[jscheel]

Jack Dorsey has a habit of explosively increasing headcount. Twitter was so overweight that 80% were eliminated when Musk took over. Block's headcount grew from 3,900 to 12,500 in three years during Covid. Block's stock price has also tumbled from ~$275 to ~$54 since 2022. I think that the severance package is incredibly generous, and the willingness to communicate with those affected is admirable. But I also think that Dorsey is spinning a story to cover up for ZIRP-era mismanagement. AI provides the justification, with the hope that dumping 2x the work on the survivors won't crush them because AI tools will help. The bet may pay off, I'm just skeptical of the justification.

[interestpiqued]

To be fair X has significantly declined as an experience since Elon laid of 80%. I assume many of those he laid off were soft skill people that helped curate the experience.

[jdross]

As you know, this is a subjective take. (I enjoy my experience there more now, for example, with less social politics in my feed.)

And their head of product claimed that X only has around 30 FT employees apparently working on it, so it's much more than 80% since then.

https://www.ndtv.com/feature/x-head-of-product-claims-compan...

[ulfw]

And twitter hasn't launched one single meaningful anything since.

If your definition of success is 'let's keep the codebase running and make sure servers don't go bust' then yes twitter is doing great with fewer people

[EdiX]

> And twitter hasn't launched one single meaningful anything since.

Longer tweets? Analytics? Premium? Grok? AI autogenerated news summaries? Livestreaming? I honestly have a harder time trying to think of features launched between 2011 and 2022, besides spaces.