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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

#271

Post by boatsie »

slg wrote: post #208

Let's say you run a company and you want to reduce staff. Let's also say you want to make an unpopular decision (or multiple unpopular decisions) that you know will drive a certain percentage of your staff to leave the company. Wouldn't it make the most sense to announce those decisions before making layoffs? Let people self select whether they want to stay and work for you and then make your layoffs after to ensure…

I think you have it backwards. This is how you accomplish a 75% reduction while only having to lay off (and pay severance for) 50%! Musk again playing 4d chess.

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

#272

Post by bigfudge »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #119
fortuna86 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100%. Rules are for other people.

You can't expect getting paid and set the rules. If you don't like it, stop receiving pay, that allowes you to ignore the rules. It's fair.

Some rules are not allowed.

Not allowing remote work is still allowed, but I don’t think it’s far away from being socially unacceptable. Being legally unacceptable is just one step beyond that.

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

#273

Post by jesuscript »

slg wrote: post #208

Let's say you run a company and you want to reduce staff. Let's also say you want to make an unpopular decision (or multiple unpopular decisions) that you know will drive a certain percentage of your staff to leave the company. Wouldn't it make the most sense to announce those decisions before making layoffs? Let people self select whether they want to stay and work for you and then make your layoffs after to ensure…

No post body was provided.

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

#274

Post by pseudonym »

ctvo wrote: post #80
DonsDiscountGas wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> But real estate costs have made this approach untenable, so something has to give. I need a citation here. Big tech was so large and profitable the last decade that thinking it’s real estate costs that led them to open office spaces and not a flawed ideology re: work and collaboration.

I assume the larger portion of what's "untenable" is "short commutes"; spending multiple hours of unpaid personal time in a car per day just driving to and from work so that you can have the place you sleep be affordable is a huge downside of a lot of in-person jobs that used to be taken as more of a default pre-pandemic, before so many places showed "yeah we could let you work from home but we just don't want to".

The downsides of an open floor plan can be at least partially countered by headphones, but there's much less that you can do on an individual level to make up for having that much of your personal time locked up in pure transit.

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

#275

Post by alistairSH »

So, he fires thousands of them while hob-knobbing with other billionaires on the other side of the country.

And his first company-wide communication is rescinding previous WFH policies without much reason.

What an absolute knob.

Edit to add... He demanded a company-wide all-hands on one hours notice, then appeared 15 minute late. I hope every employee worth their salary walks, Twitter implodes, and Musk loses much of his fortune and all of his cachet. What a narcissistic asshole.

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

#276

Post by JakeTheAndroid »

boredtofears wrote: post #89

I have to admit if I was an executive and I watched one of those "day in the life of" tiktoks from twitter employees that show them spending maybe 20% of their day doing work and the other 80% enjoying company amenities I might be considering tightening things up as well.

Wait, so you have an employee that can get all their work done using 20% of their working hours and then spend the rest of their day ensuring they don't burn out and you want to become adversarial to that employee?

Because clearly they are getting stuff done if they can post that video and not get fired. Otherwise, you have a low performer slacking off which is its own, completely separate issue from the video itself.

It's like that quote from The Office where Michael says Jim is a lazy worker because it takes Jim 20 minutes to complete a project that would take Michael hours to complete. Seems like you're saying you want your least efficient employees and can't be bothered to understand the working habits of your most efficient employees.

Or maybe, just maybe, using time as a sole metric isn't the best way to evaluate employee effectiveness or efficiency.

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

#277

Post by bigfudge »

mirekrusin wrote: post #191
UncleOxidant wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It probably is, but it's kind of risky if you end up pissing off employees who are key to your operations and top performers. Those folks can easily find work elsewhere. You end up with the people who can't easily move elsewhere.

If you are key top performer, surely you can get approval to work remotely, no?

Probably. But you might not want to work at a place where this is at the whim of a manager. Or where your non rock star colleagues are treated like shit.

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

#278

Post by warinukraine »

boatsie wrote: post #271
slg wrote: post #208

Let's say you run a company and you want to reduce staff. Let's also say you want to make an unpopular decision (or multiple unpopular decisions) that you know will drive a certain percentage of your staff to leave the company. Wouldn't it make the most sense to announce those decisions before making layoffs? Let people self select whether they want to stay and work for you and then make your layoffs after to ensure…

I think you have it backwards. This is how you accomplish a 75% reduction while only having to lay off (and pay severance for) 50%! Musk again playing 4d chess.

No, you have it backwards. If you wanted 75% reduction while only having to lay off 50%, you make the unpopular decision _first_, and then the lay offs.

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

#279

Post by memish »

newfonewhodis wrote: post #245
memish wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I like how some people equate "innovate" with "break the law and make other people pay".

Do they? You're the first one I've seen who has equated those two things.

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

#280

Post by v-erne »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #183
kibwen wrote: 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.

Yeah, sure. Because society and culture does not change and evolve. It's standing still like its 1905 when predatory capitalism was all the rage and people was still angry for loosing all their literal slaves. At this scale those are not just his "own" money otherwise we are going to have another Nero and Caligula moments again in the future.
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