Yeah, I'm surprised by that number as well, but then again, Facebook got tons of news coverage yesterday for adding five emoticons (did they actually add them, or were they just flighting it?). Things are strange these days.
Many companies are much more complex than you might imagine from the outside. Also, a lot of it is meta-headcount: managers, facilities, food service, payroll, benefits, recruiters, lawyers, HR people, etc. all scale at least partially with headcount.
You'll notice many of the jobs are with companies Twitter has acquired or various platform-level projects, like Fabric, Vine, TellApart, Finagle, etc.
You hire managers, when the direct reports increase.
When you are a manger with 5 direct reports, you want to increase the headcount to justify your existence: you go around looking for projects, and direct reports.
Not completely unexpected, but still somewhat of a surprise.
Twitter have been taking on staff faster than their userbase has been growing since their IPO. I guess the question now is how many they are going to layoff - 4,200 employees is a lot of people for something like Twitter.
What's interesting is they've had a lot of leaks...a leak like this comes from someone high up so that's a problem they need to fix. Moments leaks, Jack as CEO leaked...big old bucket there.
If it's actually engineering I'm sure they'll all have jobs in a week but it's still hard to find talent so why wouldn't they just move people around?
Not necessarily. This information could have come from some low-level employee who happened to overhear a conversation between two managers.
The CEO and his inner circle of executives can't just lay off hundreds of employees on their own. They need to involve lots of lower-level managers in this planning, since upper management generally has no idea what each employee is doing and how essential they are to the company. So they ask each of their direct reports to make a list. And once dozens of people know that layoffs are coming, it's difficult to keep it a secret.
Couldn't help notice this is currently #85 on my HN front page with 58 points in 5 hours … at #16 is something with 22 points in 6 hours … wondering if it's a bug, or some kind of penalty box for this story.
got it, maybe those Re/code guys were spamming or something…
interesting because their earlier version of the story has a lot more mentions in my Twitter timeline than the Times story, which was later and has more background.
15 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 45.8 ms ] threadWow - what do all these people do?
As far as engineering, take a look: https://about.twitter.com/careers/teams/software-engineering
Many companies are much more complex than you might imagine from the outside. Also, a lot of it is meta-headcount: managers, facilities, food service, payroll, benefits, recruiters, lawyers, HR people, etc. all scale at least partially with headcount.
You'll notice many of the jobs are with companies Twitter has acquired or various platform-level projects, like Fabric, Vine, TellApart, Finagle, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...
When you are a manger with 5 direct reports, you want to increase the headcount to justify your existence: you go around looking for projects, and direct reports.
Twitter have been taking on staff faster than their userbase has been growing since their IPO. I guess the question now is how many they are going to layoff - 4,200 employees is a lot of people for something like Twitter.
If it's actually engineering I'm sure they'll all have jobs in a week but it's still hard to find talent so why wouldn't they just move people around?
Not necessarily. This information could have come from some low-level employee who happened to overhear a conversation between two managers.
The CEO and his inner circle of executives can't just lay off hundreds of employees on their own. They need to involve lots of lower-level managers in this planning, since upper management generally has no idea what each employee is doing and how essential they are to the company. So they ask each of their direct reports to make a list. And once dozens of people know that layoffs are coming, it's difficult to keep it a secret.
see image, nos. 76 and 81 also seem odd to rank higher - http://imgur.com/gNXJsoy
interesting because their earlier version of the story has a lot more mentions in my Twitter timeline than the Times story, which was later and has more background.