Is writing better spam filters / bot detection really so fun sounding? I don't get the fascination, it just seems like one of the most boring websites in the world. (Not being sarcastic)
It is up and running for a long time already, written and rewritten and rerewritten.
WhatsApp: 0 public posts a day.
This might be comparing apples to oranges, as one is more like a global town square, and one is more like a postal service.
You want to work on the adtech side of it there's quite a few of those exchanges similar in size around, they just aren't house hold names. Where is the fun? I'm genuinely asking.
It is going about as well as you can imagine.
Sears CEO Eddie Lampert was so ruthless in his cost cutting he would pit his own divisions of sears against eachother for bonuses an even continued employment. he declared a moratorium on any in-store livery updates for 25 years and played the company off its stock to increase its value. the guy bilked sears for personal wealth hovering around 2bn and left shareholders holding the bag.
Al Dunlap, former Sunbeam CEO, was so ruthless people called him "chainsaw al." he was notorious for massive layoffs, factory shutdowns, and threatening physical violence against board members. the guys famous catchphrase was "if you want to be liked, get a dog." he died in 2019, but is really only remembered for massive accounting fraud nowadays.
https://www.inc.com/suzanne-lucas/tesla-fires-hundreds-of-wo...
Tesla arguably chose to fire 1200 people to avoid paying their severances.
https://electrek.co/2019/05/24/tesla-cost-cutting-effort-toi...
Teslas 2019 cost cutting effort included basic hygene products like toilet paper, arguably an inconsequential operating expense. Employees had to bring their own to work.
But FAANG folks self-select as low-variance people in general, so it's best that they seek low-variance outcomes. Happiness is in indulging your true nature.
FWIW I wasn't insulting anyone. Evidence that I'm not a hater:
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30980395
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30960680
Low-variance outcomes are just that: low-variance. If you're a decent FAANG engineer, you're making in the $500k at least by your 5th year, if not earlier, which puts your net worth at 50 at around $25 million. Pretty good outcome and quite certain.
Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Google
Everything else ... not so sure ...
There are only so many letters you can use to make a word and some companies had to be dropped.
The original meaning was a term to describe the big tech companies.
bigger question is why was microsoft not part of it? mainly because it didnt form a catchy word.
This gives their business different performance characteristics from Facebook (mass market social-media and ads), Amazon (mass market sales and logistics), Apple (which is at least slightly luxury, but contracts out its manufacturing, and does mass market hardware — look at that iPhone sell), Netflix (mass market entertainment), and Google (mass market search, mail, advertising).
It's not just about profitability, it's a bloated, ineffective, behemoth.
You read on here: it is just tales of giga, 10x programmers...I only work at companies with sufficient technological prowess, 7 figures, I expect my workplace to be staffed with those of similar intelligence to myself, Ivy League PHds only, send me full resumes of everyone who will be on my team, I only deal with problems that are world-changing...on and on.
You read financial statements: inept management, no controls, massive staff expenses, development budget is usually totally out of whack with revenue, growth in staff faster than revenue, struggle to develop new features (despite a relatively simple product), over-engineered, bloated maintenance...on and on.
Financial statements don't lie (the consistency between these two stories is: most engineers are massively overpaid, they aren't good at doing useful things, many tech companies have monopoly products, they then hire lots of engineers who do nothing but bloviate about how influential they are).
In the case of TWTR, comically mismanaged company. I don't know where the bloat is but Dorsey isn't someone who should be running a listed company (and has crashed and burned several times at Twitter alone). The guy who he appointed was an obvious stooge who was clearly not up to it. If nothing else, hopefully Musk will put them back on an even keel (I don't Musk is a good exec either, but this job is far simpler than Tesla so hopefully he will bring them back to an even keel).
The purpose of my comment wasn't to suggest how to remedy the situation but your answer is indicative: there is no separation between money-making and non-money making (engineers' viewpoint, as with everyone else, on who is making the money tends to vary quite significantly...when it is pay discussions, they are responsible...when a product has gone wrong, I can't believe these managers did this to me), if you work at a company your job is to make money...that is where your salary is coming from, customers. The precise problem is that so many engineers are paid for specialising in arcane knowledge unrelated to any revenue or consumer demand. In my experience, companies that move this responsibility over to engineers do better (indeed, companies that don't, won't survive at all...the only reason these jobs exist is because some tech companies happen to have monopoly products and choose to overhire...if banks had a monopoly product, you would see a profusion of very over-educated people specialising in some arcane area of finance with no consumer demand but which get hired for cultural reasons).
There is no-one else to blame. The distinction between product and engineering is a function of dysfunction.
Curious to know why you think so?
But he also gave the impression consistently of someone who was in the wrong job. Communication is an important skill for a CEO, the least worrying interpretation is that he was making choices about PR with no reference to his PR people...least worrying...if PR actually was involved, that is worse.
- They killed Vines, and then proceeded to lose on short videos to TikTok a couple years later with no response
- Their Substack competitor is a joke that nobody uses, and also took years to produce
This is not an organization which ships products! You don't have to be a Harvard MBA to evaluate the output of this organization. The ratio of employees to product development is not in line with any other major engineering organization.
I was hearing credible stories back in 2014 about them having way too many junior devs with nothing, or very marginal amounts to do.
They had the excesses on the spending side covered without the insane growth or profitability to go along with it. Can be a great business if it's hugely downsized in headcount
In addition, those who are let go are not tainted as underperformers, just unlucky.
I don't know what 7,000 Twitter employees do but it does seem like a rather high number to me.
Sabotaging your company by secretly pushing code because you suspect a layoff is coming isn't unreasonable?
Reddit apparently has 700 employees today, and they haven't done anything significant since they had far fewer employees. Scaling these services just isn't nearly as hard as it used to be, especially given how many more experienced engineers and good technologies exist today.
Twitter should re-build the product to be almost purely software driven, with as little employee intervention as possible. Give users the tools to self-moderate content however they want. For the good of their users and long-term success, they'd be wise to make self-moderation easier to do in a "healthy" way even if it's worse for short-term engagement and revenue. Again, Reddit did this fairly well for years without a huge team.
What Twitter lacks most of all is someone with the guts to risk breaking the product in order to fix the product. The team at Twitter has been visibly afraid to make significant changes, which has left the product weak by modern standards. It's a lot like Apple was before Jobs came back.
They are definitely not profitable now, but by choice.
As SpaceX is privately held we don’t really know.
I won't comment on your first sentence. But your second makes it seem like you believe that everyone is motivated primarily by money. A good amount of people just want to make the world a better place.
I'm not disputing your statement per se, just that I think it's more of a splitting the difference than much else.
So an employee revolt would neither be unexpected nor entirely unreasonable.
Note: not to imply that SpaceX is profitable, they certainly are deep in the red due to Starlink and Starship. But that's by choice.