Jump to content

MeerkatBong

crowd sourced
  • Posts

    389
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by MeerkatBong

  1. 55 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

    Lol, "objective." 

    I'm waiting on your ruling here on if this source can be considered objective and bias-free. I'd like to know what is wildcat-approved for business news consumption that isn't mind-warping. In that vein, do you have any newsletters or dailys that you read for news that you can share that you find to be objective?

    • Haha 1
  2. 5 minutes ago, SydneyCarton said:

    Lots of assumptions in there. Now why doesn't you add in the debt service. 

    Good question, the author doesn't explicitly say why not added in the debt service for total annual cost of 2022 (FY23), but I am guessing it's because it was a one time cost and it was reconciled in 2021. Per the link back (you need a paywall, it's a newsletter, but I'll copy/paste here, bold emphasis my own):

     

    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. The company also does not appear to have a lot of extra cash on hand. While it had about $6 billion in cash before Mr. Musk’s buyout, a large portion of that probably went into the cost of closing the acquisition.

    These numbers are deceiving; in December 2021 Twitter made a $809.5 million payment to settle a shareholder class-action lawsuit for having allegedly misled investors about user engagement metrics in 2015. Without that payment Twitter’s 2021 cash flow from operations would have been $1.4 billion, which is, needless to say, enough to cover its debt burden. This shouldn’t be a surprise, by the way: while I am sure the banks regret agreeing to fund Musk’s horribly overpriced acquisition, it is silly to think that they would have committed more money than Twitter as currently constituted could afford to pay.

    • Hook 'Em 1
  3. Saw this objective analysis from a newsletter I subscribe to (bold emphasis mine):

     

    --

    Twitter, of course, has not gone down (although there do at times seem to be oddities consistent with some sort of degradation, but it’s hard to know to what extent this is a sort of psychosomatic suspicion of bugs that have always existed), and Musk is bragging about record users and engagement. That, though, doesn’t solve the issues I have raised around monetization and regulators; the advantage for Musk, though, is that those are no longer the expectations: simply staying online is now seen as a Musk victory.

    This isn’t the first time we have seen similar dynamics, of course: there is sometimes a tendency to imagine the worst possible outcome and to proceed as if it is an inevitability, and then, when that outcome does not come to pass, more moderate concerns are discredited in the wash. Like, for example, a potential degradation in service, or, as I have been writing about, concerns about monetization and regulatory action. Those are still real concerns — and to be fair, I suppose Twitter could forget to renew a security certificate or something — but it seems to me that the hysteria of last Friday has, counter-intuitively, increased the chances that Musk succeeds because it already seems like he has.

    What I have not seen much discussion about is the positive impact on Twitter’s financials of all of Twitter’s layoffs and resignations. According to Platformer Twitter had 2,700 full time employees as of last Monday; that’s down from 7,500 at the end of last year (there were also a reported 4,000 contractors let go). Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that 20% of Twitter’s Cost of Revenue, and 80% of Research & Development, Sales & Marketing, and General & Administrative were salaries:

    2021 (in thousands) Total Costs $ Salary Salary Costs
    Cost of Revenue $1,797,510 20% $359,502
    R&D, S&M, G&A $3,007,010 80% $2,405,608
    Total     $2,765,110
           
    Employees 7,500 Average $368,680
           
    Post-Layoffs 2,700 Total $995,440

    Again, these are very rough estimates, but I think it is reasonable to assume that Twitter’s employee costs have been cut significantly, leaving its total annual costs at around $3.0 billion (excluding last year’s lawsuit settlement); add on the company’s reported $1 billion in interest payments and the company needs to come up with $4.0 billion a year in revenue. 2021 revenue, meanwhile, was $5.1 billion, and remember, Twitter had around $6 billion in cash pre-buyout. In other words, while I suspect Twitter’s ad revenue has been impacted, it will take a pretty large impact to drive the company bankrupt.

    • Hook 'Em 1
  4. 6 hours ago, Bateshorn said:

    I think that’s an accurate description. And it’s not Qatar losing FIFA money, it’s the other way: if FIFA wants their final payments, they’ll do what the Qataris want.  And like a French whore, there’s nothing FIFA won’t do for money.

    I heard the opposite, where the journalist wearing a rainbow flag wasn't being let in (and finally got let in) and FIFA sent word to Qatar any more of those shenanigans and they will cancel games, so obviously the guy got let in and you haven't heard much more of those types of issues (rainbow shirts, subtle support, etc.). It sounded like Qatar was worried about FIFA cancelling games and FIFA had the leverage....

    That said, I understand the idea of sportswashing, but I'm thinking Qatar is having a bit of buyers remorse on this one. Nothing good coming from this for them and they clearly value different things than most of the world and don't appreciate people trying to get them to change...

  5. On 11/21/2022 at 4:42 AM, RPM said:

    Poker Face - Russell Crowe and a Hemsworth. Interesting crime story with few shots fired. Slow, but worth the watch.

     

    Speaking of Russell Crowe, just saw Thor Love and whatever, and it was pure garbage EXCEPT for Russell Crowe's portrayal of Zeus as a fat, greasy Greek. Hilarious.

    • Hook 'Em 1
  6. 41 minutes ago, Chuckie Finster said:


    He’s a run-of-the-mill 4chan dork. There’s nothing interesting about what he thinks or says, the internet is full of millions of losers exactly like him, many of whom are depraved and exhibit countless red flags.

