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Twitter to employees: all office buildings closed, badge access suspended

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Re: Twitter to employees: all office buildings closed, badge access suspended

#651

Post by waiseristy »

ShredKazoo wrote: post #602

So here's my understanding of what happened, appreciating corrections: * Twitter was known for liberal corporate politics, most employees liberal * Purchased by center-right billionaire in the name of freedom of speech (modern liberals against freedom of speech) * Twitter employees amuse themselves by making billionaire's life difficult * Billionaire delivers ultimatum, many employees out * Unclear if sufficient know…

The timeline you drew here is wack

He started firing people day 1 and bragging about it online. Of course his remaining employees are going to shit talk him.

The “ultimatum” sure as hell wasn’t in response to this either, I don’t know if you are implying that or not. He pulled this exact same stunt at Tesla just a few months ago. The dude is a raging asshole surrounded by yes men. If you value your health and your family you should not work for this man

Re: Twitter to employees: all office buildings closed, badge access suspended

#652

Post by Chinjut »

ShredKazoo wrote: post #637
solarkraft wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Twitter employees amuse themselves by making billionaire's life difficult Where did you get that from? He immediately started firing people, so when should they have done that?

https://twitter.com/rlycalm/status/1592636069224542208 Granted, I don't know this person is actually an engineer as opposed to a troll. And she doesn't claim that she or other employees actively tried to create trouble. So there was an aspect of me reading subtext into her tweet + Elon's ultimatum. Maybe incorrectly.

That is a joke post. That person was never a Twitter employee. But even if they counterfactually were, big deal if the grunts at the organization you take over have a nickname for you.

Re: Twitter to employees: all office buildings closed, badge access suspended

#653

Post by SilverBirch »

ShredKazoo wrote: post #602

So here's my understanding of what happened, appreciating corrections: * Twitter was known for liberal corporate politics, most employees liberal * Purchased by center-right billionaire in the name of freedom of speech (modern liberals against freedom of speech) * Twitter employees amuse themselves by making billionaire's life difficult * Billionaire delivers ultimatum, many employees out * Unclear if sufficient know…

Regular people have been trying to explain this to the "center-right" for a while now: Twitter's moderation policies weren't primarily dictated by their political views, they were primarily dictated by building an advertiser friendly platform. Which Musk exploded almost immediately by endorsing a far right homophobic conspiracy theory about a violent attack on the family member of an elected politician.

You can say "with the benefit of hindsight" but I would put to you: with the benefit of foresight, lots of people told him exactly what would happen. The problem isn't the management structure, it's that Musk is unfamiliar with pretty basic facts about twitter, such as its engineering architecture, its business model, and its position in the market.

Re: Twitter to employees: all office buildings closed, badge access suspended

#654

Post by pjc50 »

bagels wrote: post #214

I was really thinking about this sabbotage thing yesterday. In these large companies, to make changes to a lot of systems, you have to have someone else also sign on to the changes (eg. code review). If your aim is sabotage, you would have to find a like minded saboteur to work with you. In normal times, at most places, this is risky, because most others would not want to assist you, and would likely report you. The…

> If your aim is sabotage, you would have to find a like minded saboteur to work with you

Or forty-four billion dollars.

There's no need to actively sabotage the site from the staff position. Even if there isn't a single critical disk slowly filling up somewhere, there is a lot of dependencies in there that will eventually have a CVE.

Re: Twitter to employees: all office buildings closed, badge access suspended

#655

Post by spaceman_2020 »

kcb wrote: post #212
memish wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

George Hotz is interviewing there tomorrow. https://twitter.com/realGeorgeHotz/status/159339146698169139... For a certain kind of engineer, this version of Twitter is far more attractive than the previous one.

Why? What complex technical problem is there to solve at twitter at this point?

Twitter's media capabilities are really awful and have remained awful for as long as I can remember. The media player is slow as hell and malfunctions all the time.

