In all seriousness, I think many of us are falling into the trap that the PayPal guy fell into. Twitter isn't just the app and the website. So it's much harder to run and maintain than it seems like from the outside. If it was just the Tweets, why would they ever need more than 10 iOS developers for instance?
If we cut Twitter into what it is on the surface, and perhaps lose some data retention, then sliming down the engineering organization significantly should be possible with the right people. Not to 50, that's really low for a platform the size of Twitter. That being said: 7500 employees is also way to many for what they do, or at least for how little money they make.
Nobody asked Musk to acquire the company. The only reason it went through is thanks to a long line of court rulings starting with Dodge v. Ford Motor Co. that prioritized shareholder interest over every other stakeholders. You can't expect to practically traumatize a company's culture like this and expect all the "right people" to still stay here and give their 100%.
So that was meant as a joke, probably should have left that out.
>Nobody asked Musk to acquire the company
Technically I believe he was forced to buy in the end, but no. You're right, no one asked him to do anything. The shareholders saw an out. They had a failed company on their hands and now the PayPal guy shows up and stupidly promises to buy the whole thing for way more than it's actually worth. Of cause they are going to dump the stock on the idiot, by (legal)forced if they had to. Now it's Musks problem. He has zero ideals when it comes to Twitter culture. He doesn't care. All he currently see is 7500 people who needs a paycheck, paid by him. He stupidly thought he could run Twitter successfully, like most of us HN backseat drivers. When he realized that he can't it was to late and now he stuck and have to either save the company or at least not lose to much more money.
In all seriousness, I think many of us are falling into the trap that the PayPal guy fell into. Twitter isn't just the app and the website. So it's much harder to run and maintain than it seems like from the outside. If it was just the Tweets, why would they ever need more than 10 iOS developers for instance?
If we cut Twitter into what it is on the surface, and perhaps lose some data retention, then sliming down the engineering organization significantly should be possible with the right people. Not to 50, that's really low for a platform the size of Twitter. That being said: 7500 employees is also way to many for what they do, or at least for how little money they make.