Out At Twitter — With Simon Balmain

Simon Balmain was laid off by Twitter today. A former Twitter senior community manager, Balmain takes us through the last few weeks at the company, describing the atmosphere, employee reactions to the layoffs, and whether the company can still function after losing this many people. Join us for a tough but balanced look at a historic moment at the company. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 0:43Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 1:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  Welcome to Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. And we are going to do this episode emergency style, just going to throw it right up on the feed. No music because we have some serious breaking news. There's been serious layoffs at Twitter. And I thought you might want to hear from someone who's been inside the company and can share a little bit about their perspective, about what it's been like, what it means and where Twitter and the employees go from here. So joining us today is Simon Balmain. He was a former senior community manager at Twitter. One of the many employees tweeting about his departure. It's been very interesting to watch it play out in public. And his tweet caught my eye and he's graciously appeared to come and talk us through what's happened.

• 1:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  Simon, welcome to the show.

• 1:51Speaker 01

  You're welcome. Thank you for having me.

• 1:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  So where are you based?

• 1:55Speaker 01

  So I'm in England. I'm in, I live in Birmingham, which is in the middle of the country. Just a couple of hours north of London. So kind of between working from home here in Birmingham and, you know, going into the London office occasionally.

• 2:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yep. And now, can you share a little bit about how you, you seem to be fairly early? Because in Thursday, on Thursday, Twitter had announced that it was going to do these layoffs. And then you tweeted pretty soon afterwards. So, so how did you find out?

• 2:29Speaker 01

  So, um, we, we'd obviously been hearing these, can you, is my voice clear? Does it sound okay to you?

• 2:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yep, loud and clear.

• 2:38Speaker 01

  Okay, cool, cool, cool. So we'd obviously been hearing about these issues, these potential rumors of layoffs since, pretty much since the deal was, was completed around a week ago. The rumor mill sort of churned into overdrive with this idea that big layoffs were, were on the horizon.

• 3:02Speaker 01

  We got the email, everyone in the company, as I understand it, got this email last, last night.

• 3:10Speaker 01

  It was pretty, it was pretty early hours of the morning in the UK. It was after midnight.

• 3:17Speaker 01

  I tend to be up quite late because I primarily had been working with people in the US and working on products in San Francisco and on the West Coast. So those are kind of my normal hours.

• 3:28Speaker 01

  And within the email kind of said, yeah, there's, there's going to be this huge reduction in headcount. You, if you're affected, you'll get an email to your personal email. And if not, you'll get something to your work email. And it was within an hour of that going out that I noticed my laptop flash. It had been sort of remotely removed from the system and kind of set to the Mac security PIN setting that you get when you sort of remotely wipe or revoke access to systems.

• 4:01Speaker 01

  And after that, I checked and it was the same with my Gmail, G Suite access that was revoked. My Slack access were revoked as well.

• 4:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  Wait, that's how you found out just?

• 4:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's how that's how I found out. Just everything just removed straight away. Yeah.

• 4:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Was there follow up communication from the company after that?

• 4:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's there's been follow up communication. Very, let's just say very carefully worded.

• 4:28Speaker 01

  Obviously,

• 4:31Speaker 01

  different countries, even different states in the US, different territories, you know, the the labor laws can vary widely. Right. And in the UK, we actually have pretty good labor laws. So there is there is certain things that have to be said and certain steps that have to be taken, processes that have to be followed. Otherwise, you can find yourself in in serious legal liability. So certainly, at least here in the UK, and I'm sure you know, everywhere everywhere else relative to to whatever local laws are applicable, is paying very close attention to ensure that this process is followed.

• 5:09Speaker 01

  And, you know, whatever, if if that happens, then that's fine. If it doesn't, then we'll see where we go from there.

• 5:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. What what's the mood been like inside the company? I mean, imagine I know that you're in the UK, right? Smaller office than in in New York, San Francisco, but I imagine you're all connected digitally.

• 5:25Speaker 01

  Yes, I mean, I've primarily been working with mostly with folks in in the US, pretty much my whole time at the company.

• 5:34Speaker 01

  I guess the the.

• 5:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  Can we start? Yeah, maybe we start with like when Musk had, you know, agreed and then we can go through. You know, the various stages. So when you found out that Elon had that was actually going to close this deal, was there a surprise? I mean, it happened. It's hard to believe, but it happened just a week ago.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, it's the whole process, even going back to, you know, April, when he first made this offer, has been just an absolute roller coaster of ups and downs and so.

• 6:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  Talk about that roller coaster. Yeah.

