We've been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it's not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for November 7th, 2022.
In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on November 7th included Steve Tuck, Tom Lyon, Justin, Matthew Sanabria, Francois Lesage, and Chris (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)
Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:
- @5:10 Stripe and Twitter layoffs
- Opposite ends of the spectrum, regarding how they were handled
- Don't want to encourage layoffs, but there are right ways to do things, and Stripe has done that
- Hard to imagine handling it worse than Twitter
- Wanting/needing to know who is laid off, because everyone is impacted
- @13:30 bloat at tech companies
- large number of layoffs at Sun (15+, going back to 2001)
- ingrained to think "if I had to do a layoff, what would it look like" all the time
- Callback to Charity's point on Whither Twitter episode: Conflict aversion at large companies leading to "yes, and" instead of making correct choices
- Peanut butter layoffs
- @22:10 DHH comparing Musk to Twitter and Job's return to Apple
- DHH's blog entry
- Hard to find a term that's not dehuamnizing - trimming, etc
- Stripe establishing an alumni email address
- @26:55 layoffs at Joyent
- First stemmed from era when money was free, growth at any cost
- Push to grow company internationally, not real product-market fit
- No CEO at the time, up to Steve to travel around with this packet and tell people they are being let go
- Being decent to the folks who are losing their jobs is not only humane, but it shows the character of the company to those who are choosing to remain or move on voluntarily
- Twitter mass layoff email was signed "Twitter" - not even identifiably human
- These things are completely opaque, and usually focused on "here's where you'll get your check, here's your COBRA forms..." and lacking in candor and transparency
- @40:13 Tom's story about layoffs with dot-com bust
- Had to stack-rank employees, missed an offsite meeting due to family stuff, got a call from a direct report asking why Tom fired him, which was the first he had heard of it
- Careers can last longer than companies, you should be able to look one another in the eye
- @43:30 US workers on visas
- When you make a decision to layoff an employee on a visa, that is fundamentally different from laying off a resident
- it's an asymmetrical relationship
- you're not firing someone, you're deporting them
- Stay close to the revenue, those teams are less likely to get cut
- H1B visas are a lottery system
- Can choose more boring or less fulfilling work some place that has a better process/path for visa/residency
- Legal system can define constraints and set minimum bar for companies
- California WARN act
- Transparency: when a business encounters headwinds, they don't want to tell the truth for fear employees will leave, but employees should be able to make the right decisions for them, and many will stay on until the bitter end
- Leadership can and should encourage transparency and candor, at the least should not discourage it.
- pets.com anecdote - went from nothing to obscenely large, to dead at breakneck speed
- Stripe taking a cut could be chilling, as it was a place you could look for the health of the industry
- Google is an analog for the health of the advertising-based revenue model.
- Tech/Software is not immune from booms and busts
- "Enjoy the party, but dance close to the door"
- Subprime Attention Crisis: Advertising and the Time Bomb at the Heart of the Internet
- Industrial companies are 10 years behind in tech than software companies, and the catered lunches aren't as good, but they can have greater stability
- Way too many tech billboards between SMO and San Franciso
- There needs to be consequences for Twitter having laid people off like this
If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next Twitter space will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time; stay tuned to our Twitter feeds for details. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!