    The only difference between Elon and the rest of them is his bank account.

    Pretty massive difference.

    • Fuck You 5
  7. The Imitation Game (2014)

    I had heard good things, don't think this film as aged all that well and seems to be historically super hollywood washed. Thought Benedict Cumberbatch was just okay. Give it a B for entertainment value only (which I guess is why they took so many liberties with the historical facts and timelines).

  8. 41 minutes ago, FartingMonk said:

    She doesn't have any Theranos money left.  She cucked some rich ass hotel dude and has one kid with him with another on the way.  She met this dumbass after the the whole fraud fiasco.

    People are sickly attracted to deranged. Similar to young, good looking chicks who write and marry serial killers in prison.

  9. 2 minutes ago, FunkSoulBrother said:

    Just upgraded my Disney+ membership to the Disney+ Trio premium bundle where I have Disney+(no ads), Hulu(no ads) and ESPN+(with ads). I was wondering though, now that I have ESPN+ wouldn't I have access to their articles on the site as well? It's telling me I had to pay $9.99 to access. Thanks.

    I'm reading with Bob Chapek being axed and activist investors at the gates, Disney+ will combine with Hulu

  10. On 11/20/2022 at 9:37 AM, atomheartbevo said:

    Played Tommy in the Power Rangers, lived in Houston.  Committed suicide this morning, had four kids.

     

    Dang, suicide!?! With 4 kids. RIP, didn’t know he had demons like that but I guess he’s been out of the spotlight for decades.

  11. 35 minutes ago, Texzilla58 said:

    That’s their current culture. Colts lose a lot of game in the last minutes. Wentz was a master at it. Takes time to fix it. More time than Saturday has. I don’t think it was a bad hire for the situation they’re in. As an interim. I don’t think he’s a permanent solution.

    Of course he's not, which is why the absolute meltdown media members were having is so hilarious and ridiculous in the first place.

    • Hook 'Em 1
    • Fuck You 1
  12. 27 minutes ago, SizzleChest said:

    I’m waiting for 2025 F-150 Lightning.  Assuming the reliable 1000 mile per charge batteries end up coming to fruition.

    They are gonna be like $125k base price at this rate.

  13. 12 minutes ago, Hefeweizen said:

    It is pretty amazing reading a middle managers assessment of Twitter programmers based on his reading of Elmo tweets.

    It’s like you people don’t read Fishbowl or Blind or even Reddit or Quora. In fact this very point I think was made even here on a thread some years ago. It’s not even remotely controversial to state that, all things being equal, Twitter even before Elmo wasn’t a tier-1 destination compared to FAANG.

  14. 46 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

    And yet more than a few of them were being publicly recruited by top-tier companies, so yeah, no, you don’t seem to have a grasp on how this works.

    Chrispy, you are telling us you’ve never worked at a tech company, without telling us you’ve never worked at a tech company.

    If you are a good developer or good at whatever tech job you have, you are not worried about layoffs at other companies, because you have headhunters seeking you out and you are getting offers even before you hit the Silicon Valley version of the transfer portal.  When you are given a loyalty test by Elon to agree to work a lot more hours, you bail for greener pastures because you won’t have a problem getting a job that pays just as well without Elon’s bullshit hours.  A good developer is also not going to put up with stupid shit like emailing the CEO screenshots of your work (that really has to be fake because I can’t imagine Musk being that fucking stupid as to request screenshots of work from individual developers).

    If you are mediocre, you are absolutely going to stay at Twitter and work those extra hours and promise to do whatever Elon wants because you are terrified of competing with a bunch of other people who were recently laid off at other companies.

    Oh, and if you are paying attention to Elon killing the advertising revenue stream, even if you are mediocre, you may consider bailing anyways, because there will be more job cuts, more hours required, and probably pay cuts.

    I think you missed my point which was, on the whole, Twitter doesn't have "rockstar" or "ninja" or whatever cool prefix is used before "coder/techskill" that denotes an A+ player. They are a bunch of B & C team players to begin with. 

    To put it as an analogy in my world. Twitter is like the tech world's KPMG of the Big 4. Sure there are some outlier all-stars and probably even a few departments that are great or practices that shine, but on the whole, it ain't housing the best in breed (and this is because of multiple reasons; compensation plan, RSU/stock options have sucked, mission-driven people roll their eyes, culture stuff, etc.).

    All that said, B&C team players are better than an empty bench where there is work to be done, so in that we agree.

     

  15. 3 hours ago, henrygandorf said:

    i've read some lengthy threads on this, and the consensus seems to be (at least in the tech space) that the 50-75% that leave are the most talented with the softest landing spots at other top companies.  maybe he will try to "rebuild with the best performers", but it may not entirely be up to him.

    I've also read some on this and from what I've read the general consensus in this Big Tech world with all these skillsets is that Twitter had at best the B-team of Silicon Valley and at worst was home to the most mediocre of big tech STEM/Developers/Tech people.

    That doesn't bode well for competing against the 10k amazon folks and 13k meta folks who are already on the street due to RIF's with Google's cut incoming. 

    Basically these Twitter folks are smart to quit and get in before the labor market is a mess with the job market being super tight for comparable compensation/jobs in big tech.

×
×
  • Create New...