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Twitter staff have been told to work 84-hour weeks

businessinsider.com

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Re: Twitter staff have been told to work 84-hour weeks

#41

I think people might be missing the point here. Elon probably wants higher turnover. These are very desirable jobs. People would bend over backwards to work at Twitter. Younger, cheaper people who have strong ideas of how to fix Twitter and would actually try to push these ideas. And these seats are currently filled with older, expensive employees who like things the way they are averse to things breaking. Either tha…

> These are very desirable jobs. People would bend over backwards to work at Twitter. Every sane person I talk to has the opinion that there are not enough money in the world to deal with an asshole like Musk. Time change but history repeats itself . It’s always right wing nuts and generally people who fall for cults who end up in the bunker where they discover that the person whom they thought was god , in reality j…

> Every sane person I talk to has the opinion that there are not enough money in the world to deal with an asshole like Musk.

You don't talk to any poor people. They already have a bad boss that underpays them, a bad boss that pays them well is a massive upgrade.

Re: Twitter staff have been told to work 84-hour weeks

#42
I'm both saddened and excited. Saddened because this abuse is all too common in capitalist corporations led by megalomaniacs. And excited because my company is hiring and we don't ask anyone to work more than 40 hours a week. Hoping we can interview some people from Twitter soon so that they don't have to worry about finding new work after layoffs

Re: Twitter staff have been told to work 84-hour weeks

#43
post #25

I think people might be missing the point here. Elon probably wants higher turnover. These are very desirable jobs. People would bend over backwards to work at Twitter. Younger, cheaper people who have strong ideas of how to fix Twitter and would actually try to push these ideas. And these seats are currently filled with older, expensive employees who like things the way they are averse to things breaking. Either tha…

> People would bend over backwards to work at Twitter. Sure, I'd love to work in a company with the guy that couldn't really decide whether or not he wants to go through the agreement he signed, carried toilet furniture in as his first job as the CEO and then is threatening to fire huge amounts of the current employees. I mean, what could possible go wrong?

I know you are trying to be flip here, but I can almost guarantee you that their number of job applicants has probably exploded as a result of these shenanigans.

Re: Twitter staff have been told to work 84-hour weeks

#44
post #7

Does America not have the concept of constructive dismissal?

It does! Generally if you quit you can't collect unemployment insurance, but if your boss places unreasonable expectations on you or creates a hostile work environment you can argue it was constructive dismissal and collect unemployment even if you quit. The current Twitter situation is ripe for such claims. Criteria from Wikipedia: "The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has provided a 3-part test to determine…

In my (blue) state if you quit and file for unemployment due to hostile/unsafe work environment, they ask the company if that was true and take the company at face value and reject your unemployment claim.

Re: Twitter staff have been told to work 84-hour weeks

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that’s his intention. To force resignations

Well, to a point. It could be self-defeating if enough people quit. Worst case it could effectively end Twitter as an ongoing concern. I doubt that would happen, but ya never know.

Extremely doubtful. There is no shortage of people looking for work.

Re: Twitter staff have been told to work 84-hour weeks

#46

I think people might be missing the point here. Elon probably wants higher turnover. These are very desirable jobs. People would bend over backwards to work at Twitter. Younger, cheaper people who have strong ideas of how to fix Twitter and would actually try to push these ideas. And these seats are currently filled with older, expensive employees who like things the way they are averse to things breaking. Either tha…

These are very desirable jobs. s/are/were

I understand your point, but if he even gets a fraction of the talent they have to turn down at SpaceX or Tesla he'll do just fine.

Re: Twitter staff have been told to work 84-hour weeks

#47

I think people might be missing the point here. Elon probably wants higher turnover. These are very desirable jobs. People would bend over backwards to work at Twitter. Younger, cheaper people who have strong ideas of how to fix Twitter and would actually try to push these ideas. And these seats are currently filled with older, expensive employees who like things the way they are averse to things breaking. Either tha…

These are very desirable jobs. s/are/were

There are lots of hungry developers around that world that would kill to work 12/7 and take home 200k USD

Re: Twitter staff have been told to work 84-hour weeks

#48

Musk is a bully. Like any bully, he is doing this to find out who is easy to pick on, and will keep them around, while dismissing those who are willing/able to fight back. Life will continue to be miserable to those he keeps around. My advice to all engineers feeling this pressure -- start looking now . Leave as soon as possible. You are more valuable than what Musk thinks of you. Those who are in a position to do so…

The best engineers in the world working at SpaceX and Tesla disagree.

Here's Andrej Karpathy's (ex-Tesla, even better) take from a couple days ago on Lex's podcast.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbxladysbTE

Re: Twitter staff have been told to work 84-hour weeks

#49

Wow. IF (if!) this is true, I really hope every single Twitter employee sends Musk an email saying "fuck you" and walks out. There's just now call for treating people like this. EDIT: let me expand this to say, it might not be as bad as it sounds if there's some massive reward (beyond just "keeping your job") tied to this or something. And I have no problem working 80+ hours a week.. I do it all the time myself. It's…

Treating people like what? Asking them to be productive and get shit done? Should Musk hand out hugs and participation trophies? Maybe little "You can do it!" stickers?

There are 7500 employees at twitter and nobody seems to know what they are working on. The bureaucracy at Twitter was poison and the entire company had lost billions under the old management.

The free lunch, wheatgrass smoothies, and safes paces are coming to an end. Get to work. That's why you're there. Don't want to work? Go pretend to work someplace else. It really is that simple.

The people who want to work will stay.

Re: Twitter staff have been told to work 84-hour weeks

#50
post #6

"I work at Google and they've told me to work 125 hours weeks". In that statement I provided just as much evidence for my claim as the article does their claim. In fact, there's more proof for my claim since it has a username tied to it, whereas the article just cites anonymous "according to internal sources". And yet, this is an article that how many thousands of people will read, and internalize into their model of…

I also suspect Musk is intentionally trolling the press at this point.

He'll say random flippant things in meetings he know will get leaked. Those things don't happen. He trains his employees not to trust the news and gets to make a point about news trying to find an axe to grind.

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