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Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work

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221–230 of 1001 posts

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

#221

Remote work is about the only thing where I very much disagree with Musk. I get it for engineering physical things. But not for web software. In that area, remote works much better than in-office, at least for me.

I agree, but I think either full on-site or fully remote are both leagues better than partially remote. Partially remote is far worse than either - because now all the in-person tactics exclude the remote folks, and all the remote work tactics are an unnecessary burden to the in-office folks. An all-remote team of heads-down engineers is 99% as good as in-person, if not better, because now all the communication has been written down and recorded.

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

#222
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that there are pros and cons to remote work, and that it should be possible to have a frank discussion about where the balance lies. However, that is sadly irrelevant to this news item, as Musk isn't banning remote work because of any logical consideration of its merits. He's banning remote work because he's an authoritarian micromanager who believes that workers are to be treated like cattle.

Quoted post unavailable.

That doesn't make him immune from criticism or being described as authoritarian. A negative view on an employer may not have an immediate impact but medium to long term it can make hiring and retaining difficult, which can drive up costs.

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

#223
post #139

Here's a cool and perhaps unforeseen hypothetical turn-of-events: 100% of Twitter's staff give their resignation letter on Friday, and don't show up to work. Leadership wakes up to a collapsing platform, a 44 billion USD bill to pay, with no one to keep the lights on or answer the PagerDuty alerts. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes? No time for silly "knowledge transfers", or "onboarding new team members". You jus…

Don't typical contracts for people like Twitter's staff in the US come with timing requirements on quitting? As in, you can't really quit "on the day", you have to leave proper notice and so on? I understand that in practice once someone says "I quit!" there might be little interest from the employer to keep them around, but in a scenario like you outline I would be very afraid of legal ramifications. Just a thought,…

No, you can generally just quit instantly if you want to. Companies can also fire you instantly (but mass layoffs do have some rules).

There's a general convention of giving two weeks' notice, but it's not a legal requirement.

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

#224

I think that the NYT article has the much better lede from the emails in it: Due to resignations by 3 top execs yesterday, engineers are now likely to have to make sure that their code is compliant with the FTC w.r.t. the 2011 judgement against Twitter. As in, there is a good chance that individual SWEs at Twitter are going to be legally culpable for violations. Even if I am totally misreading that quick lede about d…

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

#225
post #193
post #149

I see we're still deep in the "fuck around" stage and have yet to reach "find out."

What you find out is in proportion to how much you fuck around. You have to fuck around to innovate and do new shit. It took a lot of fucking at Tesla and SpaceX to get to where they are.

Enron....

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

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does that work? If a SWE isn't aware of the gazillion laws surrounding their code, why isn't the company liable when X of those laws are inevitably violated? What about the people who review the code? Or the people who wrote the systems that push the code?

It seems Musk's new legal "department" is wanting developers to self-certify - put their own name on the certification. https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/10/23451198/twitter-ftc-elo...

This is just another way to materially change the job position to force people to quit.

I would also be shocked if the FTC accepted a certification from anyone that is not qualified and does not have the appropriate support system in place to certify.

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

#228

Here's a cool and perhaps unforeseen hypothetical turn-of-events: 100% of Twitter's staff give their resignation letter on Friday, and don't show up to work. Leadership wakes up to a collapsing platform, a 44 billion USD bill to pay, with no one to keep the lights on or answer the PagerDuty alerts. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes? No time for silly "knowledge transfers", or "onboarding new team members". You jus…

If only software devs had setup a union or something.

No, we're too privileged to be fired:

https://ma.nu/blog/not-going-anywhere

Oops: https://ma.nu/blog/bye-twitter

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

#230

> “over the next few days, the absolute top priority is finding and suspending any verified bots/trolls/spam.” Is this goodbye to @ElonJet? Also, "troll" seems rather nebulous. Is it the end for anyone seen as a troublemaker?

No. And Musk already said so. What’s the intention of the FUD?

> And Musk already said so.

You think this matters? Did you not see the whole "comedy is legal again" followed by banning/suspending people for parodies? How quickly he went back on "free speech"?

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