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™.
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!
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.
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:
This past night I slept for about 90 minutes. Today is going to be so much fun…
Microblogvember 2022, Day 8: I truly hope that Australia reaches consensus regarding the need for — and value of — an indigenous voice to Parliament.
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 5: Today I am exempt from making lunch.
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 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.
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.