The Twitter News Cycle Moves Fast
Not even a day, and there’s a new item of craziness I can add to my earlier list.
Elon Musk's First Email to Twitter Staff Ends Work from Home - Bloomberg:
The new rules, which kick in immediately, will expect employees to be in the office for at least 40 hours per week…
At least 40 hours per week? The standard working week in Australia is 38 hours. So if Twitter were an Australian firm (or perhaps for the remaining Australian Twitter staff), Musk is asking them to work in the office for more than the typical working week. And since it is “at least”, one presumes additional work would be required at home beyond those 40 hours?
Maybe he should have announced this before the firings. That might have minimised severance costs while still reducing head count.
Once again, we are provided evidence that wealth and intelligence are not inextricably linked.
With a massive thanks to @vincent I’ve got his new shoutouts.lol platform running on the homepage of my blog. I’m still tweaking the look but I’m loving the opportunity to promote things I like™.
Fun and Games at Twitter
Update 10 November: Now Elon is requiring employees to work at least 40 hours per week in the office.
Twitter is a clown show. But I have an irrational fear of clowns, and not Twitter, so maybe it’s better described as a dumpster fire.
Anyway, let’s see if I can get this straight. In a few short days, Elon has:
- Fired half the company, including ones who knew what they were doing.
- Introduced the blue tick for anybody - at a price ($20, nah, $8 - USD anyway).
- Seen impersonation happen (surprise!) and created random rules about not being allowed to do that.
- Implemented a new grey, “official” checkmark for people who sort of used to be the blue tick people (but not quite).
- Removed the grey official checkmark:
I just killed it
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 9, 2022
There’s move fast and break things, and then there’s fly by the seat of your pants doing random shit because you can’t think even 1 step ahead.
Further evidence that there is false equivalence between wealth and intelligence.
Microblogvember 2022, Day 10: My father-in-law was once Australia’s Minister for Defence. My father was an Anglican minister. Separation of Church and State!
The Great Correction?
Are we now experiencing “the great correction” in the tech world? Meta has announced layoffs of 11,000, we just had now privately-owned Twitter reduce headcount by 7,500. Stripe let go of 14% of its people, and Sketch had to let a bunch of it’s employees go recently as well. These are just the ones I recall off the top of my head - I’m sure there are others.
Higher interest rates reduce the availability of cheap venture capital; leading to increasing pressure to run a business to deliver profit and return to shareholders; and a number of these firms are behemoths that may have reached the end of their natural growth potential.
Social media in particular is a business that relies on ad revenue above all else. If interest rates continue to increase, people will buy less, and thus advertisers will have less free cash flow to put towards advertising. Ultimately this will result in more pressure on revenue for the social media companies.
Good luck everybody; I think the tech seas are about to get rough for some time.
Microblogvember 2022, Day 9: After virtually no sleep last night, I am certain to sleep well this evening.
You Get a Checkmark, and You Get a Checkmark!
Update, 10 November: Now the official checkmark has been unrolled out. You couldn’t make this stuff up.
Twitter’s solution for ruining verification is another check mark - The Verge:
Twitter is rolling out another type of check mark to help distinguish accounts that users actually need to know are real. Although you can pay $7.99 per month for a blue check mark with the new version of Twitter Blue, select accounts for governments, companies, or public figures will get a gray “Official” check mark
Twitter is on the pathway to full farce. it reminds me of this clip from The Late Show:
Microblogvember 2022, Day 8: I truly hope that Australia reaches consensus regarding the need for — and value of — an indigenous voice to Parliament.
This submarine cable map is really cool!
I’ve set up shoutouts.lol by @vincent. For now it is running as the opening entry at canion.me or specifically at canion.me/shout-out… I’ve tried it on andrewcanion.com but the styling doesn’t look so nice and I don’t know how to fix that.
Microblogvember 2022, Day 7: With the amount of time spent in Microsoft Teams, surely I have gained enough insight for a single work day.
Microblogvember 2022, Day 6: I went on a roller coaster today. I’m too old for it. But I heard the echo of screams while riding.
Microblogvember 2022, Day 4: After two weeks of solo parenting, I look with admiration upon all those who do it alone full-time.
Microblogvember 2022, Day 3: I’m so old. I’ve had a license to drive a car for 28 years. I still remember driving myself to school for the first time; I felt like a bad-ass.
I got myself a new avatar! Thank you nanayudhistira2.
I see that @dave has created Feedland. I’m having trouble grokking it - or maybe I’m over-thinking. It grabs RSS feeds and presents a river - but I don’t understand why I’d use it ahead of a feed reader. I’m missing something, right?
Microblogvember 2022, Day 2: My coffee shop sandwich was de-contented. It was definitely not a feast. Guess that’s one way to defy rising cost of materials.
Business Basics and Twitter Acquisitions
Can Elon Musk Make the Math Work on Owning Twitter? It’s Dicey. - The New York Times:
Last year, Twitter’s interest expense was about $50 million. With the new debt taken on in the deal, that will now balloon to about $1 billion a year. Yet the company’s operations last year generated about $630 million in cash flow to meet its financial obligations.
That means that Twitter is generating less money per year than what it owes its lenders.
In my paid employment I often take time to explain to companies who do not benefit from the largesse of venture capital that the number one priority must be to keep revenue ahead of expenses, and avoid saddling their firm with debt.
Musk has ignored these basic tenets of business because the culture of tech bros is that the rules don’t apply to them. In a falling market, however, other people’s money becomes less accessible. At some point, the music stops, and the debtors knock on the door.
I have added rel="me" links on my various websites so they each vouch for one another that they’re all related to me.
I am grateful not to be working in an office, where I have to pretend to care about the Melbourne Cup. That stupid horse race has ruined so many of my Tuesdays - I even remember having to watch it in Primary School! (obviously the teachers were betting on it)
Microblogvember 2022, Day 1. I need to figure out how to rediscover my motivation for work. Been feeling meh these past few days.
Having a night where I can’t fall asleep. Then I start thinking about not getting enough sleep, and start calculating how little sleep I am going to get before having to wake up, which causes sleep anxiety… you know the drill.