<story><title>Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/03/twitter-layoffs-elon-musk/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>beanjuiceII</author><text></text></item><item><author>maxbond</author><text>Keeping factories open during the initial COVID lockdowns because of your personal belief that it&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;just the flu&amp;quot;, and thus putting the lives of your employees at risk, seems like a direct analog to peeing in bottles to me.</text></item><item><author>giancarlostoro</author><text>I dont understand the SpaceX argument since he was an actual original founder if I&amp;#x27;m not mistaken, I could see the Tesla argument, but those people never provide any true insight into how he is riding on Teslas former success whenever I run into those (not to mention, if it was so good... why did they need a new CEO). I think it&amp;#x27;s pretty obvious he is a capable individual, overly ambitious at times, but hey, he somehow makes it work.&lt;p&gt;I try to be neutral about him, but as a Software Engineer, he is easy to admire, he is able to work on various tech related companies at once and make it work. That is no small feat. We have discussed on HN before that companies like Amazon having employees peeing in bottles usually those sort of issues come down from the top (CEO tier) and trickle down to the bottom, if that&amp;#x27;s true, and Elon is awful, it would show in all his companies, but he manages to delegate correctly enough to keep a few large companies going.</text></item><item><author>losvedir</author><text>And so the grand experiment begins. I feel bad for the folks losing their job because that always sucks, and I hope there&amp;#x27;s a decent severance package.&lt;p&gt;Now we&amp;#x27;ll see what happens to Twitter... I hardly use it, so if it implodes it won&amp;#x27;t bother me too much. But I am curious to see if all the &amp;quot;how do you need X people to do Y?&amp;quot; commenters are correct in this case. The app is simple but doing simple things at scale is hard. I wonder if we&amp;#x27;ll see more downtime and issues now.&lt;p&gt;I think this is also a great experiment for everyone who either thinks Elon is a genius and the greatest thing to bless this Earth,  or those who say he&amp;#x27;s overrated and Tesla and SpaceX were successes independent of him. I think Twitter has been around long enough that we&amp;#x27;ve all formed impressions of it. Let&amp;#x27;s see what this single change of replacing ownership actually results in.&lt;p&gt;Anyone want to make predictions about the state of Twitter in a few years?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>InsomniacL</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s not the problem. I can&amp;#x27;t speak for the USA however this perspective is from the UK.&lt;p&gt;At the height of covid cases, hospitals were nearing their capacity, some did and had to declare major incidents rerouting patients to other nearby hospitals which were also nearing their capacity...&lt;p&gt;Even if the death toll from covid would have been ZERO for every infected person, assuming they were able to get a hospital bed, without lockdowns reducing the transmission, we would have ran out of hospital beds. Ambulances would have been sat outside the hospitals unable to unload their patient&amp;#x27;s. At this stage all elective&amp;#x2F;emergency surgery would have stopped. The 999 operators would have been swamped which wouldn&amp;#x27;t matter anyway because there is nothing they can do as all the ambulances are stuck. Imagine calling for an ambulance after a car crash, or for a family member after a household accident, not only do you not get one but the hospital wont accept a patient if you drop them off.&lt;p&gt;Elon is no doubt highly intelligent, he would have known this.. He also would have known that if he kicked up enough of a fuss, and sent his own employees in, this would have little effect on the overall hospital bed status and he could avoid fines by threatening to take his business elsewhere or just pay them and still make a profit by having the factory open.</text></comment>
<story><title>Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/03/twitter-layoffs-elon-musk/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>beanjuiceII</author><text></text></item><item><author>maxbond</author><text>Keeping factories open during the initial COVID lockdowns because of your personal belief that it&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;just the flu&amp;quot;, and thus putting the lives of your employees at risk, seems like a direct analog to peeing in bottles to me.</text></item><item><author>giancarlostoro</author><text>I dont understand the SpaceX argument since he was an actual original founder if I&amp;#x27;m not mistaken, I could see the Tesla argument, but those people never provide any true insight into how he is riding on Teslas former success whenever I run into those (not to mention, if it was so good... why did they need a new CEO). I think it&amp;#x27;s pretty obvious he is a capable individual, overly ambitious at times, but hey, he somehow makes it work.&lt;p&gt;I try to be neutral about him, but as a Software Engineer, he is easy to admire, he is able to work on various tech related companies at once and make it work. That is no small feat. We have discussed on HN before that companies like Amazon having employees peeing in bottles usually those sort of issues come down from the top (CEO tier) and trickle down to the bottom, if that&amp;#x27;s true, and Elon is awful, it would show in all his companies, but he manages to delegate correctly enough to keep a few large companies going.</text></item><item><author>losvedir</author><text>And so the grand experiment begins. I feel bad for the folks losing their job because that always sucks, and I hope there&amp;#x27;s a decent severance package.&lt;p&gt;Now we&amp;#x27;ll see what happens to Twitter... I hardly use it, so if it implodes it won&amp;#x27;t bother me too much. But I am curious to see if all the &amp;quot;how do you need X people to do Y?&amp;quot; commenters are correct in this case. The app is simple but doing simple things at scale is hard. I wonder if we&amp;#x27;ll see more downtime and issues now.&lt;p&gt;I think this is also a great experiment for everyone who either thinks Elon is a genius and the greatest thing to bless this Earth,  or those who say he&amp;#x27;s overrated and Tesla and SpaceX were successes independent of him. I think Twitter has been around long enough that we&amp;#x27;ve all formed impressions of it. Let&amp;#x27;s see what this single change of replacing ownership actually results in.&lt;p&gt;Anyone want to make predictions about the state of Twitter in a few years?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>maxbond</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not going to accept that assertion without evidence, but even if we grant it, it&amp;#x27;s not an okay thing to do to put hundreds of your employees, and their families, at risk because you have a fucking hunch. Even if Musk were a superhuman thinker with really great hunches it wouldn&amp;#x27;t be an acceptable thing to do.</text></comment>