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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

#791

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside: there is no "technically resigned" here, if they're referring to Musk's loyalty-pledge deadline. Those employees have been terminated -- and are entitled to unemployment and wrongful termination protections.

I wonder if this legally really is the case. Twitter seems to have asked "Do you still want to work here", giving an option to affirm. They didn't say "you have to go", they said "you may go if you do not like the new direction of the company, please tell us which one it is". I'd be rather careful with that, and not just proclaim these people were terminated. I see a rather good chance court could rule very different…

They phrased a little differently, though, didn't they?

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

#792

How does one follow a come-back-to-office police while being simultaniously being locked out from said office? Is this an employer lockout, the employer version of an employee strike? So many questions! Maybe one of those blue checkmarked Elon's on Twitter can answer! But seriously, how can someone burn down something he just bought for 44 billion so fast and consequently?

> But seriously, how can someone burn down something he just bought for 44 billion so fast and consequently? The fan boys would say: It’s Elon, he is playing 3D chess and no one is smart enough to understand his end goal.

This is 100% going to happen. Twitter will crash and burn, and then fanboys will go "This was Elon's plan all along! He hated Twitter, and just wanted to kill it to own the libs. Everything he was doing was an act. What a genius!!"

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

#793

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside: there is no "technically resigned" here, if they're referring to Musk's loyalty-pledge deadline. Those employees have been terminated -- and are entitled to unemployment and wrongful termination protections.

I wonder if this legally really is the case. Twitter seems to have asked "Do you still want to work here", giving an option to affirm. They didn't say "you have to go", they said "you may go if you do not like the new direction of the company, please tell us which one it is". I'd be rather careful with that, and not just proclaim these people were terminated. I see a rather good chance court could rule very different…

Is it that simple though? By your logic it's possible to never fire anyone, just change the contract until they resign... doesn't really make sense to me.

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

#794
post #782
post #776

What I find so amazing about this dumpsterfire is how easy the plan to maximize Twitter revenue would have been: fire 80-90% of developers over the next year and just optimize the system to reduce infrastructure costs by 95%. Be transparent, humane and not an asshole while doing this. When you then have a leaner organization then you can go nuts. Musk acted like an impatiant child, all the while being mostly right.

> fire 80-90% of developers over the next year and just optimize the system to reduce infrastructure costs by 95% "just" The presumption here is that 90% of the staff weren't doing anything useful, and that 95% of the infrastructure costs were wasted, and both of those would be extremely surprising? Also very non-efficient-markets-hypothesis, that a public company would just sit there wasting almost all of its money.

Why would it be surprising? Without any pressure to cut costs engineers find countless ways to "be useful" that ads little value while adding massive complexity to the organization, ballooning maintenance costs in the long-term.

I've heard so many bullshit work stories from FAANG friends that I'm not sure why you'd expect markets to be efficient regarding these hugely subsidized tech companies.

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

#795

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't see what it is about the Twitter product that would require going "hardcore". It's been more than twenty years since the dot-com bust and people still think that just because a company is on a website that makes it a tech company. Sure, Twitter's product is twitter.com the website, but most criticism of it and ideas for improvement don't revolve around the engineering aspects of keeping a website running: t…

> Thinking that by having engineers go "hardcore" you're automatically going to have a better product is like if a pizza delivery company decided to invest in better cars because people criticized their pizzas. Bingo. Hard-core engineering has been the lynchpin of Tesla and SpaceX's success -- they literally won via designing and manufacturing superior physical things. It makes sense that EM would blunder by attempti…

Can we stop parroting the term "hardcore engineering"? It makes never-ending crunch sound virtuous, rather than dumb. "Dumbcore engineering".

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

#796

I hope that the wheels stay on sufficiently to get an idea of where EM wants to take Twitter and find out what kind of value it can bring. Having said that, he really made it obvious to me as an eng that the severance is the option I would be taking. Going "hardcore" on things can be fun, at the right time in your life, for the right reasons, with the right people. But somebody who takes over the company and accrues…

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…

> Unfortunately it seems like it may be backfiring.

Why do you consider that "unfortunate"?

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

#797

My respect to twitter folks quitting en mass is through the roof. I understand those who can not quit right now due to financial commitments. But as soon as your house is in order, quit. This will send a strong message to anyone trying to emulate musk.

And the people looking at your resume later. Staying at Twitter now will need a darn good explanation, otherwise I guess the assumption is you buy into this BS, or you need your visa. If you need your visa I get it, otherwise that is a stain on your resume

What percentage of tech folks are on h1-b. 20% seems about right.

Makes sense that some people had to check that box.

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

#798
post #769

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On principal, I hope it crashes and burns and ruins him. And I know this will cause a lot of people to suffer some. I am so sorry for that. But these piss ant billionaires need to start facing real consequences when they behave so abhorrently. I hope all of his ventures fail similarly. Fuck him and his petulant behavior forever.

Billionares have a support system of other billionares giving one another handsies. I'm sure if Musk was in danger of feeling pain someone like Thiel or Bezos would step up to give him a hand perhaps without interest even. I agree "fuck him", but sadly I doubt he'll suffer much of a fallout of this. That said I am riding the sweet wave of schadenfreude and do hope that twitter crashes and burns (and that everyone who…

Agreed. It is great watching him eat the shit sandwich he has made for himself.

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

#799

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Going "hardcore" on things can be fun, at the right time in your life, for the right reasons, with the right people. I don't see what it is about the Twitter product that would require going "hardcore". It's a lose-lose situation; I don't think Twitter's problems would be solved by engineering harder; and you will spend 80 hrs/wk where you can end up fired because people aren't as deterministic as cars. It's a comp…

You know the butterfly effect where one small decision affects tens of thousands of other things? That must have been the day that things were going to well at Tesla, record profits, etc, that Musk got bored and decided he only likes to work under unbearable pressure. So, he made a couple of insulting tweets and now here we are. I really can't believe he didn't put any escape clauses in his contract, no due dilligenc…

> I really can't believe he didn't put any escape clauses in his contract, no due dilligence, etc. I think he's very smart in general but this mistake is pretty much colossal in size.

This was not a mistake. He was seeing that his offer to buy twitter was not taken seriously. Understandably the board felt he will flake out. He wanted to show he won't flake out. The way he could demonstrate that was by binding his own hands.

So he went to his lawyers and asked them to write an offer he can't back out from. And then he got what he asked for.

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

#800
post #676
post #375

>In addition to the payroll team being gone, Twitter's entire US tax team is gone, I'm told, along with its financial reporting team. Not great. https://twitter.com/HaysKali/status/1593449877094047744

I bet the SEC is thinking “not this guy again”

They are a private company. The SEC has nothing to do with them.
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