• 6:07Speaker 01

  Unpredictable. He made, you know, he made this offer in in in April. I suppose based upon the relative economic market at the time pertaining to tech companies. Shortly after that, you know, global events that took place, like, you know, what's been happening in Ukraine and, you know, various other things.

• 6:32Speaker 01

  Caused the majority of tech stocks to, you know, drop quite dramatically over that time. At which point it seemed like he felt like he had made a mistake and perhaps should have waited a bit longer. And then spent the summer trying to get out of it. While denigrating the company, the executives, the employees in the process.

• 6:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  What was the mood inside the company while that happened?

• 6:57Speaker 01

  It was just bizarre. It was bizarre.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  Nobody really knew what to make of it all, but certainly it was very distracting.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  We, we didn't get a huge amount of communication from the previous administration. But it was more than we got in the last week from the new management to certainly.

• 7:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  Was there like a general sense that like, okay, this, this deal probably, once he tried to get out of it, was there a general sense like, oh, he probably won't be the new owner? Or was it sort of like limbo?

• 7:33Speaker 01

  I mean, at one point, it certainly seemed like he might.

• 7:40Speaker 01

  Might be willing to pay some kind of nominal fee to get out of it.

• 7:47Speaker 01

  Certainly seemed for a while that he, that he absolutely did not want to do it if he had the choice to. And maybe, maybe that's still the case. Maybe he didn't have a choice not, not to do it at this point, given what happened in, in court. Who, you know, who's to say it's a very complex acquisition matter. But certainly when, after the, the judge. Had agreed to this delay after he said that he was going to close it.

• 8:15Speaker 01

  I think at, at that point, you know, there was no way this wasn't going to happen.

• 8:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  And then, yeah. And so when he said he was going to close it, did, did that catch you and the employees by surprise? How was that perceived internally?

• 8:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  Cause he had spent, you're right, he had spent the whole summer denigrating the company.

• 8:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, honestly, it, it didn't take me by surprise or really anybody that I spoke to. Not because, and purely because it's.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  It's hard to, he's just, he's a very unpredictable character. That, you know, logically with most people, you would think that if somebody spent a large amount of time saying, hey, I don't want to do this thing anymore. I'm not going to do it, then they wouldn't do it. So, but that's, you know, you can't, you can't predict what, what someone like that does. So I wa, yeah, I wasn't surprised.

• 9:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And how did people react once he said, okay, you know, this is going to close inside the company?

• 9:19Speaker 01

  It's hard, it's, yeah, it's, it's hard to say because again, even though he had said that. Anything could have happened at that point, like he had, you know, track record had proven that. What is true one day may not be true the next day, and what is false one day may be true the next day. It's, it's, it's just impossible to tell. So it was just like this very prolonged. Just waiting game, emotional roller coaster of not knowing what to think.

• 9:48Speaker 01

  When I, I, I think the real mood shift came. On the day that, you know, the, the deal was closed and he, you know, showed up at the office and fired all the executives.

• 10:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 10:00Speaker 01

  You know, these, these are incredible people that, that, you know, most people in the company have, have had some kind of interaction with one way or another, depending. You know, obviously what, what department you're in. And to have that sort of chain of command, just like broken at that level.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  Was, it was horrible to see. And, and I think at that point, we knew that. You know, these big layoffs were pretty much inevitable. Plus, plus the fact that. There was no communication internally about any of this stuff. Right? You would expect something and got nothing.

• 10:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  And so how were people communicating? How were they figuring out what was going on?

• 10:42Speaker 01

  On pretty much on platform, following the news, following, yeah, following, you know, following the resources of of deep diving investigators like Casey Newtons and people like that. Um, yeah, we're finding out a lot of stuff at the same time everybody else is.

• 11:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right now, there's this rumor that 75% of the staff was going to get cut. People picked up on that inside?

• 11:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, that was, that was the number that was going around for a few weeks. Um, he did, uh, he did say when he went into the San Francisco office that that number was not accurate and he didn't know where it came from. Uh, I think it is probably not, it's probably not quite that high, but probably not far off either.

• 11:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. So how many of the, of the people that you worked with closely are still at the company?

• 11:40Speaker 01

  It's really hard to say. I mean, I've, I haven't heard from, from everybody. Uh, I, yeah, I, I know that a lot of people are not, it's hard to, it's, it's, it's a sea of people saying that they're not. And the, the odd message from somebody sort of sheepishly saying, I'm still here and I don't know how to feel.

