move quickly in shipping product with a mere 2,000 engineers.
- filmgirlcw 4y ago
  You were cheering. You’re still cheering. And you’re doing it while you’ve had continuous layoffs of your own staff that have put everyone who works for you, or anyone unfortunate enough to be part of your predatory boot camps, in jeopardy. I don’t take any joy or schadenfreude from your failures. Real people’s lives are involved and it genuinely makes me sad. But glass houses dude. Glass houses. Maybe when you’re own company is falling apart, you should refrain from publicly commenting on someone else’s.
  - austenallred 4y ago
    I was not cheering, and my opinion is consistent; as money becomes much tighter companies have to rightsize themselves to the amount of revenue coming in. This is true across Silicon Valley and it is true of us. https://twitter.com/austen/status/1588336949403611136?s=46&t=Y3JHbuxO1A1ntOe7k9PbUg https://twitter.com/austen/status/1588336949403611136?s=46&t...
    - dzader 4y ago
      this is only true of shitty businesses built on scams and lies. company producing results don't need to.
      - austenallred 4y ago
        Sadly that’s not true. Even the very best of companies try to grow and occasionally miss and have to shrink, or layoffs would be far more rare.
    - throwaway2729 4y ago
      You had no empathy for the people getting laid off. The drama at Twitter was 'interesting' to you.
    - filmgirlcw 4y ago
      Why do you need to comment at all, I guess is my question. Why not spend the time trying to run your own business rather than callously argueing how over-staffed Twitter was. Why does that matter to you? You don’t work there. You aren’t one of Elon’s investors. Why not just keep your thoughts to yourself, the day 3700 people lost their jobs, instead of pontificating about how a company needs to rightsize itself? Especially when you had to know you were weeks away from laying off half your remaining staff. Someone else mentioned you need to spend less time online and you argued that you’re not that online and that the dopamine rush is worth it for you. Fine. Deal with it in therapy. But know that it looks incredibly tone deaf that the day you lay off half your staff (and the day after), you’ve spent hours debating yourself and justifying your actions on HN and shitposting on Twitter. Have some fucking tact.

calling Austen a CEO is like calling Bernie Madoff an investor. sure maybe it's 'technically' true, but they're both just clueless scammers looking to make a buck.

mikeyouse 4y ago

Not aware of that but he always seemed like the kind of CEO who would benefit from a lot less time on social media trying to be a thought leader and a lot more time working on the company.

austenallred 4y ago
Hmm, perhaps. I actually don't spend as much time on social as it would seem. It takes very little time to dash off a tweet. It's almost like a background process that runs in my mind, and it helps me think through things and shave the edges off of my thinking. There's also probably a dopamine hit that I get from it that I'm not as aware of being a driving indicator, but I don't believe it negatively impacts my ability to run the company.
- astura 4y ago
  Dude, bragging about how little thought you put into your social media posts is really not a good look.

wittycardio 4y ago

Absolute dirtbag

austenallred 4y ago

I wouldn't say I was cheering; I was simply acknowledging that, though difficult, Twitter certainly has too many employees for the amount of revenue they're bringing in, and I am skeptical of claims that Twitter will cease to function as they go from 8,000 employees to whatever the new number is (2,500 seems to be the latest)? There's certainly internal knowledge that is lost in a transition of that kind, but the amount of money Twitter was burning makes no sense, and while reducing numbers of engineers is risky (and complex systems require more engineers than most people assume), I completely believe that Twitter will be able to sustain the technical operations and move quickly in shipping product with a mere 2,000 engineers.

filmgirlcw 4y ago
You were cheering. You’re still cheering. And you’re doing it while you’ve had continuous layoffs of your own staff that have put everyone who works for you, or anyone unfortunate enough to be part of your predatory boot camps, in jeopardy. I don’t take any joy or schadenfreude from your failures. Real people’s lives are involved and it genuinely makes me sad. But glass houses dude. Glass houses. Maybe when you’re own company is falling apart, you should refrain from publicly commenting on someone else’s.
- austenallred 4y ago
  I was not cheering, and my opinion is consistent; as money becomes much tighter companies have to rightsize themselves to the amount of revenue coming in. This is true across Silicon Valley and it is true of us. https://twitter.com/austen/status/1588336949403611136?s=46&t=Y3JHbuxO1A1ntOe7k9PbUg https://twitter.com/austen/status/1588336949403611136?s=46&t...
  - dzader 4y ago
    this is only true of shitty businesses built on scams and lies. company producing results don't need to.
    - austenallred 4y ago
      Sadly that’s not true. Even the very best of companies try to grow and occasionally miss and have to shrink, or layoffs would be far more rare.
  - throwaway2729 4y ago
    You had no empathy for the people getting laid off. The drama at Twitter was 'interesting' to you.
  - filmgirlcw 4y ago
    Why do you need to comment at all, I guess is my question. Why not spend the time trying to run your own business rather than callously argueing how over-staffed Twitter was. Why does that matter to you? You don’t work there. You aren’t one of Elon’s investors. Why not just keep your thoughts to yourself, the day 3700 people lost their jobs, instead of pontificating about how a company needs to rightsize itself? Especially when you had to know you were weeks away from laying off half your remaining staff. Someone else mentioned you need to spend less time online and you argued that you’re not that online and that the dopamine rush is worth it for you. Fine. Deal with it in therapy. But know that it looks incredibly tone deaf that the day you lay off half your staff (and the day after), you’ve spent hours debating yourself and justifying your actions on HN and shitposting on Twitter. Have some fucking tact.