Complex internet services fail in interesting ways as they grow in size and complexity. Twitter's recent issues show how failures emerge slowly over time as relationships between components degrade. Meta's quick launch of Threads demonstrates how platform investments can compound over time, allowing them to quickly build on existing infrastructure and expertise. While layoffs may be needed, companies must be strategic to maintain what matters most - the ability to navigate complex systems and deliver value. Twitter's inability to ship new features shows they have lost this expertise, while Threads may out-execute them due to Meta's platform advantages. The case of Twitter and Threads provides a lesson for companies on who they want to be during times of optimization.
My favorite phrase in coding is "9 women can't make a baby in a month, but 9 women can make 9 babies in 9 months".
Elon took over and fired so so so many talented engineers saying they were lazy, or incompetant, or whatever excuse he had when he really meant "they cost a lot". Now he's seeing the downside of that.
The phrase means you can't take a project and throw more people at it to make it go faster because there is institutional knowledge that needs to be learned first. You can't take a 9 month long project that 1 person is in the middle of and throw 8 more people at it and demand it gets done in a month, something Elon is really trying to push. Those 8 other people need time to onramp, to learn how the thing is being built, to learn how systems and subsystems all interact. In fact, usually this is a sign of a terrible leader because most of the time projects will slow down while you're trying to onramp all of those other people when at that point it would have just been faster to let the one person finish.
What you can do, as Facebook obviously did, is actually project plan. They said "we need 9 babies, what do you need to get that done?" and they replied "9 people and 9 months". and look how it paid off.
I hope Elon's twitter tanks because of his impulsive short sighted decisions that he thinks are "projects"
Elon’s antics aside, I hope no-one thinks that the amount of developers that Twitter had was needed or even sustainable.
Did he get rid of too many? Definitely. Did he get rid of the wrong ones? Definitely.
It depends on their aspirations.
Did they have too many engineers if all they wanted to do was keep the lights on for their core business? Yes.
Did they have too many engineers if they wanted to have the capacity to deliver more ambitious products and solutions, such as massively scalable live video streams, or social audio, or something entirely new? Maybe not.
Personally I believe their organization was highly bloated to the point of them being unable to reach any new goals with any reasonable pace.
Obviously that’s a highly speculative armchair based assessment and you may take it for what it’s worth, nothing.
But just look at the firing squad that’s been out this winter. Meta/Facebook, Twitter, Google.
Collectively that’s at least around 25k people that have been let go just from those three behemoths alone.
Access to capital was easy and they were simply throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.
Now that interest rates are higher profitability is suddenly important.
Now they actually have to think about what they invest in and which products deserve to live.
Not that it changes anything for Google, they’ll probably just keep making yet another chat service before killing it off again 3-5 years later after having introduced a few more in the meantime.
Thatsva tidy narrative there. Is there a correlary for the other 140k+ layofffs from the 2nd and 3rd tier tech companies that followed the lead?
Another tidy narrative is that these tech companies, besieged by pesky overworked employees who kept trying to unionize and demanding higher pay, decided to teach them who is in control.
Almost the same time all these "unnecessary" people were let go, these same companies ramped up their H1-b visa hires. Hmmmm, coincidence? Maaaaaayybe! It's odd that some of these firings happened as unionization gained momentum. There was a time when that was illegal.
You mention things I haven’t heard about. Any sources on those?
Sure. Let's see... There's this: Tech Layoffs Likely Pose No Deterrent to Record H-1B Visa Demand
Tech workers willing to rake lower pay
This illustrates how widespread these layoffs are: More than 219,000 global tech workers have lost their jobs this year
In every other industry, hiring continues to be robust, yet pretty much the entire tech industry is in a depression. Why? Even the companies having "weak" earnings last quarter continue to do well financially.
Outsourcing hubs like India to bag 30% to 40% of jobs lost to tech layoffs
Big tech doubles down on union busting as labor movement intensifies
Thanks.
Again though, I think the why’s point back to the same thing.
Salaries in tech in the US has been boosted by ridiculous high demands.
Accountants don’t understand that skills and knowledge is something you pay for and just see that one dev in India costs 1/5 of one dev in the US.
Heck, even I’m cheap compared to the average US devs and I live in Norway.
But why do all these other companies do the same thing? Because they’re bandwagon companies. If FANG does something they’ll do the same.
I also read once that recessions hit the tech industry first, but it also bounces back first.
If that’s correct I have no idea, and I’ve yet to go through a proper recession in my career, but it’s definitely clear that we are busy making one.
All the companies going like “we need to be inflation winners”, I know mine does.
As for outsourcing to India, that always goes in waves. Hard to build good tech there. It’s only cheap in the beginning. Too much instability and job switching.
Note that I have never seen or met anyone who earns more than $160,000 as a developer. That is itself considered a huge sum of money here in the U.S.A. I am in the northeast, and it's the same in the mid-Atlantic.
I think references to 300-600k pay is bullshit - a unicorn presented to make everyone outside the industry think we're priveliged and have nothing to complain about. It's a strawman, a convenient myth.
160k is still a ridiculous amount of money.
In Europe that’s about where they max out.
Fresh out of university in Europe you’ll be lucky to fetch more than 65k, give or take for currency.
Not many that goes over 120k while still retaining a developer title (and job description), but I suppose we’re getting there quicker with the current inflation rates.
Yep, the reality here is closer to yours. Of course right now one must earn 150k to be able to afford a house, costing on average $400k now for a small house) and most make less than 70k.