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539 points donohoe | 10 comments | | HN request time: 0.738s | source | bottom
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Hoasi ◴[] No.44511157[source]
X has been nothing short of an exercise in brand destruction. However, despite all the drama, it still stands, it still exists, and it remains relevant.
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mrweasel ◴[] No.44511712[source]
More and more I think Musk managed to his take over of Twitter pretty successfully. X still isn't as strong a brand as Twitter where, but it's doing okay. A lot of the users who X need to stay on the platform, journalists and politicians, are still there.

The only issue is that Musk vastly overpaid for Twitter, but if he plans to keep it and use it for his political ambitions, that might not matter. Also remember that while many agree that $44B was a bit much, most did still put Twitter at 10s of billions, not the $500M I think you could justify.

The firings, which was going to tank Twitter also turned out reasonably well. Turns out they didn't need all those people.

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jbreckmckye ◴[] No.44514680[source]
I cannot see how it was a success.

1. He overpaid by tens of billions. That is a phenomenal amount of money to lose on an unforced error.

2. Enough users, who produce enough content, have left to make X increasingly a forum for porn bots, scam accounts and political activists. It's losing its appeal as the place "where the news happens" and is instead becoming more niche.

3. The firings did not go well. X has struggled to ship new features and appears nowhere closer to the "everything app" Musk promised. It posts strange UUID error codes. The remaining developers seem to implement things primarily client side, to the extent I even wonder if they have lost their ability to safely roll out backend changes.

4. The capture of X by far-right agitators has led to long term brand damage for Tesla, Musk's most important business property.

I can't see any positive outcome from it.

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1. cryptoegorophy ◴[] No.44517329[source]
3. Didn’t go well? I don’t remember twitter (x) crashing for days or data erased. Means that organizations don’t need that many people. One thing I learned from this is to not trust so called “experts” or loud voices.
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2. Simon_O_Rourke ◴[] No.44517630[source]
Crashing isn't the totality of unsupported code. I previously worked in a company where a goodly proportion of the back end product team was let go, and their system stayed running for two plus years without a single fix or update going in.
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3. PicassoCTs ◴[] No.44517675[source]
Proofing that it was a real good back end team..
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4. motorest ◴[] No.44517967[source]
> 3. Didn’t go well? I don’t remember twitter (x) crashing for days or data erased. Means that organizations don’t need that many people.

I don't think you have a solid grasp on the problem. To start off, Twitter did experienced major outages that it never experienced before. Also, you hire and retain people when you need to implement changes. If your goal is to cease any form of investment in your platform, like rolling out a new product or providing a new service, then your responsibilities are limited to keep the business barely aflost while coasting.

See it as a navy ship. You need full crew to perform all your missions, but mothballing the ship requires a skeleton crew.

Here you are, boasting that a ship doesn't require more than a skeleton crew to be kept afloat. I mean, sure why not? But are you saying what you think you're saying?

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5. UltraSane ◴[] No.44519167[source]
"One thing I learned from this is to not trust so called “experts”"

Really? THAT is what you learned?

6. sflicht ◴[] No.44519397{3}[source]
Not good at engineering their own job security
7. mortehu ◴[] No.44520179[source]
Twitter has a permanent outage reporting breaking news. Whenever something big happens now, the feed looks like any other day. This didn't use to be the case.
8. dinkumthinkum ◴[] No.44521730[source]
It never experienced before? Were you aware of the Twitter "fail whale"? I think it is very hard to say that it has been a complete technical failure as many anticipated. I think if Musk had the "correct opinions" as you see them then many people would probably not have been making these proclamations.
9. tonyhart7 ◴[] No.44521887[source]
discord is manned in 20s-30s employee, valve who makes steam is also has small number of team

if you thinking you need 500s employee or something well you are wrong since many company do this for a long time and still do well

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10. motorest ◴[] No.44528527{3}[source]
> discord is manned in 20s-30s employee, valve who makes steam is also has small number of team

Discord is renowned for it's small engineering team, but I'm afraid you somehow claimed it has half the staff it does. A few years ago Steam reportedly employed around 90 engineers. Is it less than 500? I guess. What does that comparison tells you? Well, nothing. You need staff to roll out new features on multiple projects. If you add no feature, have no projects to work on, or have nothing to do then you don't need engineers. If your business plan has ambitious goals then you need engineers to achieve them. If all you're doing is keeping the lights on then you barely need anyone. Does this sound obvious?

I've been at companies that doubled their engineering staff overnight because they made a call to invest in a feature. I worked at companies that fired an entire floor of engineers because management decided some projects could be put on cold storage to improve financials. Why do staffing agencies are so popular? Have you ever thought about it?