Twitter was built on shaky foundations. From the very earliest days, the "fail whale" was a recurring theme

Re: Twitter to employees: all office buildings closed, badge access suspended

#656

Post by wstuartcl »

RavingGoat wrote: post #574
rednerrus wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm giving Elon the benefit of the doubt, A. he's intelligent B. He has 20+ years of corporate experience running companies, I would assume that there was some method to this madness. If I had to guess, he came in with the assumption that forces in the company would be hostile to him based on their beliefs. In order to weed those forces out, he engineered some of this madness to shake those people out. Unfortunate…

He is playing Candyland while everyone else is playing chess

At least trying to take the wrapper off the box -- not sure if he has figured out how to play yet..

Word on the street is full teams (including most of infra) have clicked "no". He may be in a state where the site can't even stay up as he coasts on employee fumes.

Re: Twitter to employees: all office buildings closed, badge access suspended

#657

Post by pjc50 »

TheLoafOfBread wrote: post #4
mongol wrote: post #2

How will Musk's failure at Twitter affect market confidence in his other ventures?

Depends how he spins it and how much he will be able to control narrative. I guess he will use something like - Twitter was broken before I got in and I could not save it anymore. Being Elon, I would be more worried about the fact that Saudi's are supposed to be as one of the investors in Twitter and they already have trace of killing people. If Elon won't be able to spin the story as somebody's else problem and inst…

That is not how the Saudis work. Losing mere money is a cost of doing business. It's losing face that matters. That's why they murdered Kashoggi. They're probably already being handed the DMs of critical people who they are going to be able to quietly murder without any outrage.

Re: Twitter to employees: all office buildings closed, badge access suspended

#658

Post by bkishan »

kibwen wrote: post #247
r721 wrote: post #157

>Hundreds upon hundreds of Twitter employees have technically resigned but still have access to Twitter’s internal systems, with some speculating it is because the employees tasked with managing that access also resigned. https://twitter.com/alexeheath/status/1593431420587761664

Same energy as the following article on the Twitter layoffs: "Twitter hasn’t responded to requests for comment, likely because its communications staff has been included in the layoffs." https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/04/twitter-faces-a-class-acti...

Nothing beats this[1] though,

The Verge reached out to Musk for comment. Twitter no longer has a communications department.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/10/23451198/twitter-ftc-elo...

Re: Twitter to employees: all office buildings closed, badge access suspended

#659

Post by spaceman_2020 »

bitcharmer wrote: post #556
random314 wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And he has a history of being a chronic liar. He has no STEM degree at all! https://twitter.com/kyliebytes/status/1593391167718113280

I have no degree at all and my job is pretty advanced research and implementation of ultra low-latency software execution stack in a major market maker. What's your point?

The point is that all of tech has now collectively decided that Elon Musk is a "phony" and "not that smart".

Apparently there was a memo sent to everyone in tech that they have to completely discount his work at Tesla and SpaceX and only evaluate him based on his tweets.

I feel like I'm living in bizarro world where overnight, Elon Musk became a dumbass - at least in the eyes of the tech industry.

Re: Twitter to employees: all office buildings closed, badge access suspended

#660

Post by ShredKazoo »

waiseristy wrote: post #651
ShredKazoo wrote: post #602

So here's my understanding of what happened, appreciating corrections: * Twitter was known for liberal corporate politics, most employees liberal * Purchased by center-right billionaire in the name of freedom of speech (modern liberals against freedom of speech) * Twitter employees amuse themselves by making billionaire's life difficult * Billionaire delivers ultimatum, many employees out * Unclear if sufficient know…

The timeline you drew here is wack He started firing people day 1 and bragging about it online. Of course his remaining employees are going to shit talk him. The “ultimatum” sure as hell wasn’t in response to this either, I don’t know if you are implying that or not. He pulled this exact same stunt at Tesla just a few months ago. The dude is a raging asshole surrounded by yes men. If you value your health and your fa…

I searched for the Tesla ultimatum you refer to. It seems to have been different, specifically saying execs couldn't work remotely: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-01/musk-s-te...

Contrast w/ Twitter ultimatum: https://twitter.com/donie/status/1592859900941852674

I think the Twitter ultimatum is the kind of thing you send if you suspect most employees don't support your leadership / are not pulling their weight. Similar to the Zappos philosophy of offering a generous severance to everyone who quits, in order to have an office full of enthusiastic employees.

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