
Twitter Plans Company Wide Layoffs Next Week - coloneltcb
http://recode.net/2015/10/09/twitter-is-planning-company-wide-layoffs-for-next-week/
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TheBlueDot
What's interesting is they've had a lot of leaks...a leak like this comes from
someone high up so that's a problem they need to fix. Moments leaks, Jack as
CEO leaked...big old bucket there.

If it's actually engineering I'm sure they'll all have jobs in a week but it's
still hard to find talent so why wouldn't they just move people around?

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greenyoda
_" a leak like this comes from someone high up..."_

Not necessarily. This information could have come from some low-level employee
who happened to overhear a conversation between two managers.

The CEO and his inner circle of executives can't just lay off hundreds of
employees on their own. They need to involve lots of lower-level managers in
this planning, since upper management generally has no idea what each employee
is doing and how essential they are to the company. So they ask each of their
direct reports to make a list. And once dozens of people know that layoffs are
coming, it's difficult to keep it a secret.

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RockyMcNuts
Couldn't help notice this is currently #85 on my HN front page with 58 points
in 5 hours … at #16 is something with 22 points in 6 hours … wondering if it's
a bug, or some kind of penalty box for this story.

see image, nos. 76 and 81 also seem odd to rank higher -
[http://imgur.com/gNXJsoy](http://imgur.com/gNXJsoy)

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DanBC
Ranking on HN isn't purely votes and time, but includes user flags, flame
detection, and probably some other stuff.

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RockyMcNuts
got it, maybe those Re/code guys were spamming or something…

interesting because their earlier version of the story has a lot more mentions
in my Twitter timeline than the Times story, which was later and has more
background.

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tiredwired
That explains why their recruiter stopped responding to me a few weeks ago.

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JamesMcMinn
Not completely unexpected, but still somewhat of a surprise.

Twitter have been taking on staff faster than their userbase has been growing
since their IPO. I guess the question now is how many they are going to layoff
- 4,200 employees is a lot of people for something like Twitter.

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TheBlueDot
It's not about user base, it's about revenue. I think their revenue per
employee is still ~$500k which is pretty good.

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e15ctr0n
> It reported roughly 4,200 employees last quarter

Wow - what do all these people do?

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superuser2
According to the Twitter Careers page: Software Engineering, Design & UX
Research, Sales & Revenue, Product Management, Infrastructure Operations,
Media & BizDev, Trust & Safety, User Services, Legal, Finance, Workplace &
Admin, Marketing & Communications, HR & Recruiting.

As far as engineering, take a look:
[https://about.twitter.com/careers/teams/software-
engineering](https://about.twitter.com/careers/teams/software-engineering)

Many companies are much more complex than you might imagine from the outside.
Also, a lot of it is meta-headcount: managers, facilities, food service,
payroll, benefits, recruiters, lawyers, HR people, etc. all scale at least
partially with headcount.

You'll notice many of the jobs are with companies Twitter has acquired or
various platform-level projects, like Fabric, Vine, TellApart, Finagle, etc.

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TheBlueDot
With almost 50 (17 in the last two years) acquisitions most of the growth is
from that.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Twitter)

