So Twitter finally did the thing everyone assumed was coming since July: Jack Dorsey is officially CEO, no more "interim" in front of it. They announced it this morning along with the less fun part, which is that about 336 people are losing their jobs, roughly 8% of the company, mostly out of product and engineering. Dick Costolo's out, Dorsey's back in the chair he originally sat in before getting pushed out by the board back in 2008.
I've been half-following this saga all summer and I still don't totally buy the setup. Dorsey is now running Twitter full-time-ish while also being CEO of Square, which is a real company processing real payments for a lot of small businesses, not some side project he tinkers with on weekends. He's said publicly he'll split his time, and I guess if anyone can pull off two CEO jobs it's a guy who already invented the checkmark button, but come on. Running one company well is hard. I've watched enough founders try to be "hands on" at two things at once and it usually means neither gets the attention it needs. Maybe Dorsey's different. I'll believe it when Twitter ships something that isn't a UI tweak nobody asked for.
The layoffs are the part that actually matters more long term, I think. Twitter's user growth has basically flatlined for a while now and the stock has been sliding pretty much since the IPO high wore off, so this reads less like a bold reset and more like a company trimming to hit numbers Wall Street wants to see. Dorsey's internal memo (which of course leaked within the hour, because everything does now) talked about "moving with urgency" and getting the org "less complex." Fine. Every CEO says some version of that when layoffs happen. I don't fault him for the corporate-speak, that's just what you say, but it doesn't tell you anything about whether the product actually gets better.
And here's my real complaint, the one that has nothing to do with org charts: Twitter itself just feels worse to use than it did five years ago and nobody running the company seems to be fixing the actual thing. I still open the app out of habit more than enjoyment most days. The timeline used to be a stream you could dip into and catch up on in order; now there's a "while you were away" module shoved at the top half the time and it's never the tweets I actually wanted to see. I know they're eventually going to mess with the chronological order more (there's been talk of it for months and every time it comes up people lose their minds, myself included) and I genuinely think that's the wrong move, but I also get why they're considering it. New users don't understand a raw firehose. I do, because I've had an account since sometime in 2008 back when you texted your tweets to a short code and it cost you actual SMS money if your plan didn't have unlimited texting. Different world.
None of this is really Dorsey's fault, to be fair. He inherited a company that's been searching for its second act since roughly the day it went public. But putting his name on the door permanently, on the same day as a round of layoffs, is a weirdly blunt way to start. It signals confidence and cost-cutting in the same press release, which is a strange combination to sit with.
I don't have a tidy prediction here. Square is reportedly circling an IPO of its own before the year's out, which makes the "part-time at Twitter" thing even harder to square (no pun intended, honestly didn't notice until I typed it). We'll see how long the dual-CEO arrangement actually lasts before something has to give. My money's on Twitter losing that particular tug of war eventually, just because Square is the company with the clearer story to tell investors right now.
Anyway. Back to actually using the thing, checkmark button and all.