• 12:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, wow. Interesting. So, um, can you, can you talk a little bit about the, the plans that, that Elon said he wanted to introduce? Were, were, was there any excitement to? Well, actually, let me ask you this. What, what is your opinion about Elon, you know, or what was it before this all began?

• 12:19Speaker 01

  Um, so I, I personally try not to really have too many solid opinions about people that I haven't met or don't know that are based on, you know, media or projections or, or whatever. I, I try, I try as a rule not to do that. So, uh, while there certainly were people, um, that were very anti him, uh, and certainly there are a lot of people that are very pro him. I, I tend to find that historically I've just been quite neutral. I'm like, I will judge people by their actions, uh, if I think it's a good thing that you've

• 13:02Speaker 01

  done, or if I think it's a bad thing that you've done. Um, and, and tend not to make, you know, personality judgments on people that I don't know.

• 13:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  Do you believe in the plans that he laid out for Twitter? And what will the fact that he's cut so many employees do to his ability to actually see them through?

• 13:21Speaker 01

  That's a good question.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  Given that I don't know the exact number that's impacted, but I do believe it to be quite high. I think it's going to be challenging. It's going to be challenging. And I think that there are people who, even if they have survived this, probably very likely to leave at their own accord in the not too distant future.

• 13:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's difficult. As far as what their plans might be.

• 13:54Speaker 01

  I think one thing that's pretty clear from the economics of this deal is that he's on the hook for quite a lot of money in not a huge amount of time. You know, we're talking a billion plus in interest payments alone to the financiers every year. You know, that's more revenue than Twitter has been making. Obviously, you know, some of it is collateral against, you know, Tesla stock and whatever else. And he's not going to want to, you know, have to sell other things unless he's forced to. So it's sort of this juggling game for him, I guess.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  But I think what that makes clear is, is product wise, the focus is extremely likely to be on everything that drives new revenue and ignore everything that doesn't.

• 14:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. Interesting.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  That's my sort of crystal ball of it from, from, you know, what I've, what I've seen in the last week or so.

• 14:55Speaker 01

  I think my, my personal feeling about the broad direction of product travel is, is likely to be a couple of different things. And one of those is that there will be a large focus on.

• 15:09Speaker 01

  Products that directly drive revenue to the company in that the user will need to pay to do X or Y. And then the other one will be a high priority attempt at sort of creator programs, influencer programs where users pay other users and the company takes a cut for whatever content or access or features they might be able to use. And I think between those two streams, that's likely to be the product priority for at least the midterm, if not the next few years.

• 15:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I want to ask you a question that's sort of been with me since this whole thing started, which is that a lot of people have focused on Elon. But you know, you mentioned you didn't hear much from the previous administration. I guess you started in November 21. Was Jack Dorsey still the CEO at that point?

• 16:00Speaker 01

  Jack Dorsey was still the CEO at that point. Jack, Jack stepped down, I think about two weeks after I started and two weeks is kind of your onboarding.

• 16:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. So tell me about, yeah, how did that, what was your reaction when that happened?

• 16:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I was excited to potentially work with, with Jack. You know, I think there's always this sort of, you know, cult of the founder, as they call it. And that's, you know, it's, it's a real thing, you know, when you're the founding CEO, there's, there's a certain amount of sort of mystique that goes along with that, whether that's, you know, warranted or unwarranted. Certainly with Jack, having, you know, gone through his journey of being removed from the company and setting up another successful company with Block formerly known as Square, and then coming back to Twitter, you know, there was, there was, you know, that kind of element around him.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  When he, the funny thing is when he stepped down about, yeah, two weeks is about the general onboarding at Twitter. So those first two weeks is just a lot of setting up your systems and reading this and doing that. And you're not really doing any actual work. But as I recall it, there's, there was a tradition of Jack jumping into a Google Meet call with every batch of new employees on a pretty rolling basis. And that was actually in our calendars. And it was supposed to happen like two or three days after the day that he ended up saying, you know, I'm stepping down. And so, so that that didn't happen. So I was like, days away from having that, you know, get this like, well, you know,

• 17:40Speaker 01

  group time, actually talk to Jack. But from, from what I heard from people that had been at the company for, you know, a while at that point, there was a sort of general feeling that he had been kind of absent for a year or two, kind of mentally checked out. Probably, probably since the stuff in DC, honestly, and after he got called into Congress and all that stuff.

• 18:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  Really?

• 18:10Speaker 01

  You know, yeah, I mean, I don't know that that's the case, but the timeline seems to, seems to match up. Yeah.

