zlacker

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+(OP)
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+98
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+xi
> 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!”

>>jquery+lW1
Twitter feed the money to their employees. Was a bad deal for shareholders