zlacker

>>prawn+(OP)
So this is how Twitter goes out: not with a bang but with a seemingly endless stream of stories about the little ways Elon is ruining the service each day.

Just staggers me that Elon could have just… not done any of this. And yet here we are. He’s had to sell billions in Tesla stock to finance this ongoing mayhem, this is surely going to be up there as one of the greatest examples of hubris in modern business.

>>afavou+n6
Elon is certainly awful for all that he’s doing, but couldn’t Twitter have simply told him to buzz off when he proposed buying the company instead of taking legal action to ensure he did it?

People up top were eager to cash out at the expense of all the employees under them. That’s equally disgusting to me.

>>pigsty+R7
Twitter was an unprofitable laughing stock until 2016, and with Trump gone they were very likely to revert to that whoever was in charge. It's hard to justify not taking twice what you're worth for that. Frankly even for employees, getting cashed out on your RSUs at double value and the option to walk away with 3 months' severance sounds better than staying there while it slowly runs into the ground.

>>lmm+Ha
Why is this myth so pervasive. Pre-musk, Twitter was making upwards of $1m per employee. If only we could all “fail” this way… It not being profitable was due to short term capital expenditures.

>>jquery+Qi
They've had literally two profitable quarters in their whole corporate history. They went from being considered an equal competitor to Facebook to... not, as Facebook was able to bring in advertising revenue and Twitter wasn't.

Every money-losing tech company claims that they could turn the spigot to profitability at any time and the reason they're not profitable is short term capital expenditures; the proof is in the pudding.

>>lmm+et
> Every money-losing tech company claims that they could turn the spigot to profitability at any time

A bit of an exaggeration but there is some truth here, tech companies are notorious for feeding all their revenue back into growth. However in Twitter’s case it was absolutely true. It had a solid perch and wasn’t going anywhere… until Elon took over and became Trump 2.0 except “this time, he owns the site!”