• 18:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  Does Jack, I mean, Jack said Elon Musk was the perfect person for Twitter. I mean, and then Parag, of course, you know, worked, you know, was his handpicked successor and you didn't hear much from him, apparently, during his time, because the Elon thing came in pretty soon after.

• 18:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  You know, does the fact that, that they pushed the company to Elon and now all these employees are out, do you have any reaction to that? It's a lot, there's a lot of people are talking about like Elon's role in this, and of course, not great in the, in the layoff. I feel like this layoff is, is very ill advised. You can't possibly know how to cut half the company and, you know, in just a couple of days. I've written that, like, some of the stuff he's done is, is good, but he's, he's definitely like, it's just a, it seems kind of reckless. But, but, so he deserves his fair share of criticism. But I wonder what you think about Jack, like, pushing the company to somebody who will, would then go ahead and cut so many?

• 19:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, Jack is certainly not an innocent bystander in this turn of events. He's a very active participant in this turn of events, even having not been at the company for a year and not been on the board since, I think, May is when he stepped down from the board. Clearly, a very active participant. I think it's common knowledge that that Jack did not like the board and the way the company was set up. And, you know, it was it was the existence of that whole structure from the beginning that was what allowed them to push

• 19:54Speaker 01

  him out when he got pushed out. And, you know, eventually, he made his way back in, perhaps perhaps due to there not being any better options at that time. But certainly, it's pretty clear to me that the structure of the company and the way it was set up has been something that he's been unhappy about for quite some time. So on that on that basis, you know, it's

• 20:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  There's no sense of betrayal there?

• 20:30Speaker 01

  It's hard for me to feel a sense of betrayal because

• 20:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  Because you were on there for a couple of weeks.

• 20:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, because he did step down so quickly.

• 20:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  What was it like? Yeah. What was it like with working under Parag, where he was pushing the sale to Elon, obviously stood to make a lot of money on the way out and clearly had an idea of what was going to happen inside?

• 20:51Speaker 01

  I don't think personally that communication during that timeframe from the top of the company was as good as it could have been. I feel like there was a lot of just, you know, keep people hanging and tell them as little as possible. And that just repeated week after week, month after month.

• 21:16Speaker 01

  What I will say is that the level of executives underneath Parag were incredible. There was some absolutely incredible people there. Huge amount of respect for people like Leslie Berlin, who was the CMO.

• 21:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  Who's now out, yeah, former CMO.

• 21:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, the product heads, I was a, I was a huge fan of Caveon. It was surprising.

• 21:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  Who was out and then former head of product, former guest on the show.

• 21:44Speaker 01

  Oh, you had Caveon on the show. Amazing. Caveon is fantastic. I love Caveon. I was very surprised that he was, that he was laid off, so, you know, fired earlier in the year.

• 21:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  Apparently he's back in Twitter headquarters now, which is interesting.

• 21:57Speaker 01

  That's a rumor that I heard.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  I have yet to speak to anybody that personally has been able to verify that rumor.

• 22:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  Interesting.

• 22:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, Caveon, fantastic. So many great people in the company. Tony Hale, who came through the Scroll acquisition.

• 22:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 22:15Speaker 01

  Is absolutely incredible.

• 22:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 22:17Speaker 01

  Rembert Brown, who was maybe still is.

• 22:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  Tony's also, by the way, Tony also laid off today. He just announced it.

• 22:24Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 22:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 22:26Speaker 01

  Wow, you know more than I, I mean, I've been on the phone to press all day. So, wow, wow, Tony's incredible. That's sad.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  Nobody is safe. Nobody is safe.

• 22:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. What was the mood inside the company like over the last 24 hours or so before the actual notices went out, like clearly like this was something that was imminent, it was reported in the press.

• 22:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  Maybe you can talk a little bit about, yeah, the mood over the last day and, and what Twitter culture has been like.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  Sure. Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm just checking my calendar.

• 23:04Speaker 01

  So there are, there are fun.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  Sort of get together, social channels in the Twitter Slack.

• 23:16Speaker 01

  Um, very sort of general hangout, talk vibes.

• 23:23Speaker 01

  And in one of those channels for, you know, hours and hours and hours on end yesterday.

• 23:31Speaker 01

  Basically, every single person in the company was posting the salute emoji.

• 23:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hmm.

• 23:36Speaker 01

  As a sign of solidarity and that just went on for hours and hours and hours.

• 23:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hmm. Interesting.

• 23:42Speaker 01

  That was, yeah, it was, it was something, it was something to see.

