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Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work

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Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work

#31
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he can't force his employees to work under his total control That is because he actually can force them to be under his control. > He also can't accept the gain in life capital for his employees in working from home for his workforce and that the future of work for humanity is probably decentralized offices and WFH, not middle managed, over the shoulder, supervised, centralized offices. I don't think he cares about…

I get what you’re saying but does that produce the most effective, creative and innovative workforce required to compete in the technology industry?

Creative and innovative - absolutely not. Effective - mostly not, except in some situations. There are many ways how to be ineffective tho, this is one of them many. I think that you dont need to be super effective to compete in the technology industry.

Will he be able to compete? I dont know. Musk twitter moves seem incompetent overall to me. But so far, his charizma and money (to certain people) did allowed him to get quite far in his previous companies. He did treated his previous employees pretty much the same way.

Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work

#32

It seems that Musk at this point is completely unaware that he is a walking contradiction. On one hand, he is a technologist. Forward thinking and driving towards the future. On the other hand, he is an old fashioned factory owner. He views his workforce as pure labour and can't accept that he can't force his employees to work under his total control. He also can't accept the gain in life capital for his employees in…

What if he(and others like me) believe that working in-person really is truly necessary for accomplishing great work?

Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work

#33
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cutting edge technologist for the investors, old school factory owner for managing people. Makes perfect sense if you're trying to extract the max amount of money.

Similar to the formula Bezos is using. They are both making a lot of money doing it, just like the robber barons of the Gilded Age did.

Not letting people work from home doesn't make you a robber baron.

Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work

#34
post #7

It seems that Musk at this point is completely unaware that he is a walking contradiction. On one hand, he is a technologist. Forward thinking and driving towards the future. On the other hand, he is an old fashioned factory owner. He views his workforce as pure labour and can't accept that he can't force his employees to work under his total control. He also can't accept the gain in life capital for his employees in…

The cheapest way to downsize is to have employees quit of their own accord. Removing benefits like WFH incentives this.

Except that you lose your best people this way, rather than average/worst.

Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work

#35
post #23

I am split on the remote work thing from a productivity / creativity perspective. I do think there are times when I'm less productivity working from home compared to the office. I also think as a team we're less creative. Some of the best stuff I've done in my career has come out of casual conversations with my team about the stuff we're building. I've noticed I don't think about what I'm building as much when workin…

IMHO the ideal situation would be for people to work in their own offices, with doors that closed, and short commutes. Easy to work distraction-free alone, easy to have group meetings and random chats.

But real estate costs have made this approach untenable, so something has to give.

Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work

#36
post #19
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter doesn't need "best people" - it's not innovating and hasn't been for a very long time.

"Innovating" is not the only nor primary thing that requires "best people".

innovating is a meaningless term in ad tech companies. optimizing I think is a better word.

Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work

#37
post #23

I am split on the remote work thing from a productivity / creativity perspective. I do think there are times when I'm less productivity working from home compared to the office. I also think as a team we're less creative. Some of the best stuff I've done in my career has come out of casual conversations with my team about the stuff we're building. I've noticed I don't think about what I'm building as much when workin…

I'm beginning to think that collective distributed satellite offices is going to be big. Like WeWork but for companies to house their local staff and far less culty. Would help if they had standing desks, folding treadmills, three screens and everything else for a superb dev experience that is a bit of a pain to set up at home.

I mean that’s the worst of both worlds. You get to be a remote employee as in you don’t sit with your team but you still have to commute to an office

Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work

#39

It seems that Musk at this point is completely unaware that he is a walking contradiction. On one hand, he is a technologist. Forward thinking and driving towards the future. On the other hand, he is an old fashioned factory owner. He views his workforce as pure labour and can't accept that he can't force his employees to work under his total control. He also can't accept the gain in life capital for his employees in…

What if he(and others like me) believe that working in-person really is truly necessary for accomplishing great work?

> What if he(and others like me) believe that working in-person really is truly necessary for accomplishing great work?

Well, it's his (and your) right to be wrong but that's a belief that was already on very shaky ground before 2020 and has by this point been absolutely proven wrong.

Unless your job actually requires physical interaction with or proximity to a thing or other people it can almost certainly be done equally well remotely.

Processes may have to be adjusted to account for remote workers and even the way people work when working remotely, but almost 100% of jobs that take place at a desk in front of a computer can and should be allowed to be remote.

The biggest thing that doesn't work in a remote environment is micromanagement, so bad bosses who feel the need to micromanage hate it, but those people are terrible so if they don't like it that's a good thing.

Re: Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work

#40

At this point why would anyone want to stay at twitter? The mood must be absolutely abysmal.

Over summer, tech companies were offering wheelbarrows full of cash to potential employees. Love him or hate him, once he started f'ing around at twitter, why would anyone have stayed? Unless you really desperately wanted to be in the presence of the man himself, and maybe thought he was going to buy you a horse in exchange for something

Probably because the people getting let go aren’t in high demand anywhere with current tech layoffs
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