The Email Caste's Last Stand

Re:The Email Caste's Last Stand by Animats on Tuesday November 08, 2022 @01:11PM (#33522189)

The oil states have a huge problem with this - an oversupply of educated but useless people. The government ends up as the employer of last resort. Egypt used to guarantee a Government job to anyone who completed college. Then the oil ran out. There's been much unrest ever since.

In the US, only about half of college graduates have jobs that require a college education.

Craigslist has about 50 employees. If you really had to, you could probably run Twitter with a very small staff, and the computing outsourced to AWS.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The Email Caste's Last Stand by GuardianCaveman on Tuesday November 08, 2022 @01:23PM (#33522358)

When I wanted to leave Saudi Arabia and bring my dog I had brought there, it took about 15 signatures from Arabs in various offices around the ministry of agriculture. Everyone wants to be not management but upper management.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The Email Caste's Last Stand by Traubenfuchs on Tuesday November 08, 2022 @01:17PM (#33522268)

> If you really had to, you could probably run Twitter with a very small staff, and the computing outsourced to AWS.

Why didn't they though? Why did they become a monster that, as we are seeing right now, can survive easily with about half of its employees gone in a heartbeat?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The Email Caste's Last Stand by kweingar on Tuesday November 08, 2022 @01:22PM (#33522337)

> can survive easily with about half of its employees gone in a heartbeat

A bit premature to make this claim imo

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The Email Caste's Last Stand by throwaway1777 on Tuesday November 08, 2022 @01:22PM (#33522341)

The answer is because promotions depend on growing your org. This is extremely common in big tech and known as empire building. You’d be hard pressed to find a company where this isn’t the case.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The Email Caste's Last Stand by yamtaddle on Tuesday November 08, 2022 @01:31PM (#33522474)

Investment, too. Investors want to see activity, and you're better off showing useless activity than none.

Plus, you don't grow to a tech behemoth (Google, Microsoft, Facebook, et c.) by running smart & lean. You might get bought by them that way (cf. WhatsApp, and maybe even Minecraft) but you don't become one of them. So if leadership/investors thought Twitter had a shot at joining the big-boy club, maybe that's why.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The Email Caste's Last Stand by indymike on Wednesday November 09, 2022 @10:02AM (#33532530)

> This is extremely common in big tech and known as empire building.

Great companies focus on business performance not headcount. I'm more impressed with leaders that generate more positive metrics per dollar. Sometimes it takes headcount, but most of the time, a really great exec can make more revenue/growth/market share happen with the same or less headcount.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The Email Caste's Last Stand by Robotbeat on Tuesday November 08, 2022 @01:19PM (#33522300)

Incompetent leadership that maybe should’ve been fired for cause?

[ Parent | on HN ]