• 23:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, general mood has just been.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  Just, yeah, all, all. Huge, hugely deflating, I think, for a lot of people, but.

• 24:01Speaker 01

  I think one of the things that props us all up is.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  The culture, the, the sort of historical culture.

• 24:13Speaker 01

  Of, of people within the company and people who had left the company is it's like a giant support network.

• 24:21Speaker 01

  You know, even, even leading up to, you know, what's happened today and last night, you've seen. Very, very influential people who are no longer at the company saying.

• 24:33Speaker 01

  I'm happy to do a referral, talk to me, whatever you need, like it's been, it's been like that with everyone.

• 24:40Speaker 01

  And it's.

• 24:43Speaker 01

  I think this is, this is a pivotal moment in, in tech history, right? Because. Think about all of the people that came to the company. As through acquisitions who were CEOs, who had raised venture capital, who had had successful startups. It's a lot of people and all the people that directly worked under those, like I'm one of them. Like sphere, my company sphere messenger, the CEO of that was a guy called Nick Diologio. Nick was the youngest person to ever get venture capital when he was like 15, sold his first company to Yahoo when he was 17. And this was, you know, his, his next company, you know, did the same thing again. Nick's, Nick's incredible. He's a genius. I don't know if Nick has been laid off, but certainly a lot of the sphere acquisition people, including myself have been.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  Um, or believe that to be the case right now with the sort of lack of communication that we had.

• 25:34Speaker 01

  And that's that's going to be the case for a lot of incredible people in the company. And it it doesn't seem to be from as far as we can tell, there's no sort of rhyme or reason to teams or roles in particular or anything. It seems to be everybody, right? So you have basically a perfect storm of of of C suite executives, people who know how to get VC funding, programmers, designers, marketing people, community people, like you've got you've got everything you need, right? And it's impossible for me to think that there won't be a bunch of new incredible startups that come out of this.

• 26:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. How do you respond to some of the folks who've said, I mean, I've been tweeting about this a little bit, and I've been surprised to see like the lack of empathy from some people who've been like, you know, these employees had it coming or, you know, lay off as many of them as you can.

• 26:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's weird. I mean, I've been getting the the sort of MAGA people in my responses all day in between, you know, a much higher percentage of people who actually do have empathy. And the weirdest thing to me is that they can't even look at my bio and see that I'm in the UK. It's like, what do what do I have to do with your political climate, really? So, yeah, it's it's weird. I don't know what they expect.

• 26:57Speaker 01

  Because there's a very, there's a very real scenario. And I think, you know, The Verge and others had written about this, that revenue directly revenue generating products take a take time to, to, you know, properly design, properly implement and to, you know, pick up support from people. And and if you are losing your brand safety with your advertisers who are 85% of your current revenue.

• 27:27Speaker 01

  That's a weird position to be in. Like, it's, I mean, it's a dangerous game to play.

• 27:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I'm looking for a tweet right now because Elon just shared a tweet right before we went on air. And he said, Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with the content moderation. And we did everything we could to appease the activists. Extremely messed up. They're trying to destroy free speech in America. So, I mean, he is right that the content moderation policies haven't, haven't changed, but he is laying off lots of people in the ad group and

• 28:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, you know, content moderation is, it's not AI driven, right? It's not machine learning. It's, you know, there's elements of that to it, like anything in tech, but it's a manual job that real people are doing. And if you're laying off people that do that, then stuff's not going to get checked in the way that it should. And I suspect that

• 28:31Speaker 01

  he, it's, it's, it's potentially quite likely that concessions will have to be made by him in order to, you know,

• 28:42Speaker 01

  appease brand advertisers in certain ways.

• 28:46Speaker 01

  That some of these people who were very jubilant and joyful about this might have a very quick turn of heart about those decisions.

• 28:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 28:57Speaker 01

  So we'll see, we'll see.

• 28:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  Let me ask you two more questions if I can.

• 29:00Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 29:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  First one, what do you think? What's your view of what the future of Twitter is going to look like now?

• 29:10Speaker 01

  Heavy focus on direct revenue generating products in the short to midterm.

• 29:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right, right. Well, we said that, but like, successful, not, do you think that, like, where does this end up? Where does this go with Elon?

• 29:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean.

• 29:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  You can't really say, but like, what's your hunt?

• 29:28Speaker 01

  I don't have a crystal ball.

