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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

#991
post #685

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>then start hiring as necessary with the kind of people you want. That assumes that people will still want to work for Twitter after all of this. Given that there is no shortage of jobs for engineers even after massive layoffs at Facebook/Meta and Twitter, many people are going to think twice about signing up to work for a company and owner that have a reputation for treating people as disposable trash. Employees are…

> That assumes that people will still want to work for Twitter after all of this. Just a data point, but Twitter is now much more interesting to me (as a place of work) than it was before. Which is to say, it went from zero interest to "maybe?" * Chaos provides opportunities to make real changes instead of being just a tiny cog doing what you're told. * Advancement is going to be faster in a fast-changing organizatio…

> * It's in "go big or go broke" mode. After a year you're probably going to know which. Better than spending a decade working for a zombie.

The people inside seem to already know which it is, and it's only been 2 weeks.

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

#992

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

[deleted]

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

#993
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.

citing some evidence for all the people who are calling you out and accusing you of making up these claims against him: > He calls himself a "nano-manager". source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/electric-car-pioneer-elon-musk-... > In conversations with 35 current and former Tesla employees, CEO Elon Musk is described as a polarizing figure who inspires but micromanages to an extreme. source: https://www.cnbc.com/2018…

> Elon Musk says remote workers are just pretending to work.

Hehe, I wonder how does he think how 100% remote companies continue to work and excel.

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

#994
post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, the Tesla robots would (with a VR headset) enable physical-thing workers to work remotely.

That would be really cool, but probably still a while before that actually works on a large scale. Let alone before the Tesla robot actually works. I am less optimistic about the time it takes to develop it.

I have no particular idea how long it will take or how much such a robot will end up costing. I can see the use case, but I've only ever done hardware as an amateur, never professionally.

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

#996
post #481

Or -- he's stupid.

Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to HN. We've had to ask you this kind of thing before.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33552827.

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

#997

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's stupid is people thinking that someone who successfully rules over some of the most influential companies in the world is stupid. Reminds me of all those people who claim that Trump or Putin[1] are "stupid" where in reality they just mean "I don't like them". [1] You can be a murderous dictator and not stupid, I would actually wager a guess that those people tend to actually be cleverer than average. Some appl…

Quoted post unavailable.

You can't attack another user like this, regardless of how wrong they are or you feel they are. We've banned this account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

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

#998

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at a place that did this in 2009. The problem with this method is that many people DID relocate to keep their jobs. And then were layed off two months later. Imagine uplifting your life for your job, and then being told you need to find a new job anyway.

In 2020 the company I worked for did ~25% temp salary reduction so they could feel safe that they could keep everyone employed and such. 3 months after everyone did it they said "thank you thank you we are so happy we don't need to let anyone go". 2 months later they laid off ~50% of the development team and people throughout the company... At the end of the year they said no bonuses, followed by an email saying desp…

All generalizations are false.

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

#999
post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are assuming that he is optimizing for employee happiness. I am not associating a value judgement to whether that is the right/wrong move in Twitter's context. I wish that we, as a culture, stopped harping over what Elon Musk might do to Twitter next. It does not matter. This will take some time to play out. I hope Twitter employees land on their feet. That is pretty much the only thing that matters. I don't have…

I bet a lot of people actually experience Schadenfreude at seeing these social media empires being toppled. The point was not employee happiness, but an attitude that completely ignores that the employees might know a thing or two about how to run the place. And plenty of employees are willing to put up with subpar pay and otherwise boring work if they feel valued for the stewardship and experience.

> And plenty of employees are willing to put up with subpar pay and otherwise boring work if they feel valued for the stewardship and experience.

That sounds like a reasonable hypothesis. I don’t know if that is being (or was ever) tested at Twitter.

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

#1000
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…

Given that the best people might find new jobs faster than the worst, you might drive away the better half of your human resources. With the 'fire-first' approach, you have more control over who should leave (e.g. hiring managers).

I don't like it either, but I think that is part of the rational behind it.

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