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Twitter Now Asks Some Fired Workers to Please Come Back

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Re: Twitter Now Asks Some Fired Workers to Please Come Back

#181
post #26

Sounds familiar. Where I worked years ago, the company asked for volunteers to be laid off, many people, took the package (1 years salary). IT was not allowed to volunteer. Mang. did not keep count, some Departments were emptied out. So after a couple of weeks, many people were re-hired and was able to keep their '1 year salary bonus'. Many people in IT left once the re-hirings happened. The company went chapter 11 a…

Accept to leave for 1 year salary? I’d do that any time. It’s a free year off, you can even start working somewhere else if you get bored and just be 1 year ahead finance wise. That’s a great deal.

Yeah, sounds like a company desperate to reduce the metric of ongoing operating cost, no matter what it did to anything else. I would guess private equity shenanigans.

Re: Twitter Now Asks Some Fired Workers to Please Come Back

#182
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realized Elon wasn't a scientist or engineer a long time ago. But a good businessman I thought he was and I think it's too early to say in this case whether that holds true. One issue is that since the company is now private, we most likley will not get to see it's profit. All we will have is what employees or musk says. So I still think it's too soon to make conclusions.

He’s just a young Donald trump

[deleted]

Re: Twitter Now Asks Some Fired Workers to Please Come Back

#183
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

eh, most of the comments here aren't saying what you're saying. They are blasting Musk for having layoffs in general.

It really does not seem so to me. They complain about size of it, speed of it and the way it was done. They are however reacting in more of emotional way. The thing is, Musk really went out of his way to troll Twitter employees and those who like twitter. And his fans really went out of way to mock fired people, call them lazy and so on. It was not just layoff, it was layoff designed to let you know how much looser y…

> They complain about size of it, speed of it and the way it was done

I haven't seen much of that here in HN though. Do you have examples?

> It was not just layoff, it was layoff designed to let you know how much looser you are.

Again, I don't see that. It just needed to be done. Could have been handled better? Were mistakes made? Probably. But I don't think it was intentional to show what a loser people are.

DHH has a nuanced take on it that I like. https://world.hey.com/dhh/apple-fired-4-100-when-steve-jobs-...

He quotes Jobs during his return and reboot of Apple

> Some mistakes will be made. That's good. Because at least some decisions will be made too. We'll fix them... But I think it's so much better than where things were not very long ago.

Re: Twitter Now Asks Some Fired Workers to Please Come Back

#184
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is certainly a hot take. When a company is losing $4 million a day drastic measures are in order to save the company so the remaining employees still have a job. Having worked in tech for over 20 years and being on both sides of layoffs I can tell you how hard it is for the people making the decision of who to layoff is exceedingly difficult and heart breaking. It definitely looks like Twitter was a hot mess and…

AFAIK the company didn't lose $4M/day until the advertisers halted their ad buys because of the uncertainties brought by the new management.

And the interests on the debt the company got from Musk.

Re: Twitter Now Asks Some Fired Workers to Please Come Back

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN seems pretty anti Elon, no?

I'm not sure what the "elon support" split on HN is, but in the past it seems to have been rather 50/50. I suspect that HN has recently seemed more anti-elon because the anti-elon crowd has a lot of bullshit to point to recently, and the pro-elon crowd doesn't really have good defenses to most of it.

Most “pro-Elon” people who are not completely brainwashed have had lots of reasons to re-evaluate their opinion of him recently. People are not static and can have changing emotions.

Re: Twitter Now Asks Some Fired Workers to Please Come Back

#186
post #63

related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33488224 see the top comments. "Allegedly Oracle did this years ago when they had layoffs-- employees were let go, then asked if they wanted to return. Apparently, if they said no, the company considered the exit a resignation instead of a layoff, and would refuse severance. If oracle was then taken to court over the lack of severance by former employees, those employees'…

Are you suggesting that Elon Musk is the new Larry Ellison?

They sound rather similar these days.

Re: Twitter Now Asks Some Fired Workers to Please Come Back

#187
post #11

Can't wait to see the HN "just give Elon a chance to put his brilliant plans in motion!" crowd to explain this one to us. Enlighten us please !

Here's DHH's take. https://world.hey.com/dhh/apple-fired-4-100-when-steve-jobs-...

" the focus on the customer.... is uncannily similar."

what is he smoking? Musk literally banned the head of a major advertising organization concerned about where Musk was taking the site in terms of it being friendly to advertising (https://www.axios.com/2022/11/06/musk-twitter-marketers-adve...). Read Josh Marshall's thread at https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1588679838306799617. Musk is absolutely doing everything the customer does not want (the customer being: advertisers), and they have already ran for the exits.

Re: Twitter Now Asks Some Fired Workers to Please Come Back

#189
post #23

If I were asked back I'd take it (hopefully with an increase in salary) then I'd actively search for another job. Once I landed it I'd give zero day notice. Fuck them. I understand I could be potentially hurting coworkers by adding additional work to their plate but Twitter didn't give 2 shits about the people left behind and the work that they would have to take on. Why is it corporations can "layoff" without notice…

> If I were asked back I'd take it

Since the workers mostly aren't actually fired, but in a no-access, no-duties period between notice and dismissal while still employed and on payroll, its “resume duties, quit, or be fired for cause”.

Re: Twitter Now Asks Some Fired Workers to Please Come Back

#190
What I like about this is that Elon apparently made this call by counting SLOCs printed on paper, and then stack ranked them. Clearly the man is a genius, and he will save Twitter.

You cannot audit performance at a software company by SLOC. In fact, its a great way to drive up hardware costs and salaries.

I stand by my previous statement about stack ranking: It does not fucking work. EVER. Fire low performers if you must but don't turn them on each other.

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