• 29:31Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, I, I really don't know. I, I think. I wouldn't be surprised if more advertisers pull their revenue because if we're honest, there's other places they're happy to put it, right? Twitter has never been for most big advertisers. Yeah, this is our like number one thing that we're going to put all of our money into. It just hasn't been that. Um, so if there's, if there's risk or there's turbulence, there's instability. They'll, they'll, they'll shift it around. They'll move it wherever else, you know? Experimental advertising in Metaverse or whatever Zuckerberg's doing. I don't know. Like, you know, there's, there's options.

• 30:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 30:13Speaker 01

  So I would, I would not be surprised if, if that trend continues of advertising revenue dropping. I'm not confident that a push on direct revenue products via users will pick up at the same pace that ad revenue may drop.

• 30:32Speaker 01

  It's, it's, it's a dangerous game to be playing.

• 30:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. Um, finally, um, how are you feeling and what's next for you?

• 30:40Speaker 01

  I'm pretty zen. I'm pretty optimistic. Um, it's just in my nature. So, um,

• 30:48Speaker 01

  I did not expect my tweet to, to, to do that many numbers. Uh, so yeah, there's a lot of goodwill there. There's been recruiters in my inbox. There's been CEOs in my inbox. There's been all kinds of things, referrals, whatever else. Like, I'm not, I'm not short of options.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  For what I want to decide to do, to do next. Um, what I, my personal beliefs are very much in, in building trust, building empathy into the internet, um, you know, building open community products like that. As many people can use and have a great experience with. I think we need to get back to that.

• 31:28Speaker 01

  That sort of unrealized potential that we, that we all had in the earlier days of the internet, your late nineties and your early two thousands, when everything seemed to be a lot more open and protocol based and, um, people operated with a lot more empathy.

• 31:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yes.

• 31:42Speaker 01

  We need to get back to that.

• 31:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's one of the things I thought as I was scrolling through Twitter today was like, oh. Like you might not agree with people, you might, you know, think Elon's going to do a good job with Twitter and I'm still open to the fact, maybe he will.

• 31:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  Wrote about it this week. There's some good things that he's doing. However, like the, the lack of empathy is tough to see. Let's end with, um, by reading the tweet that you sent right before we got on the phone or a couple of hours before. You're, "Hi, everyone. I have, I have coffee and the sun is shining. Appreciate you all. Life is good. Don't forget to smile. Put on some Stevie Wonder, Prince, Joni Mitchell, Nas, or whatever your preference is, and have a wonderful day." I just thought that attitude was, you know, so refreshing. And I mean, the one thing that I can tell is that, you know, the, the group of people who were laid off today, um, very talented folks.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 32:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  The tech world is in need of, of solid talent. So

• 32:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  eventually everyone will, most people will, uh, land on their feet and, um,

• 32:41Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 32:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  You know, I know today's a tough day. Um, I appreciate you taking some time to speak with us about it.

• 32:46Speaker 01

  Thank you. Thank you so much. It's been my pleasure.

• 32:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  Great. And if people want to find you or hire you, it's the best way to do it.

• 32:52Speaker 01

  Uh, so my Twitter is still up. I'm not planning on deleting it. It's S B K C R N. Or my full name on LinkedIn, Simon Balmain. That's where I'm at.

• 33:04Speaker 01

  Always welcome for more recruiters or headhunting with interesting offers.

• 33:10Speaker 01

  And we'll see, we'll see what happens.

• 33:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hey, Simon, last question for you. Are you, are you going to pay $8?

• 33:16Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, Twitter Blue never even launched in the UK. I only had it as a staff member, right?

• 33:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  I see.

• 33:22Speaker 01

  So, you know, they'd have to sort that out first and, and then we'll see where we're at.

• 33:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, that's fair. Okay. Thank you, everybody for listening. Um, this has been an emergency show. Um, so a few bells and whistles, but thank you for being here with us. I thought it was important to get Simon's voice out on the feed, uh, one of the collection that we're, um, throwing out there, uh, recently. So it's great to have heard from him. Um, thank you LinkedIn for having me as part of your podcast network. Uh, thank you, Nick Watney, as always, for doing the audio, although your fine prints aren't on this. So any problem was, was my problem, uh, this week with the audio. And then, um, stay tuned. In a couple of days, or maybe even tomorrow, we're going to have Saagar and Jettie and Marshall Koslov from the Realignment Promised Emergency Podcast about the US midterm. So just dropping content on the feed left and right. Um, and, uh, thanks to you. Thanks always for listening.

• 34:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  Really appreciate you guys being here. All right. We'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast.

• 34:15Speaker 02

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the HouseMajorityPact.com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.