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.
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.
