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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

#81
post #39

Can people be for cause fired for working only the stipulated 40 hour weeks at this point? And if it’s for cause do you get severance?

I doubt those employees have contracts which stipulate 40 hour work weeks. They are salaried exempt employees. They can be fired for cause (although depending on the exact facts of a particular case the employee might still be able to file for unemployment insurance). There is generally no legal requirement to pay severance to terminated employees, unless it falls under the WARN Act and the employer failed to give su…

You can legally ask someone to work 24/7 everyday or fire them without severance?

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

#82
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't speak for others but I didn't give a crap about WLB in my 20s. Or job security. I didn't have to be in school anymore! If the job was fun and you got to work someplace cool that's just gravy - I was more than happy to cut into my video game time. But even to this day, working 60 hours a week for a place where you can arbitrary push code into production and see what happens IS ALWAYS going to be more fun and r…

> to this day, working 60 hours a week for a place where you can arbitrary push code into production and see what happens IS ALWAYS going to be more fun and rewarding than sitting in a team meeting reviewing the wording on BRDs for 20 hours a week. This only works for subscale businesses. Once a company becomes big enough, that kind of approach ends up causing production outages, private data spillage, or PR / custom…

Seriously, there’s zero chance of Twitter being some cowboy coder paradise where anyone who wants to can just arbitrarily push code to production, not with billions at stake. It’ll still have large company bureaucratic bullshit.

And if is that cowboy coder paradise, that’ll make me even less likely to climb in a self driving car or a rocket from one of Musk’s companies than I already am.

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

#85
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.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/elon-musk-has-turn...

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

#86

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…

If that is such a great idea then why didn't the earlier owners think of it? They are experienced business-people as well I would think. Were they just dumb? Or is this just the ego of Musk trying to generate the maximum of mentions of himself in the media?

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

#87

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…

> I think people might be missing the point here. Elon probably wants higher turnover. It certainly is. But this is a shitty and stupid way to go about it. You ruin the lives and health of those who can't afford to give you the finger, for no actual benefit to anyone. (Say... they have family who needs their paycheck. Or they're on an H-1B.) Of the remainder, you chase away everyone who is competent and confident eno…

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/elon-musk-has-turn...

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

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except the lowest unemployment numbers in USA. That might be an issue. https://www.npr.org/2022/08/05/1116036160/the-unemployment-r...

To be fair, NPR is state media and the state has a motive for stating certain things that mispresent the truth.

> state has a motive for stating certain things that mispresent the truth.

If you want to cast doubt on some reporting you should provide some evidence not just say you think state has a motive for "stating certain things". Else people will reasonably wonder whether you have a motive for "stating certain things".

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

#89

I am glad that I am living in Europe. The moment my boss would try such shenigans I would be laughing at his face and then continue with my 8 hours / day work time.

Musk seems to be a bit of a clueless guy, thinking of his earlier demand that everybody print out last 30 days of code, and of how much he overpaid for Twitter and then tried to weasel out of the deal.

In US there has been a lot of talk of "quiet quitting" lately. That means you do the minimum you need to stay in the job, don't try to excel in it. Just doing long hours is not the same as excelling, it can be part of the quiet quitting.

So one approach would be to work overtime as much as asked, demand to be paid for it but not do much. Only the minimum.

And isn't it illegal to be forced to work overtime without compensation? So that might be a strategy as well, do what they ask and then later sue them. Or gladly work overtime you do get paid for it but again do only as much as is needed.

The problem with Musk's actions I think is it immediately creates a confrontational atmosphere in his company.

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

#90
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Honestly, when you’re paying employees $300k packages, arguments that can be made for an Amazon warehouse worker just doesn’t apply here. I kind of want to apply to Twitter tbh. Sounds like a fun place to work, probably eliminating 90% of the bureaucracy and HR bullshit. Stock alone would be worth it, working with brilliant and motivated people in a high pace environment is becoming rare. Silicon Valley used to do th…

> working with brilliant and motivated people

Are you expecting that Musk demanding people work 100% overtime will make them "highly motivated"?

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